The staircase loomed, an unyielding specter. Gravity, merciless in its decree, pulled her down. She reached out, fingers grabbing for the banister, a lifeline just beyond her grasp. But then a second shove made her hand slip, and that was the end of it. The abyss claimed her, and soon, the darkness as she hit the bottom of the stairs.
Impact. Wood met flesh with a brutal kiss, the sound reverberating through the hollow spaces of the house. Pain bloomed, a cruel garden growing wild and unchecked.
But Angela Jennings, whose compassion painted her world in hues of love, lay still at the foot of the stairs, silence her only response.
The silence struck Will harder than any scream. His breath hitched, his eyes stretching wide as the truth crashed into him with more force than Angela's body had met the staircase moments before. Horror etched deep grooves in his face, a grotesque sculpture of regret.
"Angela?" The name, usually a tender murmur from his lips, was now a shard of glass in his throat.
Motionless, she lay. A crumpled form at odds with the vibrant woman who breathed life into every room she entered. Blonde hair fanned out, an eerie contrast to the dark wood beneath her. Angela's chest rose and fell with the faintest quiver, each shallow breath a whisper of the pain radiating through her, her fingers digging their nails into the wooden floors below.
"Angela!" His voice broke, splintering the stillness. No soft, soothing tone answered—no firm resolve to steady the spinning world.
Will stumbled forward, knees weak, the distance between them an abyss he had created. His hands trembled with dread. He ran down the stairs.
"Please," he begged to the quiet. "Please. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry."
But Angela, the heart of their home, remained silent, her bright blue eyes staring at him, blood running from the back of her head where she had collided with the large vase at the base of the stairs. Her strength, so often a quiet undercurrent, had been consumed by the violence of the fall.
"Angela, I…."
Words failed, guilt choking him, turning his plea into a strangled gasp.
The house, their sanctuary, stood witness to the tragedy, its walls closing in, suffocating. In the wake of his actions, Will found himself alone, unable to actor know what to do next.
And then there was something else. Panic.
It clawed at Will's insides, a feral thing desperate to escape. Her stillness screamed louder than any cry for help. His gaze darted over Angela's form, the angle of her limbs unnatural, chilling. Blood—a dark red against the soft hue of her blouse—began to bloom.
He should call for help, should be pressing his hands to wounds, should be doing something other than staying there, drowning in the rising tide of his own fear. But the phone felt a universe away, and his body refused to obey. He was a doctor. He knew what to do.
Yet he didn’t.
Instead, Will backed away. Each step was a betrayal, his heel a gavel condemning him. The staircase loomed above, an escape route, a coward's path.
"Forgive me," he choked out, the words empty, futile.
He pivoted, the motion jarring, and took the stairs two at a time. His breath came in sharp bursts, punctuating the silence that had devoured any trace of the life they had built.
The bedroom door slammed shut behind him, the sound a punctuation mark to the end of Angela's quiet strength and their shared dreams. Alone now, with only his racing heartbeat for company, Will leaned against the cool wood, gasping for air, for absolution, for anything but the truth of what lay below.
Her absence was a void, pulling him toward an edge he could never return from.
Chapter 34
“You left her to die,Will. Tell me I’m wrong about this. I think she might even have been able to make it if you had called for help when it happened. There are scratch marks on the floor where she was lying that you weren’t able to erase. She was still alive, wasn’t she? You were so coldhearted thatyou went back to bed and waited until someone else found her. Your own son had to find his mother on the floor in a pool of blood. Imagine what that does to a young boy. How do you live with yourself?”
"Enough!" Will's voice boomed through the cabin, his desperation palpable.
"You pushed her," I declared, each word a nail in their coffin of lies. “You finally had enough, and you decided just to get rid of her so you could be with the woman you love. Didn’t you?”
"Shut up!" Will roared, lunging toward me, driven by fear and guilt.
Diane reached out, her hands clawing at the air. "Please!"
My instincts flared, honed from years of rigorous training and fieldwork. A twist of my hips, a pivot on the balls of my feet, and I evaded Will's outstretched arms, his fingers grazing the fabric of my soaked shirt. Diane swung next, her desperationgiving strength to her blow, but it was graceless, untrained. I ducked and felt the whoosh of air as her hand passed over my head.
“My guess is that you wanted to wait until a few years after Angela’s death to really be together. You didn’t want your relationship to seem suspicious. And you almost made it. Three years had passed, and so far, no one suspected a thing. But then came Carol, the neighbor, and she ruined everything. When she told her lie, instigated by Detective Larson, fueled by her anger toward you for not wanting her, you ended up in jail. Where you both belonged. You two murdered her. Your own daughter, Diane.”
