problem, however small, and I decide I like how that feels.
I make coffee and breakfast for my family, preparing us all for the day ahead. We drive over to the courthouse in silence, unable to listen to the radio in case they report on my brother’s trial, and too distracted to pick and choose between music. As we pull into the car park, I yell at Dad to stop but I’m too late and the bucket of blood sloshes its way all across the windshield, with a sickening sound. I strain out of my seatbelt to see who it is, and my stomach rolls over when I recognize the face of Hunter Farley, one of Tyler’s best friends and someone I’ve spent countless hours with at lunch tables and movie theatres and parties.
“MURDERER!” someone shouts as I get out of the car, my heart shuddering to a near stop in terror, before pulling myself together, putting my mask back on and grabbing Georgia’s hand so that we can walk up the courthouse steps together. On the other side of those doors to the courthouse is the Mayor and her family, waiting for us to arrive as they have done every day since the trial began. Every day they have stared us down as we walk past them and into the court room. Burning their own version of justice into our skin and the back of our heads as they follow our every move.
But what I’m really bracing myself for on the other side of those doors is Ethan. Because every day that we walk through those doors holds the potential to be the last that we see him as he really is, as Ethan Hall, twin, brother, son, rather than Ethan Hall, convicted murderer. I take a deep breath and hear and feel Georgia do the same as we push the heavy wooden doors open at the same time and confront those waiting eyes.
The following week dragged, long days and longer nights at work stopping me from seeing much of either my family or Kat and Ray to talk about the podcast. In stolen minutes I managed to arrange with Kat to meet them in Twin Rivers on Saturday. They were already there, setting up shop and making a camp for themselves in the small city where my brother had been convicted of murder. I hadn’t been back to Twin Rivers in years. Not since my parents sold up and moved, as soon as they possibly could, to the outskirts of Portland. And now that I was facing down the reality of having to physically go back and confront my family’s past and my brother’s present, Friday had come around all too quickly.
I let out a sigh of exhaustion, and Karen Powers, the second chair on Reid Murphy’s case, and my boss, shot me a caustic look. Karen Powers didn’t sigh or yawn. She didn’t ever give the sense that she was as physically fallible as that. “We keeping you from your bed, Kitson?” she asked archly and I felt burning red begin to creep up from underneath my shirt collar. Kitson was the name I’d taken when I applied for law school. ‘Hall’ was a common enough surname, but when combined with my first name, not to mention my face and its uncanny similarity to my twin brother’s, it was a name I no longer wanted to be burdened with. Sometimes it felt like a betrayal. Of Ethan, of myself, of my family in general. Other times it just felt like what I had to do to get through the day.
“No, I’m fine,” I said.
“Good, well why don’t you run along and get us all some coffees just to stave off that evident exhaustion you’re feeling.”
With a nod I left the room, catching Daniel’s eye who smiled back at me sympathetically, as I did so. By the time I returned to the conference room, jobs that would take all evening and probably all night had been delegated and I was left with the least interesting; babysitting the defendant, Reid Murphy. Reid had been released on bail, and the whole week had been dedicated to preparing her for taking the witness stand. It’s fairly unusual for defendants to take the stand, but Karen liked to lean into controversial situations and had made what I thought was the fairly shrewd observation that Reid was likely to elicit sympathy from the jury more than anything else. There was a reason everyone on the team but me seemed to think she was innocent. Small and slight, with wide watery blue eyes, and mousey brown hair, she didn’t look like she could hurt a fly, let alone almost kill a man. Quiet dropped over the room once everybody else had left, taking the coffees I’d retrieved with them. Reid stared down at the table, or possibly at her thumbs, the skin around her nails bitten and ripped to ribbons, while I sat in the corner by a large window that was slowly being plastered with rain. I scrolled through my phone, switching between email, Twitter and Instagram while drinking my coffee, and was largely ignoring Reid when suddenly she spoke, her voice quiet at first but getting stronger.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
I looked up from my phone slowly, eyes meeting hers almost involuntarily. “I don’t have to believe you, Reid. I’m your lawyer not your mother confessor.”
Her face pinched together a little, skin losing color. “I just thought you of all people would get it. Would believe me.”
“What do you mean, ‘me of all people’?” I demanded, back straightening in my chair, legs uncrossing, both feet planted on the ground.
“You’re Olivia Hall, right? Ethan Hall’s sister? I just figured you’d get it, what with everything you and your family went through?”
I could feel my muscles tightening, clenching, almost against my will, and I forced myself to relax, lean back again, and maintain eye contact. “Why would you say that?” I asked.
“Well, you are Olivia Hall, aren’t you? I thought I recognized you, but then everyone kept calling you Kitson.”
“I changed my name,” I said, finally answering her question.
“I knew it,” she said, this time quietly again. “You look exactly the same.”
“Well, not exactly the same,” I said, mildly affronted. “Ethan’s jaw is much stronger.”
“No, not as Ethan. As you did in high school.”
Something pulled at my stomach, something hard, sudden and strong; the same thing that always warned me when I was about to walk into something I should probably walk away from. “High school? You’re from Twin Rivers?”
“Yeah.”
“But you’re too young for us to have been in high school at the same time,” I said. Reid was just 22, making her six years younger than me.
She nodded, agreeing with me, “Yeah, but my sister was the grade below you. Spencer. You came by our house a few times, and I always had to go watch the basketball games because she was a cheerleader. Like you.”
I remembered Spencer. She’d been keen, a little clingy even, desperate to be part of the squad, always making sure she was at every single party. I hadn’t been her biggest fan, but she was nice enough I supposed. “You’re Spencer’s little sister? Wow, that’s so weird. Where is she now?”
“Twin Rivers still. She’s a teacher there,” she said quickly, clearly not here for me to reminisce vicariously about her older sister. “You know he totally deserved it, right?” She said this in a rush, her words picking up speed as if she’d been revving up to this all along and suddenly taken her foot off the gas.
“My brother?” I asked, a slight cold sweat pricking at my back.
“No, not your brother. I don’t care if your brother did it or not. Tyler Washington. He totally had it coming.”
I looked at her carefully, trying to work out what she was saying. Sympathy for Tyler Washington was practically universal; I’d never heard anyone say anything like what Reid had just said. “What do you mean by that?” I asked finally.
“He was an asshole.”
I sank back into my chair, disappointed. “Not all assholes deserve to be killed, Reid.”
“No, but he did.” She took a deep breath and swallowed, her gaze holding mine right where it was.
“What on earth would make you say that?”