someone was going to go to prison for the rest of his life.
Melissa let out a small sniffle, and Spencer looked over. Her sister’s eyes were lowered and her lips were pressed together in worry. “What?” Spencer asked suspiciously. The alarm in her head was getting louder and louder.
“You know why they’re saying there’s insufficient evidence, right?” Melissa asked quietly.
Spencer shook her head.
“It’s because of the Golden Orchid thing.” Melissa glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. “You lied about the essay. So they aren’t sure you’re exactly…trustworthy.”
Spencer’s throat felt tight. “But this is different!”
Melissa pressed her lips together and pointedly stared out the window.
“You believe me, don’t you?” Spencer asked urgently. For a long time, she hadn’t remembered anything about the night Ali vanished. Then little pieces began coming back to her, one by one. Her final suppressed memory was of two shadowy figures in the woods—one was Ali, and the other was definitely Ian. “I know what I saw,” Spencer went on. “Ian was there .”
“It’s just talk,” Melissa mumbled. Then she glanced at Spencer, biting hard on her top lip. “There’s something else.” She swallowed. “Ian sort of…called me last night.”
“From jail?” Spencer felt the same sensation she had the time Melissa pushed her out of the big oak in their backyard—first shock, and then, when she hit the ground, searing pain. “W-what did he say?”
It was so quiet in the hall, Spencer could hear her sister’s gulping swallow. “Well, his mom is really sick, for one.”
“Sick…like how?”
“Cancer, but I don’t know what kind. He’s devastated. Ian was so close to his mom, and he’s afraid that his conviction and the trial brought it on.”
Spencer flicked a piece of lint off her cashmere coat, apathetic. Ian had brought the trial on himself.
Melissa cleared her throat, her red-rimmed eyes round. “He doesn’t understand why we did this to him, Spence. He begged us not to testify against him in the trial—he kept saying it was all a misunderstanding. He didn’t kill her. He sounded so…desperate.”
Spencer’s mouth dropped open. “Are you saying you’re not going to testify against him?”
A vein in Melissa’s swanlike neck fluttered. She fiddled with her Tiffany key chain. “I just can’t get over it, that’s all. If Ian did do it, we would have been dating at the time. How could I not have suspected anything?”
Spencer nodded, suddenly exhausted. Despite everything, she understood Melissa’s perspective. Melissa and Ian had been the model couple in high school, and Spencer remembered how upset Melissa had been when Ian broke up with her halfway into their college freshman year. When Ian blew back into Rosewood this fall to coach Spencer’s hockey team— creepy! —he and Melissa quickly got back together. Outwardly, Ian had seemed like the ideal boyfriend: attentive, sweet, honest, and genuine. He was the kind of guy who’d help old ladies cross the street. It would be like if Spencer and Andrew Campbell were dating and he got arrested for dealing meth out of his Mini Cooper.
A snowplow grumbled outside, and Spencer looked up sharply. Not that she and Andrew would ever be a couple. It was merely an example. Because she didn’t like Andrew. He was simply another example of a Rosewood Day Golden Boy, that was all.
Melissa started to say something else, but the main doors downstairs opened, and Mr. and Mrs. Hastings strode into the vestibule. Spencer’s uncle Daniel, her aunt Genevieve, and her cousins Jonathan and Smith followed behind. Daniel, Genevieve, Jonathan, and Smith all looked weary, as if they’d driven across the country to get here, when in fact they lived in Haverford, only fifteen minutes away.
Mr. Calloway was the last person through the door. He bounded up the stairs, unlocked the boardroom, and ushered everyone inside. Mrs.