“Adam,” I whispered, “Ron never really left Harbour Falls back then, did he?”
Adam glanced over at me, but then turned back to stare ahead, out into the darkness that had fallen. “No, Maddy, he didn’t.”
I knew from his tone that Ron Mifflin was dead, that he’d been shot in that room. But I wasn’t ready to hear who shot him. I prayed it hadn’t been Adam. Before he could say anything more—like confess or something—I quickly backtracked, “So Ron was harassing Helena and threatening her. I know you and Nate showed up that day in May. That was her last entry. What happened when you left the school?”
“Helena wrote about that day in her diary?” Adam sounded somewhat surprised.
“Yeah, but the entry ended with you, her, and Nate leaving the campus to go to Fowler’s to find Ron…and Ami.” Adam looked away, and I could feel him closing off, shutting down. I placed my hand on his arm, his muscles flexing beneath my grip.
“Please, Adam. No more secrets. Part of me is terrified to hear what you have to say, but a bigger part of me just wants to know the truth. Tell me what happened when you got to Fowler’s.”
“You’re really ready to hear this?” His eyes met mine—indigo in the dark—and I nodded.
“Okay, Maddy, I’ll tell you everything I remember.” He took a deep breath and settled in his seat. “When we got to the motel, Ami’s car was parked in the lot, but she wasn’t in it. It had stopped raining so we looked around the building, went around the back. We couldn’t find her anywhere. Helena was a mess by then. She was practically hysterical, blaming herself for everything. Nate was trying to calm her down…” He trailed off and sighed. “It was just bad, Maddy, but things got a lot worse.”
“Oh, Adam.” My hand was still on his arm, and I slid it down to take his hand.
He gave me a tight smile and continued, “Ami had told Helena that Ron was in room number eleven, so we went around the back and started pounding on that door. Nobody answered, so we stopped. And that’s when we heard Ami, crying softly from the other side.” I felt him tense, so I squeezed his hand, trying to offer comfort. “Nate and I each threw a shoulder into the door and the lock immediately busted. We all went in.” Adam leaned his head back against the rest, and the pain of remembering was clear in his expression. “It was awful, Maddy, truly awful. Ami was on the bed…she was under the sheet, but it was obvious she had no clothes on.”
I gasped, sickened. “Did Ron…?”
Adam nodded. “Yes, he had raped Ami. And he didn’t look one bit remorseful. He was leaning back on the bed, on top of the covers. He had his jeans back on. And he was stroking Ami’s hair. It was just sick. Every time he touched her, you could see her flinch.”
These details were so horrible that all I could do was shake my head and hold tight to Adam’s hand as he continued, “The whole time, Nate and I were trying to block Helena’s view of the scene, because we knew she’d lose it. But she managed to sneak past Nate and lunge at Ron. None of us knew he had a gun. Things then just got crazy.”
“What happened?”
Adam told me the rest of the story. Ron raised the gun with every intention of shooting Helena, but thankfully Nate pushed her out of the way. With Ron distracted, Adam knocked the gun out of his hand. There was an ensuing scuffle, but it ended quickly, with Ron face down on the bed and Nate holding his arms pinned behind his back.
Everyone thought it was over, but what none of them realized was that Ami had picked up the gun. She turned it on Ron as soon as he lifted his head. She aimed and fired. The bullet passed right through his neck, driving into the wall above the mattress. Ron bled out and died within minutes.
Ami had killed Ron Mifflin.
“Fuck,” Adam said, “there was so much blood, Maddy. We all panicked. It was chaos. Ami begged us not to call nine-one-one; she was convinced she’d go to jail. Maybe she would have, maybe not. It wasn’t self-defense because Nate had had him pinned, that’s what she kept saying. We were young and we made poor choices. Once we got started, we didn’t have time to think about what we were really doing—covering up a crime, cleaning up all the evidence, disposing of a body.” Adam put his head in his hands, and I wrapped my arms around him.
We stayed that way for a while, but eventually Adam spoke again, sharing the things they had done to conceal the crime. They wrapped Ron’s body in the bloody sheets and hid it out behind the shed in the back. “We figured we’d take care of it later.” I didn’t ask what that meant, and Adam didn’t elaborate.
Next, he and Nate went out to buy cleaning supplies and materials to cover the bullet hole. Helena stayed in the room with Ami. After they dropped the supplies off, he and Nate left once again, this time to dispose of Ron’s car.
“Didn’t anybody see you running around?” I asked. “Nobody heard the shot?”
“At Fowler’s, are you serious?” Adam scoffed. “If anyone heard anything or saw us, they didn’t care. Nobody ever reported anything, I know that. We were afraid at first, but the more time that passed with nothing happening, the more we figured we’d gotten away with it. Ami may have killed the man, but we were all
