Don't Trust Her

by Elizabeth Boles

  I need a break, a change of venue. Or at the very least, a change in topic. So I set my sights on Blanche.

  “Why’d you come?” I ask her. “Here, this weekend? I mean, Paige stole your husband. The last place that I’d want to be was anywhere near the woman who did that.”

  Blanche closes her eyes and presses at the line that divots between her brows. “I thought we could make peace. I thought maybe, just maybe, if we talked, that Paige would apologize for what happened, maybe even admit her wrongdoing.”

  Bullshit. Who the hell wants to be trapped with the woman who stole your husband? “I know you better than that. You can’t lie to me.”

  Blanche avoids my gaze. “I thought maybe, if I talked to her, she’d break things off with Jeremy.”

  “Then what would happen?” Faith queries.

  “I don’t know.” Blanche gives us an accusing look. “I really don’t know, but I just hoped that if she’d do that—”

  “You’d get your husband back?” I venture.

  “Yes,” she grudgingly admits. “So I planned to talk to her. But then that shit happened with the cards last night, and I knew it was no use. She only invited me here to torture me.”

  Faith lifts the letter. “To make sure we all saw this.”

  A shadow slices across the windows, plunging the room into gray. I shiver as the sun lowers through the sky. The storm has stopped again. I can almost feel the cold creeping in through the windows, wrapping us in its frigid embrace.

  Blanche’s eyes are glassed over from drink. She rakes her fingers through her long hair and sinks deep into the cushions. “Does anyone have any other questions? I’m here to answer. And I’m not going to compare notes on the men in bed.”

  Vile. “I don’t want to know any more than what you’ve told us.”

  “It’s enough, isn’t it?” Blanche laughs bitterly. “What a weekend.” She points to Faith. “You’re a klepto, and I’m a swinger. What does that make Court?”

  A blush creeps up my neck. “I don’t know.”

  Blanche leans in. The glassy look in her eyes has been replaced with intrigue. “Your turn to spill the beans. What did you do to get yourself on that letter? What’s your little secret?”

  I hedge. “Well, Blanche…”

  “Come on.” The words slur. “We’ve shown you ours; now it’s time to show yours.”

  “Wait.” Faith fingers Paige’s letter. “There’s something here.” The top page pulls away, and she exhales, sitting back. “Oh no. There’s more.”

  Blanche is up and at Faith’s shoulder in a blink. “You didn’t see that?”

  “No. I thought the letter was done, but the second page got stuck.”

  “Probably from her spit mixed with Xanax.”

  “Blanche,” Faith warns.

  “I’m not apologizing. Let me see it.”

  Faith hands the letter over without argument. She withers back into her chair as Blanche lifts the paper and begins to read.

  Chapter 30

  Paige’s Letter - Part Two

  There is one more surprise, ladies, that I have in store for you. But before we get to that, let’s return to Brittany and what happened before and after her fall.

  When I left the woods, she wasn’t anywhere near the edge of the bluff. Brittany was smart. She wouldn’t have fallen on her own.

  That means one of you pushed her.

  Don’t try to deny it.

  This is what I know happened to Brittany after she recovered from her surgeries. She became a drug addict. Court, you told me that. You said that as a teenager, she had a bad accident and became addicted to painkillers not long after. You said she used to steal drugs from your mom’s pharmacy.

  That’s not the Brittany I knew. The girl from high school who used to come over to my house never would have done drugs. She was pushed into it, and it all started at that bluff.

  The next thing I know about Brittany is that she hid her drug addiction well, didn’t she? At least for several years. Then she did a stint in rehab and started college. But college didn’t last long because she flunked out, right? Thanks to the drugs. And then your parents convinced her to return to college and she did, but the drugs didn’t stop. Not until she entered rehab one last time.

  Would that time have taken? We don’t know that for sure, do we, because the car accident that killed her occurred after the last stint, when your family was taking her home. Do I have the story right, Court?

