The Girl I Used to Be by April Henry

Author:April Henry [Henry, April]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781627793339
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

THE TRUTH

An old woman sitting at a nearby computer furrows her brow and puts her finger to her lips.

I drop my voice to a whisper. “What if my dad really did kill my mom? And then killed himself?” In my mind’s eye, I see how it could have played out. Have we been looking at everything the wrong way? Nausea rises in me. I swallow back the bitterness.

“What if there was another person there that day, like the librarian said?” I ask Duncan. “Maybe a hitchhiker or even a friend?”

I imagine my dad having yet another fight with my mom. Only this time it turned deadly. Meanwhile, the third adult stood by, too horrified or too afraid to act. Or maybe they ran into the woods. I picture them creeping back to find my mom dead, my dad dying from a self-inflicted wound, me the only survivor.

“Maybe they couldn’t stop what was happening, and afterward they were too afraid to deal with cops,” I go on. What if they had an arrest record or had simply been too anxious to face the questions? “They could have figured the Walmart was a safe place to drop me, and then left the car at the airport, wiped it down, and went on their way.”

I squeeze Duncan’s arm so tight he grimaces. I’ve been feeling sorry for my dad, for misjudging him all these years. But maybe I was wrong.

“No.” Duncan shakes himself free. “Wait a minute. That was a pickup your family was in. I don’t think there would be room for another person.”

Duncan’s right. Or at least probably right. There’s nothing to say that I didn’t end up on someone’s lap. But it’s a less likely scenario.

“Chief Spaulding said they were reopening the case,” he continues. “There still could be evidence that they never got around to testing back when they figured they didn’t need to, because they thought your dad did it. There must have been footprints or even tire tracks.”

Now he’s the one who’s imagining things that probably aren’t true.

“Yeah, but it was three weeks before those grouse hunters found my mom’s body,” I point out. “There would have been a lot more snow in between.” I see that little flash of memory again, the blanket of white lying untouched underneath the trees. I’ve always loved how snow makes everything new, but in this case it helped hide the truth.

“There still could be other clues,” Duncan insists. “Fingerprints on that tarp or maybe on the clothes your mother was wearing. DNA where the killer touched. Maybe blood, if the killer got cut swinging around that knife. Fibers from the killer’s clothing.”

A surge of hope pulses through me. The police must be testing things right now. Running them under special lights, picking up pieces of hair with tweezers. The truth of what happened that day might be answered in a lab.

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