My head jerked up and I stared at Commodore, certain the shock I was feeling was the same as what was reflected on his face.

“The passenger seat?” My mother’s voice trembled, and suddenly I was terrified I was going to lose both my parents tonight—my father to an accident and my mother to a heart attack. “Who was driving the car then?”

Thankfully, she didn’t grasp her arm or chest like she usually did when she was having an episode.

Her gaze darted around the room, from Ainsley to Commodore to me, and back to Ainsley again. “Who was driving the car?” she repeated, her tone turning shrill again.

Ainsley swallowed. “I don’t know for sure, ma’am. The driver’s seat was empty, and the window was open.”

My mother shot to her feet.

“Mother, please, sit—” Harrison tried to calm her down, but she ignored him.

“He said he had to work. He was working.” She said it to Commodore, as though hoping he could go back and make my father’s lies the truth. I knew if my grandfather could, he would.

Commodore’s face remained impassive. Nothing he could say would change what had happened. Nothing any of us said could.

My brother finally said what everyone in the room was thinking. “So she crawled out of the window . . . and left him in the car to . . .”

All the blood remaining in my mother’s face drained away as she absorbed what Harrison had just said. “That Gable woman killed him! She murdered my husband! She—”

I crossed the room and crouched in front of her. “Mother, calm down. Please.”

She spat in my face.

Shocked, I stumbled backward, blinking and wiping it away. My mother just spat in my face.

No one in the room moved or breathed as I rose.

“Don’t you dare speak to me.” My mother’s voice turned sharp and deadly. “You walked in here tonight with her daughter! Sneaking around with that little Gable slut all summer was bad enough, but coming in the hospital with her tonight? You were probably in bed with that trash when her whore mother killed your father!”

Three

Whitney

As I stood between the bodies of my parents, Mrs. Riscoff’s words ricocheted off the walls of the ER like bullets designed to maim instead of kill.

“You were probably in bed with that trash when her whore mother killed your father!”

They shattered me, mostly because they were true. At least, if what the police officer just told us was true.

My mother was having an affair with Lincoln’s father.

My mother was driving Lincoln’s father’s car when the cars collided and they both went over the bridge.

Aunt Jackie bolted for the door. “I’ll kill that old hag myself if she says another word.”

My body felt like it was shutting down, one system at a time. My brain couldn’t handle everything that had been thrown at it tonight. My emotions were shredded, especially after the phone call I’d just had with my brother. Aunt Jackie had to tell him what happened because I couldn’t force myself to say the words.