Chapter 261: Chapter 261: Guilty Conscience

No time to judge. Heather wasn't done. Despite my visceral reaction, the gut-punch of understanding Heather just might be a murderer after all, she sobbed softly before going on.

"I swear it was an accident," she said, "but I might as well have killed that girl like the courts said I did." She struggled to swallow, her face red, neck and chest mottled from the overabundance of her emotional turmoil. "My friend and I were drinking, like we did a lot when we were teens. We were jumping off a bridge, you know? Just a stupid thing to do, especially considering how drunk we were." She shrugged, sniffled, wiped at her nose. "Fourteen is a stupid age sometimes."

I thought back to my teens and winced. I hadn't drank, per se, if only because my father was sheriff and my mother the principal, but I knew lots of people who had and I'd gotten into trouble a time or two over lack of forethought and sheer idiocy, so I got it.