“Melanie, Thomas, Georgia,” he said out loud. “Do those sound similar to Meghan, Thad and Genevieve to you?”
Meg froze and scooted closer to Hawk so they could read together.
They ignored the noises around them and the voices on the intercom as they lost themselves in the story Gen had created.
“It’s about a crumbling marriage,” Meg murmured aloud twenty minutes later. “It’s reality-based fiction. That does make sense. She’s always been a method writer.”
“You’re Melanie,” Hawk pointed out. He read aloud a sentence. “‘Melanie wanted everything Georgia had. She couldn’t begin to know how to be her own person, because she’d never had to be.’” He looked up at Meg. “Harsh.”
“And untrue,” she snapped. “Entirely untrue. I didn’t want my sister’s life.”
“No, just her marriage,” the detective agreed.
Meg grunted and shook her head. “I didn’t want her marriage, either. Thad and I had a connection when the two of us needed it the most. It’s lonely when you’re dealing with someone who isn’t based in reality.”
“Wasn’t it a bad idea to allow her to have a career in fiction, when in real life, she was detached from reality?”
“Allow her to have a career?” Meg reared her head back. “You don’t know a lot about Gen, do you? We couldn’t allow or disallow anything.”
“Okay, noted,” Hawk said calmly. “I didn’t mean any offense.”
“I know you didn’t,” she answered. “Gen is just an unusual person. I love her, but she can be difficult. And no one can understand unless they’ve seen it.”
“Well, you’re a doctor, so you do have an advantage.”
“True.”
They kept reading, about how Georgia was the victim, and Thomas and Melanie were plotting against her. It was very apparent that they were the villains in her story.
“That’s normal,” Meg said aloud. “She was lashing out. This story was her catharsis, the way she handled her pain. Artists frequently do that.”
Hawk started to read aloud.
“‘Georgia kept to herself, growing more and more isolated. What was this life? Was madness, in fact, freedom? Behind her back, her husband and sister cavorted in sin, as Georgia whiled away in silence.’”
“Now she’s getting ridiculous,” Meg muttered. “She was never silent.”
“‘Her bedroom was a tomb, quiet and dead. She tread in it alone, with only her own madness to accompany her.’”
They continued to read, shoulder to shoulder.
Melanie combed her hair and waited for Thomas to join her. They laughed about Georgia’s naivete while they readied to climb into bed together. Down the hall, Georgia slept, blissfully unaware.
“You are the love of my life,” he whispered to Melanie as he climbed in beside her.
“As you are mine,” she murmured, her lips on his throat. They clutched each other, as they rode waves of ecstasy, over and over throughout the night. By morning, Thomas’s member was wet and limp, thoroughly used.
“I forgot she wrote romance,” Hawk said ruefully. Meg didn’t answer, as she was absorbing the fact that her sister was writing about her and Thad’s lovemaking.
In the morning light, Georgia crept from her own bed and stood in the doorway, gazing at her sister and her husband.
Her sister’s face was beautiful in the light. They had gotten their good looks from their father, the same blond hair and blue eyes, although they inherited the cleft in their chins from their mother.
She loved them both. She hated them both.
She would rather die than stand in their way, would rather die than watch them live happily ever after together. There was only one thing to do at this point.
She had to kill her sister.
* * *
Hawk and Meg reached this point at the same time and looked at each other.
“In the journal, she wrote that someone agreed to do it. I thought it was gibberish, along with the rest of that page, but I think she might’ve been talking about the abductor,” Hawk said slowly.
“My coat,” Meg said, and her voice shook. “She took my pink coat that night. She was wearing it. Hawk, we look enough alike to be twins.”
Hawk stared into Meg’s pale face, and the truth dawned on him like the sun.
“It was supposed to be you.”
53
Gen, Then
Gen grabbed Meg’s pink coat and slung it around her waist. She fluttered her fingers at the doorman, and brushed him off when he cautioned her about New York at night.
Of course, she knew.
She was drunk, not a child.
The stars twinkled at her like fairy lights and she waved back, dipping and flouncing along the sidewalk. The lights blurred and followed her like snakes, and her cheeks were flushed.
She stopped at the chipped yellow fire hydrant to adjust her shoe. Then she threw her head back and twirled in the night.
She’d never felt anything so magnificent as the night air on her skin right now.
“Meghan,” a voice whispered from behind.
She paused, and for a split second, she remembered what she had done, what she had set up, and that someone was mistaking her for her sister right now.
But there was a pain in her head, and then nothing.
It was the buzz that woke her.
Before she was really awake, she felt her body being jarred, vibrated.
Her head throbbed, and she opened her eyes. It took a moment for her eyes to focus—everything was so blurry.
Two red eyes burned in front of her. She started to thrash and kick, but her hands were bound. She was in a dragon’s belly, she decided. She would die here, and become part of it. She would be its soul. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.
But her head.
It throbbed, and she tried to clutch at it with her bound hands.
