"So then," Nancy continued watching Melissa's eyes grow larger with each passing minute, "with her best friend Sara out of the way, Maggie had Steven all to herself. She quickly stepped in, taking over her friend's responsibilities. She helped him raise his son, fixed his dinner, helped with his housework. Did all the things his wife had done. Eventually, she thought, he'd see what a wonderful woman she was and fall for her. The way he was supposed to before he met Sara. But that didn't happen, did it?"

Without realizing it, Melissa automatically shook her head from side to side. "No," she whispered. "It didn't."

"Along comes the new teacher in school. She's smart, pretty, and a lot of fun. Steven asks her out. They hit it off immediately. She begins to become a big part of his life; of Shaun's life. Finally, after nearly a year of dating, he asks her to marry him. This isn't what Maggie planned on. He wasn't suppose to ask Emma to be his wife. He was supposed to ask her. Now Emma was in the way. She had to get rid of her."

Melissa shook her head again. "No, that's not true." Her voice had been reduced to a mere whisper.

"Sure it is," Nancy prodded, moving from the counter to within a few feet of the girl. "She already knew how she'd do it. After all, she wrote the story. The plans were already laid out. Maggie just needed to follow them. She'd get rid of the second wife. Or I should say, fiancé. This time, suspicion would fall on Steven. He'd need her support more than ever now. How could he not possibly see her for what she was? The woman he was destined to be with."

"No," Melissa blurted out. "You've got it all wrong. And you think you're so smart. Maggie didn't kill anyone! I know!"

"You say you know," Nancy said. "She's your sister. You're going to support her, no matter what. To protect her."

"No," Melissa said. "She's protecting me! I..." she covered her mouth with hand as she realized what she said.

"You?" Nancy asked, pretending to be surprised. "Why you?" Silence reigned as the two faced each other. "I see," Nancy said softly. "You're the one in love with him, aren't you. You fell in love with your teacher. When he told you that you were too young, you decided to get rid of the competition."

Melissa's face registered a mix of shock and disgust. "Ew. Yuck. He may be cute, but he's a teacher. Gross! Why would I fall in love with my teacher?" She shuddered.

Now it was Nancy's to show some confusion. "Then why kill Ms. Lawson?"

She heaved a sigh. "I did it for Maggie. She wanted him so badly. I don't see why, but she did. She loves him so much, but won't come out and tell him. I thought I could make her happy."

There it was. The confession she needed to prove that neither Maggie nor Steven had killed anyone. "You used your sister's story, didn't you?"

Melissa nodded. "I found it one day last year in her closet. I don't even remember what I was looking for. I sat on the floor and read the story. I even read the comments the teacher made." She shrugged. "If she'd listened to some of them, she could have made the story even better. Anyway, I put it back and forgot about it. Until a few months ago."

"When you decided to get rid of Emma Lawson," Nancy

prompted.

She shrugged. "Yeah. Since Sara was already dead, I figured it fit perfectly."

"You told your boyfriend what you were planning to do, didn't you?" Nancy asked. "Isn't that why you got in the fight that day at school?"

She frowned. "All I told him is that I wanted to get her out of Maggie's way. I never told him how I was going to kill her. Or even that I was going to kill her, for that matter. He just assumed that's what I meant."

"Because you killed Sara?" Nancy asked.

For the first time since the conversation began, Melissa showed real remorse. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. "I didn't kill her. At least I didn't mean to. I was arguing, and then it just sort of happened. I pushed her and she lost her footing and...." her voice trailed off. "I still hear her screams sometimes in my dreams," she whispered.

"Why were you arguing?" Nancy encouraged her to continue.

"Over my sister. I was out riding my bike along the highway when I saw Mrs. Taylor standing there, crying. I stopped to ask her if she was okay. She had this funny look in her eyes when she saw me. She was really upset. The next thing I know, she was screaming at me about my sister and her husband. I think she thought he was cheating on her."

Nancy bit her lip. Deep down, a part of her felt sorry for the 13 year old girl who had only stopped to help her sister's friend and instead had been caught in the middle of a romantic entanglement between the adults in her life. Pushing the sympathy aside, Nancy continued.

"Was Maggie mixed up with Steven?"

Melissa sighed. "No. She loved him, and was always making comments on how Sara wasn't what he needed. But she wasn't cheating on her friend. If Mr. Taylor was seeing someone, it wasn't my sister."

"Then why were you arguing with her? Why not turn around and take off?"

Melissa gave her a disbelieving look. "She was bad mouthing my sister. No one talks bad about my sister. Except maybe me. Don't you have brothers or sisters?"

"No," Nancy said. "I'm an only child."

"Then you wouldn't understand. You have to stick up for each other. I didn't care if she was a grown up. She certainly wasn't acting like one. And just because she was upset didn't mean she could yell at me about it. Or tell me to tell my sister to stay out of their lives. She was calling her some very bad names, like a kid would do. So I treated her like any other kid. I hit her and told her to shut up!"

