“Convinced him to hook up?” Elizabeth finished bitterly.
“You had rejected him,” Jane said in her infuriatingly reasonable voice. “And Lydia can be very persistent.”
“Will wouldn’t have given Lydia drugs.”
“She could have gotten them somewhere else,” Jane said softly. “Mom and Dad don’t want to admit it, but she doesn’t always have the best judgment.”
“What does Ricky think?” she asked.
Jane wouldn’t meet her eyes, just stared at the painted cinder-block walls. “He…um…doesn’t think Will did it, but Ricky admits he doesn’t know the adult Will very well.”
Elizabeth felt like she would burst out of her skin. She wanted to scream. “Will doesn’t use drugs, Jane!” She made a conscious effort not to shout. “He wouldn’t do something like that.”
“Lizzy, I’d like to believe that, but this is a guy who was arrested for reckless driving and possession of cocaine.”
Elizabeth ground her teeth together. She hated to betray Will’s secrets, but surely this was an extenuating circumstance. “There’s something he told me about that night in Palm Springs— something the police don’t know. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“Okay.” Jane’s tone was dubious.
“His sister, Georgiana, was driving the car that crashed into the swimming pool. She’s had drug problems ever since George Wickham got her hooked. It was her coke in the car. Will took the fall because he knew she would get sent to prison.”
Jane inhaled sharply.
“He hates drugs. He hates what they’ve done to his sister. Do you understand why I know he couldn’t do it?”
Jane was silent for a long moment. “Lizzy, forgive me, but how do you know that story is true? Of course, it might be true, but…people who use drugs can be very convincing liars.”
Elizabeth didn’t say anything for a moment; she was torn between bursting into tears and screaming at her sister.
Jane continued. “The first time you met this guy he almost hit you with his car.”
Elizabeth pressed her lips together against the impulse to issue an immediate denial; being a bad driver didn’t automatically make someone a criminal. But she tried to pull together some scraps of logic and examine the situation rationally. Without that, how could she explain her defense of Will in a way that made sense? Even worse, did her defense of Will make sense?
Her initial impression of William Darcy—the one she’d held for many weeks—had not been flattering. She had viewed him as arrogant, proud, and unfeeling. What if that had been an accurate view of the man’s character? She only had Will’s word that George Wickham was an untrustworthy drug dealer. Maybe George’s story about the Darcys was the truth.
Before I met George and Will, I was so confident in my judgment of people. Then it was all ripped apart, but what if my initial impressions were the right ones?
Will was an actor, after all; it wouldn’t have been that difficult to pretend he loved her. Maybe it was a game to him. Maybe he had a bet going with Charlie that he could seduce the woman who disliked him. What a huge triumph that would be. What a big ol’ notch on the bedpost.
How easy it would be to return to her old ways of thinking about Darcy. At the moment everyone she knew was either unsure about him or convinced of his guilt. Team Darcy was a lonely place to be.
Closing her eyes, she recalled the expression on his face when he said he loved her. She had waited her whole life for someone to say that to her and to look at her like that. And then she hadn’t said anything in return. She hugged her knees to her chest.
Yes, there were a lot of reasons to disbelieve Will, but Elizabeth had seen his heart. He had shown her everything, baring his secrets and his feelings to her. She believed in the integrity of what he had shown her. She believed in him. Either I understand him in a way that nobody else does, or I’m the most severely deluded person I know.
A slow warmth, a conviction, welled up inside Elizabeth: I am in love with him.
If only she had realized it before. If only he were here at this moment so she could tell him. If only she could shout it from the roof of the hospital.
Believing in Will was believing in love. Believing in Will was believing in herself.
She stood up.
“I’m not ready to give up on him. There’s got to be someone who saw him that day, who can provide an alibi.”
“I’m sure the police will investigate that,” Jane said soothingly.
“They think he’s guilty; they won’t search very hard. He’s innocent. Someone out there can prove it, and I’m going to find them.”