The pain is blinding as everything goes dark for a second. I think I’m screaming. I don’t know. Someone is.
She releases her grip and I roll off, scrambling as fast as my rubbery muscles allow. I look at her and Cora’s grabbing her head, the impact just as debilitating for her.
I look over and see my father standing there, watching us from across the study. His expression hasn’t changed, that perpetual squint locked in place, analyzing us as he would a financial statement. He still has his goddamned drink in his hand.
Then I realize that’s all this is.
This fight. It’s an analysis to him.
Now I understand what all this means to my father. What this point in time represents.
This is a decision being made for him.
If Cora kills me, everything can be laid to blame on awful Rose. They’ll craft a posthumous narrative in which I was the girl who did a terrible thing as a teenager and tried to tell the world about it through her books.
But if I kill Cora, the liability of the family is finally removed. The daughter who can’t control her urges, the girl whose past mistakes were always sure to be revealed will be gone, her terrible acts buried deep along with her.
Either way, my father wins. Which is why he’s standing there, holding his drink, watching his offspring try to annihilate each other.
Logan Yates always wins.
I reach and grab the fallen iron poker, then lift myself up. As I get to my feet, my back is to my father as I face Cora, who scrambles to stand.
I raise the poker over my head, now grasping it with both hands.
Cora gets onto one knee before losing her balance and falling onto her back.
Now’s the moment. She’s vulnerable. I’m not. I have only seconds to make my move, and they might be the only seconds I’ll have.
She’ll kill me if I don’t kill her.
Max. Think about Max. Both parents gone.
Attack, Rose.
Attack with all you have.
And still.
Still, I don’t know how.
Don’t know how to swing this heavy poker and smash it into my sister’s skull. Don’t know how to keep hitting her with it after the initial blow incapacitates her. Over and over, blood spraying, bone crunching, skin and face turning into lifeless goo.
I don’t know how to do that, because I’m not Cora.
I can’t.
I just can’t.
The seconds pass, my body frozen, the poker held high and immobile. Cora manages to get to her feet.
She stares at me, a purple welt rising on her forehead, that toothless grin back in place.
She knows I can’t do it. Knows I’ll never be like her.
Her right hand slides into the back pocket of her jeans, and from it, she pulls out a folded knife. Black rubber grip. Like someone who’s practiced for this very moment a hundred times, she deftly thumbs the three-inch blade from its home.
It clicks into locked position with horrifying authority.
My father, behind me, still says nothing.
“Are you ready for this?” Cora asks. Her voice is gentle, as if she’s a young mother placing her child on the merry-go-round for the first time.
I don’t answer her. Instead, I keep my gaze on Cora but address my father.
“Everything was always about family.” I put more weight on my back leg and raise the poker higher. “We could have made things right twenty years ago, but we had to have secrets because that’s how families take care of themselves, right? We could’ve brought peace to Caleb’s family.” My voice grows louder. Beads of sweat run from my forehead and down my nose. “But you kept insisting that families keep their secrets. Families protect each other. Well, what about now? Who’s protecting us now?”
I direct the words at my father but keep my intense focus on my sister, watching her every twitch, every eye blink. Cora is half-crouched, knife in her right hand, coiled on the tightest of springs. I try not to think how I could be dead one minute from now. How my promise never to leave my son would be broken in the most painful way possible. I try to suppress the fear, work to calm myself, find a place of inner focus within this horrifying chaos. No guru could envision meditating during a life-or-death fight, but that’s exactly what I do. A three-second meditation. A single deep and purposeful breath, appreciating it could be one of my very last. A simple mantra, repeated only once.
I am.
This steadies me, giving me strength.
“You are,” my father answers, his voice a graveled monotone. “You’re both protecting yourselves now. You’re my family, but this fight isn’t mine.”
My voice matches his, calm and unwavering. “I don’t want to be part of this family anymore.”
“Okay,” Cora says.
She lunges with the blade.
Fifty-Nine
I’ve talked to a lot of cops. Talked to both victims and criminals. Researched my books to great lengths, knowing that no matter how few people may read my novels, I’m giving my audience accurate portrayals of intense and life-threatening situations. What it’s really like to face danger, push through to the other side, whatever side that may be.
There are many clichés said about such situations, but one I’ve been told dozens of times is how time slows down when danger is at its peak.
This happens for me now.
I see the knife coming at me. I have a thousand years to react. A thousand years all crammed into the space of maybe two seconds, but it’s all I need.
I begin my downward swing with the iron poker at Cora’s first movement, a push off her left foot. The arc of my weapon is in motion before that foot even leaves the ground. The blade has its own trajectory, extending out to the side, then circling in as Cora descends upon me.
In these thousand years, I see a math equation. A question of physics and geometry. Time and distance, speed and motion. Either I’ll strike her first with the poker, or she’ll slice though my belly, unprotected and stretched outward toward the knife, inviting disembowelment.
I have so much time but I struggle to solve the equation. I was never very good with math. Cora was better, another way we’re different. Right-brained versus left-brained. Emotional versus calculating. Empathy versus sociopathy.
