Chapter 29

Despite telling Lauren that I was going to stop following people, I followed Bentley to the bar that we'd previously gone to together. Though we weren't having an affair, our communication was limited like we were. Cindy was already suspicious of me and I didn't want Virginia to feel the same. I saw the way that she clung to Bentley's arm like he was a balloon that might drift away if she let go. It was okay, I decided, to follow someone if it was for a really good reason.

The trial was almost over, the defense winding down its argument, and time was running out. Soon, I would lose my access to the extended Thompson family and would become one of those women obsessed with the appeals process. I needed to talk to Bentley again before that happened. I wasn't sure what I was looking for, only that there was something there, hidden beneath the surface.

He went straight to the bar after the trial finished for the day. I could tell from the way that the bartender greeted him that they knew each other, meaning that Bentley's early evening drinking was habitual rather than a one-off. I watched him scroll through his phone for several minutes before I approached him.

"Hey," I said.

He jumped in surprise and then relaxed when he saw me.

"If it isn't William's girlfriend," he said in greeting.

We both laughed like it was a joke rather than the truth.

"Let me buy you a drink," he said.

Even though I was the one who had approached him, it felt like he was the one who had approached me. Bentley held that kind of charm, the man who was in control of every situation.

"Do you want to play a game of pool?" I asked once we were both armed with glasses of bourbon.

Bentley grinned.

"It's been a minute since I've played," he said. "You'll probably be better than me."

Bentley was much better at pool than I was.

"We had a pool table in the basement of my fraternity house," Bentley explained. "We played a lot of games down there, beer pong, pool, you name it."

"I was a nerd in college. I spent most of my time studying," I said, taking a bad shot.

"You didn't go to parties or anything? You seem like you would be wild at parties." Bentley winked at me as one of the balls rolled into a hole.

"No, that came later, when I was in my twenties. I had a lot of social anxiety in college. Then I realized that alcohol existed and things got easier."

"That's the truth." Bentley laughed.

After we finished playing pool, we ordered a round of shots, followed by more cocktails. My body had taken on a warm, slippery quality.

"Where's your wife?" I asked.

We were seated across from each other at a small table.

"She's at home with the kids. I had a few things to take care of in the city, so I decided to stay."

"It seems like you spend a lot of time apart."

Bentley looked sad.

"We've been distant lately, yeah. She wants to blame it all on the trial, but it's more than that. It's everything. She's really devoted to the kids, which is great and all—she's a great mom. I just wish that it didn't come at the expense of us. It's hard to find time alone and any alone time that we did have has been eaten up by this trial. She thinks that everything is going to go back to normal after this. I'm not so sure."

"I can't imagine what it's been like for you."

"My father is having a hard time too," he continued. "He won't say it, of course. Mark Thompson would never admit to having any kind of difficulty. He's convinced that William's going to be found innocent and everything will return to normal. He's already talking about suing the state for negligence."

I made what I hoped was a sympathetic face.

"I think that boomer men have an especially difficult time expressing their emotions," I said. "I can always tell when my dad is having a hard time because he'll get really into one of his hobbies. Like one year he got really into bird-watching. Another time, he bought all these expensive oil paints and declared that he was going to ‘master the art of painting' and gave it up after two months. I think it might be cheaper and less time-consuming if he would go see a therapist."

Bentley laughed and shook his head.

"I wish that my father would exorcise his demons through bird-watching," he said.

"Maybe his demons are too big for birds," I replied.

There was a still moment between us as we sipped our drinks and thought of our respective fathers. There was a pang of homesickness in my chest that I didn't realize existed.

"Thank you for listening. I can see why William likes you," Bentley said, breaking the silence.

I wanted Bentley to compliment me more. To tell me how kind, understanding, and maybe even how pretty I was. Unfortunately, there were more important matters to discuss.

"Last time we talked, you mentioned that there are things about William that I don't know. I'm starting to think you're right," I said.

Bentley looked alarmed.

"Did he say something?"

"No, not exactly. It's more about what he won't say. I know that it sounds stupid since we're only writing letters, but sometimes I feel like William and I know everything about each other. I'm closer to him than I've been with anyone in a long time. At the same time, he's keeping secrets from me. He doesn't talk about the trial in any substantive way. He hasn't even said whether or not he's guilty, which feels like an admission of guilt in itself."

Bentley took a sip of his drink and sighed.

"I'm really not supposed to say anything. I don't want to get my brother in more trouble than he's already in," he said.

"Please? I won't tell anyone. I promise."

He looked me up and down as though looking for a wire.

