“Before she died, she said something strange.”
“Sounds about right.”
“She said she hired me as a muse. She wanted to test scenarios on me, I guess. See how I reacted. For her book. And that you were in on it.”
He gives a bitter laugh.
“She tells stories. That’s her job. I hired you because the garden looked like shit. She had nothing to do with it. I interviewed you, remember? But I think when she saw you, and saw how beautiful you are, how kind and sweet, she got jealous. She probably believed what she told you by the end. But this is real, Brie. I’m real. What I feel is real.” His tone is harder, and I wonder if he’s annoyed that I’m not acting more grateful. “She knew everything about us. She knew the whole time, and she’s been plotting to kill you, I’m sure of it. I had to do it.”
“I know,” I say.
“And if you can’t keep it together over the next week, we’ll both end up in prison.” He adjusts his grip on the steering wheel. His hands are miraculously clean. Even his fingernails are short and neat. “Unless we tell the police what happened right now, of course. But they won’t believe us. They’ll find out we were sleeping together and assume we planned it. You might go free, but my life will be over.”
He waits for my response, but I feel myself falling back into my catatonic state. Murder. Police. Prison. This isn’t real.
“I’m sorry, but I really would like to know what you’re going to do.”
He sounds nervous. I look at him, his sharp jaw, his stubble, the splash of grey at his temples, and the feeling is intense and unmistakable. I love him. I’d do anything for him, just as he did anything for me.
“I won’t tell a soul.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“We need a story.”
I’m sitting in the living room with a cappuccino made on Bradley’s coffee machine, looking at Grace’s mementoes of serial killers.
“I’m going to call the police tomorrow,” he continues. “We have to be on the same page.”
I picture the scene. Two detectives, one smoking a cigarette, rephrasing their questions until I contradict myself.
“Why don’t I just leave? Pretend I wasn’t here? ”
“The roads are still closed from the fires. Anyway, you’ll need an alibi. Where did you sleep last night? Will any security cameras confirm your story? Did anyone see you? And there’ll be witnesses to you leaving today. Cameras on the highway.”
“OK, OK. I get it.”
“You’ll be fine. Just say you stayed at the cottage all night. Tell them everything else, including all the threats. Everything strange she did. I’ll take care of the rest. She’s off her medication, and suicide isn’t outside the realm of possible outcomes.”
“What about us?”
“Leave that out. If they think we’re together, they’ll have a motive. They’re already going to sniff around because of the money.”
Of course. Grace’s trust. It will all go into Bradley’s name. He’ll soon be rich.
“I’m not very good at lying,” I say.
“Then lie as little as possible.” He goes up to a picture of a sailing ship tossed in a storm. “After this is over, how about we sail around the world?”
“I’ve never been on a boat before.”
“What? You studied seabirds, and you’ve never been on a boat?”
“We never had boat money.”
“Now you do. We can sail to Fiji. New Zealand. Vietnam.” He walks towards me, his eyes wide with excitement. “The entire Pacific Rim. You can spend the year in a bikini. And we’ll tell our bosses to go to hell.”
I think about Grace’s monologue before she died. She warned me about Bradley. She said he was a selfish boy with insatiable desires. Was it this that she saw in him, this callousness? This ability to hurt someone and feel no remorse?