The dragon eyes blinked, then they closed.
She was in the dark. She was drunk. She kicked and kicked, and then the dragon’s mouth opened.
Someone leaned in.
A man in a hood. The pain in her head was so bad, she almost couldn’t see.
“No,” she tried to say, when he called her Meghan again.
I’m not Meghan. I’m Genevieve.
But he didn’t listen, and her tongue didn’t work. Her mouth seemed to be sewn closed. She wiggled her lips, and they worked against glue.
The man hefted her out of the dragon, and her legs banged against metal.
“I’m sorry that your sister doesn’t love you,” he told her, and she was indignant at that.
“She does,” she tried to say. “She always has.”
She could hear water, crashing and lapping, and she didn’t know where she was. The stars mocked her now instead of danced, and she cursed them. The water started singing to her, though, and she sang with it. Hello, I love you, won’t you tell me your name.
“You’re fucking batshit nuts,” the man said as he was dragging her.
Her shoes caught on rocks, and it should’ve hurt but it didn’t.
She was focused instead on the moon’s yellow belly, hanging full in the night.
He lost his grip and tugged at her hair, and she tried to kick him.
He laughed. She’d never forget the maniacal sound of it. He was soulless.
He was part of the dragon, she realized, with drunken logic. He needed her soul. She fought harder, then harder, and still he laughed. She was a tiny insect, and he was the spider.
He threw her on the ground, onto her knees.
She looked at the ground, at the pebbles and the sand. Dead grass floated in bits around them, patchy and sparse. Where are we? she wondered, and then she didn’t care. She felt warmer than she had in a decade. I’m floating. I’m s
inking. I’m water.
She hummed and the man kicked at her.
“You’re crazy,” he decided, certain now.
He shoved her head down, so she could only see the pebbles beneath her. There was a jagged gray one. It would be a good marble, she thought. I’ll get it for Thad. He’ll like it. She tried to reach for it, but her hands were bound. She’d forgotten.
“Do you know why you’re here?” the man demanded. “You slept with your sister’s husband. She’s making it right with this. Do you hear? You brought this on your own head. She wanted you to know that.”
Something cold was shoved into Gen’s neck, right where it met her shoulders. She bucked at it, but it resisted.
Her fingers scratched at the ground as she tried to get the pebble for Thad.
She was startled when the man abruptly fell in front of her, facedown on the wet earth, his gun skittering away from them.
A woman stood behind him, a rock in her hands. Gen could see only her eyes—the rest of her face was covered with a hood—but it was clear that she had struck the man in the head.
“You saved me,” Gen told her. “Why?”
“That was a bad man,” Jody answered. “I followed you here. I have to take you somewhere safe. Somewhere you can’t take Thad away from me.”
She used the rock again, this time on Gen.
When Gen woke again, she was in a utility shed alone.
She was alive.
54
Gen, Now
“Let me go,” Gen begged Jody. “I swear, no one will know. You’ll never see me again. You can have Thad, and you’ll all be happy.”
Jody considered that.
“How do I know you’re telling me the truth?” she asked. “Thad says I can never tell.”
“I will swear to it,” Gen told her. “I don’t want to be here. You have my word.”
“They’ll know what I did,” Jody said. “And Thad will be so mad at me.”
An idea came to Gen, and her eyes lit up. Her plan had been foiled, but there was still something she could do. A way she could escape.
“I just thought of something,” she said. “Listen.”
So Jody did, and when Gen was finished talking, they were on the same page. They would both benefit.
Jody untaped Gen and picked up the phone to call her brother.
“Thad, can you come get me? I came to find you.”
Gen ducked out of the shed without a backward glance.
* * *
Seven days later, Meg stood with Hawk on the shores of the Hudson River while divers hunted for Genevieve.
Meg pressed her hand to her mouth, and turned into Hawk’s chest to hide her eyes as the divers came up empty-handed time and time again.
“You’re sure Jody said she was here?”
“Yes. She said Gen wanted to die and walked into the water and never came out. She had a plan to frame you and Thad for her death, to make sure you paid for hurting her. But she came to her senses and thought better of it. Jody unknowingly saved Gen from the abductor Gen had hired to grab you.”
“You mean, the man Gen paid to kill me,” Meg corrected.
Hawk looked away.
“Jody knocked him out,” he said. “Only Gen didn’t want to be saved.”
“She wasn’t a bad person,” Meg said simply.
Hawk wasn’t sure whom she was talking to. Maybe herself, maybe him.
“She was a lost soul, I think. She was out of her mind with rage. She loved me.”
“She needed help,” Hawk said matter-of-factly. Without thought, his hand stroked Meg’s shoulder in comfort.
“You didn’t know her,” Meg answered softly. “She was delicate. Her mind was so brilliant, yet so fragile.”
She didn’t watch as the coroner’s office van waited nearby for a body. They didn’t find one, though. Her body was gone.
“She tried to have you killed,” Hawk reminded her.
