I look down at my right hand. It’s soaked. Red, dripping, splattered to the wrist. It doesn’t even tremble. It’s steady.
Maybe it’s adrenaline. Maybe it’s a shock. But I don’t feel remorse. I don’t feel grief. Just this strange, buzzing calm under my skin, like the ugly, screeching voices in my head suddenly went quiet.
The blood must have sprayed more than I realized. There are dots on my chest, my stomach, and—Fuck.
I turn my head slowly.
Kiara is on her knees on the floor, a few steps away. Her hands are clamped over her mouth, knuckles white. Tiny dropsof blood speckle her cheeks and the front of her beautiful white dress like some fucked-up pattern.
She’s hyperventilating. She’s not looking at me. She’s staring at Sylvia’s body.
I turn fully toward her and my first instinct is to reach out, to help her up, to pull her to me, but my hand is still slick with blood. It drips from my fingers. I open my mouth, but the first attempt at words dies in my throat.
“Kiara,”
I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. She just saw me strangle and beat my adoptive mother to death.
I have to make her understand. I have to make her see that I’m not the monster, that the real monster is lying at our feet with a broken skull and hair matted red with blood.
“Please,” I manage, my voice barely more than air.
Her eyes drag up, slow, like it physically hurts to look at me. Her hands fall from her mouth into her lap. Her breathing only gets faster, louder, like her lungs can’t keep up.
“Let me explain everything.” My throat burns. The bile rises again, my eyes sting. “Please, just—”
She doesn’t look away, doesn’t blink. And then, without taking her eyes off me, she pushes herself to her feet and starts backing up.
“No, please don’t leave me,” I blurt out, my voice too loud, cracking under the weight of it. “Please, please don’t leave me. I swear I can explain. I’ll tell you everything.”
The words tumble over each other, broken by gasps. My knees buckle and I drop to my knees in front of her, bloody hands falling uselessly into my lap.
“I’m begging you, please, don’t leave me.”
Tears blur my vision, hot and relentless.
My whole body shakes with sobs I can’t stop. I’ve taken stabs with less reaction than this, but watching her recoil from me hurts worse than any wound.
She keeps backing away. One step. Two. Three.
“Please—d—don’t be—scared of me. P—please, Kiara. Don’t—leave me.” The sentence falls apart between breaths.
Her heel hits the edge of the staircase. She glances back just long enough to see the steps, then turns and bolts, running down the big curved stairs, through the lobby, shoving the heavy door open so hard it crashes against the walls.
And then she’s gone.
I look out the staircase window.
She’s running down the driveway, hair flying behind her in a dark, frantic wave. Her short white summer dress flutters around her thighs as she runs.
She doesn’t look back. Not once. Not for me. Not even to check if I’m following. She just runs until the trees at the edge of the property swallow her whole, hiding the manor from the outside world like it doesn’t exist.
My chest convulses with sobs I try to strangle down, but they tear out of me anyway.
The pain is everywhere, burning through muscle and bone, clawing at my ribs from the inside.
I can’t get rid of the image of her eyes on me just minutes ago. The last look before she ran. So much disbelief. So much fear. She looked at me like I was a monster.
But that’s not the truth. It can’t be.
