As I tried to focus, every thought that led me back to Lilly shut down. Roadblocks erected. Flashing yellow hazard lights. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate and recall the day Cal wore his pyramid scheme suit, I couldn’t. The scene was lost, just beyond my reach.
“Dear Lizzie, you are so close. I’m proud of you,” Virginia said, hugging me again. This time I accepted her arms around me, my eyes burning from too many tears.
“I’ve told you everything now,” I said quietly. “Everything that I can remember. A lot of it is hazy, Virginia. I told you some main events, but I think... I think my mind blocked some of the rest. I start to remember it, but the thought just shuts down a minute into the memory.”
“That’s perfectly normal. Perfectly understandable,” Virginia replied. “As we continue, you’ll start to unlock it all, Lizzie. Your memories will become your own again. But you have some tasks to complete,” she reminded me.
I lifted my eyes to hers, and then met Cal’s. He looked at me angrily. I’d divulged so much information to this stranger, this murderous woman, and Cal desperately wanted to defend himself.
I reveled in his frustration. The facts had been recounted, out-loud, for the first time, and Cal had no way to twist them. He had no way to spin each story to make himself the victim. I imagined that he was whispering against the duct tape with every incident that I recalled, protesting its truth.
So satisfying.
Cal was silent. Cal had to listen to what he’d done. Even if Virginia was crazy, she’d put Cal in the position I’d longed for for years. Cal was on trial and the judge would not allow him to speak.
Cal was held in contempt.
“It’s time to move along,” Virginia said, stroking my hair. “Do you feel up to taking a walk? I have warmer clothes and boots right here. I just need to be sure you won’t try to run. If you try to run away from me, Lizzie, I’ll be forced to dispose of Cal and Lana myself, and perhaps Jake, if he should arrive unexpectedly.”
My fierce protection for my husband forced my frustration to surface. “Don’t even think about hurting Jake, Virginia. I’ll protect Jake with my life.”
Virginia walked to the far corner of the cellar, bending to retrieve the boots that were lined neatly against the wall. “I didn’t think you’d run. Not after all we’ve been through and all we’ve shared with one another. Here now,” she said, smiling warmly. “Coat, hat, gloves, boots. Another secret passage right here that will lead to a hidden cellar door. We’ll be going for a snowy walk. We need to get to the lake.”
I nodded, sending Cal a wayward glance before slipping into the coat and boots. Time skipped a bit, and I figured the drugged wine’s latent effects were still toying with my consciousness.
I walked through the snow with Virginia. The air was filled with swirling snowflakes, the kind that rode the wind and refused to land. The crunch of the snow beneath our feet was the only sound until Virginia said, “there she is.”
I stopped as her red hair came into focus.
Lana’s body was in the center of the lake, sprawled on the ice.
“I used an auger to cut a hole in the ice. Martin kept one for ice fishing in the garage. Easy enough to operate.” Virginia reached for my hand as we approached the edge of the lake. “Don’t worry, Lizzie. It’s frozen solid. I walked all the way out to the center with Lana and drilled the hole without so much as a crack.”
My heartbeat skipped through my ribcage.
“Is she... alive?”
“Yes, oh yes,” Virginia replied as we neared Lana’s body. “The frigid water will wake her up. She’s such a petite thing, so the drugs in her wine are taking much longer to wear off. It was an effort to get her to walk.”
“Virginia,” I whispered, stopping. “What are you planning to do with her?”
Virginia smiled, tugging on my gloved hand again. “Oh, Lizzie, I can’t do all the work. The rest is up to you. I’m giving you the opportunity to watch her suffer and die. You see, the ice will act as a pane of glass. Like a window,” she added. “You’ll push her under and keep her from surfacing through the hole. She should be disoriented enough to not find her way out, but she’ll press on the ice. That is when the show begins.”
My stomach twisted. I turned to heave, wine and water pouring from my mouth. She was patting my back and I cringed, trying to fight her off.
Dear God.
“Virginia,” I cried, brushing my mouth with the back of my hand. “This is murder. Murder, do you understand me? Lana has a daughter. We can’t do this,” I cried.
