"Lilah?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do. Whose baby was it?"

Lilah's movements stilled. The kitchen was silent save for the steady drip drip of milk dropping onto the

tile floor.

"They're all dead now, Lilah. Everyone connected with the Waguespack murder investigation. All of them but Buddy. Do you know how damning that is?" Lilah whimpered. Avery took a step toward her. "What really happened that night? Buddy, my dad, Pat Greene, they were all in on it. All covering up for somebody. Who was it, Lilah? Who?"

Avery grabbed her arm. "Those boys were framed, weren't they? They didn't kill Sallie Waguespack."

Lilah's mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Avery shook her. "Those boys were sacrificial lambs. It's in

the journal, Lilah! I discovered it this morning. You were the only person I mentioned the journals to. Who did you tell? That's why my house was torched, to destroy the evidence!"

A sound of pain escaped Lilah's lips. "No. Please, it's not-"

"Stop protecting him, Lilah. You have to come clean. You have to make this right." She lowered her voice, pleading. "Only you can do it, Lilah. Only you can-"

"It was Buddy's baby!" she said, the words exploding from her. "He betrayed me, our children. This town. By day, Mr. Morality. Lecturing about how the citizens needed to take action, restore Cypress Springs to a God-fearing, law-abiding place to live. By night fornicating with that...with that cheap

whore!"

Her tears came then, deep wrenching sobs. She doubled over. Her small frame shaking with the force of her despair.

"And she became pregnant."

"Yes." Lilah looked up, expression naked with pain. "That's when Buddy confessed to me what had been going on, that the woman was pregnant. I hadn't...I never-"

She bit the words back but they landed between them- She hadn 't known. She never suspected.

Avery's heart went out to the other woman. She had always thought the Stevenses had the perfect

marriage. Apparently, Lilah had thought so, too.

"She was going to make trouble for him. She wanted to ruin him. Make it public. Shame him...all of us."

Lilah met Avery's gaze, calm seeming to move over her. "I couldn't have that. I couldn't have my family

exposed to his filth. I couldn't let that happen."

"What did you do?" Avery asked softly, though she already knew.

"I went to see her. To beg her to keep quiet. To do the right thing." An angry sound escaped her. "The

right thing? I was so naive. Sallie Waguespack wouldn't know the right thing if it hit her with a

sledgehammer. "She laughed at me. Called me pathetic. The stupid little house-wife." Lilah fisted her fingers. "She bragged about how she seduced him, about the...sex they had. She bragged about being pregnant. She promised that before she gave up Chief Raymond 'Buddy' Stevens, she would drag him and his family through the mud.

"We were in the kitchen. I was crying, begging her to shut up. I saw a knife on the counter." Lilah's eyes took on a glazed look. "I didn't do it on purpose. You have to believe me."

"Go on, Lilah. Tell me everything."

"I picked up the knife and I...stabbed her. Again and again. I didn't even realize...until...the blood. It was everywhere."

Avery took a step back, found the counter, leaned on it for support. "So Buddy took care of it for you,"

Avery whispered.

"Yes. I didn't ask him to. He told me to stay put, that he would take care of everything. But I didn't understand what that meant... didn't know until...the next day."

He framed the Pruitt boys. Manufactured the evidence against them and covered up the evidence against his wife.

He called upon his best friend to help. Pat Greene and Kevin Gallagher, too.

"I've had to live with that all these years. The guilt. The self-hatred. Those boys..what I did-"

She curved her arms around her middle, seeming to fold in on herself. "We were all so close back then.

The best of friends. Buddy begged your daddy to lie, to make the medical facts agree with the evidence.

To not request an autopsy. It was easy because the Pruitt boys were dead."

"And nothing would have to stand up to the scrutiny of a trial."

"Yes. Phillip couldn't live with the guilt at what he'd done. That's why he did it. Why he killed himself. I

wish to God I had the guts to do the same! My children...my friends, I ruined everything!"

The kitchen door flew open. Buddy charged through, Cherry behind him, expression stricken.

"Enough!" he roared, face mottled with angry color.

