Jamie smiles at me. “I hope you will be.”
“You’ve now let Sunny die and killed Brett. How exactly should we be there for you?” Roxy says, an edge to her voice. She does have a point.
“Oh, come on, tell us already,” Amelia says, clearly enjoying herself. “When did you decide to off him?”
“I decided to do it at breakfast. I decided to kill Brett,” Jamie says, remembering and wincing.
“Wow, bold,” Amelia says. “How’d you do it?”
Jamie wraps her arms around herself, reluctant to tell us the truth. But finally, she begins to talk.
“After breakfast I went back to our room and grabbed my syringe. In predictable Brett fashion he brought his own supersized water bottle, custom-engraved with his initials, to the pickleball court. I watched as he dumped two bottles of Gatorade into it and twisted the lid.”
“He did have too many things with his initials on them. It was weird,” Amelia says.
I give her the stink eye. She needs to be quiet. “Jamie, go on.”
“It was hot out, and I knew he’d chug down his bottle while we played. He even had the gall to threaten me during the game, telling me if we didn’t win, my secrets were out,” Jamie says.
“So when he crossed to the other side of the court to help Ryan fix the net height, I pushed the syringe of potassium chloride into his monogrammed bottle.” She stands up and faces the three of us. “I killed him. That’s the truth. I chose to protect my own future, just like I did with Sunny.” She glances at the body under the sheet across the room and then turns back to us.
A chill has shot through the air between us. I can’t believe what she did. I don’t understand. “How does potassium chloride kill people?” I ask. I wonder again how I could be sisters with amurderer, a repeat murderer like Jamie. First Sunny, now Brett. And she’s supposed to save lives. Is it any wonder I’ve kept my distance from this crowd for twenty-five years?
“Brett’s shortness of breath at the end of lunch was the first symptom caused by the drug. When he rushed outside, I knew he didn’t have long to live,” Jamie says. “The fresh air he was looking for wasn’t going to prevent his impending heart attack, which happened and caused him to fall into the pool. He was dead when he hit the water.”
“God, Jamie, are you listening to yourself?” I say. She’s so calm and composed you’d think she was talking about buying groceries, not ending a life.
“So, you pretended to try to save him by jumping into the pool and then doing CPR, under the cover of all that dust,” Amelia says, putting her hand on Roxy’s shoulder to stop wobbling.
“I was making sure he died, yes,” Jamie says. “I performed CPR to be certain I pushed the drug all the way in his system. I knew I’d given him a fatal dose. The CPR helped it work faster. Oh, and I’m not sorry.”
“I can tell,” I say.
“There is no way to prove it, though,” Jamie says. “It’s out of his bloodstream by now. Cause of death will be a stopped heart due to cardiac arrest.”
“Oh my God,” Roxy says. “Who are we? We can turn you in; we can tell the authorities everything you’ve done. It could be enough.”
“Please, you have to believe me—it was the only way. He came here to threaten me, and he did,” Jamie says. “He was never going to let me go. I didn’t have a choice. It was the only way.”
“What a convenient way to murder someone, Jamie. I’m impressed. And I am sorry I brought him, the bastard,” Amelia says. “I should have left well enough alone. Still, you shouldn’t resort to murder.”
“It was the only way to get free,” Jamie says, tears rolling down her cheeks. “You have to believe me. He was a monster. Please, don’t turn me in.”
“I can’t believe this,” I say. I stare at Jamie as if she were a stranger. She is a stranger.
“Brett was a jerk. He probably did deserve it. And, Amelia, you weren’t even supposed to be here, let alone bring a plus-one,” Roxy says. “You brought him to upset me, test me. You knew I’d remember buying the roofies from him, and you wanted to throw me off my game. It’s really your fault he’s dead.”
“Well, that’s a stretch. Sorry, I am not going to be the one guilty of murder. That’s the Rock Star doctor’s charge,” Amelia says. “Roxy, the truth is, really, I wasn’t thinking about you. It was all about me. I thought he was into me. I wanted to flaunt a red-hot romance in front of you guys. But now I know he was using me to get to Jamie. To give her a warning. I’m an idiot.”
I turn to look at Jamie and then at the other two. They really are unbelievable. Instead of truly sticking together all these years, honoring the memory of Sunny and our sorority bonds, they’ve been competing, cheating, and ultimately, killing.
44
Beth
This all ends here and now. We need to come together, or we’ll all be ruined.
“It’s time to reach an understanding, among the four of us, right now, right here,” I say. “Jamie, you need help, treatment, not jail time. So here’s the deal I’m putting on the table. We all will keep this our secret—withoutprofiting from it, Amelia—as long as you agree to get help for your addiction.”
