It’s Will, not me, who makes a sound, some strange, inarticulate scream of pain. I feel suddenly weightless, not knowing what’s happened.
A breath later I realize that the reason for the weightlessness is that he’s fallen from my body. He’s perched inches to my side, struggling to get to his feet, though his hands are at his head and he, like me, is bleeding. His blood comes from his head, where there is a sudden laceration that wasn’t there before.
I crane my aching neck to see. I follow the gaze of his eyes—now shrouded in fear—to see Imogen standing in the kitchen doorway. The fireplace poker is in her steady hands, and it’s raised over her head. She blurs in and out before me, until I’m not certain she’s real or a result of a head injury. Her face is deadpan. There is no emotion. No anger, no fear. She comes forward and I brace myself for the debilitating pain of the fireplace poker as it strikes me. I clench my eyes, my jaw, knowing the end is near. Imogen will kill me. She will kill the both of us. She never wanted us here.
I grind my teeth. But the pain doesn’t come.
I hear Will grunt instead. I open my eyes to see him stumble and fall to the ground, calling Imogen names. I look to her. Our eyes meet and I know.
Imogen is not here to kill me. She’s come to save me.
I see the determination in her eye as she raises the weapon for a third time.
But one death on Imogen’s conscience is enough. I can’t let her do this for me.
I spring to my unsteady feet. It’s not easy. Every part of me aches. The blood is abundant, in my eyes so that I can hardly see.
I lunge forward. I throw myself at the wooden knife block, getting in between Will and Imogen. I take the chef knife into my grasp; there’s no feeling, no awareness of the handle in my hand.
I barely register this man’s face, his eyes as he rises to standing and, at the same time, I turn to face him.
I see the movement of his mouth. His lips move. But there’s a ringing in my ears. I can’t stand it. I think that it will never stop.
But then it does stop. And I hear something.
I hear that heinous laugh as he says to me, “You’d never do it, you stupid cunt.”
He comes at me, attempts to grab the knife from my hands. He gets ahold of it for a minute, and I think, in my weakness, that I will lose the knife to him. That when I do he will use it to kill both Imogen and me.
I pull violently back, regaining full possession of the knife.
He comes at me again.
I don’t think this time. I just do. I react.
I plunge the knife into his chest, feeling nothing as the tip of the chef knife cuts right through him. I watch it happen. Imogen, behind me, watches, too.
The blood comes next, spraying and oozing from his body as all two hundred pounds of him collapses to the floor with a dull thud.
I hesitate at first, watching the blood pool beside him. His eyes are open. He’s alive, though the life is quickly leaving his body. He looks to me, a beseeching glance as if he thinks I might just do something to help him survive.
An arm rises, reaches enfeebled for me. But he can’t reach me.
He won’t ever touch me again.
I am in the business of saving lives, not taking them. But there are exceptions to every rule. “You don’t deserve to live,” I say, feeling empowered because there’s no tremor, no shaking in my voice as I say it. My voice is as still as death.
He blinks once, twice, and then it stops, the movement of his eyes coming to a stop, as do the heaving movements of his chest. He stops breathing.
I fall to my hands and knees beside him. I check for a pulse.
It’s only then, when Will is dead, that I rise and turn to Imogen, folding her into my arms, and together we cry.
SADIE
One Year Later...
I stand on the beach, staring out at the ocean. The shoreline is rocky, creating tide pools that Tate splashes barefoot in. The day is cool, midfifties, but unseasonably warm for this time of year, compared to what we’re used to. It’s January. January is often bitterly cold, thick with snow. But here it’s not, and I’m grateful for it as I’m grateful for all the ways in which this life is different from our life before.
