“Mom.Please,” Rachel begged.“Just leave.Leave.Let’s just give it—”
“And did you expect Walt’s death to not fuck me up, Mama?”Mary shot back.Her hair was tangled from the wind.She looked more deranged than Rachel had ever seen her.The veneer she’d put on for Kevin’s sake had worn away in the skirmish, the polish sanded with abrasives to reveal the damage beneath.Rachel had been delusional to think that Kevin’s influence could solve their problems, that maybe Mary was fixable.
“You have no one to blame but yourself, Mary!”Dora cried.“And you were a disgrace long before you killed Walter.Don’t youdaretry to hang your failures on—”
Mary pounced at Dora before she could finish, landing a punch to her jaw.
Rachel cried out and instinctively moved in front of her grandmother, began to grapple with Mary.
The neighbours’ dog, roused by the commotion and the women’s cries, was barking incessantly now.Their porch light flicked on.
“HELP!”Rachel screamed in their direction.“Someone!”
There were voices, a shout.Dora was clutching her mouth.
“Getoffme, Rachel!”Mary shrieked.She slapped Rachel across the face, then her leg came up and she kicked her—hard—in the stomach.Rachel doubled over in pain and shock, gasped on a surge of nausea.Her face stung, burned.She fell to her knees, and it was from there that she watched, horrified, as Mary kicked Dora, too, and in the second in whichDora was recovering from her second blow just feet from the bluff, unbalanced, Mary ran at her again and pushed her with both hands.
Rachel’s scream tore through the night air like a scythe as her grandmother’s body disappeared over the weedy cliff.
“NO!Noooo!”Rachel rose and stumbled toward the edge, unbelieving.She felt separated from her body, as though she were watching it all from a distance.Waves crashed against the shore far below as she screamed for her grandmother, her voice carrying on the wind.
No response came.
Panting, Rachel inched closer to the bluff, then gasped as she felt Mary’s hands on her shoulders, rough and pinching.
Rachel screamed again.But Mary didn’t push.She grabbed her, wrenched her away from the cliff edge, then held her face hard.
“Rachel!”Mary cried, inches from her nose.Rachel felt her mother’s breath, could smell it, and tore her gaze from where Dora had gone over.
Mary looked wild, eyes glinting in the moonlight as her hair whipped around her face in the wind.There was shouting nearby.
“What did you do?!”Rachel sobbed, nearly falling to her knees as her legs gave way.“What did you do?!”
Mary shook her head.“Nothing.She tripped.Shetripped, Rachel.Right?You saw her trip.”
Rachel pulled out of her grasp, recoiled.“You’re insane.You’re CRAZY!”
“We were arguing and she tripped.That’s all!”
Rachel gaped, staggered away from her toward the house.“Like your brother did?”
Mary stood still, a grey statue in the glow of the moon overhead.She stared down her daughter with eyes that were cold and dry, and said nothing.
dCHAPTER 34
RACHEL
Rachel takes a deep breath, finally meeting Stevens’s eyes across the table at the little coffee shop as she finishes the story.The real one.Not the scattered rumours and inaccuracies he’ll have heard from the other guys.
“I remember sitting on the steps of our front porch,” she says.“We always sat in the back, facing the lake, so it felt bizarre to sit there.I never sit out there at night now—ever—because all I see are the red-and-blue cruiser lights flashing off the trees, and the tape going up around the whole place.I always make someone else do that, put up the tape.Don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Rachel says, mouth twisted.“The neighbours were all out along the road, watching.And then your uncle came up and sat down beside me.Didn’t loom over me.He just sat, like he’d been waiting to have some heavy conversation with me, and said ‘I’m sorry, Rachel.’Then he gave me some water to rinse the taste of vomit out of my mouth.No one else thought to do that.”
Stevens watches her beneath his furrowed brow, but says nothing.Rachel takes a deep breath and another sip of coffee.It’s bitter, but she doesn’t mind.
“He took my statement like it was a heart-to-heart.He just let me tell it, didn’t push or pry.Iwantedto tell him, like he was a therapist or something.I’ve never seen anything like that since I’ve been on the force.I’ve tried to emulate it, but I don’t know if it’s a skill you can acquire.Maybe you’ll inherit it,” she added, eyebrow raised.“But we just sat there as I held that scratchy grey emergency blanket around my shoulders even though it was a hot night.I told him everything that happened while my mother watched from the back of the squad car.”
“I was going to ask,” Stevens says.“She didn’t try to bolt?”
Rachel shakes her head.“No.And I’ve wondered sometimes why not.I guess that in such a small town, there’s just not really anywhere to go.You can’t exactly slip into the underworld, disappear into a crowd.She tried to get me to lie, though.”