“She wasn’t herself.”
Meg pulled away and straightened her shirt, and wiped at her eye makeup. She lifted her chin.
“When is Joe arriving?”
“He’s not. I’ll see him at home.”
Hawk didn’t ask for details, and Meg didn’t offer. She knew what she had to do, and that was her business.
“How are your parents?”
“Mom wanted to be here, but Dad wouldn’t let her.”
“Good.”
“We still just can’t believe this. We’re in shock. We feel guilty... We feel so many things.”
“You’re not guilty,” Hawk answered, turning to her. “You didn’t do this. Thad didn’t do this. No one did this. It’s just a tragic situation.”
“A waste of New York tax money,” Meg threw his words from a while ago back at him.
“Sometimes I’m a dick,” Hawk acknowledged. “I’m working on it.” He paused. “What will you do now?”
“Go back to work, I guess. My partner has had to cover for me long enough. It’s time for me to deal with my life. All parts of it.”
Meg got into the cab alone and headed back to her hotel room, the one she was supposed to have been sharing with Gen.
She sat on the bed, surrounded by Gen’s things, and tried to imagine what Gen had felt like there at the end. She’d known about the affair and hadn’t had anyone to talk to about it.
Only the private investigator.
Before she could decide otherwise, Meg called him.
“Dr. McCready,” he answered.
“Hello, Mr. Jenkins.”
“What can I do for you? I was very sorry to hear about your sister.”
Jenkins was somber, and Meg did believe he was genuinely sorry.
“I know my sister paid you a lot of money,” she started. “But were you also friends? It kills me to think that she didn’t have anyone to talk to there at the end.”
“I was her friend,” he agreed. “Maybe the only one she had.”
“That’s not fair,” Meg told him. “You haven’t been through everything for years, the ups and the downs and the struggles. You’ve only known her for a period of months.”
“She was a good girl, and her family failed her,” Jenkins said firmly. “You’ll never get me to believe otherwise.”
“I don’t know why I care what you think, but I do. I’ll be arriving back in Chicago tonight. Can you meet me? I have something to show you.”
Jenkins agreed, and Meg texted him the address.
She packed up Gen’s things, her belly clenching with every item. An hour or so later, her mother rapped on her door. Her eyes were red. Her face was pale.
“Are you almost ready? Our flight leaves in two hours.”
“We’ve got time, Mom,” Meg assured her.
“I don’t want to be late. I just want to be gone from this wretched place. You never should’ve brought her here.”
Meg stared at her mom. “Mom, you realize that it wouldn’t have mattered where we were. Gen was going to do what Gen was going to do. She tried to have me killed.”
“And now she’s dead,” her mother snapped. “I think that’s punishment enough.”
Tears streaked her cheeks, and she wiped furiously at them. “Damn it. I thought I didn’t have any tears left.”
“You lost your daughter,” Meg told her gently. “Your emotions will be all over the place for a long time. But you’ll be okay. We’ll get through this.”
Meg didn’t say out loud what she was thinking, that a little compassion for her wouldn’t hurt anything.
She felt resentment coming from her mother, and it stabbed her.
“Even now, you’re finding fault with me,” she said slowly. “What is it about me, Mom? Why have you always blamed me, never Gen?”
“Good grief, Meghan,”
her mother snapped, and picked up one of Gen’s shirts. She held it to her nose and inhaled it. “Gen always needed more attention than you did. Surely, as a doctor, you can understand.”
“I understand that you always resented me for being healthy, I think. And since Gen wasn’t, she got every latitude imaginable. Even now, she tried to have me killed, and you’re angry with me.”
“You aren’t the victim here,” her mother answered.
“Only because a mistake was made,” Meg tossed back. “Otherwise, I would be the one lying at the bottom of the river right now. And I didn’t do a thing to deserve it.”
“You slept with your sister’s husband!”
Meg froze, unaware that her mother knew.
Ginny eyed her, her eyes bright. “Oh, yes. I knew. Your sister knew, too. Did you think no one would figure it out?”
“You’ve known this whole time?”
“I suspected. How could you?”
“It was a mistake. People make them.”
“Your father and I haven’t been unfaithful even one time in our entire marriage,” her mother said. “It’s really not that hard.”
Meg decided not to reply. Her mother was overwhelmed, and even in death Gen was her priority. She would overlook it for now—her mother was grieving.
“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” she told her mom, signaling it was time for her to go.
She finished packing, and as she did, she threw Gen’s vanilla perfume in the trash. That scent evoked periods in life she desperately wanted to forget.
In fact, there was so much of the past couple of years that she wanted to erase.
She was on her way to the airport, sitting silently with her parents when she realized something.
She hadn’t allowed herself to cry yet.
55
Jenkins stood at the window in his living room, and his wife watched from the sofa, where she was knitting a baby blanket for their grandson. She started to say something but, from years of experience, knew better. So she kept silent until he decided he wanted to talk.
The Last to See Her Page 26