“I came here for a few reasons,” Thea said. “I wanted to tell you I was sorry about Beth.”
“Thank you. But there’s no need. You expressed your condolences at the time.”
“Not like I should have.”
I didn’t know what to say. What was it that bothered her conscience? “Teenage girls aren’t exactly their best selves. Whatever petty jealousies there were between you and Beth don’t matter now. You shouldn’t give it another thought.”
“You don’t know what I did.” Her eyes shone with emotion. Exactly which one, I wasn’t sure. Guilt? Grief? Anger? “It’s partly my fault she’s dead.”
My limbs tingled. Had Thea killed her over the head cheerleading position?
“Thea, what did you do?”
“I didn’t kill her. Nothing like that. I mean, yeah, we competed over everything, but I’ve never done something like that.”
“Then what?” My voice had hardened. What game was she playing here?
“You’ll know soon enough. I can’t tell you yet because I need to do something else first. Before it all comes out, I wanted to tell you how sorry I was.”
“Comes out? What will come out?”
“I withheld information that I should’ve shared with the police. To save myself. My reputation.” She blurted this out and seemed to immediately regret having done so.
I scooted both hands under the backs of my thighs. “Information about the killer?”
“I don’t know.” Her hand shook as she reached out for her drink. “I don’t know if what I did has anything to do with the killing.”
“You must think so, or why bring it up to me? Why not just tell the authorities what you know, even if it’s thirty years late?” I couldn’t keep the accusatory tone from my voice. What did this silly woman know? Was it enough to have found my sister’s killer? “Why wouldn’t you have done that in the first place?”
“I told you why. To save myself. Don’t think for an instant that the whole decision hasn’t ruined my life. I’ve regretted a lot of things, but none as much as what I did that summer.” She looked past me with cloudy eyes. “I can trace it all back to the exact moment. The second that I decided to do something simply because your sister was, and I could never let her have anything I didn’t have. I know that now. My actions were all because of jealousy. I was always second-best to Beth. The sweetheart of Logan Bend. Beth and her perfect family. Beth and Luke, the king and queen of the high school. And there I was. Not quite as pretty or as talented. I only had my mom who worked at the pancake house and barely made ends meet and grew more and more bitter as the years went by. I wanted what Beth had. Even when what she had didn’t make sense for either of us, I took it anyway.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My head swam almost as fast as her rapid speech. “What did you do?”
She downed the rest of her drink, then lowered the glass back to the table as if she were afraid it might break. “What happened to me wasn’t my fault. I’ve learned that in therapy. I was a child. Please remember that.” She scooted out of the booth and practically ran for the door.
“Wait. Don’t go.” My pleas fell on deaf ears. Through the window, I saw her jogging toward her car. I hadn’t thought it was possible, but I was more confused than when I’d walked into the place.
I rubbed my temples before taking another sip from my wine. What had just happened? Was this simply middle-aged guilt, or did she actually know something relevant? Had she seen Beth with Z? Was she the girl Beth referred to in her journal? Z’s girlfriend? The one he couldn’t leave because it would hurt her too much? Had Thea found out they were messing around together and killed her in a fit of rage? Or did Thea cover something up to save Z? Was that what she hadn’t told the police?
I couldn’t remember who Thea’s boyfriend had been back then. I tried to recall seeing her anywhere that summer with a guy, but nothing came to mind. I’d been too involved in my own world in the months before Beth’s murder. My job at the library and Cole had taken up all the space in my brain.
Thea was just a girl in Beth’s cheer squad. Had she held the key to Beth’s killer all this time? Or had she killed Beth in a jealous rage over some boy? Seventeen knife stabs? Personal. A crime of rage.
I needed to tell Ford what she’d said. Maybe he could bring her in for questioning? Yes, I thought. I needed to tell Ford and let him do his job. I was not a detective, even though I’d been acting like one. My mother didn’t need a second daughter murdered.
I sat in Sheriff Ford’s office, sharing what I’d learned from Thea. “And then she ran out,” I said to the sheriff. “Leaving me totally confused.”
Ford had listened without asking any questions or interrupting as I’d conveyed the conversation I’d had with Thea. I made sure to tell him every detail that I remembered. “In hindsight, I should have recorded her.”
“Odd, isn’t it?” Ford said.
“Which part?”
“The part about her being a child and that it wasn’t her fault. Like she was about to seek revenge on the man who hurt her.”
“Why do you think it was a man?”
“Isn’t it always?” Ford asked.
My stomach hollowed as I realized what he meant. “Do you think she was molested? And if so, what does it have to do with Beth?”
“No idea. Maybe Beth knew something she shouldn’t and had threatened to tell someone?”
“Which would mean it didn’t have anything to do with Z at all,” I said, thinking out loud. “Maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong.”
“You find anything interesting yet in the journal? Anything that
