Life seems to be returning to him. Letting him take control seems the safest option.
We clamber back into the car. As we pull away, I try not to see Vanessa over Will’s still body, not to see her frantic on the phone, calling for help, her daughter running out against instructions.
There’s nothing easy I can say, and so for a while, as I rack my brains to figure out what could possibly have happened, I am quiet. James is somehow quieter, his eyes on the road, his mind clearly elsewhere. Eventually, I muster up the courage to ask.
“What happened?”
A flash of…What is it? Anxiety?
“I told him everything and it didn’t matter.” The car meanders along. The night is empty. We are alone here.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean he said he has copies of the letters and that nothing has changed. That whatever you thought you did is obviously serious. The letters sound like confessions, and he could still make the police believe that you attacked George. Still put you away. And that now he knows you’re all bark and no bite, he knows he can destroy us.”
My nausea returns tenfold. This is all too much.
“You didn’t tell him anything, did you? About Claire? About George being dead?”
He shakes his head. “No, I’m not a total idiot. I made the mistake of running my mouth to him once; I won’t do it again.”
I run my tongue between the grooves of my teeth and then over the points of my incisors. “He wouldn’t try to get me arrested. Not knowing I’m innocent.”
“He made it perfectly clear that he could and he would.”
The air is slapping me now. It stings. I roll the window up and shut it out—this is not what I need right now. What I need is an escape route out of this burning building.
I try to ignore the talon gently scratching at the pane of my churning thoughts. It tells me that despite what I know, despite my innocence, perhaps things would be better if Will never gets up from that grassy lawn. That maybe, just maybe, things would still be better if Will was dead.
31
Then
Claire
A little guilt creeps in as I watch the distance blossom between Emily and my sister after Luca. I think even Emily’s nerves of steel waver at the thought of her best friend’s sister being a murderer, of Emily herself being an accomplice in some small way. I guess that’s why she slunk off the morning Luca died, the morning of her best friend’s birthday, without so much as a goodbye. But whenever that guilt flares up, I simply think of Natalie showing me Luca’s group chats the next day as we sipped our mimosas, of her guiltily confessing her relief that he’s gone between mouthfuls of eggs, and it all feels worth it.
So I know from the moment I see my sister that George has to die. She hasn’t told me much about their relationship, but it’s been clear as our torrent of regular phone calls dry into a drought that things aren’t right. It’s obvious that he’s been slowly cutting her off, sealing her away from her friends and family brick by brick.
Change, after such a stretch of time, was inevitable in some way, but I’m still not prepared for how frail she looks. How much like our mom. The sight of her, shoulders curved downward, half hiding behind thedoor…It takes the wind out of me. I can barely speak, and I can tell that this makes her feel awkward as she ushers me in.
Awkward. Natty. It doesn’t make sense. Even when she was really small, when she hadn’t quite understood how to make people like her, she was never uncomfortable. If anything, she was painfully comfortable in her own skin, in her solitude. Or, at least, that’s how I remember it. And when she got it, when she understood that to make people like you, you have to lie, she was fine.
She seems to have a thinner memory of when we were really small, of nursery and home, than I do, despite being older. It struck me hard across the cheek when I once heard her refer to our childhood as “generally happy.” The worst incident, the one that warned us that all we had was each other, she recalls. If a sanitized version. In her memory, our father’s immediately contrite. In mine, after he’d beaten our mother and sent her flying down the stairs, I remember a strange performance of familial devotion. He was the great clown Pagliacci, invited to a funeral no one wanted him at, but that he felt a duty to bring healing to. Healing through warmth and laughter. He shook soft toys at a still-screaming me, pushed dolls into the hands of a still-screaming Nat, showered all three of us in frantic kisses too hard for our bruised bodies and feelings. Nat and I were hoisted back into our seats at the table, bowls of ice cream foisted upon us. Mother had a glass of wine pushed into her hands. She sipped it, eyes big and afraid as Dad dabbed at her cuts. Through it all, she looked like a cornered animal with a broken leg, folded in on herself, teeth bared. Her gaze tracked his every movement across the room, almost like she was waiting for the next attack.
I have a particular memory of a weekend afternoon with our dad. At least, I assume it was a weekend. I just know that it was sunny, andwe went out to the florists together, so it couldn’t have been a workday. I remember Dad making a show of buying a nice bouquet for Mom, waxing on to the florist about how she just deserved a little treat. It wasn’t their anniversary or her birthday or anything.
I remember it wasn’t the first time he’d done this. It was a little pilgrimage we made every other weekend, until he could only afford to shell out for particularly bad fuckups. He’d do his little dance, and the florist would be all smiles. As part of the dance, he’d always pick the prettiest flower out of the bouquet and pop it behind the florist’s ear. She’d almost lose her head giggling at that, every time. He’d disappear into the back of the shop for a while and leave me on a stool, teddy bear clutched in my hands and on my lap, a book I couldn’t read.
The florist would usually keep me company. Read a bit. Make silly faces. One time, she told me she’d “just be a minute,” needed the loo. While she was gone, a little old lady came in.
“Are you okay, love? Where are the grown-ups?”
I wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers—the florist didn’t count, as we had seen each other so many times—so I just stared at the lady with big eyes. There was some noise coming from the back room—quiet scuffling and gentle knocking. The old lady took matters into her own hands and crept over to see what was what. I remember the sound of a woman shrieking, how quickly the lady came shuffling out, my dad’s face red, voice bellowing, spittle flying.
It’s obvious to me now that my dad was having an affair. Not with the florist, who never went into that back room when Dad was there, but with someone the florist liked well enough, or who paid her well enough, to help keep the affair a secret. But I didn’t understand any of this at the time. All I knew is that my dad would go to buy these flowers, be showered with praise by the florist, by our neighbors when theysaw him bringing them home. People loved him.She’s so lucky to have you!they’d say. I guess they didn’t know how to spot bruises on dark skin. Not that Dad often hit her where people could see anyway.
When Dad got home, he’d slap the flowers down on the dining table and promptly forget about them. He didn’t even hand them to Mom.