"You're not an aspiring journalist, are you? One of those murder podcast people? They've approached my family, you know. They think that they're like some secondary arm of the courts now. There's the judge, the jury, and the podcast hosts."

"No, no, I swear."

Bentley sighed again.

"I always wanted a brother," he began. "Even though I was young, I still remember being lonely. I thought that if I had a brother, it would mean that there would always be someone to play with. It wasn't like that though. I thought he would be able to play with me right away and instead, my parents brought home this tiny, screaming thing. He was always crying, day and night. When I had kids of my own, I realized that he had colic, but I didn't know that at the time. Eventually he got bigger, stronger, and didn't scream quite as much. It was still impossible to play together. William was always competitive, even as a toddler. As soon as he could talk, he would tell me that our mother was his mother and not mine. Everything was his and his alone. We used to get into fights—not an ordinary kind of roughhousing, as some people would have you believe, but real fights. There was one time that I remember that he ran after me with a knife and I had to lock myself in our parents' bedroom because I was scared that he was going to try to kill me."

Bentley paused to take a sip of his drink.

"No one ever believed me. I was older than him, so how could he be a threat to me? I used to get in trouble when I fought back, no matter how much he hurt me. I was always supposed to be the bigger person, even when he caused me physical pain. In public, it was like a switch flipped and suddenly, he was charming and articulate. Like a little grown-up, people said. It didn't occur to them that kids aren't supposed to be like little grown-ups, that maybe that was an indicator that something was wrong. The injuries he caused me are just the start of it. There are other ways that he's hurt me, things that are worse than a broken arm."

With that, Bentley swallowed everything that remained in his glass like he was trying to wash the memories away.

"Do you want another one? I need another one," he asked.

I nodded and handed him my empty glass. No matter that I was already drunk.

"My father encouraged it all," Bentley said when he came back. "He thinks that competition is what inspires people to greatness. It was like he wanted us to fight each other. One time, William broke my arm. Snapped it clean in half. I think my father was almost proud of him. He lied when he took me to the emergency room, said that I got hurt playing soccer. There were other instances like that, times when William hurt me and I had to make up a story for cover. He liked to try to pin things on me too. It was a game for him. He'd hide empty liquor bottles, weed, and condoms in my room and our parents would find them and get mad. One time, my room started to reek. I couldn't figure out what the smell was. For a while, I thought it was me. Then I found a dead rabbit hidden beneath my bed."

I put a hand to my mouth.

"Why didn't you say something?" I asked.

"He swore up and down that he didn't know what I was talking about. He suggested that the rabbit had found its own way into the house and died there. My parents believed him too. William's very convincing. He was a great lawyer. It's too bad that he's finally destroyed himself." Bentley paused to take a sip of his drink. "The rabbit's not even the worst thing he did either. There are things that I can't say. That I'm not allowed to say. I know that he's in jail, but I'm still scared of what he might do."

Bentley finished his drink. I looked at him apologetically.

"Sorry," I said. "I know this is a weird conversation."

"Can I ask you a question?" he said.

"Of course."

"What is it that you want out of this? Best-case scenario: Let's say that William is innocent. Either he's found guilty and spends the rest of his life in jail as an innocent man or he's acquitted, and then what? Are you going to settle down? Get married? Have children? Is that what you want from my brother? And what if he's guilty? Do you want to be with a man who's killed four women?"

I looked down at my hands. My nails bitten to nearly nothing.

"I don't know," I said.

I didn't. The future was a gangplank on a ship at the end of the world.

I looked at Bentley. Our eyes met.

"I take it that you think he's guilty," I said.

"If you want my advice, Hannah, I would leave. Get out of here. Go home and find yourself a nice, normal boyfriend. Someone boring, an accountant. Forget about my brother."

I threw back the remnants of my whiskey and Coke, crunching ice cubes between my teeth. I took a breath.

"I'm going to go use the bathroom," I said.

There was a particular type of drunken lumbering that happened between the stool and the bathroom of a bar. A moment when I went from feeling relatively sober to forgetting how to move my arms correctly. I hadn't wanted to disrupt Bentley and thus, I'd been sitting in relative discomfort for quite a while and in that time I'd gotten significantly drunker.

Something stopped me from reaching the door of the women's restroom. There was a tugging at my arm that startled me.

"Bentley," I managed to say before I found myself pinned against a wall, his lips on mine.

That was how I found myself kissing the brother of the serial killer that I was dating.

