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“So, what questions?” she asked, tucking a wet strand of hair behind her ear.
“It’s bringing things up in the past, things that will be painful to you.”
“I...I don’t understand,” she said, a sense of panic rising in her eyes.
“It has to do with your parents.”
“What about them?”
“They were the ones to find Alex after she was attacked.”
She stared at him blankly for a moment. “What are you talking about?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“No!”
“Your parents didn’t tell you?”
“I was at camp when they died in the fire. I’d been there all week. The police brought me home when it happened. It was awful.” She punched the dashboard. “I should have been there. I could have saved them.”
“You can’t blame yourself for that, Annie. For all you know, if you had been there you would have died, too.”
“Well, at least we would have died together.”
“I don’t believe that’s what your parents would have wanted.”
She looked out the window. “My grandparents took me in and finished raising me. But I never knew about my parents finding Alex. My grandparents never told me. I don’t even know if they knew.”
“So you knew about her being assaulted?”
“There were rumors, and I heard things from time to time.”
“She was also raped.”
Palmer’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “I didn’t knowthat.”
“And no one else in town told you about your parents finding her?”
“No. Who else knew?” she asked.
“Well, the police did, surely.”
“I can’t believe this shit.” She paused and studied him. “But what does that matter now? Whether I knew or not?”
“Alex got attacked and your parents found her. And from the timeline I looked at they found her pretty muchimmediatelyafter she was attacked. Then, three days later they die in a house fire?”
“I must be very stupid, but I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“I think they might haveseenwhoever raped Alex. They could have passed the man on the road, maybe he was running or driving away. The point is, it’s a lonely area. It was getting dark. There might not have been anyone else around.”
“But if they saw the rapist, why didn’t they tell the police?”
“That I haven’t figured out yet. I just found out they were the ones who discovered Alex and reported it.”
“So are you saying that my parents were, what? Murdered?”
“It’s possible.”
