It's One of Us(76)
Olivia does. He saw the look on her face when that nasty reporter tossed St. Louis at them. Her recoil, her hand yanking away from his as if she couldn’t bear to be touching him anymore. He is losing her, he knows it, and he needs to find a way to keep her, and fast. She has to believe he isn’t capable of murder. That all of this is just coincidence.
Damn it, how did Erica Pearl, of all people, find out about St. Louis?
Poor little Annie Cottrell. Everyone in the neighborhood knew there had been a creep driving around, asking kids if they’d seen his puppy. It had been happening almost the whole summer. Everyone knew it had to be that creeper who took Annie. Everyone knew it.
But a vicious whisper campaign had started up among the neighborhood moms. The Bender boys had been paying too much attention to Annie Cottrell.
Without a clear suspect, the neighborhood had turned on them. Accused the boys of such terrible things. He and Perry hadn’t even been near Annie’s house when she went missing. They were at the field, Little League pregame batting practice underway. Park remembered the day vividly—he’d hit a homer and run the bases with a carefree smile, not knowing hours later their world would be under attack.
The police searched their house, talked to the boys, to Lindsey. Annie was their sister’s friend. Annie and Lindsey were playing by the fence, Lindsey had gone inside to get popsicles, and when she came back out, Annie was nowhere to be found. Yes, Park and Perry had seen her on their way to the field, but that was before. She’d been on her way to their house to play.
The creep was arrested a few months later exposing himself to another girl a town over. He denied knowing anything about Annie Cottrell, which fueled the flames all over again.
Eventually, their parents had decided they should move. They packed up and came to Nashville, and the course of all their lives had been altered.
Olivia Hutton lived across the street from the new house.
Olivia, with her scratchy voice and her sable hair and her budding, ripe little girl on the cusp of womanhood body, who worshipped the ground the Benders walked on. She was smart. She was funny. She was talented. Park’s parents—his mother especially—adored her. The Huttons and the Benders became fast friends, going out to dinner together, leaving the kids with a sitter, vacationing together, camping trips and beaches. It was natural that Olivia befriend their sister, and the boys, too. The boys played with her, protected her, and fell in love with her. Olivia became the north for the entire Bender family compass.
That has never changed, nor will it. The history they all share is too intertwined. She chose him, damn it. Park. Not Perry. It was she and Park who were childhood sweethearts. Madly in love. Yes, they’d had a spat, a breakup, some hurt feelings while she dated Perry, but she came back to him. Then came marriage. Joy. Love and happiness. Attempts to have children.
It’s only been recently that he’s felt things slipping. That the feeling he had when they were in high school and she wouldn’t talk to him crept back in. She’s closed herself off now like she did then, and it is Perry, again, who has swooped in to pick up the pieces.
Olivia was and is and always will be Park’s entire world. When she was hurt last night, when he’d gotten the call that she’d been in an accident, Park felt like part of his soul had ripped apart.
And now, circumstance and an ill-advised decision twenty years ago is going to drive them apart. He feels the chasm growing, inch by inch, day by day.
He pours another Scotch, shoots it down. And another. Gets angrier by the gulp.
Why is he out here in the proverbial dog shed revisiting hellacious memories alone while his brother is inside with his wife?
He hears the buzzing, the murmurs, the car doors. Looks out the door to the shed and sees the line of vans, satellite dishes pointed to the stars.
The press has arrived.
Now the real fun is going to start.
35
THE MOTHER
Darby closes her iPad gently, staring all the while at her daughter. Her beautiful, precocious sprite of a daughter, who resembles her donor father in ways Darby has never imagined, if only because he is not the man Darby thought fathered her youngest child.
“I can’t believe this,” Scarlett mutters, and Darby nods. I have failed you, she thinks. Her world—their world—has tilted on its axis, and all she wants to do is hide. But she can’t. She can’t. Because the police who are going to arrest her son and incarcerate him for life and maybe kill him before they get the chance to slap on the handcuffs are standing five feet away, their faces arrayed in both shock and delight.
Delight, for that is the only word that fits.
The thought hits her, clear as a bell. They think Park Bender is guilty of something. Then another.
Maybe this will take their attention off Peyton.
Should their attention waver from her son? She doesn’t know. The war raging inside her mustn’t show, because they’re looking at her, curious what she might say, but not leaning forward in anticipation of her giving up her son. She’s already done all she can for him. She has given him a baseline for an insanity defense. Do they know that was her goal? Do they know she is wondering if he is insane? That in case of the unthinkable, she had a plan? Do they know that this has always been her deepest fear, the one thing she’s spent her entire mothering life worried about? She’s known Peyton has a darkness in him. She’s seen the blank stares following women in grocery stores, the withdrawal after interactions that didn’t go as planned, the lack of dates, the absence of female friends.