Explain Nothing
Explain Nothing
BOOK 1, CHAPTER 10 • POSTING DATE: 21 MARCH 2026
TBAR RATING:
THIS SHOW MAY CONTAIN:
STRONG LANGUAGE
GRAPHIC IMAGERY
The following morning, Dominic and Willa were still in the barn when Jonah, Jennifer, and Noemi showed up. Noemi asked them, ‘We tried calling you both but got no response.’ Willa replied, ‘We were talking with my mom and then we came out here and fell asleep’.
Willa then asked Noemi, ‘Did your parents ever keep secrets from you?’ Noemi replied, ‘Not that I know of, why?’ Dominic then said, ‘We found out from Felicity that her parents, my parents, and two other people helped kill an innocent man.’ Jonah said, ‘Shit. Did you find out when it happened?’ Jennifer butted in, ‘Give them a break Jonah, they’ve been reeling from a family secret.’
‘I knew that this day might come,’ said Noemi. ‘Let me go inside and talk with her.’ Noemi then went inside the house and began to converse with Felicity about the previous night’s events. Noemi asked, ‘Who all was involved in the killing of Xavier?’ Felicity replied, ‘my husband, Dominic’s parents, and these two people named Winston and Charlotte.’ Noemi gasped at the news. Felicity asked her, ‘Do you know those people?’ Noemi, now crying, replied, ‘They were my parents. They weren’t married at that point in their lives, only dating.’
Noemi then went back outside to the barn and told the others, ‘My parents were the other couple that helped kill Max’s father.’ ‘Fuckin’ hell, man,’ said Jonah. Dominic, Jennifer, Jonah, Noemi, and Willa now knew the shared family secret of three of them. ‘Should we tell Max?’ asked Jennifer. ‘Not yet, as he’d flip us the bird and tell us all to fuck off if we tell him now,’ replied Willa.
While inside the house, Felicity was now remembering the night that Xavier was murdered. She breathed in, and was immediately transported back in her imagination. The night nearly 20 years earlier was a wet, rainy night. Willa’s father Daniel was driving the car carrying Xavier, who was tied up in the back seat, and he was infuriated. He said to Felicity, ‘This man will slander us for years to come over something simple.’ Felicity replied to him, ‘He will not. If you kill an innocent man, I won’t be able to forgive myself.’ Daniel added, ‘John and Yasmin think the same things I do. They hate this man, and want him out of their lives.’ They stopped at the quarry lake on the outskirts of town. Daniel opened the rear passenger door and dragged Xavier out of the car. Xavier now surrounded by Felicity, Daniel, John, Yasmin, Winston, and Charlotte, began to plead for his life, but ones that landed on deaf ears. As Winston grabbed a gun from his back belt pocket and handed it to Daniel, saying, ‘Xavier Tulum, you will never tell anyone about what things we have said.’ As Daniel cocked the gun, Felicity ran back to the car, now knowing what was about to happen. Yasmin then told Xavier, ‘Say goodbye to the life you’ve known. There’s only darkness coming to you now.’
Daniel then shot Xavier in the chest, Yasmin and John together shot him in the arm and abdomen, Winston shot him in the abdomen a second time; and finally, Charlotte shot him in the head, killing him. They left his body there along with the gun, which had no fingerprints due to the group wearing gloves and mittens due to the cold temperatures that night. Charlotte, now filled with regret, longingly looked out the truck window as they left Xavier’s now dead body behind.
Felicity, now enraged with her husband screamed at him saying, ‘Why did you have to kill an innocent man!?!? He had children and a wife, and you five shot him dead!’ Daniel did not say a word, content with the events of that night, knowing that the other four would agree with him on their idea of vigilante justice.
Now free from her imagination of that dreadful night, Felicity went over to the mirror in the living room and reassured herself that she would not keep any more secrets from her daughter.
Felicity then went out to the back deck of the house, and with a sadness looming in her chest, looked out at the barn where her daughter and her friends were discussing the secret long held by the parents until the day they died, except for Felicity, who was still in the land of the living.
Back in the barn, the group was still discussing how and when to tell Max about his father’s murder. ‘He still thinks that his father was killed by some rando, not our parents,’ said Noemi. Dominic then said, ‘He needs to know everything that we now know. We can’t keep this from him, unless Z finds a way to let him know.’ Willa added, ‘He’s right. We need to tell him before Z beats us to the punch.’
The group then realized at that moment that Max was on vacation with his family in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and he had no cell service. They would have to wait just a matter of days before he came back to tell him the tragic and gruesome news of what happened to his father nearly 20 years earlier.
Just days later when Max returned from vacation, the group prepared to tell him the news. ‘Dom, how do we phrase everything?’ asked Willa. He replied, ‘We just tell him the facts and that we know who killed his father, then we go to the police and tell them.’
As soon as Max showed up at the barn, Jonah greeted him and invited him inside. The others were sat on the couches and told him to sit down and be prepared for a wild conversation. Dominic then opened the conversation with, ‘Max, we need to tell you something...’ And then the floodgates opened. ‘Our parents did something very bad to your dad,’ Willa added. ‘Okay, what happened to my dad?’ asked Max. And then the group proceeded to explain. Dominic started with, ‘Our parents took your dad to the old quarry lake. Felicity had nothing to do with anything that took place. She was pretty much a bystander.’
Noemi, now welling up with tears, then said, ‘My parents, Willa’s dad, and Dominic’s parents then shot and killed him.’ Willa then added, ‘They left his body there until the following morning when my mother reported the dead body to the police.’ Jonah said, ‘We’re planning on going to the police with all this information later today.’ The group continued to tell Max what happened nearly twenty years earlier to his late father.