Don't Trust Her

by Elizabeth Boles

  Derek chuckled. “Well, this baby here is in fine shape except for the o’s. The lowercase cuts off a little at the bottom. Not much to complain about, if you want to know the truth.”

  “Is my husband regaling y’all with boring old tales about typewriters?” Paige, her eyes glassy from drink, snaked a hand over Derek’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to be putting y’all through such torture.”

  We laughed as Blanche and Jeremy came up, along with Faith and Scott. It was one of the last times that I remember all of us girls being together.

  The last time until now, that is.

  Faith’s voice carries up the stairs. “Court, there’s something that I have to show you!”

  There is a sharpness to her tone that triggers me.

  My hand trembles. It’s silly, my reaction. All she has is the pill vial. What could Faith possibly need it for?

  From the top of the stairs I see her and Blanche in the living room. Faith’s wet hair drips onto the shoulders of her shirt. Moist blotches quilt the tee from top to bottom. Blanche stands on the other side of the room, glowering at Faith.

  What the hell is about to happen?

  “I couldn’t find the cable,” I say lightly.

  “Never mind that now,” Faith tells me.

  Blanche snickers. “Faith has something to show us.”

  My feet drag over the stairs as I descend. My gaze cuts to the window, searching for any sign that the ice is melting, but not one raindrop falls from the trees. The branches sit as encased in crystalized ice as they did yesterday.

  There will be no leaving today. Our families will start to miss us. Tal won’t know what’s happened, and when I don’t come home tonight, he’ll worry. He might come up if the ice melts enough to travel.

  “What do you have to show us?” I ask.

  Faith eyes me sharply. “I want the two of y’all to sit.”

  Blanche exhales. The sound rings with exhaustion and fatigue. It’s the noise of running, constantly running without rest. All of us look as if we’ve been hit by a truck. Our eyelids are swollen, and the circles beneath are deep amethyst. We have cried. We have worried, and now there is a new challenge.

  Blanche speaks. “Faith, the cable to the router is missing. We can’t reach anyone and tell them what’s happened. Can we just—”

  “Sit!”

  Blanche eyes me warily. I come to her rescue. “Okay, Faith,” I coo, “we’ll sit and listen to what you have to say.”

  I cross the living room as if walking over an egg carton. Blanche and I choose the same couch and sit, knees together, backs straight.

  Faith paces like she’s wound to popping. Her voice is shrill, her curls a wild halo swimming around her head. “I knew there was something strange about what happened to Paige. Like, it doesn’t make any sense. I’m not a great person—I admit that. I’ve lied to y’all and kept a terrible secret. But there are worse secrets here, secrets that I can’t get involved in.” Her voice tips into the soprano range. “Y’all see that, right?”

  She looks to us for an answer, and I nod even though I’m unsure what she’s talking about.

  “This is what’s going to happen. I’ve read enough mysteries to know this. The police will come looking for someone who’s going to confess about Brittany.”

  “Me,” I volunteer.

  She nods, goes on. “But they’ll be suspicious because the woman who called them is now dead.”

  “She was getting divorced,” Blanche adds.

  “But she’s dead,” Faith reminds her sharply. “She’s dead, so suddenly that looks strange. The detective starts to dig, and he discovers that the suicide victim was extorting her three best friends? That’s just too coincidental. It’s so much of a coincidence that they will begin to look at each one of us. Our dirty little secrets will be exposed. I will be arrested. Scott will divorce me and will probably get full custody of the kids.” Her voice hardens, and her head shakes, her gaze darting about the room. “I can’t lose my kids.”

  I speak. “No one’s saying you will—”

  “Yes, I will! Don’t try to tell me how this will play out, because I already know. That’s what will happen. And while the two of y’all want to live in la-la land about it, I know the truth. So.”

  She takes a big, deep breath and studies us. How does this connect to the pills? How is all of this brought together? Is it that she’ll say again that Paige never would’ve taken sleeping pills because of her cousin?

