My Family Abandoned Me in the Woods novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Her Side of the Story

Brooke posted at noon on Tuesday, while I had a water pick in my hand.

My coworker came into the break room at one with her phone held out in front of her.

"Callie," she said. "Is this your sister?"

On the screen Brooke sat on a cream sofa in a gray sweater, with no makeup and one tear already sliding down.

The title across the top read: MY TRUTH ABOUT SABLE CREEK.

"I've kept this secret for twelve years," Brooke said in a small, cracked voice.

"When I was fourteen, my older sister, Callie, planned a camping prank on a boy at our school. She talked me into it. She talked my friends into it. I was a child, and I did what my big sister told me."

A picture came up: the sheriff's old list, with a yellow box around one line.

CALLIE RUDDOCK, 16, HOME ALL NIGHT.

"She told the police she was home," Brooke said. "She wasn't. And now she is trying to bury it, by saying it was me."

The picture changed to a frame of the flyer from the trailhead.

"I'm so sorry, Danny," she said to the camera, and wiped her cheek with the side of her hand. "I should have said something years ago."

She had used his name.

I stood there with the break room microwave humming.

"It's not true," I said.

"Which part?"

"The part where it's mine."

My coworker looked at me for a long moment.

"Okay," she said. "But, Callie. Which part is true?"

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