“Why would I wait…?” I stop. “You’re worried, aren’t you? The police have been asking questions about Greg and the murdered girls. You’re worried that what’s on that film could implicate your dad in some way…or Jack.”

“A photo came through on Dad’s phone once. Of Nic Wallace. Smiling in her underwear. Jack deleted it before Dad saw it—said it was a mistake. That she meant to send it to him.” He pauses. “But I always wondered. Especially after Mum left and then Nic went missing.”

“Have you told the police?”

His silence gives me my answer.

“You have to. You have to tell them—”

He interrupts me. “Tess—what if…?”

“What?”

“What if Bella was involved in Dad’s death?”

“What do you mean, ‘involved’?”

“Perhaps Dad was what I’m scared he was. Bella and Nic Wallace were friends, weren’t they? She could have found out and…”

“And what? Murdered him and buried his body? She was eighteen, she was…she was good.” I put the memory of the night before the wedding out of my head. Her tears, her weird behavior as she made me go with her to Dean House.

“Come on, we all know she was more of a rebel than the good girl you’re suggesting. We were strangers to the village but even when we first moved here, we heard stuff about her and her friends—that they were the ones to go to if we needed booze or to find the parties.”

“What—so because she drank and went to parties, that makes her a murderer? Who the hell are you to say anything about my sister? What—you were Mother Teresa, Mr. bloody perfect?”

“Of course not, but…”

“But nothing.”

“You’ve put her on a pedestal, acting like she was perfect. Oh no, there can’t have been anything going on with her and Jack, oh no, she can’t possibly have been involved in anything bad.”

“Shut up.”

I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to remember the times when I didn’t put her on a pedestal, when all my feelings for her were jealousy and resentment and anger.

“You were always misguided—especially when it came to her. You wouldn’t listen. There could be something on that film, something important.”

The camera that holds the last photos Bella took looms in my mind and I’m remembering Max asking oh so casually about it, all this interest surrounding decade-old things that should have been forgotten by everyone but me. The woods surrounding us seem to creep closer and I think of Sean following me here, where there’s no one else for miles around.

“Stop it, go away. Get the fuck away from me,” I hiss. “I was right. You and your brother are bad news, here to stir things up. Leave me alone, Sean. Leave my memories of my sister alone.”

Chapter 28

Chapter 28