Chapter 13 - The Echoes of 1994 and the Blood on the Dock
While the forensic team processed Charles’s office,
Lillian Prescott lay in her hospital bed,
staring at the ceiling.
She knew Warren was dead.
She could feel it,
a strange,
sudden lightness in her chest,
as if a parasite had finally detached itself.
She closed her eyes,
and the memories of 1994 came rushing back,
unbidden and vivid.
She had been on the dock that night,
hidden in the shadows of the boathouse.
She had seen everything.
She hadn't just seen Warren push Sarah;
she had seen why.
Sarah had found Warren’s stash of stolen pills,
pills he was selling to other students.
She had threatened to go to the dean.
Lillian had watched from the darkness,
paralyzed by fear,
as Warren’s hand shot out.
She had seen the look on his face,
not of anger,
but of cold necessity.
And then,
she had seen Charles arrive.
She had watched as Warren transformed from a killer into a grieving friend in the blink of an eye.
She had stayed silent for forty years,
bound by a twisted sense of loyalty and the fear that Warren would do the same to her.
She had let Charles carry the guilt,
watching it eat away at him,
watching him become a surgeon just to make up for a life he thought he had failed to save.
The guilt she felt was a physical pain,
sharper than the reaction to the patch.
She reached for the call button,
her hand shaking.
When the nurse arrived,
Lillian asked for the detective.
“I need to make a statement,”
she said,
her voice stronger than it had been in years.
“A real statement.
About the lake.”
Twenty minutes later,
Teresa Morales was at her bedside,
recorder in hand.
Lillian told her everything.
The theft,
the push,
the forty years of psychological warfare.
She told her how Warren had been micro-dosing both her and Charles for years,
keeping them in a state of confusion and dependency.
“He had a ledger,”
Lillian whispered.
“Not just in the pharmacy.
In the safe in our house.
A black ledger with every dose he ever gave us.”
Teresa’s eyes widened.
“If we find that ledger,
Lillian,
we can clear Charles.”
“It’s in the floor of the library,”
Lillian said.
“Under the section for toxicology.
He thought it was poetic.”
As Teresa rushed out,
Lillian felt a sense of closure.
But she also knew that some wounds never heal,
no matter how much truth you pour into them.
The man she had married was a ghost,
and the man she had loved,
May you like
Charles,
was a stranger broken by a lie she had helped maintain.
