by Minka Kent
She still won’t look at me.
Fucking coward.
Checking her phone, she tells Thayer someone’s almost there—two minutes away.
“Good,” he says. “We’ll just sit tight then. Meadow. Couch. Now.”
I don’t move. I can’t. I’m frozen. Paralyzed.
“Now.” He speaks through clenched teeth and his voice booms, startling Lauren.
Stepping carefully, I make my way past the two of them and take a seat at the far end of the couch. Thayer takes the chair across from me and Lauren stands between him and the door, as if I might try to escape with a crazy guy pointing a handgun at me.
When there’s a quick rap at the door a minute later, Thayer tells Lauren to get it and she moves as though her life depends on it. Funny, all this time I thought Lauren had the upper hand.
The door swings open and a woman in a black jacket and dark jeans enters, her hair pulled away from her face and tucked under a baseball cap.
Our eyes meet.
“Elisabeth?” I begin to stand until Thayer points his gun in my face again and tells me to “sit the fuck down.”
The door slams behind her.
I’m going to be sick.
Forty-One
“Meadow?” Elisabeth is surprised to see me.
“You two know each other?” Thayer asks.
“You all know each other?” I answer his question with a question of my own.
“She’s my sister,” he says.
“Half-sister,” Elisabeth corrects him. The distinction must be important to her. She turns to Lauren while pointing at me. “The girl you described is nothing like her. You said she was your fucking mini-me.”
“She is,” Lauren says. “She basically … I don’t know … became me.”
Elisabeth rubs her temple, her winded breath steadying. “Great. This is … this is just great.”
Thayer hasn’t moved an inch, keeping the gun trained in my direction.
“I’m sorry, Meadow.” Elisabeth’s voice softens, but her face is hard lines and dark circles. “You’re a good person. You don’t deserve this, and I’m truly sorry. I mean that.”
“Sorry for what, Elisabeth?” I say her name and I speak to her as a friend. A friend who has dropped everything to be there for her in her time of need. A friend who has done nothing but listen and cook her food and clean her house and quell her loneliness.
Friends don’t kill friends.
But if she’s capable of ordering a hit on her husband … she’s capable of anything.
Thayer sniffs. “Come on, Meadow. You’re not that dense. You’ve been piecing this shit together from the start.”
Slight tremors rush over me, electric shocks that come and go. “You set me up. The three of you.”
Lauren looks down. Thayer smirks. Elisabeth says nothing.
“You only needed a roommate so you had someone to frame,” I speak to Lauren. They had it all planned from the start. They wanted to find some quiet, awkward girl, rope her into their inner circle, plant evidence, then accuse her of being dangerously obsessed.
And it made sense why she kept saying I was perfect …
I was a blank canvas, unremarkable and impressionable, and she was planning her masterpiece.
This could’ve happened to anyone.
I just happened to be the first one to answer the ad. And I was exactly the person they were looking for. Someone socially lost and awkward, someone who needed friends. She saw exactly what I needed before I even knew I needed it—and then she used it against me.
Manipulative bitch.
Everything was a lie from the moment I walked into that house.
Everything.
And that day Thayer was grilling me about who Lauren might be sneaking around with? He was only fishing, only trying to see what I knew at that point. He was never some forlorn lover, some jealous boyfriend. He was only a man on a mission, trying to keep their little plan from falling apart.
“So what now? You’re going to shoot me?” My voice wavers, though I’m trying my damnedest to keep a brave face. “You don’t think it’ll raise any red flags to the police when the roommate of the girl who was sleeping with the professor who was murdered … winds up killed herself?”
Elisabeth tucks her chin against her chest, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Will one of you explain how this is going to go down. I can’t right now. It’s like slaughtering your pet chicken so you can eat it for dinner.”
“Yeah, we’d hate for you to have murder on your conscience.” Thayer speaks under his breath, rolling his eyes. He lowers his gun for a moment. “You know, Meadow, killing you wasn’t part of the plan. At all. We had our alibis locked down, our evidence planted. We just wanted the heat on someone else—we didn’t even intend for you to be convicted. But you kept digging and digging. And you couldn’t keep your mouth shut. And we had an agreement. If one of us goes down, we all go down. That’s why we couldn’t let you go to the police about Elisabeth. I mean, hell. You gave us a good scare when you marched down there and told them it was me.”
His jaw flexes, eyes squinting.
The police said he had an alibi: his sister.
Of course.
“Lauren, get some paper,” Elisabeth says. A moment later I’m being handed a notebook and a pen. “This is your confession. And your final goodbye.”
The pen shakes in my hand.
They’re staging a suicide.
My suicide.
Forty-Two
I’m hunched over Thayer’s coffee table, my hand trembling so violently I’m not sure I’ll be able to write my name, but I don’t have a choice.
There’s a gun to my head.
And three people who have made it their mission to see to it I die today and take the blame with me.
“Hurry up,” Thayer says after a minute.
“I’m trying.” My eyes burn, welling with thick, hot tears. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You’re the writer, Elisabeth.” He turns to his sister.