  Blanche twitches. Her face grows red. It looks like nerves but could be anger. She purses her lips a lot. I decide it’s anger.

  “So all of that,” Faith tells us, “got me thinking. I wanted to take a look at the evidence—”

  “What evidence?” Blanche asks.

  “The pills,” I whisper.

  Her head jerks toward me. “You know about this?”

  “I saw that they were missing—when I went up there just now, that is.”

  “The pills,” Blanche muses, rocking back. Her brows lift sarcastically. “Fascinating.”

  “The evidence,” Faith corrects.

  “That you just tampered with,” Blanche reminds her. “I don’t think the police will like that very much.”

  Faith pales but quickly regains control of her features. “It was a necessary evil to learn what I did.”

  “And what is that?” Blanche asks, her tone full of skepticism. “What exactly did you learn from a vial of pills that were sitting on a bed stand? Let me guess. You learned that if you take them all at once, it will kill you. Is that it? Is this over?” she asks me.

  “Not by a long shot,” Faith snaps. “You’re acting awfully suspicious, Blanche. Like someone who has something to hide.”

  Blanche sucks in her cheeks. “I have nothing to hide. For God’s sake, yesterday I told you about the swapping. What have I been hiding? You and I said why we were being blackmailed, but Court never did.”

  My mouth dries. “Oh, um…”

  Faith pounces. “That’s right. Court, why were you being blackmailed?”

  “Because of Brittany,” I answer quickly. “Because she was pushed from the bluff. The letter said that they knew I had done it.”

  Blanche’s eyes narrow.

  Faith shrugs. “Well, I mean, you did admit to us that you pushed her.”

  “But then why would Paige have written that one of us needed to confess to pushing Brittany? If your letter already spelled out your guilt, I mean,” Blanche adds.

  “I think she may have just been guessing with mine,” I tell them. “She didn’t have anything concrete on me.”

  “Of course not,” Blanche says under her breath, suggesting that I am too perfect to have done anything wrong.

  Humiliation winds in my chest. It should be me buried underground, not my sister. When I close my eyes, I see blood. I see glass shattering. I whisper words in her ear, and I dream of a thousand pounds of dirt falling on me, my fingers clawing to puncture through the mound of earth that enters my lungs and cuts off my breath.

  They don’t understand the burden of guilt I bear, and they never will. The only thing I can do is plead my truth. “I’m not perfect. Y’all know that. What I mean is that—”

  “We know what you mean,” Faith says. “You don’t have to explain.”

  Her words are ice that slices my skin. It’s no use trying to explain anything to them—not right now. Emotions are too high. The situation presses on all of us like a ceiling that’s lowering to the floor, slowly squeezing us until we break.

  We’ve seen death, blackmail, had to face our pasts, our sins, and everything else in less than twenty-four hours. It’s like we’re trapped in a horror movie, waiting for the next victim to be taken by some invisible beast.

  I circle the conversation back to Faith. “What is it that you think you have?”

  Faith presses her fingers to her cheeks, which are red. Her fingers are cold, I’m sure, same as mine. I dig mine between my thighs and pinch my legs tog
ether. The fire is burning down. My gaze skitters to the wood, and Faith sees it. She yanks a log from the pile and tosses it atop the flames, sending ash and smoke spitting out.

  “The label on this bottle is interesting—very interesting. Y’all may not know this, but I have anxiety sometimes. It’s not often, but I do have some. Do you know what my doctor prescribed me?”

  “Let me guess,” Blanche says. “Xanax. I’m right, aren’t I? I know I’m right.”

  “You’re right.” Faith eyes gleam wickedly. “Not only do I take Xanax, but I take a certain kind of Xanax.”

  “The same brand,” Blanche guesses again.

  “The exact same brand.” Faith points to a spot on the label. “You see, on this bottle, there’s a description of the pill—its shape and the markings on it. See? Right there.”

  It looks like a football with a slit down its horizontal middle. There are either numbers or letters on the pill, too, but I can’t quite make them out because Faith snatches the bottle away too quickly.

