Sara Shepard: Heartless

Everyone stopped and turned. Her mother’s hair looked glossy under the lot’s fluorescent floodlights. Her dad’s cheeks were red from the cold. They were both smiling expectantly at her. And suddenly, Spencer realized her mother had no idea what Spencer was about to say. She hadn’t seen the photo of Mrs. DiLaurentis that Spencer was holding. She hadn’t known what Spencer and Ian had been IMing about just seconds before that. For the first time ever, Spencer felt sorry for her parents. She wished she could throw a blanket over them and protect them from this. She wished she’d never found this out in the first place.

But she had.

“Why did you guys do it?” she said quietly.

Mrs. Hastings took a step forward, one of her high heels making a solid clunk against the stone walkway. “Why did we do what?”

Spencer noticed then that cops were sitting inside the cars. She lowered her voice, directing her words at her mom. “I know what happened the night Ali died. You found out about dad and Mrs. DiLaurentis’s affair—you saw them at Ali’s house. And you found out how Ali was my . . . was Dad’s—”

Mrs. Hastings head jerked back like she’d been slapped. “ What? ”

“ Spencer! ” Mr. Hastings cried, appalled. “What the hell?”

The words were spilling out now. She barely even noticed that the wind had picked up and was biting into her skin. “Did it start when you were in law school together, Dad? Is this why you never told us that Mr. DiLaurentis was a student at Yale the same time you were—because something between you and Jessica had happened then, too? Is that why you never spoke to Ali’s family?”

Another car pulled into the lot. Her father didn’t respond. He just stood in the middle of the parking lot, bobbing ever so slightly back and forth like a buoy. Melissa dropped her clutch and bent quickly to retrieve it. Her mouth was open and her eyes looked glassy.

Spencer turned to her mother. “How could you have hurt her? She was my sister. And, Dad, how could you cover it up when she was your daughter?”

The bones in Mrs. Hastings’s face seemed to turn to ash. She blinked slowly, as if she’d just woken up.

She turned to her husband. “You and . . . Jessica? ”

Spencer’s father opened his mouth to speak, but only a few unintelligible syllables came out.

“I knew it,” Mrs. Hastings whispered. Her voice was eerily calm and steady. A muscle in her neck twitched. “I asked you a million times, but you always said it wasn’t true.”

And then she lunged for Mr. Hastings and started pummeling him with her Gucci purse. “And you used to go over to her house? How many times did you do that? What the hell is wrong with you?”

It felt like all the air had drained from the parking lot. Spencer’s ears buzzed, and she processed the scene as if in slow motion. Everything was unfolding all wrong. Her mom was acting like she didn’t know. She thought back to Ian’s IMs. Was it possible that her mother hadn’t known any of this, that this was the first she’d heard of it . . . ever?

Her mother finally stopped hitting her dad. He wheeled back, gasping. Beads of sweat dripped down his face.

“Just admit it. For once, just tell me the truth,” she gasped.

The next few seconds stretched out forever. “Yes,” her father finally admitted, his head hung low.

Melissa shrieked. Mrs. Hastings let out a shrill wail. Her dad paced nervously.

Spencer closed her eyes for a long minute. When she opened them again, Melissa had disappeared. Mrs. Hastings turned to her husband again. “How long did this go on?” she demanded. Ropy veins stood out at her temples. “And was she yours? ”

Mr. Hastings’s shoulders shook. A thin, guttural sound escaped from his lips. He covered his face with his hands. “I didn’t know about the kids until later.”

Mrs. Hastings backed up, her teeth bared and her fists clenched. “When I come home tonight, I want you gone,” she roared.

“Veronica—”

“Go!”

After a pregnant pause, her father did as she asked. A moment later, his Jaguar revved to life and he gunned his way out of the parking lot, leaving his family behind.

“Mom.” Spencer reached for her mom’s shoulder.

“Leave me alone,” her mother snapped, collapsing against the stone wall just outside the restaurant. Happy Italian accordion music tinkled out through the outdoor speakers. Inside the restaurant, someone let out a high-pitched laugh.

“I thought you knew,” Spencer said desperately. “I thought you found out about this the night Ali went missing. You seemed so distracted the next day, like you’d done something awful. I thought this was why we couldn’t ever talk about that night.”

Her mother whirled around, her eyes wild, her lipstick smudged. “You honestly think I could have killed that girl?” she hissed. “Am I really that much of a monster to you?”

“No!” Spencer squeaked in a tiny voice. “I just—”

“You just nothing, ” her mother growled, shaking a finger at her so violently, Spencer took a couple of frightened steps back into the flower beds. “You know why I told you we should never talk about that night, Spencer? Because your best friend went missing. Because Ali’s disappearance has taken over your life and you need to move on. Not because I murdered her!”

“I’m sorry!” Spencer wailed. “It was just that . . . I mean, Melissa couldn’t find you that night and she seemed so—”

“I was out with friends,” her mother boomed. “Late. And the only reason I even remember that is because the police asked me about it nearly fifty times over the next few days!”

There was a cough behind them. Melissa was crumpled next to a small topiary. Spencer grabbed her arm. “Why did you tell Dad over and over that you needed to find Mom?”

Melissa shook her head, baffled. “What?”

“You guys were at the door that night and you kept saying, ‘We need to find Mom. We need to find Mom.’”

Melissa gaped at Spencer helplessly. Then, her eyes doubled in size, the memory coming to her. “You mean when I asked Dad about needing a ride to the airport to catch my flight to Prague?” she said weakly. “I knew I’d be too hungover, but Dad basically told me tough luck. I should’ve thought about that before getting drunk.” She blinked at Spencer in bewilderment.

A family with a young girl got out of a minivan. The husband and wife were holding hands, smiling at each other. The girl stared curiously at Spencer, her thumb in her mouth, before following her parents inside the restaurant.

“But . . .” Spencer felt dizzy. The smell of olive oil floating from the restaurant was suddenly overpoweringly putrid. She searched her sister’s stricken face. “You weren’t fighting with Dad because Mom found out about the affair? You didn’t run back to Ian and say, ‘My dad is having an affair with Mrs. DiLaurentis, and I think my mom went and did something horrible’ ?”

“ Ian? ” Melissa interrupted, her eyebrows shooting up. “I never said that. When did he tell you that?”

Spencer ground to a halt. “Today. He said he’s been IMing you, too.”

“What?” Melissa exploded.

Spencer clutched the sides of her head, feeling disoriented. Ian, Melissa, and her mother’s words mixed together in a hazy swirl, twisting and blending until she had no idea what was the truth.

Was Spencer even IMing Ian at all? She’d been IMing someone who claimed he was Ian, but did she really know for sure?

“But what about what you and Mom have been whispering about all week?” Spencer begged, desperate to make sense of the situation, to justify what she’d just done.