Blake took the whole scene in. He wore a black suit and a black tie with a crisp white shirt. His hair looked slightly wet and plastered into the kind of order I’d never before seen on him. He kept his eyes on Amanda and me but spoke to Samantha.
“What is this all about? It’s time, honey. It’s time to do this thing once and for all.”
“Blake, I think you’re going to want to hear this,” I said.
He smiled, but there was little warmth in it. He looked at me like I was a stranger, someone he needed to tolerate for just another moment. “I don’t need to hear anything from either of you. You were invited, but you said no. So . . . that’s probably for the best. I told the truth about what happened in college, and I’m going to get in some trouble for all of that. And none of that is sitting well with Sam’s parents. They’re not even here.”
“And that’s fine,” Sam said. “We can do it all on our own.”
“Sam was just about to tell us something important,” Amanda said.
For the first time since he’d stepped outside, Blake turned and looked at his bride-to-be. And then he spoke to us while he stared at her. “She doesn’t have to tell me anything else. I know what happened. And I know why Sam went to Jennifer’s house that day. Why do you think I wanted your laptop? I started to suspect Sam had done it, and I wanted to check the information you downloaded. When I saw the messages from Lily Rose, I knew. I’ve played the stupid drinking game with her. But none of that’s important. Our wedding is.”
He reached out and took Sam by the hand, gently tugging her in the direction of the Barn and their wedding guests.
But Sam stayed rooted in place, resisting the pressure. She fixed her eyes on me.
“It’s not jealousy,” she said. “Do you know why I went over there to see Jennifer that day?”
“Baby . . . ,” Blake said.
“It’s okay,” she said. “They’ll understand. Ryan will understand. He will.” She sounded calm, logical, perfectly in control of her story. “Blake told Jennifer all about Aaron Knicely and the Steiner girls. He told Jennifer who was really driving that night. Not you, Ryan. Him. Blake. He told Jennifer that he was driving. He did it because he slipped up and drank again. And you know as well as I do that makes him loose-tongued. I’m not thrilled he told someone else before he told me, but it was the drinking that did it. That’s why he had to stop when we got back together.” She spoke about Blake as if he wasn’t there, like he was her child and she was sharing her struggles with him at a support group. “When he ended the relationship with her to get back together with me, she threatened to tell. Maybe she was bluffing and just wanted to make him squirm, but how could we take that chance? You know what that’s like, Ryan. When you don’t want your dirty laundry aired for all to see. She . . . Jennifer . . . was going to tell the police that Blake was driving that night and put him in legal jeopardy. Hell, she tried to tell you, Ryan. Why do you think she reached out to you just a few days ago on Facebook?”
“I thought she wanted something else. Something . . . romantic. I didn’t imagine . . .”
“She told me that day when I went over there. She was trying to tell you the truth about the accident. That Blake was driving, and you were off the hook. She was going to show you the letters. But you ignored her. If you’d responded and talked to her, you would have known then. Instead, I went to get the letters back. To keep Blake from legal jeopardy. To keep everyone from knowing. And then Blake and I would get married, and it would all be settled.”
“What happened at her house?” I asked.
“I thought she’d listen to reason. You know, one woman to another. I just slipped over there in the evening. I didn’t think it would take long. And if I hadn’t gone there, everything we’d planned would have been out the window. All of this.” She gestured to the Barn, the surrounding landscape, everything that was to come in the future. “We couldn’t have that, could we? Not when we were so close to having it all worked out.”
Her words were calm and reasonable. She didn’t allow for the possibility that there could be any objection to anything she said.
“What went wrong when you got there?” I asked.
Sam reached up and brushed at a corner of her eye. Either a tear or a makeup smudge. I couldn’t say which.
“She wouldn’t listen to reason,” Sam said. “Blake didn’t know I was going there. He really didn’t. That’s why he sent you that night, Ryan. I didn’t tell him I was trying to solve the problem on my own. I got the feeling she didn’t really want to get Blake in trouble. She wasn’t hanging on like a woman scorned. But she clearly wanted us both to squirm. She liked having that power over us. And she used it. So I offered her money, money I’ve received from my parents over the years. Not a small amount. And that set her off. She was offended, and she shut down. So things escalated from there. I wasn’t leaving without those letters. We couldn’t have the loose end dangling.”