Lilah cringed. Cherry rushed to her mother's side, drew her protectively into her arms.

Avery turned to the man she had once thought of as a second father. "It's too late, Buddy. How could

you?"

"I never wanted you to know, Avery," he said, tone heavy with regret. "Your father didn't want you to know." Avery trembled with anger. With betrayal. "How do you know what my father wanted? You used your friendship to force him to lie!"

He shook his head. "I only wanted to protect my family. You understand that, don't you, Avery? What

happened wasn't Lilah's fault. I couldn't allow her to go to jail for my mistakes. My sins. Your father understood. Sallie's death was a crime of passion, not premeditated murder."

"Pat Greene didn't see the Pruitt boys leaving Sallie Waguespack's that night, did he?"

"No. I told him I did. Confessed to having an affair with her. Asked him to help me out. Because of how

it looked."

"And he believed you?"

"He was my friend. He trusted me."

She made a sound of derision. "And the murder weapon in the ditch behind their trailer-"

"I planted it. The prints on the weapon and the blood on Donny's shoe as well. Pat didn't know."

She had looked up to him. Loved him. To know he had done this hurt. Her vision swam. "And Kevin

Gallagher?"

"Kevin prepared Sallie for burial. All he knew was she was pregnant. I asked him to keep it quiet. Why exacerbate the situation? Why smear the poor woman's name any further?"

"And my dad?"

He drew a heavy breath. "Your daddy was hard to convince. In the end, he did it not just for me, but for Lilah and the kids."

"Those two boys," she whispered. "They were-"

"Trash. Delinquents. Only nineteen and twenty and had been busted a half-dozen times each. For drugs, attempted rape, drunk and disorderly conduct. They were never going to amount to anything. Never going to contribute anything to society but ills. To sacrifice them to save my family, it wasn't a difficult decision."

"You don't get to play God, Buddy. It's not your job."

His mouth twisted. "Your daddy said the same. I guess that old saying about the apple not falling far from the tree is true."

"What about Sal?" she asked. "Why include him, Buddy? You needed the Gazette, but for what? Swaying public opinion?"

"He wasn't included. He thought the crime went down exactly as officially reported. But I was able to use Sal and the Gazette as a way to focus the public's attention on the social context of the crime. Whip them into a state of outrage over the crime rate, the immorality of the young, the drug epidemic, and take their attention away from the crime itself."

"You bought into your own spin, didn't you?" Avery all but spat the words at him. "And The Seven was born. You and your buddies all got together to decide what was appropriate behavior and what wasn't. You took the law into your own hands, Buddy. You and your group became judge and jury. And things got out of hand."

"It wasn't like that. We loved this community, all of us did. We had-have-its good at heart. We only want to make life better, to keep things the way they had been. We keep watch on our friends and fellow citizens. Monitor the important things. If need be, we pay a friendly visit. Use a little muscle if necessary."

"Muscle? A palatable euphemism for what? A brick through the window? The threat of broken bones? Financial ruin through boycotts? Or just good old-fashioned cross burnings on the front lawn? What's the criteria for a death penalty in Cypress Springs?"

He looked shocked. "Good God, Avery, it's nothing like that. We're not terrorists. We're not killers. We offer help. Guidance. If that doesn't work, we suggest a change of residence." He lowered his voice. "If we didn't make things a little uncomfortable for them, what would their motivation for change be?"

She made a sound of disgust. "Motivation for change? You make me sick."

"You don't understand. It's all done in the spirit of caring and community concern. Nobody gets hurt."

"Actually, I think I understand too well." Avery glanced at Cherry. She was holding her mother, crying quietly. She returned her gaze to Buddy. "You're such a hypocrite. Making like you're Mr. Morality. Persecuting others for their sins, when all the while you're the biggest sinner of all."

Tears glistened in his eyes. "Do you think I haven't suffered for my sins? A day doesn't go by that I don't wish I could go back, do it all over. I had everything. A beautiful family. The love of a wonderful woman. The respect of my friends and the community. If I could make that choice again, I wouldn't go near Sallie Waguespack. None of this would have happened."