Chapter 12: The Video

For one night, half of Larch Lake believed him.

My phone filled up while I sat in the emergency room with Hayes.

"Is it true you messed with his shells?"

"I always knew you were jealous of your sister."

"How could you, at a family club?"

A nurse wrapped his palms in white gauze.

He watched me read every text and didn't say a word until I put the phone face down.

"Stop reading them," he said.

"I can't."

"Then read me the funny ones."

"None of them are funny."

"Then make some up."

So I did.

I made up a text from the yacht club's oldest member demanding I be burned at the stake on the ninth hole.

He laughed so hard the nurse told him to hold still.

By morning, it didn't matter what anybody had texted.

A woman on the club deck had been filming the show on her phone. She'd kept filming when the awning caught.

The video was a minute and a half long.

It showed a gray boat with MOSS BROS. on the bow hitting the dock at full speed.

It showed me jumping off with an extinguisher in each hand and running straight into the fire.

It showed Hayes tearing down the burning canvas with his bare hands.

And in the corner of the frame, the whole time, it showed Dustin Shepard in a white polo.

He shoved an old man aside and jumped off the dock into the lake.

She posted it at six a.m. with one line.

"Watch who ran which way."

By noon, the whole town had watched who ran which way.

The yacht club manager called me himself. He used the word "grateful" four times and "misunderstanding" twice.

The marshal called at one. He'd seen the setback distance on the video and he'd be visiting Shepard Pyro's storage that week.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Chose My Sister, So I Left Him With Nothing from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.