But I am also just completely confused. Before the investigators get to Gabriel’s body, I walk back over to it. I can hear the cop approaching me, and Sam runs interference, just long enough for me to slip the necklace off him and shove it in my pocket. When I walk away, I notice I got a bit of his blood on my hand, and I instinctively wipe it off on my pants as I move on.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Time slides by. I've completely lost track of it.
I can't stop seeing Millie's face, the blood trickling down it and dropping onto Xavier's arms as he scooped her into them. She just lay there, pouring out her blood onto the ground, and there was nothing I could do. I stood there and watched her murdered right in front of me, and there wasn't a single thing I could do to stop it.
But it's another face that's hitting me even harder. Gabriel. So young and sweet. Full of life. Until the moment he put that cyanide pill in his mouth and smashed his car.
I just don't understand. I can't understand.
Why was he here? Why Gabriel? Why cyanide?
It's obvious his running over Millie was no accident. Just watching it was proof enough. There wasn't a single second of hesitation or slowing down. She was his target, and he mowed her down. But even if it hadn’t been for watching how he hit her, the fact that he killed himself within moments tells so much. And yet, nothing. He never got a chance to speak.
And then there's Lydia. Brought out of one freezer only to be stretched across a slab and put into another. No one is taking either of the cases seriously. The investigation into Millie's death has been surface-level, barely existent. The police say it's an open-and-shut case. The solution is right there. It might not make any sense, but Gabriel ran over her, then killed himself out of guilt.
There's no reason to dig any deeper. It will only cause pain.
It's different for Lydia, and yet so much the same. The police said the right things. They searched around and took pictures. They watched the same surveillance I did. They searched through the same belongings now packed in the corner of my room because I don't know what else to do with them.
And all they can say is it had to have been an accident. Her body showed no signs of assault. She wasn't shot or stabbed. Her fingernails were pristine, which means she didn't claw at the door to the freezer or try to get out.
But that surveillance footage was suspicious. Not in that it showed she was murdered or what might have happened to her. Instead, it was suspicious purely because of her behavior. She seemed erratic, impaired. As soon as they saw that, the police framed the entire situation as a tragic accident, a woman who indulged too much and found herself trapped in a freezer where she passed out and froze.
Only, there's still no explanation as to why the freezer was even on. The manager admits that section of the hotel is completely off-limits. When the owners decided to stop offering services in that area, they wanted it disconnected from the rest of the hotel as much as possible. Turning off the electricity and water meant no heating or cooling bills. A huge savings.
Except that there was a freezer left on. Something like that is easy to overlook when you want to cast blame on the woman who died rather than find the real answer.
Both of these women are dead, and everyone is just pushing them aside.
I've been torturing myself over it. Even if I am their only voice, I will scream for them. These aren't women I particularly got along with all the time. I clashed repeatedly with them. Disagreed with them. But neither one of them deserved what happened to her. No one had the right to take their lives, especially the way that they did.
And if it's up to me to find out what happened to them, I will do whatever I need to. I am not the only person whose life these women walked through. And it's for those other people I will make sure neither is forgotten.
I will be Lydia's voice for Greg and for what he hoped for with her.
I will be Millie's voice for Xavier and what he once had and still carries inside him.
I have the TV on just to give me sound. It has faded into the background. I can't even tell what's on until I hear Lydia's name. I look at the screen and see a picture of her smiling out from above the shoulder of the dark-haired news anchor. She's reading out the story as if she doesn't even hear what she's saying. It's just words she's reading, without connecting them to each other.
She rehashes the story of Lydia's mysterious death, then shifts over to a recorded interview. Rachel Duprey's cold eyes stare at me.
“Over the last few days, many people have asked me how I feel about this hotel ending up in the news again,” she says. “I'm here to tell you I am angry. I'm offended and upset. And I'm disappointed. It doesn't matter to me that the name of this hotel has been spoken on the news again. It doesn't matter to me that the image of the hotel is being seen all across the country. What matters to me is my father's name is still being linked to it. Ten years after his death, he is still being dragged into
