Montaine by Ada Rome Page B

gone.”
    “What happened to her?” I
asked quietly.
    “Rosie was thoroughly
good. She had a purity of spirit. I felt like I needed to protect her. She was
too trusting. She trusted the wrong person. I wasn’t there to save her.”
    I thought about Miklos’s
warning of a few days prior. Be careful that you do not trust the wrong
person too .
    “She met this new guy in
her English Literature class,” he continued, still staring down at the mute
headstone. “Peter Haverford. I didn’t like him right away. Rosie said that I
was jealous because he was taking up more of her time. I was jealous,
but that wasn’t the problem. I didn’t like the way he treated her, like he
owned her. She started to retreat within herself. Suddenly, we were barely speaking.
I saw her on campus. She looked thin and worried. That wasn’t like Rosie. She
was always a bundle of energy, with a smile that could light up the darkest
day.”
    As if on cue, thunder
rumbled from afar. A few tiny raindrops sprinkled my shoulders. I felt that I
knew where the story was headed. Trent’s pain radiated from him in waves that
shook my heart. The temperature dropped. I rubbed my arms to keep warm. The
raindrops grew heavier, landing and sliding down the sides of the pink marble
and soaking into the grass.
    “One day, I noticed that
she had bruises on her arm. They looked like fingermarks, from being grabbed.
Right around here.” He reached out a hand and gently caressed the top half of
my arm. My skin tingled with goosebumps. “I tried to talk to her about it, but
she refused. She said that it was none of my business and that I should leave
her alone. So I did. And it was the worst mistake of my life, one for which
I’ll never forgive myself.”
     “He murdered her, didn’t
he? Her boyfriend, Peter Haverford?”
    The booming thunder grew
closer. The rain left large wet splatters on Trent’s t-shirt, but he didn’t
appear to care. He nodded slowly.
    “She disappeared. First
it was just a few days, but then that stretched into a week, and then a few
weeks. I knew Peter had done something to her. When they found her body---”
    He paused and kicked the
ground with his shoe. His fists clenched, the muscles and tendons visibly
shifting under the skin.
    “She was in the woods
just off the highway,” he continued. “She’d been beaten, strangled, and dumped
in a trash bag. I knew Peter had killed her. Everyone knew Peter had killed
her. But Peter’s father happened to be a very powerful state senator, and his
political machine made sure that Peter got off scot-free. A lack of evidence,
the police said. They concocted some story about a traveling vagrant coming
through town, killing Rosie, and then disappearing into the mist. It was
completely ridiculous. There was no justice. I blamed myself. I still do. If I
had intervened, I could have saved her.”
    “You can’t blame
yourself, Trent.”
    I took one of his fists
in my hand and smoothed the curled fingers, twining them around my own. He
looked searchingly at me, the rain sopping a lick of hair that had flopped over
his forehead.
    “There’s more,” he said
in a low, solemn voice. “Months later, after Rosie had been buried and Peter
had been cleared of any responsibility for murdering her, I decided to confront
him. I wanted the truth. One night, Kill and I were out drinking at one of the
local bars. Peter was there. He left alone. It was the middle of the night. We
followed him. I knocked him down and dragged him through the dirt. I grabbed
his throat and demanded that he confess. The bastard laughed in my face. He
told me that Rosie had gotten what she deserved. That’s when I totally lost my
mind. I beat him to within an inch of his life. Kill stopped me. He pulled me
off of Peter while the shithead was still breathing. Then he told me to go home
and wait. I did. The cops never came. Kill took care of it.”
    “That’s why you say that
you owe him. He covered for you.”
    “Exactly.