Chapter 18: Both of Her

The post had four million views by the time Nolan knocked.

I had written it in nine lines, with my full name at the bottom.

I was in the car in 2013.

I did not plan it.

I begged them to stop, and I could not make them.

Later I told the sheriff I was home all night, and that was a lie.

I am the only person who has to answer for that one.

Everyone else in that car will have their turn.

He read it standing in my kitchen with his coat still on.

Danny had gone to find food, because he said he could feel a fight coming and he wanted to be at a drive-through for it.

"You didn't wait," Nolan said.

"No."

"We said we would decide together."

"You decided what I could hear for six days." I crossed my arms. "Where were you Wednesday?"

His face closed.

"Leland."

"You told me a shift at the district office."

"I know what I told you."

"Then what's in your jacket?"

He took out the pink camcorder and set it on my table between the salt shaker and a stack of mail.

I looked at it, and I looked at him.

"What is that?"

"Brooke's. The boy who drove gave it to me." He turned the little screen open. "I should have shown you the second I got back. I couldn't."

"Why not?"

"Because I watched it in a tire shop and I understood that I'd had you wrong."

He pressed play, and then he stepped back against the counter and did not look at the screen.

I watched myself at sixteen, in two braids, pulling at a locked door.

I heard Brooke say the words.

If you tell Mom, I'll say it was your idea.

I had forgotten it.

I had not remembered it once in twelve years, and my whole body knew it again at once.

My knees went, and I sat down on a kitchen chair with the camera in front of me.

"I was a kid," I said.

"You were a kid."

"I thought I'd made it up. I thought I'd made up the part where she said it."

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