“Brie, please.”
—there’s not enough air, I can see how hard he swung the rock, how it cracked into her skull, how her body collapsed as she fell over the edge, her limbs like a doll’s, lifeless?—
“Look at me.”
—she’s dead, how is that possible, how can life just go like air leaving a balloon, how can it be that fragile, how?—
“Listen to me, Brie. I had to do it.”
As he helps me up, I see he’s wearing gloves and push him away. He planned it. He lured Grace here to kill her. I stumble further along the bridge, desperate to get away. In my mind, I see blood pouring from the wound in her head, blood and matter.
He swung the rock, and she was gone.
“She was going to kill you,” he calls out. “I was trying to save your life.”
Yes, the mania in her eyes. She was going to kill me, wasn’t she? That’s why she started screaming while we stood on this bridge, where I could so easily have an accident and fall over the edge to the rocks below. She told me all those lies to get me there, and then she was going to kill me.
I walk away and climb until I’m in the forest again, and the bridge can’t be seen. I can hear Bradley’s footsteps heavy behind me. I stop and turn around, and the sky behind me is in flames. I half-expect to see the four horsemen galloping towards us. Because how could this happen, and the world just carries on?
Bradley reaches out to touch me, but I step back.
“How did you know?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about Grace. Let me tell you in the car. We can’t be seen here.”
“No. I’m not?—”
He half-turns to keep his eyes on the trail leading down to the bridge, as if Grace might suddenly emerge, an avenging angel. “Grace is very unstable. She has episodes, sometimes, where she enacts fantasies. The stories in her head and the real world overlap, becoming indistinguishable. Often they’re innocent. But now and then, they’re violent.”
“I thought you didn’t believe me!”
“I always believed you. I just didn’t want to scare you. I thought I could control it. There’s a new medication, but it can be rough, with side effects, and Grace must have stopped takingit. Just now, when I tried to tell her I was leaving, she flipped out. I left her alone for a minute, and then she was gone, and I came to find you.”
I try to process all this information, but it’s too much.
“So you killed her.”
“She has history, you know,” he says, exasperated. “With Caroline Churchwell.”
“She killed Caroline?”
“No, she tried to kill me.” He raises his shirt and points to the scar. “She did this.”
“Because you were sleeping with her.”
“No, but Grace thought I was. She planned to kill me, then kill Caroline. But as soon as she stabbed me, Caroline ran away. When she surfaced again, I paid her a lot of money to stay quiet. Brie, when I saw you on the bridge, I couldn’t—” He shakes his head slowly, then covers his eyes and wipes them. “I knew I had to choose. She would never let it go. I had to do it. It was you or her. And I chose you.”
I don’t know how to respond. I feel drained, catatonic. When Bradley touches me again, I lean into him and start crying again. He leads me away. His car is parked almost in a ditch, out of sight from the road.
He opens the passenger seat door, removes his gloves, sweatshirt, and track pants, and places them in a plastic bag in the trunk. I notice that the trunk itself is also lined with plastic.
“Hey, get in the car!” He slams the trunk shut. “I’ll run back and get your bag. Best if no one sees us out here.”
Inside, I try to go over everything he has told me, to let the reasons for her death wash over me. He saved my life. If not for him, I’d be dead. I should be happy. No, I should beecstatic.
But none of it changes the immense, terrible fact of her death. I can think of nothing else; it fills the sky.
As he drives back to Pine Ridge, I run over everything he’s told me.