  “This is the exact same tablet that I take, and there’s something very funny about it.”

  Blanche crosses her arms. “And what would that be?”

  “That pill, after it’s been in the bottle for a few days, starts to leave white powder on the inside. I know this because I get my prescription filled every four weeks. Within a few days, there’s a residue. But this”—she unscrews the cap and flicks the bottle in our faces—“has been wiped clean.”

  It is as she says—the brown cylinder’s interior is spotless. This isn’t an important detail to me, but Faith’s self-satisfied smirk makes my gut twist. She’s heading down a road that no one is going to like. There is nothing for me to hold on to, not even Blanche, who sits stoically beside me. My friend is void of emotion except for when she’s hit rock-bottom. That Paige saw Blanche at her weakest shocks me because I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve seen Blanche weep.

  She straightens, her body beaming a signal that she can’t be touched. Blanche isn’t a life raft for me to cling to. Nor will she toss me a rope to grip as Faith spins her theory from a ribbon that doesn’t exist.

  Blanche, with fatigue in her voice, says, “What exactly are you saying, Faith, because I’m not following you.”

  Faith licks her lips. “What I’m saying is that someone got this bottle, wiped it clean, and set it beside Paige. Either that, or there were never any pills in the vial to begin with.”

  “There were never any pills,” I repeat, trying to grasp what she means. She’s turning this against us. She’s pointing fingers at me and Blanche. This can’t be what it is. Faith wouldn’t, couldn’t be shifting on us so violently.

  But couldn’t she be? She’s been suspicious since the first night. She has dropped hints before, noting the extra card beside Blanche, saying that Paige never would have killed herself.

  Oh God.

  Now there’s a vial that’s spotless inside. This is all the proof that Faith needs to descend down a rabbit hole to nowhere.

  Blanche rubs her hands. Her brows pinch, and her mouth twists into a puckered bow. “You’ve gone too far with this.”

  Faith shakes her head. “I’m not the one who went too far. Someone planted this beside Paige, and it wasn’t me. I didn’t put this there. That only leaves two options. It was one of you. One of y’all left this bottle beside Paige’s body.”

  The cabin moves in, the walls breathing down on me. The house seems so much smaller, so tiny as the accusation grows. I dare ask the next question, but I need to know for sure exactly what Faith means.

  “Why would we have done that, Faith? Why would someone have wiped the inside of the bottle?”

  She scoffs as if it’s obvious. “Because Paige didn’t kill herself. One of y’all murdered her and then planted an empty bottle beside her to make everyone think it was suicide.”

  Chapter 38

  Bile churns in my stomach. My gag reflex threatens to kick in but is held back by clamping a hand over my mouth.

  I look at Faith to see if possibly this is a sick joke, that she’s only kidding. She thought that somehow it would be fun to make our weekend so much worse. But the glimmer of suspicion in her eyes tells me how wrong I am.

  Faith means every damn word.

  Blanche explodes. “Faith Parsons, are you going to stand there and say that one of us killed Paige, a woman who was our friend?”

  Faith slides the vial of evidence, if you can call it that, back into her pocket and shrugs as if trying to get rid of a pesky fly that’s landed on her shoulder. “Paige wasn’t your friend anymore, remember, Blanche? You told us that.”

  Faith twists our words too easily, as if she takes great pleasure doing so.

  “That doesn’t mean I killed her! I should have left this house when I had the chance.” Blanche flings an arm toward the door. “I should have taken Court’s SUV and got out Friday night. This is madness. You’ve gone and lost your damn mind, Faith.”

  Faith nods and her flustered persona sinks away, revealing a cool, calculated woman, one who feels so cornered that she had to dig up what she considered evidence in the most unlikely of places.

  “You can say I’ve lost my mind,” she says without flinching. “You can go ahead and believe that. But I knew Paige, and she never would’ve killed herself.”

  Blanche stands and jabs the air. “You are out of your fucking mind!” She turns to me, hands on her swinging hips. “Can you believe this bullshit? As if it isn’t bad enough about the blackmail, but now she’s adding this other shit on top of everything else?”

