Marshall looked at her, tilting his head in a curious way. “I was surprised, too. All these years, I’ve been living with a stranger. A murderer. A liar.” He flipped his hands over and stared at his palms.
“How long have you known?” Brett asked, and then swiveled her head to glare at Eli. “And you? I bet you’re going to sit there and tell me you didn’t know about this either?”
Eli’s mouth hung open. He looked just as shocked as she did. He shook his head and started to protest, but Marshall spoke over him. “Eli had nothing to do with any of this. I swear on my life he didn’t. I didn’t even know about Margot until last night when Clara and I were arguing about what to do with that reporter, with your friend.”
“Jimmy.” Brett could barely push his name past her clenched teeth.
“Yeah. We were arguing about him. And I was thinking about what you told me when you dropped off Elizabeth, about Margot going missing in the afternoon, not in the morning like we all thought. And I couldn’t stop thinking about that day, the day Margot went missing. Clara came over to my house that afternoon, and she was all cut up and shaking. When I asked her what happened, she told me she’d tried to hurt herself, and at the time, no one even knew Margot was gone, and even after, I didn’t think…” He let out a low moan and buried his face in his hands. “I believed Clara. I believed her about everything because that’s what you do, isn’t it? You believe the people you love.”
“She told you she killed Margot?” The words scraped her throat dry.
“She told me it was an accident.” In his voice was the desperate need to believe his wife, even after her betrayal, knowing all he knew now. “But then she told me she killed Zach, too. Because of what he’d done to Elizabeth. And after what happened with Jimmy…” He swallowed, the sound loud in the quiet room. “I came home and found him lying on my kitchen floor. I thought he was dead.” He laughed, a brittle stutter. “She said he attacked her. And I believed her about that, too, but that was before I knew about Margot and Zach. So I did what she told me to do, I helped her move him. We drove him to a hunting cabin in the middle of the forest, I don’t even know how she knew it was there, but I did what she asked me to do because I believed her. I thought it was an accident, and I didn’t want her getting in trouble. I didn’t want either of us getting in trouble.”
His gaze moved out the window, searching for his daughter, but Elizabeth was nowhere to be seen. He looked heartbroken as he shifted his gaze back to his hands. “But now I know who she is, what she’s done. I shouldn’t have done it. I should have stopped her. If I had known…” The rest of the words broke off in a muffled sob.
“What about Nathan Andress?” Brett asked.
Marshall’s brow furrowed.
“Do you think Clara might have killed him, too?” she pressed.
“I don’t know.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Before, I would have said no, absolutely not. Clara is a good person with a good heart. But now, I have no idea who that woman I married is. A monster capable of anything, I suppose.”
And it was starting to make a terrible kind of sense. Clara loved Marshall first. But Marshall fell in love with Margot. And that day in the woods, in a fit of jealous rage, Clara killed the girl she perceived as a threat. Clara killed Margot. But there were so many things Brett still didn’t know. Why did Margot go out into the woods in the first place? Had Clara lured her there, or was it merely happenstance? An accident like Marshall claimed, or something far more sinister? And how did Archer find them? What had he seen?
She imagined Archer crouched in the shadows, in one of the forest’s many hidden places, watching as Clara and Margot argued, as Clara struck Margot down, as Margot never got back up and Clara fled. And after Clara was gone, Archer gathered Margot up, covered her in flowers, made her beautiful in his own twisted way. Her death stirred in him dark desires from which he would never be able to turn away.
There was still so much Brett needed to know about that day, so much only Clara could tell her. She clenched her fists in her lap, thinking of the woman who had spent the past twenty years walking around Crestwood free, raising a family, happy and unburdened by the decisions she’d made. Did she feel any guilt at all for the lives she’d ruined?
Twenty years Brett had pushed down her grief. It rose now, a cold wave breaking over her, drowning out Marshall’s explanations, the roar of her grief louder than his pitiful excuses.
She’d heard enough.
She stood from the loveseat and reached for the handcuffs clipped to her belt. “I’m going to have to bring you down to the station.”
“You’re arresting me?” His gaze swung wildly to Eli. “You said—”
“You admitted to keeping a man prisoner in the woods,” she cut him off.
“I let him go,” Marshall protested. “That has to mean something, doesn’t it? I get it. We all make choices in this life, and we have to live with the consequences of those choices. But I’m trying to make things right. I’ve told you everything you wanted to know, haven’t I? I’m cooperating.”
He might not have done the killing, but in Brett’s mind, he was no better than Clara. He had kept her secrets, for all these years, for his own selfish reasons. To share a house, a bed, a life with a monster and claim to not have known, to not have even the smallest inkling of an idea—Brett didn’t believe it. Some part of Marshall knew and had known all along. Some small kernel of doubt lived inside him, but he was too much of a coward to let it grow, to hold it to the light and reveal what was hidden there. He hadn’t wanted to know, and so he had looked the other way. For this, he was guilty. For this, Brett would never forgive him.
She stood resolute, waiting for him to get up and go with her. His gaze darted between her and Eli, panicked, and then his whole body sagged, and finally, he nodded. “Fine, I’ll go, but not in handcuffs. I’ll go of my own free will. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
She scoffed at him but hooked the cuffs back on her belt and gestured him to his feet.
