While Shane and Josh are playing Nintendo, my phone rings with a number I don’t recognize.
When Tim was first arrested, I learned not to answer the phone if I didn’t recognize the number. Mostly, it was reporters on the other line, desperate for a firsthand account of my experience both eleven years ago and over the last few months. They offered me mind-boggling amounts of cash to tell my story, but I always refused. It’s bad enough I’ll have to testify at Tim’s trial—I have no desire to relive it with a reporter and then see my story smeared all over the news and the internet. Not to mention it would increase the chances of Josh finding out the truth.
And then there were the haters who used to call me. People who were furious with me for sending an innocent man to jail. For falling in love with a man who turned out to be a killer. I had to change my email address because my inbox was flooded every day with angry messages and even threats. I changed my phone number too, but it didn’t help. If someone truly wants to reach you, there’s always a way.
But it’s been long enough. There have been like a hundred other news stories since Tim’s arrest, and the public has a short memory. Reporters aren’t interested in my story anymore. I’m yesterday’s news, and that’s the way I prefer it.
So it’s safe to answer the phone.
I click the green button to accept the call as I settle down at the kitchen table. “Hello?”
“Brooke?”
It’s a woman’s voice. She sounds older, about the same age my mother would have been, but I don’t recognize her.
“Yes…” I say.
“Brooke, this is Barbara Reese.”
I cringe, wishing I hadn’t taken the call. Barbara Reese left several messages on my voicemail way back when Tim was first arrested, but I never returned any of them. She was desperate to talk to me, which isn’t
surprising, considering I’ll be testifying against her only son at his trial. And that’s all the more reason I can’t talk to her.
“Mrs. Reese,” I begin, “I can’t—”
“Please don’t hang up, Brooke.” Her voice breaks on the words. As hard as the last couple of months have been on me, I’m sure they were even worse for her. “Please. I need to talk to you.”
I want to hang up the phone, but I can’t do it to Mrs. Reese. The truth is, I really liked her when I was a kid. I spent about half my childhood at Tim’s house, and Mrs. Reese was way nicer than my own mother. She always had better snacks than at my house, she and her husband made the best burgers on the grill, and she always had kind words to say to me. Not to mention when my mother caught Tim and me in a lip lock that time when we were in middle school (practicing!), she did her best to smooth things out with my hysterical mother. I always envied Tim for his mother.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but we don’t have anything to talk about.”
I pull the phone away from my ear, but I’m stopped by the sound of Mrs. Reese crying out, “Please don’t hang up, Brooke! Please just hear me out!”
I let out a long breath. “There’s nothing to talk about. I… I saw a dead body in his basement. I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to hear that. I never would’ve thought Tim would do that either.”
“He wouldn’t!” Mrs. Reese has lost her composure. “Brooke, you knew him better than anyone. Do you really believe he would kill that girl?”
“The body was in his basement.”
“So someone else must have put it there!”
I feel a rush of sadness. She doesn’t believe it because she wasn’t stuck down in that wine cellar where a dead girl was wrapped in a tarp, rotting on the basement floor. She didn’t see the panic on Tim’s face when he realized the police were going down to the basement. It would have taken a lot to convince me that my former best friend was a serial killer, but that night made me a believer.
At that moment, Shane comes into the kitchen with his empty glass of water. He starts to fill it up, but when he notices I’m on the phone and catches the expression on my face, he raises an eyebrow at me. He mouths the words, Who is it?
“Please talk to Tim,” Mrs. Reese whimpers. “If you talk to him and you still believe that he did those horrible things—”
“I’m not going to visit Tim in jail.” That is absolutely out of the question. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Reese.”
Shane’s other eyebrow shoots up at the name Mrs. Reese. He stands there, clutching his water glass in one hand, listening to my end of the conversation.
“You have to, Brooke!” Mrs. Reese cries. “This is all happening because of you—don’t you understand? Give Tim a chance to explain. You have to—”
Before Mrs. Reese can complete her sentence, Shane snatches the phone right out of my hand. He presses it to his ear, listens for a second, then clears his throat loudly.
“Mrs. Reese,” he says in a firm voice. “This is Shane Nelson. You need to leave Brooke alone. Don’t call this number ever again.”
With those words, Shane jabs at the red button on the phone, then tosses it on the kitchen counter. “Some nerve of her,” he mutters.
“To be fair…” I look up at him. “Your mother called me when you were on trial and said almost the exact same things.”
“Right, but I was innocent.”
“I’m sure Tim’s mother thinks he’s innocent.”
“Oh, please.” Now that I’m off the phone, he fills up his water glass, right to the brim. “She knows the truth. How could she not know? She raised him, after all.” He takes a drink from his water glass. “Don’t you think if Josh were a killer, you would know it?”
It’s funny because when I believed Josh’s father was a murderer, I was always watching my son for sociopathic tendencies. If he had shown any at all, I would’ve jumped all over it—but Josh was a good boy. Still, kids change after they grow up. Will I know him when he’s thirty as well as I know him at age ten?
“I don’t know,” I finally say.
He rolls his eyes. “Don’t be naïve, Brooke. Tim’s mother isn’t looking for the truth. She’s just looking to get her son off the hook. You can’t let that happen.”
He’s right, of course. Mrs. Reese will do whatever it takes to get her son acquitted. But it’s going to take a lot more than convincing me.
