Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93453 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Charlie stands up. “Autumn.” His face ravaged, his voice breaking, but I’m too far gone to stop.
“So I wasn’t driving that truck, but I also should have said something to you, to Jennifer, to anyone. I should have done what was the right thing to do. For that, I will forever live with the guilt that I lived and she didn’t. Not him, he got what he deserved. But I should have saved her. I should have been the one sitting next to him. You would have kept her safe.” He takes a step to me, and I hold up my hand. “But just so you know, I died that night also. I’m breathing, but inside I’m dead. There is nothing left for you to destroy.” I thought his face was ravaged before, but I was wrong. “I took your verbal punches over and over again, just like I did with Waylon. Unlike with him, I guess I deserve yours.”
“Don’t you dare compare the two,” he hisses at me. “I’m nothing like him.” He turns on his heel and storms out of the room toward the back door. The door slams so hard as he walks out of it the window shakes. I watch him walk through my yard to the darkness of the forest, disappearing as if he was never here.
“This is the end of it,” I tell the empty room. “There is nothing else left to do.” I walk to the door and turn the lock. “Whatever it is that we were doing is over.” I look out into the darkness one more time before going to my bedroom. I strip out of the shorts I chose for the night. I pull the shirt over my head before I go to the bathroom and wash my face, the tears mixing with the water as I replay the scene with Charlie over in my head. “I’m nothing like him” are the only words I hear over in my head.
Slipping a T-shirt over me, I pull the covers back, sliding between the cold sheets, laying my head on the pillow. My eyes land on the empty pillow beside me as I’m taken back to the day my life would really never be the same.
“Did you hear?” My brother walked into the office while I was doing the paperwork as I looked up at him.
“Autopsy came back.” His eyes stared into mine. It was six weeks after the accident, six weeks since that fateful night. The bones healed, but the guilt was eating me alive. I held my breath as I waited for him to tell me what I’ve known, what I’ve been dreading. “No alcohol or drugs in his system.” The air sucked out of me. “I guess those court cases suing for wrongful death will be dismissed now.” My hands pushed against the desk to stand, but my knees gave up, and I fell back on my ass. Two weeks after the accident, a couple of people started chattering about suing the Cartwrights. Jennifer’s parents were some of them who wanted them to take responsibility for the accident, something the Cartwrights refused to do.
“That can’t be,” I said the words that shocked my brother. “That can’t be,” I said over and over again until my brother came to the side of the desk and squatted by my chair. “There is a mistake.”
“What are you saying?” He looked at me.
“I’m saying that he was drunk. I know he was drunk.” There, in the office, I told him that Waylon had swapped out the water in his water bottles at my house before going to get everyone else, filling them up with vodka instead. “It’s not right.”
“What are you going to do about it?” he asked me, and I looked at him.
“I have to make it right.” That was the only thing I knew. Little did I know that making it right would ruin everything around me.
With my father and brother by my side the whole way, I went to Jennifer’s parents and told them what I knew. They went ahead with the court case, but it kept being postponed and pushed aside. Something that smelled like the Cartwrights’ doing. The case brought forth by three victims’ families was the biggest thing that this town saw after the accident. I was called as a character witness for the Cartwrights. I was to go up there and tell the world how amazing Waylon was. Except I didn’t, I went up there and said the truth. Everything from that night, that he was drinking vodka instead of water.
After my shocking testimony, the trial turned into an absolute shit show. Jennifer’s attorney knew the Cartwrights were as dirty as they came. He believed they were withholding evidence, so he filed an immediate request for Wallace and Margo Cartwright to produce Waylon Cartwright’s legitimate autopsy report. The courtroom went into an uproar and, of course, their attorney objected, as he stated that his clients had the same autopsy report that was filed at the coroner’s office.