  But after the bluff incident and before rehab, Court’s family moved away. Your mother couldn’t live with the fact that someone had broken her child. No one believed what occurred up on that bluff had been an accident, least of all your mother.

  I know this because she visited me. She came to my house and begged me to tell the truth, to admit what I’d done. She had to know, she said, what had really happened.

  All I could tell her then was that I didn’t know. That’s what I would tell her now if she asked.

  I might not know, but you three do.

  So I say that one of you is directly responsible for Brittany’s death. This is why—the person who pushed Brittany turned her into a drug addict. If Brittany had never been an addict, then she never would have been in the car crash that took her life.

  You’re wondering why I care, don’t you?

  Brittany was my friend, and you ruined her life, same as the three of you wrecked mine. I pulled myself together, got married, became rich.

  But Brittany died. She died because of one of you. One of you pushed her. You changed the trajectory of her life.

  It’s time you confessed.

  Y’all seem to think that your actions don’t matter, that the games you played in the past were harmless. Well, they weren’t.

  It’s time to face what you’ve done. It’s time for you to pay.

  You didn’t think my little surprise would end with blackmail, did you?

  You’re so wrong.

  The police know what you’ve done. I have contacted a detective and told him that a killer is about to confess.

  It’s time to look deep, ladies. It’s time for justice for Brittany.

  It’s time for one of you to pay.

  You can come up and see me now. You can be angry, but it isn’t going to change the course of the future for one of you.

  Your best friend,

  Paige

  Chapter 31

  Holy. Shit. My throat closes. My voice is gone. The three of us stare at each other, searching one another for answers.

  Blanche speaks first. “Well, it doesn’t look like Detective Billy Bob is gonna be coming today.”

  God, she’s drunk.

  Faith bites her bottom lip. “I don’t understand.”

  “How can you not understand?” Blanche gestures upstairs. “Paige wants one of us to go to jail. This wasn’t just about her. It was about Brittany, who covered for us.”

  I press my fingers to my temples, applying pressure until it feels like my head will burst. “He’ll be here. As soon as he can. If Paige told him that she knows someone committed murder, he’ll come.”

  “But it’s not murder. Brittany wasn’t murdered,” Faith says, her face a blustery red. “This is insane.”

  “But he or she will still come,” I argue. “Paige gave them great clickbait.”

  Blanche shrugs hard. “I’m not worried. As soon as Billy Bob shows up, he’ll realize that what happened was a long time ago, that it was an accident. What do we have to be worried about?”

  “It’s all just a big misunderstanding,” I add.

  “Yeah.” Blanche looks relieved, relaxed that we’ve already put out this fire. “Paige was just trying to scare us.”

  Faith gnaws her fingernail. “And guess what else Billy Bob will find when he gets here?”

  “What?” I ask.

  She eyes Blanche. “The person who told him about the murder is dead. What a coincidence.”

  There is a long-drawn-out silence.
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br />   “What are you talking about?” Blanche says.

  Faith hikes a shoulder to her ear. “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do,” Blanche grinds out. “What is she talking about, Court?”

  I wave my hand in dismissal. “It’s nothing.”

  Her gaze slashes from me to Faith and back. “Have y’all been talking on the sly?”

  This looks bad. “No. Faith…” Thinks you might not be on the up-and-up? Believes you aren’t telling the truth?

  “Faith what?” Blanche demands.

  Faith fluffs her hair and shakes her head. “I just think it’s strange that we were all invited here and now Paige is dead.”

  Blanche stares at me. “What am I missing, because this looks pretty cut-and-dried to me. Paige thought she could face us. But when push came to shove, she couldn’t.”

  No one speaks.

  Blanche scoffs. “Y’all don’t really think there’s anything else going on, do you?”

  Faith lifts her brows and frowns as if to say, Yes, sorta, kinda, I do.

  “Court?” Blanche says.

