She hadn’t actually killed anyone.

She had a decent lawyer.

She concocted a defense.

“Drew was stalking me,” she told a Seattle TV station in a jail house interview. “He was in love with me. I was in total fear all day, every day. I feel like a battered woman,” she added.

Drew gave an interview to Inside Edition, but most of it was bleeped out.

“That—BLEEP—is a—BLEEPING—liar! I hate her—BLEEPING—guts. Plus she’s old!”

Even though the botched crime scene made things difficult for the prosecution, the Kitsap County prosecutor stood firm and offered no deals. Trial was set for June, though most observers expected a series of delays. Justice was never fast, especially when the case was as messy as the one involving two dead teenagers from formerly sleepy Port Gamble, Washington.

Annie Garnett wasn’t proud of how things went down with the Grant and Connors cases, but she was able to use the tragedies to increase funding for her department. Her part-time deputy was able to leave his Humane Society gig for full-time employment in Port Gamble. Annie also discovered one thing that brought some relief. While she liked silky fabrics, she didn’t care for thongs, after all. Some things literally creeped.

Beth Lee—who was back to wearing her friendship bracelet—entered a student art show in Seattle that winter and won first prize for her drawing, “Girl from London.” Kim Lee talked with the property management company about terminating their lease, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave. Something would always keep them there.

Colton James let Hayley know that his increasingly absent father wanted him to fish with him that summer in Alaska, and he said yes. Hayley hated the idea. The only thing worse than summer in rainy Washington was summer without a boyfriend.

In London, the news for the Grants was quite good—at least as far as Winnie was concerned. The murder of their daughter had put Edward back in the media spotlight—big-time. Two months after the arrests of Drew and Brandy, the BBC aired the first episode of his new show, Just Us, focusing on victims’ rights.

NOT LONG AFTER the Drew and Brandy news faded a bit, Hayley and Taylor sat at the kitchen table in front of the Scrabble board. The house was mostly silent, save for the ticking of the mantel clock and the strange dog-purring of Hedda tucked under the table at their feet. Their mom had gone off to Costco to get some things for Christmas, which was the following week.

Their father had just left on a final interview trip to Des Moines, Iowa, to talk to the parents of the murderer for Killer Smile.

When Valerie returned, the girls helped carry in the groceries. It had started to snow, and the world seemed especially bleak.

It was as good a time as any to ask about the things that they needed to know.

Hayley put down a bag of Spanish onions. “Mom, what really happened with Tony Ortega?”

Valerie set down her purse and took off her coat. The look on her face was no longer fear but resignation.

“I’ll tell you what I know. It has been a long time,” she said.

She told them how she had seen Tony playing basketball by himself during his one-hour daily exercise period. One time he looked up at her.

“I can’t explain it,” she said. “But in that moment when his eyes met mine, I just knew that Tony wasn’t a killer. I grew up there on that island. I could sense who was really bad and who wasn’t.”

She stopped and went to turn on the teakettle, and then returned to her seat.

“What happened when you were lost?” Hayley said.

“Yeah,” Taylor said. “And why didn’t they just execute him afterward?”

Valerie nodded. “I talked to my father about it. I told him that I didn’t think that Tony was a killer, but he told me that the prison didn’t make mistakes and—get this—even if they did, it was too bad. I really hated him right then. It just seemed so . . . wrong. I’d overheard my dad saying that a lawyer claimed to be tracking down new evidence to get Tony a stay of his execution, but he wasn’t going to get it done in time. I wanted to buy him more time.”

“So what did you do?” Hayley asked.

“I know it sounds dumb, but I thought if I could stop the electricity that went to the electric chair I could save him. So that’s what I did. I took the schematics from my father’s office. We had a passageway from our house to the prison. I used it and did what I had to do.”

The girls were silent, processing what it was their mother just said. The teakettle whistled, and Valerie went to fix her tea.

Taylor watched her mother spoon some sugar into the hot liquid. “But Tony didn’t die. Why not?” she asked.

“His lawyer came through in the end. Tony hadn’t set the fire that killed his parents. His little sister Maria had. Tony never pinned the blame on her. He felt sorry for her. She’d been terribly abused by their father all through her childhood, and the whole family knew it.”

Taylor felt like crying. The air in the room seemed so heavy. The image of a red plastic gasoline can came to her just then.

“What happened to Tony?” Hayley asked.

“He was released.”

“What about Maria?” asked Taylor.

“She’s at the hospital,” Valerie said, choosing her words carefully, not wanting to say too much. Just enough.

“Your hospital?”

Valerie nodded.

“Are you taking care of her?”

Valerie dipped her tea bag in and out of the hot water. “No, she’s not my patient.”

Taylor was relentless. She wanted to know more. “How is she doing?”

Valerie looked away and then shook her head slowly. “Not good. Sometimes the past is so evil, so horrible, you can never get over it. It leaves you kind of stuck. That’s Maria Ortega.”

“Killing her parents is a ginormous burden,” Hayley said, picking at the Scrabble tiles that were scattered in front of her.

Valerie dribbled some milk into her tea. “No,” she said. “Not that. I meant what was done to her.”

When she returned to the big kitchen table with her mug of English Breakfast tea, Valerie looked down and noticed fourteen Scrabble tiles arranged in three specific groupings:

It was the phrase that her daughters had said over and over when they were babies, and no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t unscramble what they were absolutely sure was a message.

Hayley drummed her fingers on the table.

Without saying a word, Valerie started rearranging the tiles:

Finished, she looked up at her girls.

“You knew all along?” Hayley asked, incredulous that her mom was opening up.

Valerie nodded. “Yes, I knew,” she said, her voice full of emotion. “I’ve always known. You girls can see things . . . know things that other people can’t.”

“Why didn’t you talk to us about it?” Taylor asked. “Mom, you covered it up on the tape. On Savannah’s tape we saw you. You hid our message. We gave Savannah a warning in alphabet letters, and you wiped it away.”

Valerie took a deep breath to steady herself. “It’s because I love you that I didn’t say anything. I was hoping it would go away.”

“Go away?” Taylor asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Like it did for me.”

TRUTH IN FICTION

WHILE THE CHARACTERS and the plot of Betrayal are fictional, elements of the storyline take some cues from a famous case involving the murder of a British girl in Perugia, Italy, and the subsequent conviction of an American student and her boyfriend for the crime.

Seattle native Amanda Knox was accused of the murder of her roommate and friend Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy—a crime committed on Halloween night in 2007. While Knox maintained her innocence, the Italian police and prosecutors thought otherwise. Most of the evidence against Knox in the beginning of the case were mischaracterizations of her behavior. She was seen making out with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, at the crime scene. She was caught on tape shopping for lingerie right after the murder as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She did cartwheels in the halls at the police station. And so on.