Chapter 24

I stopped following the Thompsons around once they knew my face and name and started greeting Mark whenever I could: at the water fountain, outside the bathrooms, in the hallways, as he walked to his car at the end of the day. This was made difficult by the fact that I knew William wouldn't like it if he saw me speaking with his father and thus, I needed to avoid said interactions in places where he could see.

Mark invited us out for happy hour drinks following the prosecution resting their case. I thought it was going to be an intimate affair, just me, Dotty, Lauren, and the immediate Thompson family with the exception of William, since William was obviously in jail. Instead, I walked into the room that Mark had reserved at a local restaurant to find it full of people. Even with a son on trial, the Thompson family was well-connected and people were more than willing to show up to a party, particularly if that party was being held behind closed doors.

Mark as a host was a man within his element. He welcomed each guest enthusiastically and directed them toward the trays of appetizers and the open bar. Anyone who didn't already know better would never have guessed that his son was on trial for serial murder.

He greeted me with a hug that served as a reminder of how physically isolated I was.

"So glad you could make it," he said.

Cindy was icier. Though she was significantly older than me, she reminded me of the popular girls in high school who could put me in my place with a single glance. She looked at me and I was suddenly conscious of my split ends and the ancient mascara that I'd scraped against my lashes before leaving the hotel room.

"Nice to meet you," she said, her gaze still analyzing the price of everything on my person. "I've seen you around, talking to my husband."

There was a harshness to her tone that made me feel embarrassed, though I wasn't sure what I'd done wrong. I understood how flies felt when people swatted at them as they buzzed innocently about the room.

"Yes, Mr.Thompson has been so kind," I said and shook her hand, taking note of the giant sparkling ring on her finger.

Lauren and I were out of place at the gathering. We were too young, our clothes too shabby, and our accents in contrast with the heavy Southern ones that permeated the space. Dotty, on the other hand, fit right in. The room was filled with her kind of people, wealthy and white. After only a few minutes, she'd amassed a group of women around her who were telling her their favorite places to work out and get their hair done.

I ordered a drink from the bar and hovered near the appetizers, watching Mark. At first, I'd taken his gregarious nature to be the opposite of the cruel man William had described. The more I watched him, the more that his friendliness seemed a feature of psychopathy. His son was in jail and there he was, telling people to help themselves to food and drink.

"Hi there." An older man sidled up next to me. He looked like everyone else at the party—rich and drunk.

"Hi," I said politely. He was blocking my view of Mark. Under the guise of saying hello, men were always interrupting women while they were doing important things.

"How do you know the Thompsons?" he asked.

"It's a long story. How about you?"

"Oh, we go way back. I've known Mark and Cindy since high school. Shame what's going on. Such nice folks. They don't deserve this."

Neither,I thought, did the women deserve to die.

"Say," he continued, "I love your dress."

I touched the cotton fabric with my fingers. I'd purchased the dress several years earlier on a shopping trip with Meghan from the clearance rack at Target. It had never fit me quite right, but I held on to it for its moldability as my weight fluctuated up and down.

"Thank you," I said.

"Are you here with your husband? Boyfriend?" he asked. He glanced at the empty fingers on my left hand.

"I'm here with friends."

The man took a step closer to me and I realized too late that I should've lied, made up a Brad or a Peter who accompanied me everywhere I went.

I was trying to figure out how to exit the conversation when a male voice at my side said, "You're Hannah, right?"

I turned to find Bentley Thompson standing next to me.

"Yes. And you're Bentley," I replied, grateful for the interruption.

The man took one last look at me.

"I see someone over there that I need to talk to. Nice to meet you," he said.

"Nice to meet you too," I echoed, though it hadn't been.

"That's Verne," Bentley said when the man was gone. "He was hitting on you, right? He does that to all the pretty ladies."

I blushed at the word "pretty." I held back my impulse to explain that, no, I wasn't actually pretty. I was just young enough and wearing makeup.

"You really saved me there," I told him instead.

He smiled a handsome smile that made me hyperaware of my ordinariness.

"Glad I could be of service," he said.

Bentley and I hadn't talked much. He was nearly always with his wife, Virginia, and didn't attend the trial as religiously as his parents did. I knew from William's letters that Bentley worked for their father's law firm the way that William himself had been expected to do. Bentley and Virginia had met at a bar when Bentley was in law school and Virginia was an undergraduate with a fake I.D. He said that Virginia had gone to college with the express purpose of finding a husband, something that I wasn't aware that women still did. She knew from a young age that she liked nice things and not working and men who could provide that for her. In return, Bentley liked being the provider.

