Spotlight: The Final Episode by Lori Roy
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When a true crime series chronicles the tragic childhood summer that changed her life forever, a young woman must grapple with the truth about her father…and herself.
Jennifer Jones and her best friends spend every summer at Big Cypress Swamp, and this summer, Jennifer will finally turn eleven. She hopes to gain the “second sight” foretold by family legend and fulfill her destiny. Instead, the swamp serves up dangers greater than the gators lurking on Halfway Creek. Little Francie Farrow vanishes—and Jennifer’s father goes to prison.
Twenty years later, Jennifer has almost shed the label of Paul Jones’s daughter when her past comes barreling back. Inspired by True Events, a TV series that solves the unsolvable, is recreating that fateful summer. As the series plays out, Jennifer wonders: Did the show finally find Francie Farrow? And is Jennifer’s father truly guilty?
Someone else wants answers even more than Jennifer does, and they won’t let her forget it.
As the series nears its finale and the long-awaited truth, Jennifer must come to terms with who her family is…and what that makes her.
Excerpt
Twenty-two years later . . .
The distant rumble of an engine made me sit up in bed. I held my breath and listened. I was already awake, because it’s in my blood to wake at just the right time. It’s in my blood to now when trouble is coming.
When the hum of the engine continued to grow louder, and I was certain a car was headed this way, I paused what was playing on my phone. Same as I’d been doing for the past seven weeks when I couldn’t sleep, I was watching the first episode of Inspired by True Events.
This season, the show is recreating the case of Francie Farrow. It’s telling our story. I’m not sure if you know that. Probably, you do. It’s odd, watching versions of all of us on the screen, saying and doing the things we said and did that last summer on Halfway Creek.
In seven days, the final episode will air. That’s the one that has me worried. And that’s why I’m writing to you again. It’s been a while, not that you’d know that. I suspect you never read these letters. But I need to write now, because once the show ends, I think I might never want to again.
Closing my eyes, I pressed my lips into a hard line and willed the car to drive past my house. It didn’t. I knew it wouldn’t. Instead, the tires slowed. Gravel stopped raining down. An engine rattled and went silent.
The sound of a car approaching deep in the night was like a familiar voice, a warning I’d been hearing since you went away twenty-plus years ago.
That’s what Dehlia and I call it. You went away. We don’t say you went to prison.
Slipping out of bed, I smoothed my sheet and comforter and tidied the corners. I’d say I like order. Others would say I’m compulsive. When I was a kid, Dehlia sent me to several doctors. They all said my need for neatness was a way of bringing order to a life that had been dumped upside down. She’ll outgrow it, they said. I didn’t.
After scooting Belle, my three-year-old lab, into her kennel, I tiptoed toward the living room.
Once there, I pressed against the wall next to the picture window and peeked outside.
It was Beverley Farrow in that car, and I’d been expecting her. Not that I knew for certain she’d come tonight and yet, I did.
But I don’t have second sight. I promise, I don’t. I wouldn’t call it that.
I knew it was Mrs. Farrow because every time in the past twenty years when a car pulled up late in the night, it was always her.
Episode seven brought her. It didn’t deliver the big reveal everyone was waiting for. If this season is like the last, that will come in the eighth episode, the final one. But anyone who watched the show tonight is now certain you were the one-and-only villain that summer. No doubt about it. They believe that two decades ago you took Francie Farrow and almost certainly killed her. To be fair, most people have always believed that, and you being in prison for what you did to Nora Banks isn’t enough for them.
To Mrs. Farrow especially, episode seven is proof of what she’s always thought. And if you took Francie Farrow, that must mean I know more than I’ve been telling her.
Under a trickle of foggy moonlight, I saw nothing outside my window that didn’t belong. At the far edge of my mostly gravel yard, a stand of ragged pines blocked my view of the road running past my house. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to see her, Mrs. Farrow always parked behind those pines.
A car door slammed. Holding my breath, I listened. What came next was important.
I closed my eyes even, reasoning I’d hear better that way, but they popped open again. The moonlight on my face made me realize my mistake. I’d forgotten to draw the drapes. Now Mrs. Farrow could cup her hands around her eyes, press them to the wide-open window, and see inside.
Maybe see me.
Mrs. Farrow’s late-night visits started in the months after my eleventh birthday. You had gone away by then, and Dehlia and I still lived together at the house in Naples, the one we all shared. Everything in my life either started or ended with that birthday. With that summer. You could say the same, I suppose.
Not having time to pull the drapes closed, I scanned the living room to make sure I wasn’t casting a shadow. Mrs. Farrow getting a glimpse of me, even the shadow of me, was like water on a grease fire. Those nights always erupted into something bad.
When a second car door closed, I exhaled. That was what I’d been hoping for. Relief made my fingers tingle as the blood started flowing again. Two doors closing meant Robert Farrow was with his wife. Robert Farrow meant less chance of trouble.
From behind the pines, Mrs. Farrow appeared and began walking toward the house. She was only a shifting shadow, but with every step, her lines sharpened. She wore a thin nightgown, was barefoot, and carried something as she marched across my ragged lawn. Under the moonlight, her gown shimmered, and as she gathered speed, it fluttered in the breeze. She drew closer.
Yes, she cradled something in her arms.
Still hugging the wall, I fixed my eyes on the pines. Even though there had been a second slamming car door, no second shadow appeared. No sign of Mr. Farrow. And no one else would come to help me. Being this far outside of town, the lots are large and the pines are thick. No one was going to hear. No one was going to call the police.
Mrs. Farrow had almost reached the porch. Her long hair, faded from blond to white after all these years, hung loose. It fluttered in waves that brushed her shoulders and the sides of her face. You’ll remember her, I’m sure. She’s still beautiful. Still tall and straight. And still strong, because in her arms, she carried a cinder block.
The second door that slammed hadn’t been Mr. Farrow. It had been Mrs. Farrow opening and closing it when she took the cinder block from the back seat.
“I know you’re in there, Jenny Jones,” she shouted.
I didn’t dare look out from my hiding place, but from the sound of her voice, she’d stopped at the stairs leading onto the porch.
“If you have a decent bone in your body, you’ll come out here right now and tell me the truth.”
A wooden tread creaked—Mrs. Farrow stepping on the first stair leading to my porch.
“Why won’t you tell me?” she said, her voice strong. “You still hoping they’ll let him out? They won’t. They’ll never let him out.”
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About the Author
Lori Roy’s debut novel, Bent Road, was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best First Novel by an American Author. Her work has been twice named a New York Times Notable Crime Book and has been included on various “best of” and summer reading lists. Until She Comes Home was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel.
Let Me Die in His Footsteps was included among the top fiction books of 2015 by Books-A-Million and named one of the best fifteen mystery novels of 2015 by Oline Cogdill. The novel also received the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, making Roy the first woman to receive an Edgar Award for both Best First Novel and Best Novel―and only the third person ever to have done so.
Roy lives with her family in West Central Florida.
