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Fuuccck him. “Is that what you would have done?”
“No.” He tilts his head so he can see me. “But you aren’t like me.”
“Of course, I am! That’s the whole reason I wanted to run away with you.”
“You wanted to run because you felt guilty.” His eyes hold mine. “You’ve dedicated your entire life to making up for your sins. But your sins can’t be atoned by good deeds, my love.”
Well, at least we’re back to my love.
“They can only be forgiven. There is no going back. What’s done can never be undone.”
Give me a break. Who let Mother Teresa in here?
“I know that, Van Gogh.” I say his name like a curse. “I’m not trying to make up for what I’ve done. I’m simply trying to help other women like my sister.”
Van’s lips purse as if he’s holding back a smile. “By helping other women get away with murder?”
“My sister didn’t murder Robert. I did!”
I gasp and clap my hand over my mouth. It’s the first time I’ve ever admitted what I did aloud. It’s sickening.
“I didn’t mean to hit him that hard,” I say after a moment. “I just wanted him to stop hitting her.”
Van chuckles. “From the photos I saw, I say you managed to do that and then some.”
“It’s not funny, Van.”
I should have known my husband would find humor in the mistreatment of an abuser. That’s absolutely his kind of justice.
“Actually, Reese”—he says my name in the same exasperated tone I said his in—“neither of you killed him.”
I swear the earth stops mid-rotation until I can catch my breath.
“What?” Did he just say Julia and I did not kill Robert all those years ago?
“No. You’re wrong. He wasn’t breathing when Julia pushed me out of the house and told me to run.”
Van, always politically correct, rolls his eyes. “Oh, well I stand corrected, then. Tell me, which one of you is a doctor again? I could have sworn you were both teenagers at the time. I highly doubt either of you knew where to even check for a pulse.”
Apart from wanting to punch him in the face, he does have a point. Did I check for a pulse? Did Julia? Or did we freak out and think he wasn’t breathing?
“How do you know this?”
This time, the bastard does smile. “You think I’d let an actual murderer join me on my quest for vengeance?”
This man. “You had me investigated!”
He scoffs like I’m an idiot for even thinking such a thing. “I remember you calling it stalking.”
“You mean, you didn’t have someone from law enforcement check into it for you?”
“Yeah,” he quips sarcastically, “because I wasn’t going from town to town, burning down the homes of dirty cops and mayors.”
Oh, right. “Well, still. You could have told me back then!”
“And what would you have done differently if you knew you didn’t kill Robert?”
I know what he’s doing. He’s setting me up to say that I would have run back and found my sister—that I would have never started hacking and funding various women’s shelters.