  I take Blanche’s hand and give it a good squeeze, silently telling her that we must remain calm. Fighting Faith with fire will only push her forward, make her even more sure of herself.

  To Faith, I ask, “What is it that you want?”

  She lifts her chin, staring down her pert nose at us. She says in a voice that’s too calm, “I want the person who committed this crime to admit to it. Immediately. When the police arrive, I want whichever one of you who did it—and I don’t know how you killed her, but I will find out. Anyway, when they arrive, I want you to confess your guilt.”

  “You don’t know how we did it because we didn’t do it at all.” Blanche pulls her hand from mine and rakes her fingers through her hair. “Faith, I just…this is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Faith jabs her own chest, and her eyes fill with tears. So the persona starts to crumble. “I am not going to jail because of one of y’all. I just won’t.” Her voice breaks. “I have…lived with my secret, and I’m not about to have it come out because one of y’all…did what you did.”

  “But why did we do it? If you’re so damn convinced that one of us somehow murdered Paige, why?” Blanche asks.

  Faith plucks several tissues from a box and blots her eyes. “Your life would have been ruined if the swapping got out. You said so yourself.”

  “Hardly a reason to kill someone,” Blanche flings out.

  “I suppose…” Faith whispers.

  “You suppose what?” Blanche demands.

  “I suppose you did it because she destroyed your marriage.” Faith’s brow curls in defiance. “You trusted Paige, and then she ripped away the only thing that you wanted. You told us that yourself. You said that you wanted to save your marriage more than anything. But Paige stole that from you, didn’t she?”

  Blanche looks uncomfortable.

  Faith smiles wickedly. She knows that she has Blanche now, that she has won.

  Blanche quickly wilts, and it is a strange thing to see Blanche, who is so proud and strong, physically bow her back as she realizes that everything Faith says is true.

  Faith, obviously buoyed by this victory, pins her gaze on me. “And if I had to surmise, I suppose Court did it because—”

  “Enough!” My chest feels like it’s going to be crushed under the weight of these insinuations. “That is enough. No one killed Paige. No one. You, Faith, could easily ha
ve lied when you said that you didn’t know she was the one extorting us. For all we know, you could have planted the pills.”

  She asks with a smirk that I want to slap right off her face, “But then why would I reveal them?”

  Because you’ve lost your mind?

  I stare at Faith and exhale. “We are all friends here. All of us. And no one killed Paige. What happened was either an accident or she took her own life. I don’t know the truth and probably never will. You’ve got to get that through your head right now, or else we’ll be walking out of this house as enemies. It’s one thing to speculate. It’s another entirely to tell us that we’re guilty of a heinous crime. Murder, Faith? Really? I thought you knew us better than that.”

  “I thought that I did, too,” she says.

  Blanche slaps a hand against her thigh in disgust as Faith steps away, eyeing us both. Her finger tap, tap, taps the bottle that sits snuggly in her pocket as she contemplates her next move.

  “You have a choice,” I continue. “You can either let go of this idea and salvage our relationship, or you can damage it forever. Which will it be?”

  And even as the words fly from my mouth, I pray that there is some part of Faith left that I recognize, a part of her hiding deep inside, a little girl that will see what she has done is wrong.

  As I think this, time strides forward. A clock on a wall ticks away the seconds. The fire crackles and hisses. The stuffed deer heads gaze down at us, their black marble eyes watching, always watching.

  We stare at one another. My breath is frozen in my chest as we wait for Faith to move a square on the board.

  Finally she speaks. “It was one of you. I know it was. That’s all I have to say.”

  She stares at us for a moment longer, letting her words sink in before heading to the kitchen.

  Blanche shakes her head. “I would never…”

  Her words trail off, but her meaning is obvious. She would never have done that to Paige. I grab her shoulder. “I know you wouldn’t. Neither would I.”

  “But she won’t believe us,” Blanche whispers. “Who is she? What’s happened? I wish I’d never come.”