Homewrecker

62 - 𝓼𝓸𝓸𝓷

After rinsing my mouth out with the water Taylor-Elise insisted I take—making a somewhat awkward and hushed remark about how she didn't want to smell my vomit breath in the car on the way to the police station, where Andi was calling out from the middle seats that Officer Porterfield would meet us—and climbing into the passenger seat, Ethan told me it would be about ten minutes before we made it to the station.

He was asking how high I wanted the air conditioning, and I just shrugged, the only sound in the car Jason in the back talking on the phone to Amy and David, asking them to come down to Shiloh. I stared out through the windshield at nothing, letting my gaze go unfocused, as I started to wonder if I was really right about this. After all, first I blamed the Solidays, then considered Jude, and now things started to point to Kingston, but that was what I thought with the others too.

My voice was quiet, my mouth so dry it felt like the words were snagging. "What if I'm wrong?"

Ethan glanced at me, eyes flickering between me and the road signs. "Just tell them what you know. You know that he lied to you. You can let them figure out what that means."

"I was with him when the tornado touched down," I whispered. "We ran to a gas station together and hid in the beer cooler. But when we noticed the tornado, he wouldn't let me go inside my house. He grabbed me and pulled me away. I thought he was trying to save me."

He slowed the car in front of a STOP sign.

"After her funeral, they did this dinner thing . . . but I left when I followed Officer Porterfield into the bathroom and found out she was actually murdered. I bumped into him, but I think he actually followed me back to the trailer park."

Ethan was quiet for a moment, his chin tilted close to his shoulder as he listened, the muscles in his cheeks appearing more taunt and rigid than they had a minute earlier. Then a car honked behind his bumper and he straightened, turning around the corner. As he did, I noticed his hands clenched white around the wheel.

When he pulled into the police station about ten minutes later like he promised, I saw that Officer Porterfield was standing outside the front doors on the first step. She was dressed in plain clothes that afternoon, in a floral t-shirt with a pair of mom jeans instead of her patrol uniform, and her hair was loose around her shoulders, even her glasses were a different pair it looked like.

It also looked as if she recognized Ethan's crossover because while he was parking, she was waving her hand, almost kind of casually. It struck me that what was earthshattering to me, was normal to pretty much everyone working in that building.

I sat there for a moment, still strapped under my seatbelt. "Do I wait for Amy and David?"

Jason leaned forward in his seat. "They're still going to be about half an hour, at least."

"Do you want them there?" Andi asked.

My movements were slow as I shook my head, glancing through the rearview back at the police station where Officer Porterfield was waiting with her hands stuffed into her pockets, although I wasn't as sure of this now that I was actually looking at her, at the police station behind her, realizing that I was about to suggest my neighbor, the boy I liked for months, was actually the one to kill my mom.

Truthfully, she was the one I wanted. I wanted my mom, and I wanted her to tell me what to do even though it wasn't like I ever really trusted her decisions before. But she was my mom. And she always listened.

I took a moment to exhale, breathe out that feeling that came over whenever I thought about her too much, then tried to look over at Andi before thinking better of it. "Can you get your mom on the phone?"