“I’ve spoken to a lawyer,” Greg said from the doorway. “I’m ready to tell the truth officially. Whatever comes from that, I’ll face it. My parents sent me away right after the crash. Told me they’d handle everything. I didn’t ask questions. I was scared. But looking back… I was just a coward. I ran into Michael a few weeks ago. That’s when I found out what he’d been carrying all these years… and I couldn’t live with it anymore.”
I was still looking at Michael, trying to reassemble something in my mind that had just come apart.
Someone near the fence whispered to the person next to them: “He let that boy take the fall for him?”
“I couldn’t live with it anymore.”
I could feel the room recalibrating around me, people deciding where they stood, what they thought, and whether to say it out loud.
I didn’t blame them. I would’ve done the same thing. But I wasn’t ready to manage other people’s reactions on top of my own.
“I’d like everyone to head home,” I said. “Please. Thank you for coming.”
Nobody argued. Within five minutes, the backyard was empty except for the three of us, the uneaten food on the table, and the string lights Michael had put up the night before, still glowing along the fence.
I hadn’t felt a silence that heavy in 11 years.
I wasn’t ready to manage other people’s reactions.
Greg stayed where he was. Michael reached into his jacket pocket and set something on the table.
A voice recorder. Small, worn around the edges, the kind kids used for school projects in the early 2000s. The plastic was scuffed on one corner, and there was a small sticker on the back, mostly peeled off, that I recognized instantly.
A paw print.
Sarah put them on everything.
“That’s… that’s Sarah’s,” I gasped.
“She had it with her that night,” Michael revealed. “It was found at the scene. I’ve had it since then.”
