Chapter 10 The Aftermath
415 Words
The interrogation room smelled like coffee and bleach.
I sat on one side of the table. Elias sat on the other.
Between us: a detective, a recorder, and three years of lies.
“I was driving,” Elias said for the third time. His voice was steady now. “I was drunk. I hit Lila Martin’s car on November 14th and I fled the scene.”
The detective nodded. Writing.
“And was anyone else in the vehicle with you?”
Elias blinked. “No.”
The door opened. Another detective walked in. Whispered something to the first one.
First detective frowned. Looked at Elias. Then at me.
“Mr. Carter,” she said. “We pulled traffic cam footage from that night. From the gas station a block before the crash.”
My stomach dropped.
The detective turned a laptop around.
Grainy video. 2:17am. Elias’s car.
And in the passenger seat.
A girl.
Long hair. Laughing.
Hand on his thigh.
Not me.
Not Lila.
“Care to explain who that is?” the detective asked.
Elias went white.
“That’s... that’s not—”
“That’s my sister,” I whispered.
The room went silent.
“What?” Elias turned to me, panicked. “What did you say?”
“The girl,” I said. My voice was shaking. “That’s not you. That’s Lila.”
His face crumpled.
“No. No, Lila was driving home alone. The report said—”
“The report was wrong,” the detective cut in. “Because you ran. Because you never stayed to tell us she was with you.”
Elias stood up so fast his chair scraped.
“Lila was in my car? She was with me?”
“Looks like it,” the detective said.
Elias looked at me. And I saw it.
Real horror.
“I didn’t know,” he said. To me. To the room. “I swear to God I didn’t know she was in the car. I thought I was following my ex. I was drunk and angry and I didn’t see—”
He broke off. Put his hands in his hair.
“I killed her,” he choked out. “And she was with me. She was in the car with me.”
I couldn’t breathe.
All this time I thought he hit her.
He didn’t hit her.
He was driving her.
_The man I hated for killing my sister was the last person who saw her alive.
- Writer
