Parker is at the bottom of the staircase now, a lanky silhouette limping toward me. Rain runs off him in rivulets, his soaked sweater pasted to his stretched frame, eyes mad.
I grab the kayak paddle from the ground, gripping it like a weapon.
“What did you do?” I scream across the wind. Lightning slashes open the sky in a streak of violet-white, and thunder bellows after it like a drum. “Did you kill my mother?”
The wordmothercracks in my throat, tears mingling with the rain on my cheeks.
Parker’s lip twitches as he steps onto the dock. “She was tryingto keep me away from you,” he shouts back. “She found me, back in August. Said if I didn’t stay away, she’d call the cops. She wanted to destroy everything for us. You should be thanking me.”
The words hit like a blade in my chest. Mom died… trying to protect me. And I never even knew she was in danger. She was out here alone, terrified. And I wasn’t there to fight for her.
Wrath fills my blood so suddenly it nearly knocks me off my feet.
My teeth chatter as I walk backward like I’m on a plank, the lake’s mist spraying against my ankles as I near the edge. “Why did you come back here?” I yell.
“I needed to get out of Seattle. I think you know why,” he spits, and I guess he’s talking about Madison. “What better place to start over than here? Where it all began.”
“Wherewhatall began?” I roar. “I didn’t even live here anymore. There is nous,” I scoff.
He steps closer. “You have—well,had—ties here. I knew I could get you to come back.” He smiles. “That’s where Alice came in.”
I flinch at her name.
“Don’t you hear me?” he yells. “She was trying to keep us apart. As was my own mother, it turns out. They both had to go.”
I’m speechless. Devastated. Sickened. There’s no response anywhere in me for something like this.
But I have to keep him talking. Until I see the police.
“So you were watching her?” I ask. “You were in the house with her, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he says, low, hardly audible. “At first… it was harmless. But I started to wonder if she sensed me in the house. When I knew she wasn’t going to accept me, I went in to do… what I needed to do. But she was still awake.” He looks behind me at the lake. “I had to chase her down here. I didn’t have a choice!”
Parker continues to cross the dock slowly, one long step at a time—
hand clutching his stomach. I adjust my grip on the paddle, tightening my fingers around the shaft.
“So… what do you say?” he asks. “Don’t let this all be for nothing. Don’t let your mother die in vain.”
I see right through his calculative nonsense. His sick way of trying to twist madness into romance.
When his stomach is inches from the tip of my paddle, I thrust it into him, ramming the rounded tip into his belly. He folds, spitting bile onto the dock.
While he’s huddled, I bring the paddle down again in vicious swings, my words spitting out in rhythm with each blow to his head.
“This! Ends! With! Her!”
The world goes fuzzy and my lungs can’t seem to catch air. I crash to my knees next to Parker, a panic attack taking over.
But before I can pull myself together, Parker lunges at me.
I stumble backward off the dock and plunge into the lake, my entire body sinking beneath the surface—and I can’t believe how cold it is. The water is glacial, feels like knives on my skin as I desperately try to find up from down. I lose myself in the waves, my limbs freezing up, accidentally breathing in, choking.
When I finally break the surface, I only manage to get one gasp of air in before I vomit lake water. My hands flail until they find the wooden edge of the dock. But the instant my fingertips clutch it, Parker stomps down on my nailbeds. Pain screams in my knuckles as I squeal and slip under again, bubbles gurgling out of my mouth.
I thrash against the waves, descending deeper into the lake. Looking around me, I’m desperate for outside forces to step in. I don’t know how much longer I can fight this. My eyes meet the sprawling windows of Harrison’s house across the lake, and I remember whatRachel said about her view of Mom’s dock. Maybe she, or someone on her side of the lake, can see what’s happening over here.
But Harrison’s living room is dim, and he’s nowhere in sight. He’s not standing at his telescope, watching me like he probably did throughout my childhood to feel some type of connection to our family. He’s not down on the dock coming to my rescue. My father is not coming to save me. He never was.
