“So you knew? You knew all along?”
“I’d always suspected,” Marissa says. “Because your friendship with Cruz…your devotion to him was weird, Leo. It was unnatural. But even so, seeing this was a shock. All I could think was that you lied to me…for years. A profound lie, Leo.” She clears her throat. “I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting, that you two were probably just kidding around. I mean, Cruz isn’t even kissing you back.”
Leo nods and hands the phone back to Marissa. “I know he’s not. But we weren’t kidding around. Or I wasn’t.” His eyes are glossy. “I love him. I’ve always loved him. My whole entire life, I’ve loved him. But it was one-sided.”
“It’s disgusting,” Marissa says.
Leo sits with this for a second. He’s not sure if she means it’s disgusting that he loves Cruz when he pretended to love Marissa or that it’s disgusting because it’s two men kissing. It doesn’t matter. Marissa has revealed herself either way. She has no feelings, no empathy, no ability to sense anyone’s pain but her own.
“I’m taking you home,” he says. He throws the car in reverse and fights the desire to leave her on the side of the road. He is not disgusting. He has, finally, spoken his truth: He loves Cruz DeSantis. After he drops Marissa off, he’ll call Cruz, figure out where he is, and apologize in person. He will get it all out—his love, his denial, his shame, his rage, his sadness, his grief. And then, once he’s an empty vessel, he can accept his heartbreak, accept himself, and start to heal.
When Leo pulls onto Marissa’s road, they see red and blue flashing lights. The police are waiting in her driveway.
The Chief
He had nothing for weeks, then everything at once. No sooner did Jasmine Kelly say the name Lopresti than the Chief knew it was Marissa’s sister, Alexis, who worked dispatch and her new boyfriend, Officer Pitcher, who tampered with the evidence. They destroyed Vivian Howe’s clothes; they paid Justin to plant the running shoes.
Alexis wants to take all the blame. It was her fault, her plan. She had been able to persuade Pitcher because she had something Pitcher wanted. （This is an old story, Ed thinks.） Alexis was trying to protect her sister, Marissa.
Marissa Lopresti is the one who hit Vivian Howe. The Chief brings Marissa into the station and she spews forth the whole story. She and Leo Quinboro broke up at a bonfire at Fortieth Pole the night before the accident. Marissa then got cozy with Peter Bridgeman. It was easy, she said, because Peter had had a crush on her since fourth grade. Marissa thought Leo would get jealous seeing her with Peter, but Leo disappeared; no one had seen him. Marissa blew Peter off and left the party but Peter Bridgeman lurked around, eventually catching Leo and Cruz DeSantis kissing by the side of Cruz’s Jeep.
The photograph, which the Chief had suspected was of two people in a compromising position, was of Cruz and Leo.
Okay, okay, the Chief thinks. He’s a lot more “woke” （as Chloe and Finn would say） than he was twenty or even ten years ago, but this possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind. Clearly, he still has some evolving to do.
Peter sent the photograph to Leo and Cruz in the middle of the night, but he didn’t send it to Marissa until the next morning, right after Cruz woke Peter up by pounding on his door. （Peter hadn’t answered, not wanting a confrontation that his parents might hear.） Peter Bridgeman’s phone records, which the Greek managed to subpoena, showed a text with an attachment sent to Marissa’s phone at 7:14 a.m.
Marissa says she was driving over to the Howe residence to see Leo and “make up” when she got a text alert on her phone. Because it was so early, she assumed it could only be Leo. She checked her phone and clicked on the photo as she was turning onto Kingsley Road. She had only glimpsed the photo—she said she wasn’t even sure what she was looking at—when she heard a sickening thud. She slammed on the brakes and realized she had hit a person. She had hit Vivi.
She panicked, she said. There was no one on Kingsley and no cars on the Madaket Road. She backed up and drove west. She took the turn onto Eel Point Road.
“I had every intention of going back to Kingsley,” Marissa said. “But I just…didn’t. Alexis texted to say Vivi was dead and then…she told me another officer had seen Cruz running a stop sign and speeding and that Cruz had probably killed Vivi, and I felt relieved by that. I was angry at Cruz. By then, I had seen the photograph. So I drove my Jeep into the Bathtub and I told Rip Bonham at my insurance company that I’d done it on Friday night.”