She exhales, massaging her temples, before waving her left hand in the air and frowning. “I don’t know. Just say you’ve loved Reed Bristowe but when you found out he was expecting a child and happily married you knew there was no chance with him so … you know. Just put it all in your own words—in your own voice. Then end it with an apology and anything else you’d like your family to know.”
My lips purse and a fat teardrop falls, staining the lined paper beneath my hand. All this time, I realize Elisabeth never once took an interest in my life. I’d let her vent for hours, rambling on about her work and her husband and her childhood, but never did she ask about mine.
The signs were there all along. Elisabeth Bristowe is as self-centered as they come, a bona fide narcissistic sociopath.
“Come on now.” Elisabeth clears her throat, stepping closer. I can’t look at her, but I imagine she’s staring down at the blank, tear-stained page in front of me.
What I wish I could write is that all I wanted was a cheap room to rent. I didn’t plan this. I swear.
I’m innocent.
But all eyes are on me.
Forty-Three
To Whom It May Concern:
I am the sole person responsible for the murder of Meyer State University professor, Reed Bristowe.
I was in love with him.
The feelings were not mutual.
I can’t bear to live with what I’ve done, so I’ve decided to take my own life.
Signed,
Meadow Rain Cupples
Forty-Four
“Let me see it.” Elisabeth yanks the paper out from under me the moment the ink is dry on my signature.
The handwriting is shoddy and barely legible, but I made damn sure my message was void of emotion, undeniably impersonal. If someone murders their “lover” it’s normally a crime of passion. If my letter is formal, maybe they’ll know it was a set up?
I may be long gone by then, but I�
��ll be damned if these three walk free.
“This is boring as shit.” Elisabeth hands it back after studying me for a moment. “But we don’t have time for a rewrite.”
Thank God.
Taking a couple spots back, Elisabeth rubs her belly, like it’s any other day. Somehow the tenderness is still there, but I don’t think someone this evil is capable of love. Not in any genuine, lasting capacity. No wonder she spent her entire college career obsessed with Reed, friendless with no desire to have a social life outside their relationship.
“Was it real? What you had with Reed?” I ask Lauren. Thayer and Elisabeth stare her down. By the looks of it, I’m guessing it was.
“Since you’re not going to answer …” Elisabeth says, “… yes. I walked in on my little brother’s girlfriend screwing my husband in the guestroom on New Year’s Eve last year. And then I found pictures on his phone.” She fakes a gag. “The only person in this world that I loved was fucking some coed twelve years my junior. My life had become a living, breathing cliché. And he needed to pay. It’s as simple as that.”
I see it now, the coldness in her eyes. This entire thing was planned out move by move. Intricate with clockwork parts. Strategic—like her novels.
I turn to Thayer. “You and Lauren … was that all an act? Since you knew all along?”
Elisabeth answers for him again, “Shockingly, no. And don’t even waste your time trying to figure them out. I stopped trying a long time ago. So not worth it.”
“I thought we were friends,” I say to her. “I was there for you when no one else was.”
Her brows meet and she moves toward me. “I know, Meadow. We were. And I’ll never forget you and what you’ve done for me. Truly, you’re a gem. And again, I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all of this.”
Half of me believes her, but only for a split second.
She’s a monster. A murderer.
Elisabeth Bristowe is anything but sorry.
I’ve heard it said before a million times … that thing that happens when someone’s about to die. Their whole life flashes before their eyes. I always thought it was this tacky way of saying someone was looking back on their life, the good and the bad, their accomplishments and regrets.
But in this moment, the saddest thing isn’t that I’m about to die.
It’s that I don’t have anything to look back on.
I’m twenty-two years old, and I haven’t lived at all.
I have no friends. No one to love me or miss me when I’m gone.
I haven’t done anything of real significance—nothing to contribute to the greater good in any kind of meaningful way.
When I die, the world won’t feel my void.
I’ve done nothing but hide myself away from the rest of the world, which has done nothing but deny myself of the kind of things I should be thinking about in this moment, seconds from the end of my life.
I want to live.
I’m going to live.
“You don’t have to do this. If you let me leave, I won’t tell a soul. I promise.” I lie before accidentally (on purpose) dropping the pen. It rolls beneath the coffee table. Elisabeth’s belly is too big for her to bend and if Thayer reaches for it, it means he’ll have to lower his gun.
I might be able to run then …
I’m almost positive Lauren neglected to lock the front door after Elisabeth arrived.
Part of me wishes the smallest part of Lauren feels guilty for this. And I hope it will haunt her the rest of her days. For the rest of her life, I hope she sees my face every time she closes her eyes. I hope she’s wracked with guilt. I hope it eats her alive, from the inside out. There’s not enough makeup in the world to hide an ugly soul.
“If you’re not happy with it, maybe let her rewrite it?” Lauren suggests. Her gaze flicks to mine. “It has to be perfect. This is her only chance to say goodbye.”
As much as I hate to admit it, for a sliver of my doleful little life, she was my friend. And I was hers. There were moments of our friendship that were rooted in something real and genuine.
