“It’s okay,” he tells me. “You’re safe. You can trust me.”
These are the exact words the social worker told me. What a crock of shit that turned out to be. I was young and trusting and I didn’t realize that everything I said would become evidence in the trial.
Waylen doesn’t know about that. He knows my parents died in a fire, but not that my brother and I went on trial for starting it. And not about anything that came next.
“Where are your keys?” I say, unable to control the hysterical edge to my voice. “I need to get Collette from school—I—”
“It’s barely even noon,” Waylen says. When I try to stand, his gentle grasp turns firm, and I realize I can’t stand. He won’t let me.
The bruise on Erin’s face. Skylar’s body on the surface of the river. I was so busy tracking Bertram’s whereabouts that I never thought about the fact that I didn’t know where Waylen was when any of it happened.
Take Collette and get out of that house.Mr. X’s words fill my mind. He’s the only one who’s ever been able to tell me what to do, the only one who really knows me.
When I try to stand again, Waylen forces me down, and I kick him in the shin so hard that he staggers back into the coffee table with a loud thud. I run for the foyer and he leaps over the couch, grasping the collar of my sweater for only a second before I wrest it away. I hear his footsteps chasing me as I scramble into the kitchen. His keys arewhere he always leaves them, in a bowl on the counter beside an old tube of ChapStick and some paper clips.
I struggle with the lock on the kitchen door, which leads out to the backyard. We haven’t opened it since the summer, when the weather was still warm enough to use the patio furniture. Now it all sits there, covered up in tarps like the old ghosts of the life I thought I was living.
“Margaux, please!” he calls after me, desperate. I trip on a rock in the yard but manage to save myself from toppling face-first into the mud.
I’m begging Waylen to stay away from me, not to touch me, and he’s saying that I’ve lost my mind and I’m scaring him. But somehow, I make it to his car and lock the doors before he can get to the handles. Now it’s his turn to try to cling to the car while I speed off, but he can’t do it. He gets to the end of the driveway and staggers, and I leave him standing there as I gun it down the street.
Eighteen
Elodie answers on the first ring. She’s on edge because the Skylar situation is freaking her out.
“Margaux!” she cries, by way of greeting. “I thought something happened to you.”
“Actually, I—”
“Listen,” she carries on, talking in that hyper way she does when she’s got an idea. “We need to talk to Mr. X. I know you know more than you’re telling me about how to get ahold of him. We’re in over our heads on this, and the deal was that he’d be watching out for us. This is getting unsafe.”
“You’re right,” I tell her. “I know where he is, but I can’t tell you yet. I promise I will—”Once he’s dead and his secrets don’t matter to him— No, Margaux, don’t go there.There’s another way out of this. There has to be.
“Listen, Elodie.” I keep my voice calm. “We’re both in danger.”
“Like—right now?” she asks, bewildered.
“Right now,” I say. “Go to the school, get our girls. You might get a call from Waylen, but don’t answer it.”
“The girls?” Elodie rasps. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out if it was really Bertram who killed Skylar.” Am I remembering the anger in Waylen’s grip as he tried to keep me in the house? Was he screaming, or was he just concerned? Are my instincts about anything right, or am I losing my grasp on reality?
“As opposed to who?” Elodie is asking. Of course she won’t just concede all the control to me. “Is there someone else?”
“No! I— Maybe there’s another explanation.”
I can still smell the smoke from the nonexistent kitchen fire. I wake up from dreams sometimes with it in my nostrils. It never truly goes away. No matter how fast I drive, I can’t evade my past.
“Take the girls somewhere safe,” I tell her. “Somewhere nobody knows about.” My heart breaks for Collette, who will be so scared and wondering where I am. She asked me if we could go to Oregon together, just to see the graves of grandparents she’s never met. Why didn’t I see it sooner?Just us, she said. Not Waylen. She wants to be away from him. She’s been too scared to tell me.
“Where will you be?” she demands. But I hear her keys jingling and I know she’s doing as I ask.
“I’m going to see Erin,” I say. “Whoever killed Skylar is the one who hurt her. Who else could it be? I need to figure out what’s going on, and she’s the only one still alive to talk. Get the girls somewhere safe. Donottell me where you are. Don’t tell anyone, do you hear me?”
“I know a place,” she says.
“Stay with them and wait for me to call you,” I say.