I can’t do the math, so I have to rely on faith. Faith that I deserve life more than her.
I keep swinging, Cora keeps lunging.
And then the thousand years comes to a sudden end. Her swipe ends with her blade whooshing centimeters from my stomach. My swing ends with the iron poker shattering my big sister’s skull. Shock waves through my arms, a million needles.
The sound is grotesque, like stepping on a swarm of roaches.
I let go of the poker, but the poker doesn’t let go of Cora.
It’s lodged in her head, the fleur-de-lis tip buried in the upper hemisphere of her brain.
She falls, first to her knees. The blood hasn’t even begun to spill, but the opening in her head is clear and irreversible. For a moment, a whisk of a moment, I think how she’d hate to see herself like this. Not beautiful. Not perfect. Yet, in the strangest of ways, it’s the most human she’s ever looked.
The knife falls to the floor, scattering.
Cora falls next, face-first, the impact almost dislodging the weapon from her skull.
Almost.
The bleeding now starts, furious.
She breathes. She breathes. Not with ease, not with comfort.
My father says nothing.
I kneel next to her, grab her hand. I squeeze, she squeezes back.
“Call 911,” I say numbly, not even sure if I mean it but knowing it was what I said twenty-two years ago, when another life was on the brink of permanent departure.
“No,” my father replies.
I don’t argue, and that’s why I’m still a Yates.
I hold my sister’s hand and feel the grip loosen. Listen to her breath become shallow and distant. Watch her eyes flutter before settling.
And then, that grin on her face, the wan smile worn by Caleb Benner. Assurances of something better in the distance.
“Touch it,” I whisper, thinking of the rainbow in the cornfield, the storm in the distance, the sun brilliant and affirming. “It’s like taffy.”
The smile remains, but seconds later, the energy is gone. Just like with Caleb. With Riley. The fruit of my sister is gone, and just the husk remains.
This is when I cry. Cry for all I’ve done and all I haven’t done.
And cry for what I still need to do.
Sixty
November 17
8:24 a.m.
I wake.
Brilliant sunlight streams in the room, filtered through white-lace sheers, rendering my surroundings like the inside of a cloud. The room is familiar, but my brain is so heavy it can’t place it. I stretch, roll onto my side, blink a few times. For a moment, it’s peaceful.
The moment lasts just for these few blinks, and then the horror of memory rips through my guts. Rips through with rusted metal teeth.
I’m in my bedroom at my father’s house.
Cora’s dead.
I killed her.
It’s…it’s daytime.
Think back, I tell myself. What happened last night? I remember crying next to my sister’s body. Crying so hard I couldn’t stop. I don’t remember coming upstairs. I don’t have any memory of what happened with…
I bolt up in bed.
Is she still down there? Is my sister’s body still crumpled on the floor of my father’s study?
My stomach’s imploding, reminding me of how I felt the moment I realized Cora was a killer. I retch again. This time, nothing comes out of my mouth, but the bile in my throat burns like acid.
The aches come alive. Pain throughout my core, where my sister punched me repeatedly. Soreness on my right shoulder, and I remember slamming into the bookshelves as I attacked her.
I reach for my phone on the bedside table, suddenly desperate to know the time. When I fumble and find it’s not there, the image of Cora smashing it into bits replays in my mind.
I’m untethered, a particularly unsettling sensation knowing Max isn’t with me. Maybe he’s been calling.
My laptop is on the table where my phone should have been. I wake it and log in to my email account.
The only new message of consequence is from the school district, declaring another snow day.
I begin writing a message to Alec when I realize I don’t have his email address. In fact, I don’t even know his number. It only existed on my phone, which I hadn’t backed up since before I met him.
I go to Facebook and log in, hoping I can find him on there. I haven’t looked at Facebook in nearly a year, having abandoned social media after I discovered my husband’s infidelity.
I’m immediately assaulted with an outpouring of grief on my wall, scores of messages from friends expressing utter disbelief about Riley’s death. I have forty-eight unread messages and two hundred and twelve notifications. A quick scroll reveals a Bible’s worth of sentiments (praying for you, thoughts and prayers) and more heart and sad-face emojis than my mind can count. The postings are all from July.
After a few moments, I shake myself out of the stupor and search Alec’s name. I find him quickly—his beautiful smile radiating from the tiny profile photo—and friend-request him. Three minutes and a lifetime pass, and he accepts. Thank god.
My phone is dead, I write in a private message. I didn’t know how else to contact you. How did Max do last night? Did he try to call me?
Pulsing dots tell me he’s writing back.
Morning. Assume you saw school’s closed. All good here. Max had a couple rough moments last night but did okay overall. He tried calling but it went straight to voicemail. Making breakfast now. Pick him up whenever. No rush.
Another shovelful of guilt piles on top of the mountain I’ve already created.
My fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to reply, but I hesitate. I have a haunting suspicion anything else I say will sound guilty, something that would be potentially damning evidence in a trial.