“Absolutely not. “Elizabeth chuffs. “I want to get this over with. I can’t her staring at me with that pathetic look on her face.”
Pathetic? Try terrified, desperate, hurt.
“Please?” I ask, voice shaking. “I can write a better one. I … I was nervous. I still need to write something for my grandmother.”
“You’re something else, Meadow.” Elisabeth eyes the pen on the floor. “Thayer, grab the pen. Get her another piece of paper. You have two minutes.”
Just as I hoped it would happen, Thayer drops to the floor, his gun lowered and his arm buried beneath the bottom shelf of the coffee table, searching for the pen I “dropped.”
I don’t waste a single millisecond.
I bolt.
Pushing past Elisabeth, she loses her balance, screaming for Thayer to grab me, and as he scrambles to get off the floor, my hands are already around the brass doorknob. The cool metal on my palms feels like heaven, and while I can hardly breathe, I promise myself to run like hell the moment I make it outside.
From the corner of my eye, I almost swear I see Lauren taking a step back. While Thayer is reaching, trying to grab me, she’s staying out of the way. But I don’t have time to think about that, not when I’m quite literally straddling a line between living and dying.
The door sticks at first, but I give it a hard pull and it swings open. With legs ready to sprint down the rickety metal stairs that lead to the parking lot, I burst through the doorway, only to knock into someone.
It takes a second for me to come to, and when I do, I find myself on the concrete walkway outside Thayer’s door, back against the handrail. Peering up, the midday sun nearly blinds me after being in that dark lair of an apartment for the past hour, but when I rub my eyes, I focus on an outstretched hand and I let it pull me up.
It’s Detective Caldwell.
“Meadow,” he says. He looks bulkier than the last time, and I think he might be wearing a Kevlar vest under his button-down shirt. “Get out of here. Go. Now.”
Before I have a chance to comprehend any of this, a uniformed police officer is escorting me down the stairway and leading me to a covered section of the building, out of sight.
Forty-Five
Despite the fact that I’m safe and sound, wrapped in a thick, woolen blanket and surrounded by painted cinderblock walls and an entire department of law enforcement officers, I can’t stop shaking.
I’m free.
They placed me in Caldwell’s office and sent some woman in to determine if I needed a referral for a victim liaison counselor. It took a lot of insisting, but finally they were able to see that I’m fine.
I have nowhere to go after this … but at least I’m alive.
The oversized clock on Caldwell’s wall has one of those smooth second hands, the kind that don’t tick, and there’s a baseball-shaped stress ball next to his phone. There’s nothing to do here. I don’t have my phone or my bag or my car keys—everything is in Thayer’s apartment, scattered on his kitchen floor where he threw them.
My chair is hard and my lower back is beginning to ache, so I swap it out for Caldwell’s and push his up to the wall. Repositioning my blanket and wrapping it around me, I close my eyes and try to rest. I’m not tired—far from it—but these fluorescent lights are giving me a headache.
I’m not sure how much time has passed when his door swings open and I’m startled into the present moment.
“You hungry?” Lee has a white paper sack in his hands and a Styrofoam cup. “Wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got you a burger and fries and a chocolate shake.”
I let the blanket fall around my shoulders and wheel myself to his desk.
“It’s a comfortable chair, isn’t it?” he asks.
“You want it back?” I unwrap the burger and shove a fry in my mouth, hating that the scent of greasy food makes me homesick in the weirdest way. Growing up, Mom ne
ver cooked. We ate McDonald’s every Monday, Thursday, and Friday—her late work days—and when she’d waitress on the weekends, she’d always come home smelling like a deep fat fryer.
We don’t get to decide what home means, I guess.
“Nah,” he says, watching me inhale this food.
“Thank you for this.” I take a sip of the shake, and the thick, icy liquid soothes my hot, dry throat and gifts my belly with a comforting fullness. “So where are they?”
He knows exactly to whom I’m referring.
“In custody,” he says without missing a beat. “Has anyone … filled you in yet? On everything?”
Sitting the cup aside, I look him square in the eyes. “Nope.”
His chin juts forward and he nods. “Okay …”
I shove my food aside, shut my mouth, and listen as he fills me in on everything.
And when he’s finished, he tells me the only reason I’m here right now, breathing this stale office air … is because of Lauren Wiedenfeld.
She saved my life.
“I want to see her,” I say to him when he’s finished.
His nose wrinkles, like I’m asking an impossible favor.
“I want to see her,” I repeat, clearer this time.
“Meadow, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” He sounds apologetic but doesn’t look it. “She’s a suspect and you’re a victim. Even if I wanted to, it’s against—”
“Please.” I stand. I’m not taking no for an answer. Not after everything I’ve been through today.
His lips press together and he releases a hard breath.
“Detective Caldwell, I just want to talk to her. She saved my life,” I say. “I just want to ask her one question and I’ll be on my way.” He drags his hand through his hair, hesitating. “You can supervise. You can stand there the entire time.”
I shove the fast food dinner aside and fold my arms before glancing toward the door.
It takes him a moment, but he finally stands. “I’ll give you one minute with her. That’s it.”