I’ll give him an ending to his investigation.
And then I’ll give myself the closure I crave, and finally decide if I’m everything Larkin wants me to be. Moreimportantly, if I’m everything my mother feared, and the thing I’ve been hiding from for all these years.
Chapter
Twenty
The entire ride to the bay is silent. Before I left, I could see Esme fighting herself, feeling like she should offer to go with me out of a misplaced sense of duty, but I never gave her the chance.
This isn’t for her, after all.
This is for me.
This is what I want to do.
My hands don’t shake on the steering wheel, but the trip blurs by as possibilities roll through my head like a speeding train; one after another after another.
I don’thaveto do this, some small part of me whispers. I can back out now, lie, and make up something about how he walked off down the trail to do whatever the hell it is Alan did when he was pissed.
But that thought shrinks as soon as it flits through my head, becoming completely undesirable even before it’s fully formed. That isn’t what I want.
My breath catches after I park, and for a few tense seconds, I worry Flanagan hadn’t actually followed me like I thought he did. The last leg of the trip was mostly back roads, with only afew cars on the path, but there was definitely someone following me at a distance.
I think.
I can hear the tires crunch over the rocks, and a car pulls up beside me in the otherwise empty, semi-gravel area. Before he’s even turned off the engine, I’m out of my car to lean against the door, with the cool night air brisk and refreshing on my cheeks as I tilt my head back to stare up at the full moon. In my head, I swear I can hear the crash of waves, though we aren’t close enough to the water for that to be real.
I haven’t felt this clear in weeks. Months.
Years,if I’m being honest with myself. Excitement hums through my veins, and I’m acutely aware of the box cutter in my pocket.
His car door closes and footsteps sound on the gravel, before becoming light rustles in the grass that’s overtaken most of the parking lot after years of failed upkeep. I glance to the side to see Flanagan glancing around, derision on his face. “This is where you dropped him off?” he asks in a tone of disbelief. “Seriously?”
“There are trails here,” I murmur. “I stuck around until I couldn’t see him anymore, but what was I supposed to do?” Pinning him with my gaze in the moonlight, I can see the slight discomfort in the way he shifts and looks into the trees. “Come on.” Without giving him an option to refuse, I walk past him to the mouth of the trail we’d taken when he had Alan’s body held between us.
Has it really only been two weeks?
Somehow, it feels both shorter and longer than that. It’s been two weeks since Larkin found me, and just under that since he contacted me for the first time.
Two weeks that I’ve known him, and already I can’t imagine going back to my life before Larkin. The clarity was missing, I realize. But not just clarity. There’s something disingenuousabout how I’ve been living for the past few years post-mental hospital. Though I couldn’t see it, I was sinking further and further into a life and a self that isn’t mine.
That’s over now, though. Alan’s death and Larkin’s insinuation into my life ripped away the fog and the complacency that had grown over my bones like ivy. Now, I simply have to finish that transition back to the girl I maybe always was.
Was Larkin right?
I haven’t thought much about his words from that night in the cabin. His insinuation that I was born this way had made me feel things that make me uncomfortable and confused. His words had shaken something in me, and it’s been easier to just push them away to worry about another time. Preferably never, if I’m being honest. But here in the cold moonlight, while leading another man to his death like some kind of siren come to life from myth, I can’t help but wonder if he was right all along.
If he’s seen it in me since the moment we met.
“Hmm?” I realize belatedly that Flanagan is speaking, though his words aren’t particularly important to me. Still, I’m trying to play nice, and I glance back at him through the darkness of the trail, because the moon above is hidden enough that we’re mostly in darkness.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up as he replies, and this time when I look around, my eyes narrow at the feeling of being watched.
There shouldn’t be anyone else here, though. This place is an old trail, pretty deserted in the winter, and ours were the only cars in the lot. Shrugging it off, I focus back on Flanagan’s words, determined to at least make him think I care.
“He really came this way?” When Flanagan trips over a root, I stop to watch him recover, listening to his soft, snarled curses under his breath. “You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure. From the lot he went down this trail, and it’s not connected to any others. He seemed really upset, though. He was…frantic.” I sigh the word and start walking again, hands clasped behind my back. “You know, Alan wasn’t very nice.” My words are musing, and I find myself loosening up, drunk on feelings of excitement and anticipation. “He was cruel to Esme. I told her to break up with him…a lot, actually.”
