Page 79 of If They Knew

“Wait, I can't move right now. What is she talking about?” I ask in a panic at the thought.

“Where are we going to need to move to?” asks Tyler. But before Mary has a chance to answer, there’s a sudden explosion that shakes the entire ship.

“What the hell was that?” asks Tyler. I continue doing my best to control my breathing through the pain.

Tyler lets go of my hand, “Stay here, babe. I'll go find out what that sound was.”

“No!” I demand through gritted teeth, grabbing his hand again. Let someone else look.

“I’ll look. Tyler, you stay beside Kelly. She needs you,” says Karissa.

49

THEO

My head is pounding, and my vision is still hazy. I can’t believe my wife tried to kill me. What the fuck is happening? My body feels like it’s on fire from whatever she injected me with. I have no idea what that explosion was, but I’m going to find out.

Opening the door to the patio, the cold air feels good on my skin. I feel like I’m burning from the inside out. I take a deep breath and steady myself, then walk to the railing and look up. The sky is filled with black smoke, and fiery orange flames flicker from the top deck as debris falls into the ocean. The strong wind blows the smoke across the sky. When I look down, I spot Julie on the 4th floor tossing a yellow bag into the water with a plastic bag tied to it. I’m shocked when I see her leap from the broken fourth-floor balcony, landing in the cold water below. After a few seconds, her head breaks the surface, and she grabs the yellow bag and tugs on a string. The bag bursts open into a round life raft. She struggles to climb aboard, eventually making it, and pulls the plastic bag inside. She quickly strips off her clothes and redresses with clothes that she pulls from the plastic bag. She then uses the remaining clothes to dry the raft, tossing the wet items overboard. When she’s finished, she falls backward, staring up into the sky. She shifts her head and looks at the ship, never noticing me. My eyes remain fixed on her as she drifts further out to sea. My emotions running wild, I reach up to wipe the tears from my cheeks.

“Why did she try to kill me? None of this makes sense,” I mutter, walking back inside the medical center, but no one responds. I glance over and see Kelly curled up on the floor in the center of the room, with Mary beside her. Xander walks past me to go outside.

“Did you see what the noise came from?” he asks. I don’t answer, still stunned by everything that has happened.

“Oh my god,” says Xander. I turn and face him as he looks over the edge of the ship, then out into the water. “What is she doing?” he asks. I walk closer to the window. As soon as I get near, I realize Xander is staring at Julie on the yellow raft drifting away from the ship, the dark cloud of smoke trailing in the same direction.

Overwhelmed by the chaos, I stumble backward from the window, needing to sit before I pass out. The sound of crumpling paper under my foot catches my attention, and when I look down, there is a piece of folded paper with my name written on it in Julies handwriting. My mind spins, and I can’t think. I’m having a panic attack. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds, then exhale. All the noise around, including Kelly's screams, fades into the background. Opening my eyes, I slump down onto the cold floor and unfold the paper.

Dear Theo,

You've been part of my life for a long time, and I know you better than I know myself, which is frightening. You're incredibly brave and always put others first. You see the good in everyone, even when no one else does. You've loved me through all our highs and lows. You were there when the doctors told me I could never have children. I’ve never told you the full truth about why I can’t have children, or that even before that appointment, I already knew it wasn’t possible for me. I'm sharing this now through this letter because I can’t do it in person. There are many things about our past you don’t know and were never meant to find out. Your father paid a lot of money to keep secrets hidden from you.

Over the years, I’ve watched you work so hard to impress your father and become the person he always wanted you to be, and that hurts me because you are nothing like him. His money and power turned him into a wicked man, and he has more secrets than you can imagine. I know you loved him more than anyone, so I don’t want to ruin that for you, but I promised myself a long time ago I'd get revenge for what he did to me and my family. I also want you to understand that I don’t blame you or Tyler for your father’s actions. You were both just collateral damage, but it was the only way my plan could succeed.

We were never meant to meet, but fate had other plans. You don’t remember the night that changed both our lives. Twenty years ago, your father took everything from me and my family. That night, you and your brother were involved in a car accident, and while you both walked away unharmed, your mother was killed by a drunk driver. At least, that’s what the press reported. The police report that included the names of everyone involved that night went missing and the story the press reported never made sense to me.

So I did some digging, and found a high schooler who was at the scene. She was studying to be a journalist and wrote a detailed article about the accident. Most people never saw it because it was never published in the local paper, only on a high school website. The young girl was awarded a scholarship for her well-written article, entitled: “Fatal Accident of Mrs. Benjamin Parrish.” To my surprise, I discovered that the scholarship she received was from the Parrish family. That seemed really strange to me, so I reached out to her, obsessed with finding out the truth. Every time I called, I used a fake name, but she refused to talk, saying it was years ago and she didn’t remember. After months of failed attempts, I visited her in person. I told her I wanted the truth.

She was nervous at first, but I bribed her with the little money I had at the time, and she told me everything. She explained that the Parrish family offered her a full scholarship if she changed the article she originally wrote and removed it from the school paper. She didn’t argue; she took the money and destroyed all the hard copies at the high school so no one could read them again. Then she rewrote the article, changing the information about the drunk driver. The Parrish family encouraged the fabricated account and awarded her a full scholarship to any college.

But when I met with her, she surprised me by showing me the original article she’d written, saying she knew someone would come looking for it someday. She’d kept the original version for insurance. I told her I’d return someday with a lot more money after I got my hands on it.

My mother was the so-called ‘drunk driver’ who killed your mother, but she’d never drank a day in her life. Your father paid everyone off to cover up the fact that your beloved mother was an alcoholic who got behind the wheel with her twin ten-year-old boys in the car. The town would have gone ballistic, and your father couldn’t risk destroying his family’s reputation.

I knew the police would never act on what I found, so I made a promise to seek revenge on the Parrish family, no matter the cost.

The woman who wrote the article managed to get an interview with a paramedic at the accident that night. I tracked down that paramedic and learned she’d become a nurse. When I found her, I made her an offer: help me take down the Parrish family for what they’d done, and I’d give her ten percent of their wealth—more money than she’d ever need. She asked me how I’d do that. I told her I was going to marry one of the Parrish brothers, and once I’d settled in and joined the family, I’d kill them both, thus making me the sole beneficiary of the Parrish inheritance. She thought I was crazy—and maybe I am. But with the amount I offered, she couldn’t refuse.

Thanks to me, she managed to get an invitation on the ship. Mary, our beloved nurse, was the one who set off the bomb I planted. It was meant to kill you on the bridge the first night we set sail because I couldn’t bring myself to do it. All of this had been planned for so long, but I actually fell in love with you, which was never part of the plan.

I asked Mary to kill you, and I’d take care of Tyler. If that storm hadn’t happened and we had stayed on course, you would have died, I would have poisoned Tyler and thrown him overboard, and I would have inherited everything. But that damn storm ruined all my plans. We’ve been trapped on this ship for months, and now I have another blood relative to worry about—Kelly’s baby. I can’t let that little shit take what’s mine. I wish things could have been different, but you can’t always get what you want.

Julie

50

THEO

I drop the letter, my body weak from the overwhelming emotions flooding my mind. The sound of Kelly screaming and Tyler shouting echoes in my ears. I stand up and walk over to Mary, shoving her to the floor. I’m blinded by rage. I could snap her neck right now.