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“Yeah, just once but we didn’t know each other very well. We met a few times at family parties he took me to. Alex and I were pretty much over and then he vanished. It’s just how stuff works out sometimes, y’know?” The thread between her fingers thinned.
“Can I ask what happened at the end that changed your view of Alex?” Teddi asked.
She looked past them, through the large windows that opened up to the street. “Nothing, I mean, it’s nothing.” Her voice became little more than a whisper.
“Hey.” Teddi leaned forward. “We’re not trying to get anyone into trouble or stir up any problems. If something happened, it stays here. Your secret is safe with us. We won’t tell anyone what happened, okay?”
“You’re his cousin,” she lifted her chin at Vera. “I’m not going to say anything bad about him but I’ll tell you that Alex just wasn’t always what he seemed.” A shiver sent her frail shoulders curving inwards, her small collarbones visible beneath her neckline.
“I’m not here to judge, Lily, no matter who my family is. We’re just trying to get the facts straight.”
Teddi pushed. “Are you talking about the thirty phone calls he placed to you in the days after you broke up? Or the eighty-four texts?” Vera stiffened infinitesimally beside her.
Lily’s throat bobbed on a swallow. A trembling fawn staring at the face of a beast yet conquered. “He just wouldn’t stop. He wouldn’t listen to me. Every single time I said that we were done he kept pushing back. I had to get my mom to change my number finally, it was horrible. He just kept saying we were meant to be, that we were never going to be apart.”
“Did you tell the Sheriff?” Vera asked.
“No, nothing like that. I told my mom and she said that she’d take care of it, that he’d give up soon. But she didn't have to do anything because he stopped. He finally let go.”
“What did your mom mean when she said she’d take care of it?”
“She was going to tell him to back off, nothing major. I think she planned on calling him. We didn’t want the cops involved and it’s not like he could keep it up forever. I lived here, he lived in Fort Collins and that’s how it was going to stay.”
“Is your mom here?”
She shook her head, tendrils of ropey hair shadowing her petite face. “She’s at work right now. My dad passed earlier this year so she had to take a job at the diner. That’s why she said she’d take care of it, we’re all we have left at this point.”
“Lily, did the Sheriff ever come to interview you after he disappeared?”
“No one interviewed me.” Teddi didn’t bring up the calls and voicemails she left the girl which would’ve offered her the chance for an interview.
Vera lifted her chin at Teddi, telling her to go ahead. “Well, I appreciate you being willing to speak with us today, it’s been a huge help. I do have to tell you some bad news though. I’m not sure if Sheriff Malis informed you but we found out that Alex has passed away.”
Her fingers froze on the thread, head cocked. Then, as if it took a moment to sink in, the tension around her eyes eased, her shoulders unfurled inch by inch as her gaze lifted from the carpet.
“Are you sure?” Her voice was small, but the thread of hope was unmistakable.
“We’re sure. Did you not know that already?” Teddi noticed her toes uncurled.
“No. No, I hadn’t heard that. It was in Fort Collins?”
Vera replied. “It wasn’t. It was closer to you. Do you know of anyone that would want to hurt him? Anyone local that he associated with?”
“We didn’t hang out here. Not sure if you noticed but there’s not much to do in a town the size of Sylen. I was…” she shifted, making the leather squeak. “I’m not allowed to date and when my mom found out I was seeing Alex behind her back, it was a huge deal. Probably the biggest fight we’ve ever had and we broke up a little bit after that.”
Unable to date at nineteen. Teddi wondered how big of a deal it was that she had. “Is your family religious, Lily?”
She shook her hard vehemently. “Not at all, no.”
“How often does your mom work at the diner?” Vera asked, changing the subject.
“Every day but Mondays, you can almost always find her there. She has to work overtime a lot to pay the bills. That’s another part of why it was never going to work between us. I’m not leaving here. I didn’t want to leave her alone with everything since my dad.”
“What happened to him?” Teddi asked as she looked at the photo wall. There was only one man in the scattered photos, his blonde hair nearly white against his freckled skin. He stood next to a woman who looked strikingly like Lily but with soft wrinkles and lighter hair. A young Lily stood between them, her hands in each of theirs the only places they touched. Both parents appeared to be in their early fifties.
Within J’s brief dossiers on Lily and the local victims’ families, they knew scattered details about their lives. Her father was no longer with them but their financials didn't seem to suffer even though Nora Howe never earned income under her own name before his death.
“The doctor thought it was a heart attack. My mom doesn’t like to talk about it so I don’t push. But he was pretty healthy, with no real issues, and then he just passed away before work one morning almost a year ago. It was right before I met Alex. I think that’s why…”