Nancy could almost picture the scene at the edge of the bluff. Sara Taylor standing by the guard rail, distraught, crying, perhaps even contemplating suicide. This young, impressionable girl, barely in her teens comes along, out for a bike ride, and sees her. Worried about this adult, this authority figure, who seemed to be falling apart, she stops to help.

But instead of helping, she finds herself the victim of this woman's wrath. Seeing her as an extension of Maggie, the friend she feels has betrayed her, Sara rounds on the poor girl, yelling at her instead of the adult she was angry with. Had her feelings not been in such turmoil, she probably never would have involved the young girl. But, in her confusion and anger, she took it out on Melissa. Melissa, like many of today's youth, acted on her first instincts. She lashed back out at Sara.

"And then you pushed her?" Nancy said softly.

"No, then she pushed me." At Nancy's look of surprise, she amended her statement. "Not hard, of course. She just pushed me away from her. Told me to get lost. Go home. Go back to my tramp of a sister. Then she turned away from me."

Melissa continued. "That made me really mad. She didn’t have any right to talk to me like that. I ran at her, pushing her into the guard rail. I pushed too hard. She had leaned forward just as I hit her. I caused her to lose her balance. She just...," the girl hesitated. "She just fell. And then she was gone."

Melissa turned from Nancy, not wanting her to see the tears that were now falling freely. Wiping her face with her hand, she turned back. "It was an accident. I never wanted to hurt her."

"Why didn't you tell anyone that?" Nancy asked. "You could have saved her family a lot of heartache if you'd told the police the truth."

"I did tell someone. I told Maggie." Melissa looked up at Nancy. "She begged me not to tell. She said they'd take me away from her; lock me up somewhere with really bad people - people that would hurt me. Maggie took care of everything. She helped me come up with the story that I gave the police."

She glanced at her feet. "I never told anyone else about it. Anyone except Jeff. And now you."

Callie dropped her phone back into her purse and peered intently through the windshield at the quiet backyard. Her instincts were screaming that Nancy might be facing trouble inside that house, yet her hands were tied out here. There was no way she could leave Laurie unattended. She could only hope that Frank and Joe would pick up their cell phones and get her messages. Soon.

She glanced at her watch. Nearly 15 minutes had passed since she'd spotted Melissa going inside. She was beginning to think that she should call the police. But then, what if she got Nancy in trouble for breaking into Maggie's house? If something didn't happen soon, she'd go crazy with worry. Trying to push her thoughts aside, she tuned in on Laurie's chatter.

"And then Aunt Vanessa bought me a table with a funny white skirt. It's pretty. And Uncle Joe painted my room pink, like my Barbie car..."

"That's nice," Callie said absently.

Laurie got back up on her knees in the front seat and put one small hand on Callie's cheek. Turning Callie's head to face hers, she looked closely at her.

"Are you sad?" Laurie asked, looking seriously into Callie's eyes.

"No," Callie said, breaking into a smile. "I'm not sad. Do I look sad?"

"Maybe. You looked kind of funny there." She slid back down into the seat.

Callie started to respond when someone rapped on her window. Jumping, she turned quickly to the new arrival. "Thank God you guys are already...." her voice trailed off when she saw Vanessa's face staring worriedly at her through the glass.

Rolling down the window, she looked at her friend. "What are you doing here?"

"You honestly expected me to stay at work after you called me?" Vanessa asked, shaking her head. "No way that was happening. What's going on? Any sign of Nancy or Melissa?"

"No," Callie said. She leaned backward slightly so that Vanessa could see Laurie in the front seat. "I think she may need help, but I can't go in to find out. I don't want to take her inside. In case there's trouble."

"Take me where?" Laurie asked. Her eyes brightened as she spotted Vanessa. "Hi Aunt Vanessa!"

"Hi, baby," Vanessa said, offering the little girl a smile. "Are you keeping Callie company?"

Laurie enthusiastically bobbed her head. "Uh huh! I'm telling her about my new room!"

Vanessa turned serious eyes back to Callie. "Did you get a hold of Frank or Joe?"

"No answer on either phone. I left voicemails for both."

Vanessa contemplated this. "Do me a favor, Cal," she told her friend. "Take her to the Hardy's house. Tell Mrs. Hardy what's going on. If Mr. Hardy is home, send him out here. She fished her keys from her purse and dropped the purse behind Callie onto the back floorboard of Callie's car.

"What do you think you're doing?" Callie wanted to know.

"I'm going to see if Nancy's ok," Vanessa said. "After you drop Laurie off with the Hardys, you can come back to see if the guys are here yet."

"And if they're not?" Callie asked.

"If they're not here, and you don't see me, call the police. Mrs. Hardy will probably do that the minute you pull away from their house, but it won't hurt to place another call." Before Callie could protest, Vanessa took off between the two houses.

"She never meant to hurt Mrs. Taylor," Jeff was saying. "She was just a kid, only thirteen. She just lashed out at the wrong moment."

"When did she tell you this?" Frank asked, sitting sideways in the front, watching as the boy told his story.

"This past spring."

Frank raised his eyebrows. "When you got into the fight?"

"Yeah."