Virginia is happy to let Bentley make all of the decisions and Bentley is happy to make them,William wrote.

I was intimidated by Virginia. She was model pretty with hair that looked like she'd come straight from the hairdresser each day. Like the rest of the Thompson family, she was friendly at first glance, but her meanness was closer to the surface, probably due to all of the facials that had thinned out her skin. Her presence made me paranoid that she was the type of woman that William was really supposed to be with, the type that he swore he didn't like.

I don't want to marry another version of my mother,he said.

There was no sign of Virginia at the party.

"Where's your wife tonight?" I asked.

"She drove home to see the kids. I would've joined her, but I needed to make my appearance here. Most of these people I've known since I was little. Except for you and your friends, of course."

I watched Dotty and her group of ladies. She told me once that she had been a baton twirler in high school and college, and seeing her with those women was like seeing her in action, directing them with the same finesse with which she'd twirled her baton through the air. The women chose that moment to burst out laughing as though on cue.

Lauren had been cornered by several older men who looked like lawyers. I hoped that she was young enough that they wouldn't try to hit on her the way that Verne had with me, though I didn't feel confident in that assumption. I would've joined her, but I didn't want to sacrifice the time with Bentley.

"Where are you from originally, Hannah?" he asked me.

We moved to a table.

"Minnesota," I told him. "The Twin Cities."

"So far from home," he said and took a sip of his drink.

"Yeah, I guess you could say that I was captivated by this case."

I applauded myself for finding a nice way to say that I was obsessed with his brother.

"My father mentioned."

"Oh."

It was both unnerving and delightful to discover that I was a topic of conversation amongst the Thompsons. If only they knew the full extent of my relationship with William, then maybe they would welcome me as one of their own. I would be able to eat steak dinners at the table with them rather than spy on them from a distance.

"Tell me more about yourself," Bentley said.

I was reserved at first. I didn't want to give too much away. I was the one who was supposed to be investigating the Thompson family, not the other way around, but Bentley was a gifted conversationalist and soon I found myself telling him about the nonprofit and losing my job and deciding to attend the trial on a whim. In turn, Bentley told me about his kids, the quirks of living in a small town where everyone knew one another, and his recently picked up hobby of cycling.

"Do you want to get out of here?" he asked after a while.

I hadn't realized how late it was. Lauren was nowhere to be seen and Dotty was arguing with someone on the phone, probably her husband.

"Sure," I said.

We ended up in a bar that was darker and more intimate than our previous location. It wasn't the type of place that I imagined Virginia going. It was strange being out with Bentley, and not just because he was the brother of the serial killer who I was dating but because we fit into seemingly incompatible archetypes. I had always been too artsy, too crunchy, too liberal, too distrustful of rich, handsome men to spend time with people like Bentley, and even if I'd wanted to spend time with men like that, I doubted they wanted to spend time with me. It wasn't that I thought myself unattractive; rather, I wasn't attractive in the way that people like Bentley thought of the term.

"How did you end up here?" Bentley asked. He was drinking an old-fashioned. "Me, I have to be here. It's my duty as a brother. You, though, you could be anywhere in the world and instead you spend day after day sitting at my brother's trial. What exactly is it that you find so captivating?"

"I couldn't be anywhere in the world," I replied. I was drinking a beer, which I didn't normally drink because it made me feel bloated, but I knew that I needed to slow down. "I can't afford to go anywhere. Not like you. And besides, I want to be here. Obviously, I want to be here for William. It's more than that though. I felt sick of my life. Do you ever feel that way? Like you need to escape your skin and become someone else?"

"All the time," Bentley said, utterly serious.

I laughed.

"What could you need to get away from? Your life is perfect. You have a great job, a beautiful wife, you're good-looking. What else could you want?"

"You think I'm good-looking?" Bentley said, winking at me.

The wink destabilized me. If I didn't know better, I would've said that he was flirting with me, but thankfully I did know better. Men like Bentley weren't attracted to women like me.

"I mean, in, like, an objective sense, yeah," I said.

"Well, thank you," he responded, as though no one had ever called him handsome before.

"My life isn't perfect though," he continued. "For starters, my brother is on trial for murder."

