Page 77 of The Followers
“It was going to come out someday, Scott. Maybe not now, but when Ella applies for a job or needs a background check, or when she goes off to college. You can’t hide her forever.”
“Her identity is secure. I was promised that.”
The anger flared inside her again. “By who? A criminal who forges documents and steals identities? I can’t even believe you’re involved with someone like that, Scott! Or should I say Sam?”
He flinched at the sound of his real name, like hearing it physically hurt. Molly hated saying it, but she couldn’t handle his new name, either. Both seemed false.
“Does anyone know else about this?” she asked.
“No.”
She believed that, knowing Scott. He would be the type to take a secret, lock it deep inside his chest, and never tell a soul. “What about your parents? They didn’t die when you were in college.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t had any contact with them since the night I ran with Ella.”
The magnitude of everything he had given up overwhelmed her—his future, his friends, his family of origin. An immense sacrifice, and she could tell by the look on his face, the set of his jaw, that he didn’t regret it. He was still racked with guilt for killing Kristina, she could see, but he didn’t regret his actions afterward.
In a way she respected his absolute conviction that he had done the right thing in the face of a horrifying situation. But it was one thing for him to make this decision for himself—and even for Ella. It was quite another to drag Molly and Chloe into it.
“You were willing to lie to me for the rest of our lives together,” she said. “Did you think I would never find out?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t.” He shrugged, looking far too comfortable with those words. “I should have been more careful.”
“No, you should have been more honest!” She shouted it, surprising even herself. “When I asked you about the birth certificates, you could have come clean, but instead you lied again. This story could be a lie, too. You could have beaten Kristina and bashed her head against the coffee table until she died. You could have committed a dozen other crimes and I would never know!”
“I don’t blame you for being angry.” His voice was flat.
“That’s great. I’m really glad you don’t blame me.” She rarely used sarcasm, and it felt foreign on her tongue.
Scott didn’t respond and silence descended, thick as a blanket pressed to her face. Anger and sorrow rattled inside her chest, almost escaping in gut-wrenching sobs, but she only allowed a few tears to escape onto her cheeks.
She could hear laughter from children playing outside, the honk of a bicycle horn, and a distant siren. The noises of a normal neighborhood on a summer night, echoes of the life she had tried to build here. Slipping through her fingers like dust.
Scott looked up, his voice quiet but urgent. “What are you going to do now?”
She knew what he was asking: Are you going to turn me in?
“I don’t know,” she said.
She was trying to wrap her head around this, what it meant for her and Chloe. She hadn’t yet considered turning him in, but did she have a responsibility to do so? That wouldn’t be good for Ella, and despite how angry Molly was at Scott, she had no desire to hurt his daughter.
“All I’m asking is that you don’t do anything right now,” Scott said, and she could see the fear in his eyes. “Let’s sleep on it. Can you do that?”
She was too overwhelmed to make any decisions right now, anyway, so she nodded. “But I’m not sleeping in the same bed as you.”
The thought of climbing into bed next to him felt wrong, like sharing a bed with a stranger, but that’s not why she’d said it. She’d said it to hurt him—to shake him, to make him realize he could lose her, to make him understand how badly she was hurting.
But he didn’t seem to care, just nodded, and that hurt even more. He should be crying and pleading for forgiveness.
“Molly,” he said, “this should go without saying, but please keep this between us. Don’t share any of it online.”
She stiffened. More than anything else he’d said during this conversation, this rankled. The assumption that she had no ability to discern between appropriate and inappropriate things to post online. Proof of his years of secrets—and her own idiocy—was not at the top of her list of things to share with the world.
And the weary resignation in his voice, as if she were an irritating teenager with a bad habit of gossiping. As if her tendency to overshare online was equal to his years of deception.
“I wouldn’t do that, Scott,” she said, snapping the last consonant between her teeth and tongue. Guilt blossomed inside her as she remembered spilling everything to Liv. But if he’d been honest with her from the beginning, she never would have needed to tell a friend.
She didn’t want any more dishonesty, so she decided to come clean about that conversation now. “I told Liv what I found about you online.”