“Yes, we will. Think about it, Lizzie,” Virginia said, staring at Lana. We were less than ten feet from her body. “If you allow her to live, she will continue on like this with Cal. She will enable him and feed his rage. His addiction. Her daughter will suffer. You are saving her daughter from suffering,” Virginia said. “You’re doing what you must do. You’re protecting the children. They have no one to protect them but us. Maybe we couldn’t protect Lilly, but we can protect Gabrielle. Protect her from Cal and Lana. Protect her from years of unspeakable abuse. The police won’t help Gabrielle. Child protective services won’t help. They investigate and nothing happens because Cal and Lana will lie and hurt and continue to lie until another child is dead or turned inside out. You love children, Lizzie. You love all children, even Lana’s. You don’t want them to be hurt, Lizzie, so you must do the hard work. And I’ll be here to take responsibility for this,” Virginia promised. “If anyone should find out. But this is the perfect place. The invisible lake. The middle of nowhere. Liza is already in there, Lizzie. She’s waiting for Lana. Child murderers don’t deserve to live, do they?”
I listened to her words, my breaths coming too fast.
“I can’t,” I said, my eyes burning again. “I can’t kill a person!”
“You must,” Virginia replied. “Or I will have to kill Cal. They can’t be permitted to exist together. Together, they are a volcanic eruption. So, allow me to make this easy for you. Lana or Cal?”
I pressed my hands to my forehead, trying to shake away the dizziness. I wasn’t prone to vertigo, but over the past few days, I’d never felt more off-balance.
“Decide!” Virginia screamed, jolting me.
“Lana,” I whispered, hurrying to her body. Virginia stayed back ten feet while I reached for Lana’s red hair, just as Virginia had described in her story. I fisted a clump of dirty red and drug her across the ice, toward the large hole that Virginia had created. The water was black beneath.
“Save the children,” I murmured, dropping to my knees and pushing Lana into the icy hole.
She woke as she was going under.
I met her terrified, unfocused eyes. Adrenaline surged through me. I fell back on my ass and kicked her with my legs, forcing her under the water and ice.
She did exactly as Virginia had described.
Lana screamed as she went under, and immediately tried to find her way out. She floated further away from the hole instead of toward it.
I followed her face as she continued to bob and smash against the ice.
I realized I liked it when she got closer to the surface, so I could see her clearly.
Her eyes were a nondescript green, and her pupils dilated. Her nose kept bucking at the ice, and I watched, my gloved hands flattened against the surface as I crawled along.
Bent over, crawling on the ice, following her.
Like a demon.
She jerked, but this time, she wasn’t trying to pound on the ice. She was choking on water, and I was fascinated.
One gulp, and then another. She was swallowing the murky lake water the way she’d swallowed my husband.
Whole.
She slowed down considerably. Her movements were no longer forceful. Her eyes lost focus, and I pressed my face closer to the ice, trying to see her.
She was sinking.
Silence.
I blinked rapidly, realizing I was sobbing. Rolling over onto my back, I
stared up at the sky. Snowflakes fell and clung to my lips and eyelashes. Clouds blocked where the sun should have been, and darkness settled around us.
Looking around, I realized Virginia was gone.
“Virginia?” I cried, slipping twice on the ice before finally pulling myself to my feet. As soon as I noticed that she’d left and gone back into the house, I wanted to run. My boots kept catching the ice and sliding out from under me, and I fell twice. The second time, my head cracked against the frozen water, but I managed to get back up and hurry to the yard.
Her footprints led back to the cellar door. I ran through the snow, my lungs burning and begging for release. I knew that the full realization of what I’d just done would hit me at any moment, but I couldn’t allow myself to think about it. I had to get to Cal.
The cellar door led to a myriad of catacombs that I didn’t remember walking through on our way out. I dragged my hands along the cold stone and tried to find my way to the root cellar. I could hear music again, but this time it was above me, not ahead. I walked away from the music, stumbling through the dark.
