The following morning, Maisie sat at the kitchen table with Lena. She’d looked so forlorn when she arrived, Maisie broke one of her few rules, making Lena a mimosa with an extra splash of champagne. The girl had just lost her sister. She deserved one tiny reprieve.
“I can’t stay,” Lena said. “Thanks for the drink though. I need it.”
“I’m sorry about Zoey. I wish she wouldn’t have been found the way she was.”
“At least she was found, I guess. If the guy was going to kill her, he was going to kill her. I mean, my heart hurts for my sister, but at least now we have closure.”
Closure, yes, but how long it would take her family to heal from their loss was another story. Maisie supposed the silver lining, if there was one, was Alice. Maisie may not have been able to save Zoey, but she thanked every star in the heavens the baby was safe.
“I wanted to talk to you about a delicate matter involving your sister. I’ve recently learned she moved home right before she married Lane because she was assaulted on campus.”
Lena’s eyes widened. “How do you—”
“How I know hardly matters now. I thought you should know that your sister wasn’t the only girl who was attacked. There was another girl, and possibly many others.”
“Keeping the secret for her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. She made me promise not to say a word to anyone. I thought about telling someone after she went missing, and then I thought if I did, and if the person who took her was the same person who raped her, he might kill her. Now she’s dead, and I wish I would have said something. I don’t know what I would have said though. She knew who raped her, but she wouldn’t tell me his name. I still don’t know who he is.”
“What all do you know about the attack?”
She swallowed half of the mimosa. “It was fast. He didn’t speak while he did it. She said it lasted around three minutes, and all she could think about was the baby and if the baby would be okay. He told her if she told anyone, he’d come back and do the same thing to Linda, and then he left.”
“After your sister told you, did you tell anyone else?”
She bit her bottom lip. “I ... umm ...”
“Lena, I need to know. It’s important.
“I only told one person, I swear. It was just so heavy, I needed to talk to someone I could trust to keep quiet. I was going crazy keeping it bottled up to myself.”
“Who did you tell?”
She paused, then said, “Kyle Grady.”