“And just…” He took a long, slow breath. “Please, can I say goodbye to Elizabeth first?”
Brett allowed it, though not to make Marshall feel better. She didn’t give a damn about his feelings, but she thought Elizabeth deserved a chance to hear the truth straight from her father. Nothing would be the same for her after today. The rest of her life would be defined by this—before and after she found out what kind of people her parents were—but at least she wouldn’t spend half her life wondering the way Brett had. Knowing couldn’t change what happened, but it did give Elizabeth a chance to grieve the wreckage of her old life and perhaps build something new from the rubble.
Chapter 36
The sky was a bruised and knotted cloud. The bay churned, brewing another storm. The tide swelled, and waves crashed against the rocks. Clara closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and slipped into the cold water for one final swim. The ocean against her bare skin burned, and for a brief second, she wished for her wetsuit, though of course, the wetsuit would keep her from doing the very thing she’d come to do—slip under the waves and disappear.
Last night after Marshall left, taking Elizabeth with him, Clara had been all motion.
She pulled clothes at random from her closet and stuffed them into the suitcase. What do you pack when you don’t know where you’re going? Or who you will be when you get there? From the can on top of the fridge, she grabbed a wad of emergency spending money and tucked it into her wallet. Then she dug her passport from the metal box that was collecting dust under the bed. She wasn’t sure where she would end up. Far. Away. Somewhere no one knew her face, which was a lot of places.
Already her chest ached with yawning loneliness at the idea of stretched out days with nothing to do and no one to love. She would have to find a job. She would have to change her name. She would have to change her hair and everything about herself. But one thing she would never do was build herself another family. She would never replace the peopl
e she loved most who had once loved her. She would never even try.
She went into Elizabeth’s room and stood breathing in the scent of her daughter—dryer sheets and strawberry lip gloss. She cataloged every inch—the music posters and soccer trophies, the pictures and books, the dangle of ribbons from the ceiling fan. When she was miles from here and alone, she wanted to remember every detail.
On the dresser sat a framed picture, the only one they’d ever taken together as a family of four. Clara picked it up and rubbed her finger over the glass. It was a few days after they brought Lily home from the hospital. They went for a picnic by the bay. The water sparkled blue in the background. Marshall had his arm around Elizabeth, her smile full and bright. Clara held Lily, swaddled in a pink elephant blanket, her tiny fists shooting into the air. They looked happy. They looked like a family with love and time enough to spare.
Clara sank to the floor and curled herself around the picture.
If she could cry, she thought, if in this moment tears dampened her cheeks, then she would know that she wasn’t a complete lost cause. She would know that there was still a piece of her self worth fighting for, some gentle part worth saving. And if there was a part of her worth saving, maybe she could do what Marshall wanted her to do and turn herself over to the police. Perhaps she could find redemption. She waited, counted the seconds, the minutes, watched the shadows shift on the wall. The tears never came.
She was packed, and part of her whispered in a furious and terrified voice to go, go, go. But there was another voice too, one that whispered gently for her to stay. This was her life, her home, her family, and it wasn’t fair that she was being asked to leave it all behind. Right when they needed her most.
Another few minutes, she kept telling herself. She had until morning, until the sun came up at least. Marshall had promised her. Another few minutes wouldn’t hurt. It was less than an hour’s drive to the Canadian border and vast stretches of nothing and no one after that. It wouldn’t take long for her to disappear. So these few and desperate moments could be spared, and she clung to them, sifting through every good memory of her life with Marshall.
Their first date, their first kiss, their wedding, buying this house. The birth of their first daughter, the way he sang her to sleep at night, the time at the county fair when he won them the largest stuffed bear Clara had ever seen. The night Clara told him she was pregnant again, which was unexpected certainly, but he’d been so happy. She remembered the look on his face, how he promised her forever. She remembered, too, the last time they made love a few days ago, though she hadn’t realized then that it would be the last time. She missed this life so much already, and she wasn’t even gone yet.
She knew she should be grateful for the years she did have. More than she ever imagined she’d get. That day twenty years ago, when she walked out of the woods covered in blood and scratches, her whole body trembling, she thought her life was over. Instead, it was just starting, and it had been a beautiful one. Until Nathan Andress ruined it.
She thought of that night at Deadman’s Point. Two weeks ago now, though she remembered it clearly enough it could have been yesterday. How pathetic he’d been, how stupid. Somehow he’d known the truth about Margot. The details of how he found out didn’t matter to Clara. What mattered was he knew. He knew what she was capable of, knew she had killed once before, and still, he pushed his luck. He’d already come to her once demanding money in exchange for his silence. That first time, she’d given him everything he’d asked for, anything to get him to go away. But he kept pushing. He threatened her a second time, and it was then she understood that no matter how much she paid him, he would always demand more. To keep her secrets from getting out, she would need to do something she hadn’t done in twenty years. Something she never thought she’d do again for as long as she lived. It was his own damn fault. He got too greedy.