I laughed uncomfortably.

"I guess that was a big omission on my part," I said.

"Things aren't great in my marriage either," Bentley admitted. "Virginia wants me to cut off contact with William and I just can't do it. I mean, I know what he did was horrific, but he's my brother, you know? I would do anything for him."

I nodded. I was an only child and had always felt like my own family's love was predicated on my success, but I understood making irrational choices for William.

"Can I tell you something funny?" Bentley asked.

"Of course."

"My mom thinks that you're trying to hit on my dad. She calls you ‘that girl that is always around.'?"

"Oh my god. No." I put my hand over my mouth. That explained the dislike that emanated from Cindy when we met earlier in the evening. She thought that I was attracted to her husband when really it was her son who I was after. I thought of all the times I'd sought Mark out in the courthouse to say hello. The way that I lingered longer than I should have. Cindy's conclusion, although wrong, wasn't entirely illogical.

"Don't worry too much about it. My dad is a talkative guy. This isn't the first time that something like this has happened. She gets jealous of any pretty woman that tries to talk to him."

There it was again, that word, "pretty." William complimented me in his letters, but there was only so much he could say as someone who had only ever seen me at a distance. It was nice to consider that I might be pretty up close too.

"I'm definitely not trying to hit on him. If anything—"

If anything, I was growing increasingly suspicious that Mark Thompson was somehow connected to the murders as evidenced by his little tour.

"If anything, I'm in love with William," I said finally.

Unexpectedly, Bentley laughed.

"I figured as much," he said.

"You did?"

"You're here, aren't you?"

There it was, that recognition. I was once again labeled as one of "those women." Bentley, at least, looked free of judgment. Though the love we had for William was different, presumably we both still loved him. Outside of Dotty and Lauren, he was the first person I could really talk to about my feelings.

"We write each other letters," I confided, and pulled the case I kept them in out of my purse.

Bentley raised his eyebrows at the folded letters in front of him.

"Wow, so you're really serious about all of this?" he said.

I hesitated, unsure of how much I wanted to tell him.

"We're dating," I said finally.

"Dating? Even though you've never met?"

"Yes, dating. It's less weird than it sounds. We were writing each other for months before he asked me to be his girlfriend. It's like meeting someone over the internet, only we met over paper."

"And he's in jail," Bentley said pointedly.

"Well, yes, and he's in jail. But it's not about that. I'm not one of those women that's obsessed with serial killers or true crime or whatever. That's Lauren. I like William. That's all."

Bentley fiddled with his wedding ring.

"What do you and William talk about in these letters?" he asked.

"Oh, you know. Our hopes and dreams," I joked.

I couldn't tell him the truth, which was that we did discuss our hopes and dreams, only that they turned into discussions about the various ways in which our families had fucked us up. How Bentley himself was a source of consternation for William. Though we had just met, I didn't want to hurt Bentley's feelings by suggesting that he had contributed to William's murderous tendencies.

Despite my omissions, Bentley's expression grew serious. He was one of those men who was always joking in a way that verged on flirting until suddenly he wasn't, and the difference was palpable.

"Please be careful, Hannah."

"I'm being careful."

"William is a complicated person. He can be dangerous," Bentley said.

"I think I know that already. I mean, he is on trial for serial murder."

Bentley shook his head.

"It's deeper than that," he said.

"It's fine," I replied, making eye contact with him. "He's in jail; it's not like he can kill me or anything."

I was grateful when Bentley laughed, a lightening of the mood.

"You're right," he said. "It's not like he can kill you or anything."

Bentley looked down at his watch, an expensive-looking thing.

"I should go," he said.

I didn't want him to leave. There was so much more to be said about William and on top of that, there was something exceedingly normal about sitting in a bar with Bentley. It made me feel like the person I was before, the one who had friends and social outings and didn't spend all her time in a hotel room writing letters to a serial killer.

Bentley paid my tab, for which I was grateful.

"It was so nice to meet you, Hannah," he said. "I'm sure we'll get a chance to speak again."

We hugged outside the bar.

Bentley isn't what I expected,I wrote in my notebook back in the hotel room. I think he knows something that he can't (won't?) tell me. It might be good to spend more time talking to him since Cindy Thompson thinks that I'm hitting on her husband.

Though Cindy had nothing to worry about from me, I would soon learn that she was right to be suspicious of Mark.