by A. Zavarelli
It was the reason why one of the charges was upgraded to murder. But there were still so many unanswered questions. Like the shell casings found at the scene, and the evidence that led back to Brayden. When they brought him in, he tested positive for gunshot residue, but he wouldn’t tell them why. They never did find the gun when they tore our house apart, so I had thought it was a mistake.
But these reports held so much more details than I ever knew. Brayden’s footprints were matched to the ones at the scene. There was also DNA collected from the vomit beside the car. It was undoubtedly his. I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand any of it. He was there that night, but why?
At the bottom of the stack were photos. Photos of the family together as one. And my confusion bled out when I saw a young Ryland standing side by side the smiling faces of the family. Only his name wasn’t Ryland. It was Jacob. And he was a part of that family.
My heart beat so hard I thought it might explode. How did I not see it?
It was there all along.
Except, it wasn’t really. He’d hidden it from the world. Changed his name and his story, only allowing people to know what he wanted them to. The news never even mentioned him. I didn’t know he existed because he kept it that way for a reason.
My body burned with guilt and shame and a thousand other emotions I couldn’t pinpoint. The further I dug, the worse it got.
Full investigation reports, witness statements, hospital records. But as my eyes passed over them, everything blurred together. They couldn’t be accurate. Because they said Jacob was in the car too. But that was impossible. Every news article stated there were four victims, including his father. But according to hospital records and witness statements that wasn’t the case.
“Jacob Ryland Lockhart was finally able to free himself from the wreckage and climb to the freeway for help, despite being critically injured. When the ambulance reached the family fifteen minutes later, they found him unconscious as he clutched Sophia Lockhart’s hand in his own. She was dead upon arrival, and all efforts to revive her were unsuccessful. The only remaining survivors were Jacob and his father, Michael.”
Tears poured from my eyes like acid, burning my skin as the image of Ryland like that broke the last ounce of strength that held me together. I couldn’t take anymore, but I couldn’t stop myself either.
At the bottom of the box, I found a Manila envelope, sealed up tight. I picked it up with trembling hands and broke the seal, revealing more photos. Photos I wouldn’t ever be able to erase from my memory.
A little girl’s leg dangling from a ballet tight as it mangled with protruding metal. A bloody hand on the door handle as though it were trying to escape from the wreckage. A mother slumped over the steering wheel with an unrecognizable face. A mass of metal so crumpled and distorted, the type of car was completely indistinguishable. And finally, three bodies covered with white sheets in a ditch.
I couldn’t look anymore. I didn’t want to. But when I heard a sharp inhale of breath behind me, I turned to see Ryland standing over me.
Stupidly, I tried to thrust everything back into the box. To get it out of my sight and pretend that this had never happened.
“By all means…” He kneeled down beside me. “Don’t stop on my account, Brighton.”
I whimpered and shook my head as he picked up the photos of the mangled body parts and thrust them into my face, demanding that I look at them.
“I want you to really understand,” he said. “I want you to digest it all.”
A bloody tutu skirt and the haunted expression of a lifeless little girl stared back at me from the glossy photo.
“I listened to her choke on her own blood for thirty minutes,” he said calmly. “Do you know how long thirty minutes is, Brighton?”
I didn’t know what to say. I had never seen him this way, and it was breaking my fucking heart.
“Thirty minutes of her crying for me to help her. I had to tear the flesh off of my chest to reach her.”
A sob escaped me, and I closed my eyes and begged him to stop. To put the pictures away.
“Do you know why?” he continued ruthlessly. “Why I watched her die a slow and painful death? Why I sat with the lifeless faces of my brother and my mom while I waited for an ambulance that wasn’t coming? Or why my father willingly ate the barrel of a gun six months later?”
“It wasn’t Brayden,” I said weakly. “He would never do that.”
“Wouldn’t he?” he asked. “Because he was in the car that night. And if I recall correctly, he was also the one to walk down the embankment and hold the barrel of a 45 against my skull.”
I blinked up at him with bleary eyes, shaking my head uncertainly.
“Oh, Brighton,” he barked out a strange laugh. “You poor, dense little girl. All these years you’ve lived with the real monster, and you didn’t even know it.”
“No,” I denied his accusation. “He would never do that!”
“I know you’d like to believe that,” he replied. “But it’s in his blood, Brighton. It’s in your blood too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Frank Gallo was your father,” he explained. “Otherwise known as the low-level scum who did the dirty work for the Chicago crime family.”
I blinked up at him, trying to digest his words while he waited patiently. I’d known my father was Italian, but my mother only ever referred to him as Frankie. But when she did, it was the only time I’d ever seen a shadow of fear pass over her face. Just like when Brayden started hanging out with his new friends. I didn’t think we had anything to worry about, but she did. And suddenly, I understood why. It was a possibility my mind had never even considered before, but Ryland sounded so certain.
“You think Frankie asked Brayden to do this?” I rasped.
“Yes,” he sneered. “The one and only.”