I don’t answer. Instead, I delete the message thread, knowing how meaningless the act is. Nothing disappears on the internet.
I throw the sheet and blanket off me, realizing how weak I am for the first time. Swing my legs over, stand, then brace against a wave of dizziness. I’m not even hungover. More like still drunk. I didn’t have more than half of that first drink…vodka something.
Steadying myself, I look down at my clothes. Same thing I was wearing last night, and there’s a small but not insignificant splatter of blood on my jeans.
I close my eyes against the sight of it, but I can’t close my memory. Of Cora’s head splitting open.
I’m frantic to divert my thoughts so I lumber to the window, pull back the curtain, and rest my forehead against the cold glass, grateful for the chill. White everywhere, easily another six inches of snow. The world outside is beautiful. The world inside is a chamber of horrors.
My urge is to rush to Max, but I need something else first. I need to understand what happened last night. After Cora.
I attempt a deep breath but end up coughing. Open the bedroom door, walk down the hallway, pause at the top of the stairs. The wooden steps appear sharp. Treacherous.
I descend. One flight, then two.
I look over to the wall at the bottom of the staircase, where in my dream I saw the painting of the rainbow and the field. There’s nothing there. Nothing has ever been there.
Through the foyer, down the hallway toward the study. The house is as silent as a house could be. A tomb.
Abril, I think, panicking. What if Abril shows up?
I see the entrance to the study, twenty feet away.
I don’t want to go in there.
I have to go in there.
My steps grow smaller.
As I close in, there’s a smell. The aroma of chemicals. Bleach.
Ten feet away. Five.
I reach the entrance. It’s dark, the wooden shutters pulled closed. There’s a diffused glow from the outside light escaping through cracks, but not enough to see what I need to see.
I reach in, flick on the lights, clench my stomach.
Breathe out. Breathe in.
Nothing.
Well, except the smell of chemicals. And there, I notice. The area rug is gone. And…the set of fireplace tools. Also gone.
Otherwise, the room is normal and immaculate. Not a book out of place. Not a drink glass touched. I walk inside, not wanting to. The chair I was sitting in is back in place. A few more steps, over to…to where it happened.
No trace of my sister. No blood on the floor. Nothing but the smell, which is stronger here. I lower to my knees, lean over, and sniff the hardwood floor where she died.
The acrid fumes bolt up my nostrils, making me jerk back.
“Took me all night.”
I scream. I can’t help it.
My father is standing in the doorway. He’s not in a suit. Jeans, polo shirt. Sneakers. As if he’s going out to watch the regatta.
He leans against the doorframe. Folds his arms and studies me.
“What…” I struggle to focus. “What happened? I don’t remember.”
“You were hysterical,” he says. “I gave you something to sleep.”
“You did?”
He nods. “Knocked you out. You needed it.”
Jesus. My father drugged me. Sleep meds and alcohol. The symbolism of it all.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“The less you know, the better
.”
“I know a lot already.” I’m still on my knees and lean back to sit on my heels. “I didn’t want to do it.”
“I know. We went through this last night. You were inconsolable.” He sweeps his gaze along the floor where Cora died. “I’m not sure she would’ve felt the same way.”
The tears start to come again but I can’t. I just can’t. I’ve pushed through to some other side where crying doesn’t even provide relief.
Still on my knees, I lower my head for a moment, the weight of the last twelve hours overtaking me. Then I look to him. To Logan Yates, the man behind the curtain of everything.
“I didn’t want to kill her,” I say.
“I know, Rosie.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
This elicits a deeper squint, a flex of the arms.
“You work so hard to protect a family of poison,” I say. “I loved Cora, I think. In a weird way. A nostalgic way.” I stare into him, deep into him. I don’t dare look away. I don’t dare blink. “But I never loved you.”
He absorbs this, processes this in whatever way his soul is capable of doing such a thing.
And then he says, “Love is weak.”
“No, it’s not. You loved Mom. You must have loved her.”
“And look what that got me.”
I shake my head. “So you just go through the rest of your life like that? Emotionless?”
He unfolds his arms and walks into the room, then settles in his favorite chair. “I guess I’m more like your sister than you.” He looks over to the liquor bottles, considering but not moving. “You asked me last night about family.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You asked how I could sit there and just let…let everything happen, when all I’ve ever talked about is protecting us.” He slouches down in his stuffed chair, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen my father slouch in his life. Logan Yates is a man who always sits up straight, an iron spine, always ready for action. Now he looks tired and beaten, finally appearing as old as he is. Maybe older. “I thought about that a lot last night. All through the night, through everything I had to do, I thought about family. And sometime this morning, around sunrise, I realized something.” He looks over at me. “Maybe she would’ve hurt you, but I think what happened…the outcome…is what she wanted. I think it’s what we all wanted. I never had the strength to do it, and you did. When I was standing there watching you two last night, all I wanted to do was keep you both safe. But then I saw there was this chance to finally solve the Yates family problem. The problem of Cora.”
The Dead Husband Page 25