“Escalated until you killed her?” I asked. “Smashed her over the head or whatever you did?”
“I got angry because she was so unreasonable.” Her voice caught. For the first time she showed something besides defensiveness and anger. Sam looked up to the sky. She again lifted a finger to her right eye, which was perfectly framed by eyeliner. She seemed to be trying to keep a single tear from falling. “I just wanted the letters. That’s it. So I tried to just take them. You know, just grab them and go. If she wanted to call the police or make a stink later, she could. But I didn’t think she would. Not really. Not if I took them and left.”
Blake watched her with an intense protectiveness. And a look that resembled admiration.
“I went into the bedroom and started looking in the closet and ruffling through the clothes. I was scrambling. I had to get out of there as fast as possible, and I thought I’d be going empty-handed. For a minute or two, Jennifer watched me from the bedroom doorway. She was almost laughing at me. Then I started opening drawers, and when I pulled open the one in the top of the dresser, she came into the room behind me.”
“That’s the drawer you told me to look in,” I said to Blake.
“That’s where the letters were,” he said.
“And before I could grab them, she grabbed me. By the hair. She pulled me back and told me to get out. She pulled so hard my eyes filled with tears.” Sam shivered at the memory. “I don’t like it when people think they can push me around. They think I’ll take anything and not give it right back. You thought that, Ryan. You thought I was just the little woman sitting idly by while Blake did whatever he wanted. Well, I’m not. And I pushed back against Jennifer. Hard.”
“How hard?” I asked.
“She had a trophy or something on the dresser. I just reached out, and it felt like a heavy stone in my hand. And I swung. Just once.” Her eyes were wide, her hand cupped as though she was holding that heavy object again. “I knew it was bad. The sound it made. The way she fell. I knew.” She swallowed hard. “I took the letters and the trophy with me. That trophy . . . It was some kind of employee-of-the-month thing. . . .”
“Where is it?” I asked.
“In the river. And the letters are burned.”
“And the glove?” I asked.
“That could be a problem,” Sam said. “I didn’t even know the gloves were in my pocket. I hadn’t worn that coat recently, and they were in there. And one of them fell out, I guess. I didn’t want it to go that way, but it did. You would have done the same thing, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you, Amanda?”
Blake placed his hand on Sam’s arm, and she went along as he guided her toward the back door of the Barn. But before they went inside, I spoke and Blake stopped and looked back.
“Did you know the truth about this, Blake? Did you know Sam did this?”
“I had my suspicions. Sam wasn’t answering her phone during the time when all of that supposedly happened. When we talked about all of these things, about Jennifer’s death, she was evasive. And cold, really. And . . . her hand. Her nails on her right hand . . . They looked like . . . They looked like she’d been changing a tire. They were all broken and chipped. And she’d been chewing them again. Her hands never look like that. But I found out for sure that day I came over to get your computer. I wanted to see what was on there. I wanted to know how bad it was.”
“You’re willing to cover for Sam, knowing she did this.”
“I am,” Blake said. “That’s what you do for people you love.”
“But you’ll go to jail. The accident. The murder.”
“Maybe we won’t come back,” Blake said. “We’re getting married. We’re going on a trip. Sam has money from her parents. They’re going to cut us off, but we can make it on our own somewhere. That’s why we’re still getting married today. I think it’s clear there’s no need to tell the police about this. We all understand why Sam did what she did. Let’s just move on and have a wedding. The cops won’t know who Lily Rose is unless you tell them.”
I reached into my pocket and brought out my phone.
“You can’t do that,” Blake said, leaning forward. “We’re friends. We’ve been friends longer than you’ve been friends with anybody. Longer than you’ve known Amanda.”
I dialed 911.
“I’m going to do the right thing at the right time, Blake.”
“Are you serious?” he asked.
When the dispatcher came on the line, and I told her where I was and to notify Detective Rountree, Blake didn’t hesitate. He let go of Sam’s hand and went inside the Barn, saying as he went, “My keys are inside.”