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“Don’t you dare compare the two,” he hisses at me. “I’m nothing like him.” He turns on his heel and storms out of the room toward the back door. The door slams so hard as he walks out of it the window shakes. I watch him walk through my yard to the darkness of the forest, disappearing as if he was never here.
“This is the end of it,” I tell the empty room. “There is nothing else left to do.” I walk to the door and turn the lock. “Whatever it is that we were doing is over.” I look out into the darkness one more time before going to my bedroom. I strip out of the shorts I chose for the night. I pull the shirt over my head before I go to the bathroom and wash my face, the tears mixing with the water as I replay the scene with Charlie over in my head. “I’m nothing like him” are the only words I hear over in my head.
Slipping a T-shirt over me, I pull the covers back, sliding between the cold sheets, laying my head on the pillow. My eyes land on the empty pillow beside me as I’m taken back to the day my life would really never be the same.
“Did you hear?” My brother walked into the office while I was doing the paperwork as I looked up at him.
“Autopsy came back.” His eyes stared into mine. It was six weeks after the accident, six weeks since that fateful night. The bones healed, but the guilt was eating me alive. I held my breath as I waited for him to tell me what I’ve known, what I’ve been dreading. “No alcohol or drugs in his system.” The air sucked out of me. “I guess those court cases suing for wrongful death will be dismissed now.” My hands pushed against the desk to stand, but my knees gave up, and I fell back on my ass. Two weeks after the accident, a couple of people started chattering about suing the Cartwrights. Jennifer’s parents were some of them who wanted them to take responsibility for the accident, something the Cartwrights refused to do.
“That can’t be,” I said the words that shocked my brother. “That can’t be,” I said over and over again until my brother came to the side of the desk and squatted by my chair. “There is a mistake.”
“What are you saying?” He looked at me.
“I’m saying that he was drunk. I know he was drunk.” There, in the office, I told him that Waylon had swapped out the water in his water bottles at my house before going to get everyone else, filling them up with vodka instead. “It’s not right.”
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked me, and I looked at him.
“I have to make it right.” That was the only thing I knew. Little did I know that making it right would ruin everything around me.
With my father and brother by my side the whole way, I went to Jennifer’s parents and told them what I knew. They went ahead with the court case, but it kept being postponed and pushed aside. Something that smelled like the Cartwrights’ doing. The case brought forth by three victims’ families was the biggest thing that this town saw after the accident. I was called as a character witness for the Cartwrights. I was to go up there and tell the world how amazing Waylon was. Except I didn’t, I went up there and said the truth. Everything from that night, that he was drinking vodka instead of water.
After my shocking testimony, the trial turned into an absolute shit show. Jennifer’s attorney knew the Cartwrights were as dirty as they came. He believed they were withholding evidence, so he filed an immediate request for Wallace and Margo Cartwright to produce Waylon Cartwright’s legitimate autopsy report. The courtroom went into an uproar and, of course, their attorney objected, as he stated that his clients had the same autopsy report that was filed at the coroner’s office.
Shocking everyone, especially the Cartwrights, who thought they were above the law, the judge granted the request and ordered Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright to produce their copy. You didn’t need to be a doctor or an expert to see the major differences between the Cartwrights’ copy of Waylon’s autopsy report and the report filed with the coroner’s office.
And lo and behold, it was all there in black and white. Waylon was indeed intoxicated. His blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit and now the entire town knew about it. The judge even ordered the Cartwrights to produce Waylon’s medical records to confirm that his blood type matched the legitimate autopsy report.
But of course, the blame was placed on the medical examiner, who—according to the Cartwrights—was not only incompetent but he chose a “low-level lab” that mixed up their son’s test results with someone else’s, and when they received a copy of the report, they didn’t bother to read it since the medical examiner said the results were negative for alcohol and drugs.
And now that they knew he was drunk, they blamed me. He drank alcohol because of me. I wasn’t good enough for him. I couldn’t make him happy, and I should have made him stop drinking. Mrs. Cartwright even spread the rumor that I was giving Waylon several bottles of whiskey from my family’s bar. That’s funny, considering he only drank vodka, which eventually was his downfall.
