Chapter 32
“Tahlia will never be forgotten nor will your brother’s betrayal when he stole her from you. You dated her first. You met her at a skate park and did your thing for a couple of weeks. Innocent stuff. You'd agree to meet up at a specific time at the park and you'd just hang out for hours. You weren't much of a skater. You just rode your bike around while watching her on her roller blades. She was pretty good. You watched her for hours sometimes. But, Max being Max, when he saw her with you, like everything else when it comes to what Max wants, you didn’t matter. He wanted her. Even when he knew you were watching her skate he'd go up to her and skate with her or just talk. Anything he could do to make you jealous.
“You told him to leave her alone ‘cause she didn’t like him anyway. That didn't stop him. Finally you had found a girl who wasn’t interested in the ’bad boy’. So she said. She just wanted to be with a nice guy like you. He came to know this, so he did the one thing, the only thing, he could do to win her away from you. He changed. He got a job! He stopped the drinking! Everything! Just to take her from you! You could’ve asked him about all this but he wouldn’t have even remembered. That's how little you mattered to him. That’s just the way he was.
“She wasn’t your first girlfriend though. You dated a girl called Annie Bellow for a few months when you were sixteen and that wasn’t even a year before you met Tahlia. But Max played his game again. He didn’t date her but he made sure you would break up with her.
“But this brings us to Alan Winter and family. It was a source of great joy to see all the effort he went to in hiding his family after my text message. Ironically, I followed them to a small motel a short distance out of town. Admittedly I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was preparing to kill at least one of the daughters. I followed so I could find them if needed. Alan isn't as smart as he thinks. He would still go to work every day then drive back to the motel in the evening. The girls weren’t going to school and they’d stay at the motel all day with just their mother. To his credit he would take a scenic route to try and throw me off but it didn't work. I spent a night or two standing outside their window.”