This whole time…some part of me suspected, deep down. Some part of me knew how this would end, and I kept going anyway. Even with my eyes shut, the truth stares back at me.
For Ellis, this was never a game.
I feel as if I’m falling—a hundred miles through an endless pit, into water, cold and black and closing overhead, filling my lungs and flooding my veins.
Ellis killed her.
She really killed her.
My heartbeat is the only sound I hear as I force myself to face the coffin—the girl in the coffin—thecorpse.I’m sick; it’s the kind of nausea that devours. I shove the lid back onto the coffin with my heel, my mind suddenly tumbling through a litany of realizations—the kinds of realizations that become reflexive after studying murder for months on end.
My fingerprints are on the coffin. I shift forward, crawling across the lid with my hands balled in fists and my weight pressed against my knuckles to scrub the cuff of my sleeve against the places I touched. I hope those are theonlyplaces I touched. Can I be sure? Do Iknow? I should wipe down this whole coffin, should—
Only it’s already dawn, the sun beginning to rise beyond the trees. Cold light filters down even into this hellhole. Someone could find me here. A mourner, or the cemetery caretaker back to shovel the snow and throw away wilted flowers.
I pull my phone out of my coat pocket, swiping away my notifications. It’s seven. I’m already out of time.
I claw my way to the surface, elbows digging into dirt. Panic is a living thing, I discover: It twists and quivers in my chest. It strangles every breath. I don’t bother with the shovel; I shove dirt into the open grave with both hands, tears freezing on my cheeks. I can’t even feel my hands anymore, my fingers like rubber.
I don’t know how long it takes to fill the grave. How long it takes to heave the snow back in place, or carry the shovel to the caretaker’s shed, or scrub away my fingerprints. I can’t fix the broken padlock. They’ll know someone was here. How many minutes until they pair the broken lock with the disturbed snow atop Alex’s grave? How much longer to exhume a body? How long, then, until they come hunting for a killer?
ForEllis.
I don’t want to think about it—about what Ellis did. But now…here, with Clara’s pale face rising like an unseen island to the surface of my mind…I can’t evade it. Ellis did this. Ellis killed Clara. Buried her in Alex’s grave, then…then…
All of it makes sense now. I don’t want to believe it; Ellis had seen how upset I was. She had comforted me, had—
She’d manipulated me this whole time.
There’s no better explanation for the book in my room, or for the grave dirt that fell from its pages. Even the inscription inThe Secret Gardenwas a forgery; all those hours we’d spent copying each other’s handwriting. Ellis had brought the book there. She’d brought it there to mess with me, to make methinkI was crazy. She—
Ellis killed Clara.I tell myself those words, try them out on my tongue. “Ellis killed Clara.” Ellis tried to convince me that I was haunted, or crazy, or both. She used magic to get to me. She told me magic was destroying me and then manipulated me into using it anyway. Then she killed Clara and lured me here to make sure I knew.
I don’t want to believe it. But not wanting to believe the truth doesn’t make it not the truth.
My hands are still numb when I shut myself in the rental car, but I can’t afford to linger. I press my wrists against the steering wheel and manage to guide the car like that, down the steep hill and out onto the open road. I pull over a mile out, crank up the heat, and sit there with my fingers held up to the vents until they finally start to thaw. The lights from passing cars cut through the silver dawn light; I flinch every time one drives by.
The radio is on. The newscaster lectures us about some store closing in town:A pillar of the community.And why would they close that store? It’s been there for fifty years. It’s a family-owned business.Sign of the times,the newscaster says, and I agree. I’ve never in my life cared as much about village politics as I do right now, sitting in this car with dirt under my nails and sweat frozen at the nape of my neck, cheeks tear-streaked and hands shaking.
What will that family do next? Will they open another store? How can they show their faces in public once everyone knows their failure?
Maybe they’ll move. Far away. Somewhere no one who knew them will ever be able to find them again. They could change their names and cut their hair. Get a little cottage in the woods and become recluse. Eventually everyone will forget.
At last, once feeling and color has returned to my fingertips, I reach onto the passenger seat and grab my cell phone. I swipe up the screen and stare at the keypad.
I should…call someone. The police, perhaps. That’s what a normal girl would do. Call the police, the ambulance, the fire department, the goddamn National Guard—anyone and everyone.
Clara’s death is a heavy stone. I want to pass it to someone else.
My phone is still in my hand when it rings.
I startle, badly enough that I drop the phone into the footwell and have to retrieve it, my cold fingers scrabbling down between my legs. The number is one I don’t recognize, but my phone tells me it’s from a Georgia area code.
All at once I’m transported back to the Dalloway main library: Me and Ellis sitting on the floor in the stacks, leaning against opposite shelves with our knees bumping together. We were in the true crime section. We’d read about a murder case, solved because the culprit made a phone call at the scene of the crime. The cell signal pinged off the nearest tower, and that easily, the murderer’s alibi became worthless.
I turn off my phone. It feels like it takes years for the screen to go dark, that infernal unknown number mocking me the whole time.
Is that enough? I didn’t pick up; maybe I’m safe.