I liked to think that had I been sober, I would've pushed him away immediately. Instead, I reciprocated the kiss. It was nice to be close to someone after months of physical solitude. I could've also made the argument that kissing Bentley was almost like kissing William. After all, they were of similar build, had the same eyes and hair. But I was conscious, even in that moment, of the differences between the two men. Namely, that one was my boyfriend who was on trial for serial murder and the other was a married father of two.

It stopped as abruptly as it had started.

Bentley pulled away and wordlessly turned, disappearing into the men's room. After a pause, I went into the women's room, my heart pounding. My bladder was still very full and it was a relief to empty it.

The weight of what had just occurred hit me as I flushed the toilet. Bentley and I had kissed. No, I wanted to say. He kissed me. The guilt in my stomach indicated that though Bentley had made the first move, that wasn't the whole truth. Bentley had kissed me and I had kissed him back.

I've been so lonely,I tried to tell myself.

He's giving me information about William. I'm doing it for us,I thought as I washed my hands.

While my brain rationalized my actions, I considered the next steps. I was too embarrassed to bring Bentley back to my crappy hotel and he couldn't bring me to the rental that he stayed at with his parents. I imagined Cindy's face if I walked through the door. Maybe we could get a hotel room together, something fancy. I imagined us lying in bed while I grilled him about William, a kind of sexual espionage.

It never occurred to me to let things end there, for the kiss to be just a kiss. I was always escalating things with men far beyond what they were meant to be and then wondering why I left every situation with a wound.

I exited the bathroom expecting to see Bentley at our table and found it empty. I took out my phone and scrolled social media while I awaited his return. Meghan had posted a photo of tasting wedding cakes with her fiancé, and Max a series of pictures from a recent punk show, the last one featuring him with his arm around Reese. The baby of another friend took his first steps. Someone that I'd met once several years earlier was vacationing in Italy. I scowled and put my phone back in my purse. Bentley still hadn't returned.

I went to the bar and ordered another drink.

"Do you want to start a tab?" the bartender asked.

"I think I already have one," I told him.

"You did, but Thompson paid for all your drinks before he left."

"He left?"

"Yeah, a little while ago."

"Oh. I guess I don't need a drink, then."

I looked around again like Bentley was going to reappear. He didn't.

The sting of his disappearance didn't hit me until I was in an Uber on the way back to the hotel, leaving my car behind. In a larger sense, it was good that we hadn't left together; he was married and I was dating his brother. In the moment, though, I couldn't help but wonder if there was something about me that had turned him off. I breathed into my hand to determine if my breath smelled bad and opened a compact mirror to examine my face. I looked the same as I ever did and maybe that wasn't good enough. The Uber driver didn't ask what was wrong when I started crying.

I rooted around in my purse for money for the vending machine when I got back to the hotel and came up empty. The hunger was psychic rather than physical, but that didn't make it any less uncomfortable.

I took out my notebook and a pen.

Your brother kissed me tonight,I wrote and then crossed out.

I'm so lonely without you. I wish you could be here to hold me.

I wish you would be honest with me. If you were, I would've never been out with him to begin with.

I like to imagine our future together too. We could leave the country. I've always liked the idea of being an expat. We could move to a Scandinavian country. Somewhere cold and cozy. Build a house full of reading nooks. Or we could go to the beach. I hear that Thailand is beautiful and it seems like a good place for a person to escape to.

I worry that the mystery is what attracts me to you and that if/when I find out the truth, I'll lose interest the same way that men lose interest in me when they find out that I'm an ordinary, boring girl.

I'm not sure if I ever want children. Definitely a dog, which is almost like having a child.

I think I like it that you're violent. There's a part of me that likes the suspense of being with someone that could hurt me at any moment. I always knew that Max was going to break my heart. It wasn't a physical breaking, but that's semantics.

I like big dogs that don't know that they're big. The kind that still tries to sit in laps and takes up half the bed.

I have fantasies about being tied up and have always been too embarrassed to tell anyone about it. It's a cliché to want someone to take control because I'm tired of having to be in control of myself, but desire has never cared about literary tropes. Will you tie me up, William? Will you make me fear for my life?

No matter what happens in the coming weeks, a future will exist. There are ways to find goodness in even the darkest moments of our lives.

Sometimes I think about what it would be like if you killed me. It's about the mourning rather than the death itself, like my life would have more meaning to it in retrospect. Think about all the people that would confess their love for me if I were no longer around to hold them accountable.

You've helped me so much, even from afar. Without you, I would still be working my stupid job, living in my shitty apartment. After this, I'm going to do bigger and better things.

At least if I die, they'll know for sure who killed me.