Here in town? They’ll probably always give me strange looks. Some of them will probably always think I got away with something horrible, because the only way to clear my name would be to drag my sister’s through the mud, and I’m not going to do that.

As hard as it is for me to accept, sometimes, that people are always going to believe a lie about me, the truth is none of their business.

My life is none of their business.

In one month, I’ll be a senior. I’ve even—finally—signed up for the ACT. I’m thinking about UT Knoxville. About maybe rooming with Amira. About meeting some people who’ve never heard of Beckett Bergen, the #babykiller.

I still don’t know exactly what I want to do with my life. But for the first time in a long time, there is nothing holding me back.

Author’s Note

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Dear Reader,

This story is not autobiographical, but it is without doubt the most personal thing I’ve ever written, and parts of it were inspired by events from my own life. I really had a pregnant teenage sister. But unlike Landry, she was fifteen, and her pregnancy was the exact opposite of a secret. It was also not a rarity, in my small Tennessee hometown. Fortunately, my sister’s baby lived, and he grew up to be my amazing, kind, compassionate nephew.

I also really did grow up with a parent who was addicted to painkillers, though we didn’t know anything about an “opioid epidemic,” back then. The origin of the addiction was an entirely legal prescription for a real medical condition, though I didn’t know any of that at the time. In fact, I was much less in the know about the situation than Beckett. I knew something was wrong. I knew things weren’t adding up. I knew there were rumors, and that my mother had lost a series of jobs with no explanation that made sense. The scene in the book where Beckett describes calling her father’s boss? That really happened. I actually made that call, but it was at Christmas, not Thanksgiving. It broke my heart. It changed my perspective in a brutal way.

However, I am happy to say that my mother not only survived her opioid addiction, she kicked its teeth in. Not quickly. Not easily. But soundly.

Several other parts of this story were inspired by real events. My husband served honorably in the military and retired after twenty years of service in the U.S. Air Force. He was in the desert several times. He was in Saudi Arabia when our daughter took her first steps.