Clara shuddered and shoved aside the memory of the knife cutting deep, the blood on her hands. Tonight she wanted only the beautiful moments in her life, the joy-filled ones that she had always tried so hard to cherish because she knew, hadn’t she? In the back of her mind, she knew that one day her luck would run out.
At some point, adrift in the warm memories of her old life, she fell asleep on the floor of her daughter’s bedroom curled around the smiling faces of her beautiful family. She hadn’t meant to. And when she woke, dawn cracked the windows, spreading eerie gray light through the house, and fear gripped her and sent her leaping to her feet and into her bedroom where she’d left the suitcase. But as she grabbed it, a new thought came to her, one that felt better than running, one that seemed easier to bear.
She had gotten into her car and driven, not north to the Canadian border, but west toward the ocean.
* * *
She tried to relax into the crush, the hiss, the cold, tried to give herself over to the waves, but her reflex was to keep her head above water, to bob with the roll and splash, to keep breathing. She started shivering. If she was going to do this, she needed to do it now or swim back to shore and get on with the rest.
When the next swell came, she dived under, pushed deeper, floated there in the dark, hovering in a nowhere place, in an emptiness that filled her. She held her breath until her lungs hurt. This was harder than she thought it would be. All she had to do was open her mouth and let the ocean flood in.
They would find her body washed up a few days from now, the way they’d found Nathan’s. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe the ocean would cooperate this time, and she would drift on a dark tide, pulled out to sea, never to be seen again. Either way, it would be over. Marshall would tell them everything. They would have their answers, and this act of drowning could be her final act, her kindness, and her redemption.
She tried. She forced her mouth open. Water rushed in. She sputtered, coughed. The water kept coming. Relax, she tried to relax and let it fill her, but her legs kicked, thrashing despite herself, and her arms propelled her to the surface, her head breaking free. She coughed, gagged, took a breath. Her arms moved slowly, keeping her afloat. She stared toward the horizon where the islands should be. They were hidden behind a dark bank of clouds, thunderheads moving toward land.
She turned and swam back to the dock.
* * *
That should have been it. Clara should have gotten in her car then, driven north without stopping until she was a face no one recognized, a woman without a past. A woman with nothing and no one to return to. She checked her rearview mirror. There were no cars on the road but hers, and maybe it was the salt drying on her skin, the cold ocean still icing her blood, but she felt invincible. No one could touch her unless she let them.
She drove to the cemetery at the edge of town. Her feet carried her through the wet grass to the granite gravestone engraved with her daughter’s name and the too-short time she was alive. Clara stared down at it, and the stone stared back, indifferent.
She pressed her hand to the cold marker. She whispered goodbye, whispered she was sorry, whispered she wished things had been different. A loosening in her chest and she was one step closer to leaving. But first, she had to see Elizabeth. What kind of mother would she be if she left without saying goodbye to her babies? She knew she wouldn’t be able to explain, not in any way that mattered, but she didn’t want to disappear from her daughter’s life the way her father had disappeared from her own. She didn’t want to leave her daughter wondering. Elizabeth deserved better than that. And if Marshall wouldn’t let her talk to Elizabeth, she could at least see her one last time, memorize the shape of her face, the flecks in her eyes, the freckle patterns across her nose.
* * *
She recognized Brett’s Beetle in the driveway as soon as she crested the hill. Eli’s green Jeep was parked there, too, next to Marshall’s car. Clara pulled off to one side of the road and watched for a few minutes, her heart pounding hard in her chest. Marshall had kept his word. He’d waited until morning, but even now, he was b
etraying her. Her grip on the steering wheel tightened as the house’s front door opened and out stepped Eli, followed by Marshall, followed by Brett. He wasn’t in handcuffs, and this hurt her more, that he would go so willingly.
Marshall got into Eli’s Jeep, and the two men drove in the opposite direction of Clara, not noticing her there at all. Brett paused outside her car, her hand on the door. She said something, and Elizabeth appeared around the corner of the house.
Her hair was a mess, flying all over the place, but Clara had never seen her daughter look more beautiful. Her daughter. Her flesh and blood and every good thing in this life, brushing tears from her cheeks, then taking a step forward and folding herself into Brett’s open arms. Bile rose in Clara’s throat. She held perfectly still, the rage in her chest coiling and uncoiling. Yet another Buchanan sister taking what didn’t belong to her.
Clara turned the car around and sped back to Crestwood with a new plan.
Cowards ran. Prey ran. Clara was neither of these things.
There were only so many places to hide in this world, only so many roads to sneak down. Eventually, the net would pull tighter. Eventually, they would come for her. They would catch her and punish her for what she’d done, and she would resign herself to that fate. But until that day came, she was still in control. She could decide, and she was not going to stand by and watch Brett poison her daughter against her, the way Margot had tried to poison Marshall. She would not let the Buchanan sisters take everything from her.
Not without taking something of theirs in return.
Chapter 37
No one knew where to find Clara Trudeau.
Irving told Brett that he’d gone to the house, but Clara hadn’t been there. Her car was gone. The front door left unlocked. The bedroom closet had been in disarray, clothes strewn everywhere.
“We need to consider the possibility that she’s on the run,” Irving said.
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