“She killed him.” Charlie looked up. “I was stupid. Sent my cousin to do what I didn’t have the courage to do, and she got mad and killed him. Then my aunt drank herself to death, and my uncle swallowed his own gun, and my parents fell apart. ’Cause I was a coward. Spent all my time trying to look so tough, when in the end, I was simply an asshole. And everyone I loved paid the price.”

“You didn’t see anything that night?” Phil pressed.

“Wasn’t even in the neighborhood. Had met up with some buddies of mine and hightailed it over to the mini-mart. Wanted to be far away . . . just in case.”

“That’s why you’re working on the book, isn’t it?” Adeline asked quietly. “Because it’s finally time to tell the truth.”

A muscle twitched in Charlie’s jaw. “Probably. I hadn’t gotten that far with confronting myself. But yeah, I figure there’s a reason I decided to write the book after my mom was diagnosed with terminal cancer; I’d never want to embarrass her while she was still alive. But if I coulda gotten the advance now, to help out with her care. Then finish up the book . . . afterward. I could tell the truth. Just . . . lay it all out there. No one to hurt but me, and who the hell knows, maybe the truth can set a man free.

“I don’t sleep so well at night,” he finished up softly. “I mean, it’s been thirty fucking years, and I still can’t fall asleep without having nightmares of Shana prancing around with my cousin’s bloody ear. I’m an asshole. I know that, okay? But she’s still the monster here.”

“Who did she hang out with back then?” Phil asked. “Other than you?”

“Sam, of course. He was into her, too. And not in a good way. He, like, actually thought they were an item. Boyfriend, girlfriend, long-lost souls. At least I was never that crazy.”

“Anyone else?”

“One of my friends, Steven, had an older brother, Shep. Rumor was, Shana and Shep would hook up, smoke dope. Shana wasn’t one to talk. She more like demanded. I want. I need. When you’re a fourteen-year-old boy and the demand in question is sex, you don’t think much of it. But in hindsight . . . She was scary. None of us mattered. It was always just about her. Until I said no. At which point, apparently she lost it. Maybe no one had ever told her no before.”

“Did you really release the details of your mother’s death in your blog?” D.D. asked.