“But he must have forced him,” I argued. “Brayden would never take part in something like that by choice.”
“Wouldn’t he?” he snapped. “What about the code, Brighton? Family and honor. That’s how it goes, right?”
His words chilled me. Because it was the very thing Brayden had mentioned before he went away. He said he would do this. For his family and for his honor.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought… I thought…”
“Well you thought wrong,” he growled, pulling himself back up to his full height as he looked down at me with pity. “Because Brayden told me himself.”
“Ryland…” I sobbed. “I’m sorry…”
“You put up a valiant fight,” he said cruelly. “But you can see now that none of it matters.”
“I don’t understand,” I cried. “If you hate my family so much, why are you paying my mother?”
A cold smile fell over his face, and for the first time since we’d started the conversation, he looked at peace.
“Think about it, baby girl. Think really hard. You’ve been playing the game, but you can’t tell me you haven’t given a single thought as to how it would end?”
The harshness in his tone unsettled a startling reality for me. One I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen sooner. How Norma-Jean’s addiction had spiraled further and further out of control over the last five years.
“You… you’re trying to…”
The words wouldn’t come out. I was the last person to advocate for my mother, but that didn’t mean I wanted her dead. And the thought that Ryland had been slowly poisoning her over the years sickened me on a level I couldn’t even comprehend myself.
“Yes,” he spat. “I’m waiting for her to die. I’m funding her descent into hell, and at this rate, it should be any day now. And once that’s done, and Brayden has felt the pain I have felt, he will die too.”
The sympathy I had for him only a moment ago vanished somewhere during that statement, and I stood up on wobbly legs, staring him straight in the eyes.
“You did all of this on purpose?” I asked. “You sen
t him to prison and then had him released, just because you could?”
“You’re finally getting it.”
“That’s where you were last week?” I stared at him in disbelief. “You were the witness that the press wouldn’t print?”
“One and the same.”
“If what you say is true, you could have kept him in prison!” I accused. “You could have done the right thing, Ryland. Gave him what he deserves. But what you’re talking about is no better than what he did.”
“Don’t you ever compare me with that swine.” His eyes blazed with a hatred so strong it gutted me. “If he had called an ambulance that night, Sophia would still be alive. He deserves everything he has coming to him.”
“So this was it?” I croaked. “This is what it’s all about? Destroying my family?”
“Yes,” he admitted, his tone softening a fraction as he turned away and paced the floor.
“And that included me,” I supplied, hoping he would deny it.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Maybe at first. But somewhere along the line, you changed things. It became about wanting you instead of hurting you.”
My heart plummeted into my stomach as I clutched my arms around myself, shaking my head as the tears flowed freely.
“You asked me several times,” he continued. “Why I chose you. I’ll tell you why, Brighton. I hated you. I hated everything you stood for. Seeing you on the porch that day, with your virginal innocence and your naivety. So imagine my surprise that all these years later, I can’t get enough of it.”
He sounded weak for admitting the last part, and it only added to my pain.
“You’re sick,” I shouted.
“You didn’t mind it while I was fucking you,” he said arrogantly. “Or don’t you remember?”
“I remember that you trapped me into an agreement to fulfill your need for revenge.”
“I can live with that,” he said. “And so can you, Brighton. Things have evolved out of my control. I didn’t expect to feel anything for you, but I do. And I can’t let you go. This doesn’t have to change anything between us.”
“This changes everything!” I screamed. “You’re trying to kill my family. And I cannot even begin to imagine how you must feel Ryland, but you can’t keep going down this road. You said so yourself. You told me you had doubts…”
“I can and I will,” he said resolutely.
“Then you can’t possibly care for me."
“But I do,” he admitted. “I’m… I care about you very much. And that is not part of the game. It was never meant to be part of the game. But it happened, and I accept that. I want you in my life. Permanently.”
His words cracked some of my resolve, but I couldn’t show it.
“You can’t have us both,” I whispered. “You can’t have me and your revenge.”
“Don’t make me choose, baby girl," he said grimly. “You won’t win. I will see this out until the very end, even if it costs me everything.”
I clutched my chest and dragged in a breath as I willed myself to find strength. Ryland Bennett had just sliced open my heart. Now the only thing left to do was bleed.
“Then I guess you’ve already chosen.”
I turned and walked out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When I got back to the apartment, Nicole greeted me from the kitchen. One glance at the expression on my face, and she knew.
“Brighton…” she hurried towards me, but I held up a hand to stop her.
“You’ve been lying to me this entire time,” I croaked. “You’ve been helping him this entire time.”
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. You don’t understand…”
“I understand perfectly,” I confessed. “Jackson was your boyfriend. And you were helping Ryland to get revenge. Because my father took him from you.”
“That may have been true at the start,” she sniffled, “but it isn’t what I really wanted. I told him I didn’t want to go through with it anymore. Once I met you, and I realized…”
“You mean when you purposely met me in the park,” I interrupted.
“Yes.” She cast her eyes to the floor. “I’m so sorry, Brighton.”