The truth of the matter was, the Cartwrights paid the medical examiner off because they knew Waylon was drunk. There was no financial trace of it. However, it was rather ironic that the medical examiner abruptly retired, sold his house a month after filing the autopsy report, and no one has seen hide nor hair of him since.
The Cartwrights were well aware of Waylon’s habitual drinking, and like everything else in their life, they disregarded it. Rumor was, Mrs. Cartwright made an emotional plea and requested that they refrain from desecrating her son’s body by performing an autopsy on him. I heard she put on quite a show too. She even wiped her “tears” with her silk handkerchief while clutching her Tiffany pearls. However, because Waylon was the driver and it was an ongoing investigation, her request was denied. As soon as she received that news, those fake tears dried up like the Sahara Desert. This was also probably why Waylon was cremated a week after the autopsy was performed. They didn’t need to wait on the results because they already knew what they were going to be.
The blackmail the family had done over the year was all brought to light because of me. The government contracts to build everything from the roads to high-rises were all done with an inside person who would tell them the bid to put out or would make sure there would be no other bids brought to the table.
Slowly, the cards came tumbling down.
I expected some pushback, but I wasn’t expecting the onslaught that would come my way. The Cartwrights might have taken a dip in the status department, but there were still people who stood by them, which meant I was public enemy number one. And after me was my family, who were in the direct path of their ammunition. I shouldn’t have left. I should have stayed and bore the brunt of it, but I couldn’t take it, and the last straw was when Charlie showed up at my house, drunk off his ass, and he stood there and blamed me for it all.
A couple of days later, I left with every intention to return, but one day turned into one month turned into one year, and so on. Now, here I was, still living in the shadow of being the woman who sullied a good man’s name. But tonight, all the secrets have come out. I have nothing left to give, not to the Cartwrights, not to the people who hate me, and not to Charlie Barnes. Especially not to him.
Tonight was the end of whatever the fuck was happening between us. It was the end of us hate-fucking each other. It was the end of me paying penance for something I’d already been paying for secretly. It was the end of the road for all of it. I would get up tomorrow and try to rebuild the company my father was proud of. I would bring it back to how it was before everything happened, and then I would leave, just like I did the last time. But hopefully this time I would do it in one piece and not shattered.
Chapter Nineteen
Charlie
I storm into my house, slamming the door as hard as I did Autumn’s, wondering if any of the windows will shatter. Not caring if they do. As I walk over to the cabinet on top of the fridge, I grab the bottle of whiskey, not even waiting until I’m sitting on the couch before I take a pull from it. Putting one hand on the counter, with the other one holding the bottle in my hand before I take another pull, I try to block out her voice, try to block it all out, but the words come to me louder and louder each time.
Hetook my head in his hand,fisted my hair in his hand, and then proceeded to knock it against the wall so hard that I felt the burn as the skin tore open. I knew I would need to go to the doctor. I also knew I would have to come up with another story about it.
Another story, the words feel like I’m being kicked in the stomach, sucking all the air out of my lungs. I take three gulps down, hoping it dulls the way my body feels, but instead, her face flashes through my mind. The way her whole body shook while she said,But, just so you know, I died that night also. I’m breathing, but inside I’m dead. There is nothing left for you to destroy.
I take the bottle of whiskey, pulling more gulps. My eyes look at the bottle in my hand, right before I pull back my arm and pitch it across the room. The light on over the stove is dim, so I can see the golden liquid drip down the wall, just like the tears that poured down her face. My head hangs down,I took your verbal punches over and over again, just like I did with Waylon. Unlike with him, I guess I deserve yours.
I put my head back, but it feels so heavy I have no choice but to let it fall in front of me, before I turn and make my way to my bedroom. As I collapse on the bed, my hand goes to my chest as I turn my head to the side, the guilt hitting me like a freight train head-on, crushing me and taking me under.