“Through here, dear,” Virginia called. I burst into the cellar, thankful to see Cal was still alive and shackled to the wall. The duct tape was gone from his mouth.
“Where is Lana!?” he roared at me.
“I did it,” I panted, pointing at Cal and talking to Virginia. “I did it, so let him go.”
She stared at me thoughtfully before tilting her head to the side and patting her blonde hair.
“You did do it, Lizzie. I’m so proud of you. So many steps in the right direction today. I do believe this is the most progress you’ve made in a very long time. But we’re not done, dear Lizzie. We have more to do. More hard work.”
“You told me you wouldn’t kill Cal! You told me that if I did- what I did-” I stumbled over my words as Cal glared at me, “then you wouldn’t kill Cal!”
“I have no intention of killing Cal. That’s not my place,” Virginia said.
“Then set him free!”
“Lizzie. You’re going to tell me about Lilly. You’re going to tell me what happened to her and where she is. Once you do, you’ll have all your answers. Your path will be clear. Every question you’ve ever had will be answered. Every uneasy feeling will fall away. You’ll be at peace again, Lizzie. Peace is all you have ever wanted. Peace is what you’ve been asking for.”
I cried out, growling and pressing my fingers to my temples. I was so sick of her riddles, and I wanted to claw at her face. I wanted to drag Virginia out to the lake and push her into the ice hole.
“Lilly shot herself with Cal’s gun!” I screamed, fury boiling my veins. “She shot herself while I was at work and Leah and Clay were at school!”
I gasped, brushing the hot spit off my lips.
Virginia stared at me, her eyes wide.
“She wrote me a letter,” I sobbed, my eyes meeting Cal’s. “She wrote me a letter in her journal and left it on her desk. She wrote that her Dad didn’t love her anymore, and she couldn’t live in the same world as him knowing that he didn’t love her. He broke her heart. And she didn’t want to be in a world where her father didn’t love her.”
Silence roared through the cellar.
Cal jerked at the chains, glaring at Virginia. “Let me go to her! Unchain me!” he shouted.
“Fuck you,” I cried. “I don’t want you to touch me, Cal! Or talk to me! Or look at me ever again!”
“I never told her I didn’t love her,” Cal argued.
I burst out laughing, fits of uncontrollable hysteria taking over as I doubled up.
“Why in the fuck are you laughing?” Cal rumbled, jerking at his chains again.
“You’re still invalidating her! Still lying to her, even after she’s gone,” I spat, walking to him. “You still defend yourself! You still say you’re the innocent one, and she’s not even here! She’s gone, Cal! She’s dead, in that casket we picked out. The one with the silk on the inside, and the pillows with lace. She’s rotting in that dress that she never wore, the one I bought for her right before she died. The teal dress, always teal. Lilly loved teal. I bought it for her on clearance, thinking it was such a great find. A steal, really. A dress she could wear again and again, to Leah’s graduation or my dad’s retirement party. I had so many plans for that dress, Cal. So many fucking plans. She was going to dance in that dress, Cal. Dance and laugh and drink punch and complain about how scratchy the material was. She was going to wear that dress more than once. More than just that once, in her casket, at her own goddamn funeral!”
I alternated between a whisper and a scream. I couldn’t seem to regulate my thoughts or emotions. Cal tried to open his mouth so many times, but I shouted over him, closing him up. Sewing his lips like they sewed our baby’s lips. Lacing them tight with truths instead of twisted fucking lies.
When I imagined Lilly older, as a woman, I pictured her in that casket.
In her casket, wearing her teal dress.
“Lizzie,” Virginia said softly, lifting her fingers to touch my arm. “May I hold your hand?”
“Get the fuck away from me!” I snapped at her, seething now. “You’re psychotic. You’re a murderer, and now you’ve turned me into a murderer. And if I already murdered Lana, what difference does it make if I murder Cal? What is the significance of one murder or ten murders? Twenty even? There is no difference. There is no impact. It wasn’t in self-defense. It wasn’t premeditated. It was just murder, and she’d just dead. Dead like my Lilly. Dead like your Molly. Dead. Fucking dead.”