"Why were you fighting? Did you want her to turn herself in?" Joe looked at the boy in the rearview mirror as he came to a stop at a red light.

"Yes. I mean, no, not exactly. It was too late for her to turn herself in. She waited too long, thanks to that idiot sister of hers. By then, no one would have believed that it was an accident."

"Then what were you fighting over?" Frank asked, repeating Joe's question.

"She said she was going to get Mrs. Lawson out of Maggie's way. That she wanted Maggie to be happy and if Mr. Taylor married Mrs. Lawson, Maggie would be miserable. She thought that Maggie would start paying attention to her again, if she wasn't always stressing out over Mr. Taylor and his new fiancé."

"Did she say she was going to kill her?" Frank pressed.

"No, just that she was going to get her out of the way. I was afraid that she meant permanently." He dropped his head in his hands. "After I heard that Miss Lawson had died, I knew I'd been right. She carried out her plan."

"Why didn't you tell this to the police?" Joe demanded.

"I don't know. Maybe because I thought they wouldn't believe me. I mean, it's not like they have any reason to trust me. I've been a bit of a thorn in the police's side the past few years. And maybe I was afraid of what might happen to Melissa," He sighed. "I just hope she doesn't hurt anyone else."

"Like Nancy." Frank said somberly.

"Yeah. Like her. She seemed like a real nice lady that day she and Joe talked to me. I don't want her to get hurt."

Frank felt the car pick up speed as Joe took off with the green light. He turned around. "That makes two of us."

Nancy mulled over Melissa's story. The weight of Sara Taylor's death must have been pressing onto this girl's mind for over two years. That was a long time for anyone, especially someone as young as Melissa had been, to deal with that kind of guilt alone. Maggie may have been trying to protect her little sister, but she failed. Instead, by forcing her to keep what happened a secret, she'd done much more harm than turning her over to the authorities would have ever done.

understand the accident part, Melissa? But killing Emma wasn't an accident. You planned that. And it didn't help your sister. It ended up getting her thrown in jail."

Melissa folded her arms across her chest again. "No," she said emphatically. "You did that. You got her put in jail. If you'd left us alone, she wouldn't have confessed to protect me."

"But you said that you did it to make Maggie happy. Steven could have been arrested for Emma's murder. How would that have made Maggie happy?"

Melissa looked thoughtful. "But I didn't think they could arrest him," she said. "They didn't have enough evidence. I made sure of that. Just like in the story."

"This isn't a story," Nancy remarked. "This is real life, Melissa. Things don't go as planned in real life."

"I see that now. I just wanted everything to be back to normal again. After Sara died, Melissa spent more time with me. She was teaching me to cook, and we went shopping together. She let me help with Shaun. Mr. Taylor was here a lot, or we were over there. If felt like I had a family again. When he got engaged, Maggie was lost. I just thought that if I could give her what she wanted, she'd be happy. Like before."

Nancy sighed and reached for Melissa. "We need to go tell this to Chief Collig," she said. "It's not going to be easy, but you can't let Maggie go to prison for this. It's your turn to protect her."

Melissa reached out with one hand and touched Nancy's. "Maybe I could...." She snatched her hand back and edged to her left, towards the doorway. "No, she'll be furious with me."

"Only for a little while," Nancy said, pulling her hand back. "She'll realize that you told the truth because you love her as much as she loves you. Help me help your sister."

Melissa had slowly reached to door that opened up into the dining room. "I can't go to prison, either," she said. "Maggie said bad things happen there. I've watched television. She was telling the truth about that."

Nancy spoke, trying to keep her voice soothing. "You're only fifteen, Melissa. Once you tell them what happened to Sara, they'll get you some help. Counseling. I doubt they'll send you to prison."

Horror filled Melissa's eyes. "Why? Because they'll think I'm crazy? Where else can they put me? A mental institution? No way." She shook her head, her hair flinging around her face. "I'm not crazy!" Turning, she fled into the dining room.

Nancy ran after her, tackling her as she reached the dining room table. Wrestling the girl to the floor, she managed to pin her in place. "Stop fighting me!" Nancy exclaimed. "I don't want to hurt you, Melissa. I don't think you're crazy. But I do think you need help. You're all mixed up right now. Too many bad things have happened in your life and you haven't had anyone really help you through them. I'll even find you a lawyer who'll make sure you get that help. happen to know a really good one. I'm sure I can get him to help..." She grunted as Melissa attempted to push her off.

"Let...me...go!" Melissa squirmed in Nancy's grasp. "I can't tell the police. I'd rather die first!" Suddenly she became still. Looking into Nancy's eyes, she repeated herself. "I'd rather die first."

Vanessa peered into a window of the house. She thought she saw movement through a doorway, but she couldn't be sure. Banging on the door, she called out Nancy and Melissa's names. Getting no response, she walked slowly around the house. She searched for a key, but to no avail. Pulling on the handle, she tried the back door. Locked

Going back to the porch, she tried the front entrance again. "Nancy!" she yelled out. "Nancy, are you in there!" She banged her fist louder this time. Hearing a crash inside, she pushed on the door. "Nancy! Answer me!"