A Lovely Lie

She repeats it like that clears it up. Is she a guest at the hotel? Did I screw up her windsailing reservation? Is she here for Tampa Lightning tickets? Restaurant recommendations? Probably not, if she knows my maiden name. I have no idea who Zoey Wilson is. My blank stare causes her to go on.

“Of course she never told you,” she says, eyes rolling. “You knew my mother.”

I tilt my head like a puppy begging for a treat. Did a Wilson check in recently? “When was this? Who’s your mother?” As soon as the words escape, I know exactly who she’s talking about.

Her face clouds. “Pepper Wilson.”

My entire body goes stiff, and my lips press to a straight line. My deer-in-headlights eyes stare right through her. That’s why she looked familiar. She’s the child of my former best friend.

My body goes cold at the memory of Pepper and the feelings I had for her back then. Adoration. Worship. And unfortunately, guilt.

I clear my throat. “Oh my, I haven’t heard that name in quite some time. How is she?” I look down and shuffle papers around on the counter for no reason, wondering when the phrase oh my entered my vocabulary. I want to look busy. I haven’t seen Pepper since the day after the senior picnic when the accident happened.

Zoey’s face drops as she continues. “How is she? Dead. Hit by a drunk driver when she was out on one of her runs. Complications from internal injuries. It happened about a month and a half ago.”

An involuntary tear threatens to fall. Pepper is dead?

The news does nothing to wash away the shame I’ve been carrying for her―for both of us―since that night. Pepper Wilson, the one I would do anything for once upon a time, is dead, hit by a car. An accident. It’s all too familiar, and for a hot second, I feel guilty when I think You deserved that because no one does. My head feels like it’s being filled with molten lava and I’m going to fall over from the weight of my mistakes.

The car lurching forward. Classmates. Blood. Pepper, leaving a scant couple days later like nothing ever happened. Leaving me with the mess. At the same time, I mentally calculate Zoey’s age based on her looks. There’s no way that she’s―I gulp.

Oh my God. This isn’t happening.

“I’m so sorry.” I clear my throat again, my smoking-when-I-drink habit getting the best of my voice today. No, that’s not it. My teenage insecurities rush back, the ones that led Pepper to railroad me into anything and everything, including lying to the cops. “I haven’t seen Pepper in a long time. Since right after senior year. That was over twenty years ago. We were close back then, but as you probably know, we lost touch. What can I do for you?” Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

She shifts her glance from side to side, looking for no one. “I was hoping you could help me with something.”

My fears are all but confirmed as Zoey reaches into her crossbody bag, retrieves a letter-sized envelope, and places it on the counter in front of me. It’s opened jaggedly from the top, and I recognize Pepper’s loopy handwriting on the front, the metallic pink marker pen that she loved. It’s addressed to me, to my old surname, and my old address, when I lived with my parents in high school.

“What’s this?” I ask nervously. A confession?

“I found it in her stuff when I was packing it up.”

We stare at each other for a couple of beats, me not wanting to touch it and her likely willing me to pick it up and read it. She has the same gaze Pepper had, the one that made me do anything she said.

I don’t want to read it. I don’t want it all resurfacing.

“Whatever is in there is old. That was my address in high school. I’m not sure how I can help. I doubt whatever she was going to say to me over twenty years ago would matter now.”

“Oh, it matters.” Her eyes tear and then she pushes it down, her assertiveness dominating. “Read it. I need to know the truth about something.”

Oh shit.

She’s insistent in the way that Pepper was back then―you don’t get to be the head cheerleader all through high school otherwise. Zoey has clearly inherited her mother’s determination.

With shaky hands, I pick up the letter. What does she want to know the truth about? That Pepper murdered someone and made it look like an accident as I stood silently by? And I even helped her lie? The paper inside the envelope is tri-folded like an accordion. I unfold it and read the short paragraph.

Dear Scarlett,

I may never mail this letter, but I feel like I need to get this out. After surviving the accident and not losing the baby, I feel like it’s a sign. I know I said I was going to get an abortion as soon as I got to New York, but I couldn’t do it. Everything else that happened that night at senior picnic―you know why we had to leave. I had to. I have a lot of regrets from that night. With them.

I hope you are okay.

Pepper