SIXTEEN
Right after Cal left, I went to see a tarot reader.
It was a psychic fair that had reserved a conference hall in a local hotel for one dreary pre-spring Saturday, and Trina and I lined up with our twenty-dollar bills for readings. She chose a woman named Crystal who read stones with Native American symbols on them. I chose a man named Doug who read a regular- but worn- pack of tarot cards.
As soon as I sat down across from Doug, I knew he was the real thing.
I’d been to many psychics at this fair or that, always with my sister or friends but never alone. When I sat across from Doug, there was no pretense. No theatrics or dramatics. We introduced ourselves and Doug simply said, “oh, sweetheart. I’m so glad you came, and I’m glad to see you. It’s been hard for you. So hard.”
Maybe he saw that my eyes were still puffy from all the crying I’d been doing since Cal left, but I’d just met Jake. My swollen eyes were replaced by laugh lines. My heart was filled with butterflies. New butterflies. Butterflies that swarmed and dipped and fluttered against my heart like I was seventeen years old again. They were a beautiful teal color in my mind, because teal was the color of reservation. Beautiful, unconventional femininity. Creativity without seeking attention.
Jake’s butterflies were teal, and teal was peace.
“I promise to always give you butterflies, Lizzie,” Jake said when we first met.
Doug took my hands and prayed with me for a moment.
Cal was an atheist, so Doug’s praying made me uncomfortable for a moment.
But I can pray again, I thought.
I’m allowed to pray again.
He instructed me to shuffle the deck. He kept touching my hand the same way Virginia touched my hand; sympathetic, but not pitying.
He began to lay the cards in front of me, murmuring every so often. When he was through, he sat back in his hotel chair, sighing deeply.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, my nerves getting the best of me.
“Oh, it is now,” he said, tapping his finger on one of the cards. “I’m going to tell you the meanings behind each card as I turn them, but I want to tell you this first. I want you to pray again, Lizzie. Someone kept you from God for so many years, but that someone is gone now. This new friend- this gentleman,” he said, turning over a card and tapping his finger against a picture of a royal man. “The King of Wands. He is fire and strength. He is the one, Lizzie
.”
“I know he is,” I whispered, nodding solemnly. “His name is Jake.”
I blushed when he turned the card above him. Two naked people entwined in each other’s arms. He must have felt the heat radiating from my cheeks and smiled. “The Lovers. This card in this position has a very literal meaning. A connection of souls. And look- here you are. The Queen of Wands. You are warmth and fidelity. Oh, the two of you are meant for one another. I haven’t seen a match like this in a very long time. You’ve spent many lifetimes with each other, and you worked through all the struggles a long time ago, in other lives. In this life, you get to just be. Loving each other is so easy. Jake and Lizzie, Lizzie and Jake. And I can see that you deserve that, and so does he.”
I tried not to cry. He handed me a tissue. I believed in past lives. I wrote an entire book series about past lives. Hearing him validate my own intuition about Jake, after I’d been doubting that I could ever trust myself again, was relieving.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“You don’t have to thank me. I just read what I see.”
I took a deep, calming breath while he went on.
He talked about me and Jake with the kids, and then with grandchildren. “Ah, and the ten of cups. So lovely. Divine love. Soon, you’ll be a happy family. It will take time, but you will get there.”
An ominous card drew my attention, and I waited impatiently for him to talk about the cloaked figure.
“This is your ex-husband. He’s begun a very lonely journey. He will end that journey alone as well. You may be angry with him, and then pity him. Eventually, you will have no emotion for him at all. He is detached from you and your children and will continue to detach further. He will never get better, honey.”
I nodded. I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
He turned another card. Again, a hooded figure, this time holding a bunch of swords under his cloak. “He is the seven of swords. Fitting,” Doug said with an exhale. “Betrayal. Deception and trickery. You’re lucky to be away from that ex-husband of yours, Lizzie.” He turned another card, nodding. “And the Eight of Cups. Time to walk away.”
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