  I twist the end of my hair into a rope. “It does look strange, but it’s nothing more than coincidence, Faith.”

  “Okay,” Faith replies defensively. “Sure.”

  “There doesn’t need to be any more discussion about it,” Blanche says. “If we’re going to discuss anything, it needs to be what happened up on that bluff. If Paige told that cop why he’s coming, then he already knows that one of us is guilty.”

  “What’s the statute of limitations on that?” I ask. “On pushing someone off a cliff?”

  “It’s not about that, is it?” Blanche says. “Even if there’s nothing for the police to press charges for, there’s a lot of other, stranger stuff going on. Paige committed suicide. Then there are the blackmail letters—if they know about them. If this information gets out in town…”

  Faith rubs her face. “Then we’ll be ruined.”

  Blanche nods. “If it gets out, and it will, if the police dig, then we’ll be raked across the coals. My store will lose business. Faith will probably be charged with a felony.” She turns to me. “And you, Court.”

  “I’ll be in just as much trouble,” I say quickly. “But the blackmail won’t get out unless we reveal it. There’s no reason for Paige to have told the detective. She would have wanted to protect herself.” But even as I say my next words, they fall flat. “Wouldn’t she?”

  We glance at each other nervously. None of us are convinced.

  “If they discover she was taking money in Bitcoins, they’ll start searching for why,” Faith argues.

  “Only if they’re looking for it,” I say.

  “We need to give the police what they want,” Blanche decides with a hard nod. “Don’t give them a reason to investigate any deeper.”

  There is uneasy silence. It’s the sort of quiet where everyone is silently agreeing to an unspoken idea. There are shared looks before gazes dart guiltily to the floor or walls.

  I only hope that Faith can give in to this. If she continues to press me about Paige, then she might, she just might talk to the police herself—tell them her own suspicions. But doesn’t she see that by pursuing it, she’ll only be dragging herself down? Ruining her own life?

  We need to keep this simple. It is simple after all, isn’t it? One of us must confess to pushing Brittany—end of story.

  I speak. “It sounds like we need to piece together what happened. What does everyone remember about the bluff?”

  Blanche laces her fingers together. “I remember Charlotte leaving and then you and Brittany fighting.”

  “Same here,” Faith says. “You got really angry at her.”

  “I was still mad about Charlotte and Sam.” I push myself to recall what happened all those years ago, to bring back the blurred images swirling in my head. It comes to me slowly, in big choppy waves. “I told Brittany that she was stupid for being friends with Charlotte.”

  “Then Brittany said that you needed to get over it,” Blanche offers.

  “Right.” Faith kneads the tendons of her neck. “You said that Brittany was too trusting.”

  “Then she shoved you, Court,” Blanche adds. “At that point I turned around and faced the other direction. I was ready to go.”

  So was I, I remember. The tension with Charlotte had gotten me worked up, made me sick to my stomach, but my sister wouldn’t let it go. We were arguing, cursing at each other. We were only steps away from grabbing one another by the hair and throwing down on the ground.

  It was worse than any fight we’d ever had as children.

  “I didn’t see anything else,” Blanche says. “I didn’t egg anybody on or tell y’all to fight it out.”

  “Are you saying I did?” Faith accuses. “Because I didn’t.”

  “I’m not saying that. All I’m saying is that I’m not complicit in the bluff accident.”

  Faith’s face twists in disgust. “We’re all complicit because we were all there.”

  “But I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Brittany. My back was turned. I don’t know how she fell.”

  “You went along with the lie,” Faith points out. “The lie that accused Paige.”

  “Because y’all told me what I should do.” Blanche gives her a patronizing look. “Besides, the lie isn’t what the police are going to care about.”

  “We don’t know that,” I murmur.

  “We’re all in this together, Blanche.”

  “That’s not how you were acting a few minutes ago, Faith,” Blanche snaps, using the same mocking tone that Faith had thrown at her. “All I did was cheat on my husband, and not even that. I was given the go-ahead.”

