How to Kill a Man in Thirty Seconds

Chapter 79: The Mourning

The weeks that followed swept by in a blur. It was ruled that Colton's death was in self defence. Trial followed trial, first my mother's- painstaking and dreadful- and then Morgan's. Colton's body was buried, a short service attended by nobody. My body was just beginning to recover from the brutal torture it had been subjected to, but my heart was a different story. It had turned to ice; guilty verdict followed guilty verdict and I found I could not shed a tear.

Morgan was charged for obstruction of justice; he received five years in county jail.

My mother, fifteen.

I didn't flinch as I watched her led out of the courtroom, cuffed and restrained, not even as my sister wailed in agony and lunged desperately towards her, not even as my mother broke into anguished sobs and the courthouse ruptured into mayhem. I was rigid and stone-faced.

Graduation arrived and passed just as abruptly. Many arrived to console, Brian and Oliver, Isaac then Sam, even Caleb at an odd hour on a Sunday night. But I remained upstairs, doors locked against their entry, hands clamped over ears to silence the knocking.

The one person I did speak to, surprisingly, was Caroline. It was following Morgan's trial; we sat atop a bench outside the courthouse in silence. Caroline had grown even thinner since I had last seen her, her face paler, her limbs frailer; there were deep bags beneath her eyes. She looked like she was living a nightmare, yet hadn't shed a tear even as Morgan was led silently away.

"It was you, wasn't it?" I found myself saying softly, "The gifts. You sent them, didn't you?"

Her aquamarine eyes flickered up to mine, and a ghost of a smile slipped over her face, "You finally caught on, Charley Green."

"Why?"

Her smile only deepened, "Take a wild guess."

Before I knew it, my hand had shot out to grip the collar of her dress, and I had yanked her forward roughly. Her face was inches from mine, and fear darted in her eyes for a split second.

"I'm done playing games, Caroline," I didn't miss the anger that laced my voice, and neither did she.

The smile fell from her face, her eyes turning emotionless, "Because I wanted to see you hurt, Charley."

"Why?"

Her gaze cocked to the side, "Look at me, Charley Green. Look at me." Her frail hand moved forward suddenly, fingers combing my hair lightly in an action that turned me rigid, "We have the same hair. Our eyes are the same shade. Have you never noticed?"

My eyes narrowed, gaze flickering over her empty aquamarine eyes and pale hair. I had noticed, the first time I'd seen her lingering in the shadows.

"You've been so frustratingly ignorant of my father's suffering since the day you were born, it angered me, Charley Green," Caroline said dismissively. Her gaze hardened, and for the first time, I saw anger and pain flash in her eyes, "Every single day since you were no more than a few years old, my father has had to look at you knowing you were his own blood, his daughter and be silent about it. Your existence has been his agony, and your lack of care is a shame." Her jaw clenched, eyes growing steely, "The number of times I've fantasized about wrapping my fingers around your petite little throat and squeezing until I see the very life leave your eyes, Charley dear, I cannot count."

A morose smile flitted across her face, "Even if he was no more than your father's friend, a stranger in your eyes, he was happy. He was thankful he could be something to you. But you weren't having any of that, were you? After his trial four years ago, you burnt the shed outside our home. You tried to burn our home too."

Caroline leaned forward suddenly until her face was inches from mine, and her words were laced with venom, "Never once did he consider pressing charges, not even to protect himself. Instead, he mourned your suffering and did the only thing he could- immoral as it was- to keep what remained of your family together, for you. He went up on the stand for you, faked his brother's death, for you."

Emotion I couldn't put a finger on surged inside of me, and I swallowed heavily, staring coldly at her.

"When you disappeared suddenly, it ruined him, Charley," sadness crept into Caroline's eyes, "It was one thing to be a stranger to you, another to be your enemy, but a whole new story to be nothing."

"What does this have to do with you, Caroline?"

A humorless chuckle escaped the girl's lips, "Why do you think he adopted a strange kid like myself with such an equally strange past?" Her hard gaze locked with mine, hurt and disappointment mingling with the loathing that stirred there, "It was because I looked the closest to you. He was hoping I could fill in whatever sick void there was in his life, without you."

The air rushed out of me.

Caroline glanced away, and I noticed she swallowed harshly as she did so, "But nothing I ever did was enough to make him happy. He tried for my sake... But I was a fake."

"You must have hated me," I said softly.

She smiled, but her jaw locked at the recollection, " When we met, I wanted nothing more than to snap your pretty little neck."

After my ordeal with Colton, the words failed to send shivers over my skin. I nodded.

"You chose those gifts after everything Morgan had told you about me, things he had discovered through my father," I murmured as realization dawned, "But why? Why not just... snap my neck and get it over with?"

"How did it feel like, Charley dear, to receive those gifts? To feel, for just a second, that your father was present despite knowing, deep down that it was impossible?" My jaw clenched and her smile widened at the sight, relishing my pain.

"These past few years, my father wasn't really living," she murmured, "He was lost in his memories of you. There, but not really there. Forcing you a taste of your own poison was... glorious."

Realization startled me, "All those times you let me into your home, you knew I was digging into the murder."

She giggled, the high-pitched sound chilling and eerie, almost hysterical. "I wanted you to find out the truth, Charley Green. I wanted it to wreck your life over," Caroline said, and her smile widened in triumph, "And you, my dear, walked right into my trap."