“You helped him blackmail me,” I whispered. “You let him have sex with me when I didn’t even know who he was.”
She looked sick at my implication. “I didn’t know,” she swore. “I didn’t know he would go that far. He didn’t tell me that, and I only found out about it afterwards. I’m so sorry, Brighton. You must think I’m a horrible person, but I’ve been trapped in his game too. He won’t let me move on…”
“The flowers?”
“Yes!” she choked back a sob. “Every year he sends me those fucking flowers, along with a note to remind me why he is doing this. To remind me how much Jackson loved me and to justify his need for revenge.”
The genuine pain in her eyes told me what she said was true. She’d confessed the same thing the night she explained her boyfriend had died. That he wouldn’t let her move on. Meaning Ryland. But it didn’t matter now because she was right. She was just another player in his game, and I couldn’t trust her. Not really. Everyone who had come into my life in San Francisco had been planted there, and I wasn’t sure who I could trust anymore.
“I have to leave,” I stated.
“Please don’t go,” she begged.
“I have to, Nicole.” I walked towards my room. She followed along, continuing the conversation while I packed.
“You can stay here,” she insisted. “The apartment’s in my name. We can change the locks. We can do whatever you want.”
“It’s not about changing the locks,” I said softly, trying to ignore the hurt expression in her eyes. “It’s about the fact that Ryland wants my family dead, and I can’t continue to do this. To get sucked back into this vortex with someone who doesn’t even care about me.”
“He does,” she argued. “He loves you, Brighton.”
I smiled sadly at her delusion and shook my head.
“What Brayden did was wrong,” I said. “I’m not going to argue that. But I can’t let Ryland hurt him…”
“I know,” Nicole agreed. “I understand, Brighton.”
“You do?”
She sighed and fell onto the bed, staring at a spot on the carpet. “I’ve told Ryland this isn’t what Jackson would have wanted. It isn’t what his parents would have wanted. But he’s so wrapped up in his grief he can’t even see his way out of it.”
I collapsed onto the bed beside her and released another painful wave of tears. Tears for Ryland and his broken heart.
“I wish I could help him,” I said. “I would do anything to help him.”
“I know.” Nicole clasped my hand in hers. “That makes two of us.”
The room fell silent as we both concluded there was nothing further to say on the subject. Nothing else that we could do. Nicole resigned herself to that fact when she spoke again.
“I’ll call Matt for you.” She stood up and walked towards the door. “You can crash with him, or he can give you a ride to the airport. Whatever you need.”
“Thank you.” I nodded. “And Nicole?”
“Yeah?”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what my father did. For how he hurt you.”
“I know you are, Brighton.” She gave me a weak smile. “But it really is time for me to move on.”
***
Matt’s truck idled at the curb of the drop off zone as silence engulfed the cab.
“I’m sorry about everything,” he said in a gruff voice. “If I’d known what Ryland was doing, I would have put a stop to it. But Nicole always worried she would bear the brunt of it, so I didn’t push the issue. I didn’t want to hurt her.”
“She cares about you.”
He nodded, finally admitting it.
“But you were Jackson’s friend,” I continued. “So she thinks it’s wrong.”
“Or at least
that’s what Ryland tells her,” he grumbled. “I felt that way too, for a long time. But I know that Jackson wouldn’t have wanted her to be miserable like this. He wasn’t that kind of person.”
“Not like Ryland,” I whispered.
“He never used to be that way either,” Matt said. “But he lost his entire family. And he hasn’t dealt with it at all.”
“I love him,” I admitted through tears. “Despite it all. All I can feel is this giant hole in my chest. I keep wishing we could get past this somehow.”
Matt reached over and hugged me, which was better than any words of false comfort. He knew as well as I did that wasn’t likely to happen.
“I better go,” I croaked. “Or I’m going to miss my flight.”
“Come back, Brighton,” he said with a sad smile. “Figure out a way to come back home.”
***
As the gravel crunched beneath the retreating taxi’s tires, I released a weary sigh.
My mother had uprooted us as children from the city of Chicago and probably made it about seventy miles south before the car broke down. Because this is where we ended up, the land where hopes and dreams came to die. It was desolate and barren, and just about everyone who lived here had a tragic story in their background. It was a silly dream to think I could ever really escape this place.
My life flashed before my eyes. A life in the Buena Vista trailer park. Born here and doomed to die here too. That is after I spent the majority of my life chasing pennies in my chosen profession of waiting tables or stripping. The highlight of my life would be the pack a day smoking habit I’d need to develop just to get by.
I swallowed past the pain in my throat and tugged my suitcase into action. I might have a broken heart and an empty future, but at least I had my family. A brother who I never really knew at all and a mother that would likely be dead soon. Yeah, I still had that.
The lilac bush where Ryland and I had first kissed taunted me with her blooms as I walked up the rickety steps. I didn’t bother knocking, and the door wasn’t locked as I swung it open with the familiar tweaking of the handle.
