“You’ll be okay,” I tell her. “Dara, you’ll be okay.”
She shakes her head furiously. “No,” she whispers. “I could have saved him.”
“And then what?” I ask. “Let the doctors restore him to full strength so he can repay you?” I pull her away from me so that I can look into her eyes. “He was going to kill you.”
“I was—going to—leave him.” The words come out as hiccups. “That’s what all the money was for.”
“You would have gone back to him, or he would have followed you,” I say. Maybe this isn’t true. I don’t know. But it’s done now. Tim is dead, and if Dara can’t make peace with what she’s done, then it won’t matter that he’s in several pieces scattered throughout the state; she’ll never truly escape him.
“I should go to the police,” she says. “I—what I did—”
I say nothing, waiting for her to complete the sentence. I can’t doit for her. Her face changes as she works it out, as she imagines herself marching into the police station and telling them that she’s killed her husband. They’ll ask if there was any record of abuse, and she’ll have to tell them no, that she’s never filed a report or pressed any charges. Yes, she has bruises, but those could be from anything. His family will want her to fry for what she’s done. She’ll spend the rest of her life behind bars.
She stares at me, and it breaks my heart that she’s in so much pain. I sweep the hair out of her face, very gently. I want her to have a long life of soft touches and sweet words. I want her to know kindness and strength. I want her to have all the things that my sisters and I will never have.Be strong.I will the words into her.Take this gift you’ve given to yourself.
When her sobs have finally begun to quiet, I whisper, “Never forget the strength it took to do this.”
21
Moody and I are sitting on the balcony, waiting for Edison to show up to take us to the mechanic. The day is overcast, still grumbling from last night’s rain. The balconies on these condos are small, but even so, Moody scoots her chair closer to mine than she has to. Strands of her long brown hair brush against my arm. “How are things with the little one?” she asks, her voice so quiet that I can barely hear her. “You never gave me much of an update.”
My entire body goes cold. I feel the color drain from my face, because for one horrible second I think she knows about the pregnancy. But then I realize she means Sadie and I recover, too late. Moody is looking at me with a furrow in her brow. “Sis?”
“Sorry.” I rub at my temples. “My head is still aching from the crash. What were you saying?”
She searches my eyes, her own going dark. “The step-kid.”
“Oh,” I say. “Her. Okay, I think.”
“So, she likes you,” Moody says. “That’s good.”
“I suppose.” My indifferent tone is one I’ve honed for years. When my sisters asked me about Colin or Elaine, and I knew it would break their hearts if I told them the truth. I still call Colin sometimes when I have a moment to myself, which happens about once every few months. I tell him I’m out seeing the country, visiting famous monuments and national parks. Other times, when I don’t trust myself, I say nothing at all; I just call to make sure that he’s still alive. I’ll hold my breath and listen to him saying “Hello?” over and over, and I’ll hang up when he says my name. In this age when nobody answers a phone call from an unknown number, he always picks up. He’s always wondering where I am and if I’m okay.
Sadie is different, I tell myself. I don’t care about Sadie. I can’t. When we sit on the floor in the living room and I teach her how to strum the guitar, and she shows me how to rosin the bow of her violin, she is nothing more than a prop. Something I’ll need to vouch for my character when Edison goes missing.
Moody is looking at me, and I pretend not to notice, acting like I’m in too much pain to concentrate on our conversation so that she’ll let it go. But Moody isn’t exactly known for letting things go. “Maybe you can use music to bond with her,” she says. “Teach her how to carry a tune.”
“I’m teaching her to play guitar,” I say, because if I don’t give Moody this much, she’ll know I’m holding back. “I’m not here for Sadie,” I add. “I wish she’d stop coming around and getting in the way so much.”Believe me,I’m pleading with her.Just this once, don’t see right through me.
Edison’s car turns into the parking lot, and I stand up, relieved at the diversion.
I imagine that someone else took that missing trucker. Some burly,monstrous figure dragged him up that hiking trail and murdered him. I imagine that this sinister figure takes Edison too.
I would find Edison. I would go to him, loose the ropes that bind him, stop his bleeding with my bare hands, and say,Who did this to you? Who did this? I’ll kill him.I would save him the way he saved me last night.
But there is no dark shadow stalking the mountains of Rainwood, Arizona. There’s no one here who will take him away and harm him.
There’s only me. His great love. His destruction.
He gets out of the car when he sees Moody and me descending the stairs. His arms are open to me, and I sink into him. Sweat and desert dust and the cologne of his body wash. I will never forget the smell of him. I know I’ll never find it in this world again.
“How are you feeling?” he murmurs against my ear.
I squeeze my arms around him gratefully. “Better.”
We’re here in this moment, the three of us, even though he doesn’t know about our baby. I close my eyes, let the love overtake me, painful in its intensity.
It is with great care that he draws away. He opens the passenger-side door for me, and I climb in. I lick my thumb and wipe away a smudge of my blood that’s caked on the console.