  Faith gives me a pointed look.

  “What’s that for?” Blanche asks.

  “Nothing,” Faith says. “Nothing.”

  Blanche’s jaw tightens. Her mouth opens to shred Faith into bits.

  “Can we please finish the story?” I plead. “Try to remember what happened?”

  “The next thing I knew, Brittany was on the ground,” Blanche says, chin lifted. “What do you recall, Faith?”

  “Um, Brittany was facing the bluff.” Her gaze cuts to the floor. “There was a lot of arguing.”

  “There was,” I say.

  My sister and I had gone at it, really ripping into each other. The words return to me.

  You betrayed me by being her friend. How could you defend her?

  What you were doing wasn’t right. She wasn’t completely to blame.

  But she was to blame! She’s a slut.

  And then I closed my eyes, and the next thing I heard was a scream and hands were groping the air like a trapeze artist reaching for their bar.

  But there was no bar to catch. All there was, was a stone slab and the jagged teeth and claws of the rock face as she flew down.

  The air squeezes from my lungs. Words get tangled in my throat. They can’t come out. They can’t recede. Blanche and Faith stare at me as I take a deep gulp of oxygen, filling my lungs to the point where they can’t gain one more inch of air.

  I exhale the shot of breath, look at both of them, and say, “I did it. I’m the one who pushed Brittany. It was me and me alone. If anyone is going to pay for something, I will.”

  Chapter 32

  Faith gives me a puzzled look. “You shoved Brittany off the bluff?”

  I curl my hands to fists. “Right. It was me. No one else. So if they come asking, I’ll just tell them that.”

  I’m so tired of thinking about all of this. I’m so tired of being stuck here. It’s the best thing, really, just to go ahead and admit it.

  “That’s why I wanted to blame Paige, or Charlotte,” I continue. “Because I was afraid.”

  Faith keeps giving funny looks, and it burns into me. I don’t understand why she keeps staring. Yes, I do. She wants more, the dirty details. But there aren’t any. I’ve been scooped out and left with nothing.


  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Blanche asks softly. Some of her drunkenness has apparently worn off.

  “I don’t know. How do you say something like that?”

  Not wanting to discuss this anymore, I fidget with my cuticles, picking at a particularly gnarly one as I scour the details.

  When the detective comes, I’ll admit fault and we’ll show him or her the bottle of pills and Paige’s body, keeping the letter to ourselves, of course. By admitting fault, my plan is that he won’t dig any deeper into anyone else. Blanche and Faith will both be immune from scrutiny.

  Yes, as I process this, it makes sense. The pieces all fit together perfectly. Paige killed herself after she told us what she’d done. We’ve been trapped here, mourning. She must’ve felt guilty for turning one of us, her friends, in to the police. It was just an accident. There’s nothing more to look into. No need to investigate any farther, Officer.

  “But you couldn’t have done it on purpose,” Blanche insists.

  “No, I didn’t do it on purpose. My backpack was big and heavy. Y’all probably don’t remember, but that day I had science homework, so I had that big awful textbook in my pack. I swung around, and it struck Brittany. She stood too close to the edge, much too close, and she fell.”

  Blanche’s eyes narrow. “Then why did you insist we say that Charlotte did it?”

  I tug at my sweater’s collar and feel a line of sweat ringing my neck. A shrug and I reply, “Because we weren’t supposed to be there, Blanche, and I was too afraid to tell the truth. We all were, if I remember correctly.”

  Blanche’s lips purse into a dissatisfied bow. “So you’re willing to say that to the police when they come?”

  “I’ll tell them that, yes.”

  “Faith?” Blanche asks.

  Faith starts. “What? Sorry. Yes?”

  “That’s what happened?”

  “That’s what I recall,” she says.

  “It’s the story we go with.” Blanche rises, stretches. “I’m going to take a shower down here. The sun will set soon. Do we have enough firewood to last the night?”