All Your Fault

by NJ Moss

  “Please don’t make me do this.”

  I saw Troy standing over my corpse, his face pinched tightly, his hands clenching into fists. He’d rant and rave about finding my killer and exacting vengeance. He’d charge through the morgue and roar, but in the end he’d settle down, and he’d help Mia and Russ to move on. They’d cherish my memory. They’d never know the truth.

  “You have to,” Benny said.

  “It will tear my family to pieces.”

  He smiled tightly, more like a wolf flashing its teeth. “Lacy cheated on me because I was emotionally unavailable, and I am emotionally un-fucking-available. Because you made me kill that poor girl. My dad used his last words to tell me how much he hated me. Don’t talk to me about families being torn apart.”

  “Benny, please—”

  “No. The truth has to come out. So get on with it.”

  I felt my head sag, the strength trying to seep from my body. I pictured Mother in her office, surrounded by her musty paperbacks, half-living in a past she’d spent decades running away from, and all because of me, of the daughter I’d taken from her.

  “I killed her.” The skin on my wrist screeched in agony as the tape tore and bit. “I told her I hated her. I told her she was a baby. I told her to cycle down the hill as fast as she could, but I didn’t think she would, not really.”

  “Yes,” Benny said, sounding like a man about to devour a long-awaited meal.

  “I hated her. I thought I was so cool, so much better than her. But I wasn’t. I was dirt. I can never forgive myself for what I did.”

  Benny nodded slowly, peering at me over the top of the camera. “Good, Grace. That’s good.”

  I heard an almost-silent ripping noise, the last of the duct tape releasing one of my hands, but the other was still secured to the chair.

  Could I do this? Did I have the courage? Was I stupid enough?

  I made my voice lower, lower, and kept talking about Hope, telling the truth. I loved her and I killed her.

  Benny crept forward to hear the quietness of my voice.

  I thought of Mia, the bundle in my arms, making me forget about university and anxiety and how much I wanted to learn about my own mind. I thought of Russ and strolling through the library in the middle of the afternoon, the rest of the world otherwise occupied, me and my son and the ancient-smelling books.

  “I can do it,” Troy had said, lying in bed at nineteen, before Mia was even a dream in our minds. “I know I can be a bestseller, Grace.”

  “I believe in you,” I’d told him.

  And I had. I did.

  “Grace?” Benny said.

  “Ah!” I cried, swinging my body in a vicious arc.

  I was almost surprised when the chair smashed into the side of his skull with a wooden thunk.

  I ran past him like a malformed insect, loping as I dragged the chair behind me, stuck to my wrist at a jagged angle. To the bottom of the stairs. I ran. I fell. I clambered up and dragged myself toward the door.

  Behind me, Benny groaned and climbed to his feet.

  54

  He gripped my ankle and tugged. I had my free hand around the door handle, squeezing hard, almost yanking it open before he gave me another powerful squeeze.

  Benny was thin, but when I felt his hands on me I realised how deceiving his body was. The strength in his grip was almost enough to send me back-flipping down the stairs. “Wait. Fuck’s sake. This is so stupid.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  I kept grabbing at the handle, trying to push it downward so the door would swing open. I was vaguely aware of the pulsing up my forearm from where the tangled chair was twisting it, from where Benny was grabbing that too, trying to bend me into submission.

  I kicked blindly, felt a fleshy contact, heard a grunt.

  He roared and leapt. Something bony crushed into my back, between my shoulder blades, sending me hurtling at the door and clashing woodenly with it. My jaw throbbed as I reeled and screamed.

  My eyes shimmered and it was the day I’d given birth to Mia, my little bundle staring up at me with accepting eyes.

  I forgive you, Mummy, I imagined her saying.

  I emerged from my daze with my ears ringing and Benny’s hand around my wrist, trying to guide me down the stairs the same way I might guide Russ after he’d done something silly and wonderful, like roll around in paint for the thrill of it.

  “Are you done?” he snapped.

  “Please let go of my hand.”

  He was three steps down, frowning up at me, a light bruise appearing on his cheek from where I’d swung the chair at him. The chair, perversely, still dangled from my wrist.

  “You’re lucky I’m so emotionally distant and cold and all the other shit Lacy calls me. Imagine what I’d do if I wasn’t.”

  “Let go.”

  “We’re not done here.”

  He tried to pull me down the stairs, but he didn’t realise I could still move my other hand, the one with the chair clinging like a parasite.

  He let go and tried to raise his hands when he saw what I was doing, but desperation made me quick.

  With a whip-sharp motion I raked my nails down his face.

  I turned for the door as he yelled and stumbled.

  I pushed it open and finally the duct tape let go, the chair falling away. I ran into the house and headed for the closest exit—the back door.

  It was locked.

  Fuck.

  I turned.

  Benny was there, face bleeding, crying blood. He slinked toward me like an apex predator. “Enough games. If you try anything else, I’m gonna treat this like a boxing match. And that, Grace, means I’m gonna royally fuck you up. So just—”

  I ducked my head and bull-rushed to his left, thinking, The front door, the front door.

  Benny leapt and his wiry arm looped around my throat, compressing my airwaves.

  “Are you going to make me kill you as well?” he growled in my ear.

  55

  “You need to stop squirming, Grace,” he said, his arm across my throat. “I don’t want to hurt you. Stop moving around.”

  “Let… me… go…”

  My words came out as a smoker’s wheeze.

  “I will when you stop panicking.”

  “You said you were going to kill me.” I leaned against him to release some of the pressure on my neck.

  “I didn’t mean it. But you have to admit you’re not exactly making this easy.”

  “Easy? This is going to ruin me.” He was loosening his grip, giving me room to speak, our bodies pressed unnaturally close together in a parody of tenderness. “It ruined you too. I understand. But that’s the past; it’s over. Nothing can change it. I have a family who loves me and if they found out the truth, they’d hate me.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I could feel the heat of his breath. “Your children love you. Your husband adores you.”

  “They love a woman whose beloved sister died in a tragic accident when she was a girl. They wouldn’t love the woman who talked her sister into sacrificing her life.”

  “What are your family like, Grace?”

  I scoffed bitterly. “You surveilled us. You should know everything about the Dixons by now.”

  “Give me a reason not to ruin you. Give me a reason to care.”

  I blinked and tears slid down my cheeks. “There’s too much.” I hated the drained sound of my voice. “Mia’s going to be a painter. No, she is a painter. You should see some of her work. It’s incredible. My grandmother was a painter and she takes after her, my mother says, and that scares me – it terrifies me – because… well, you know why, don’t you. But her art, it’s beautiful, very advanced for a girl her age. She’s precocious and she always has been, ever since she was Russ’s age. I sometimes imagine if they were both five, what would it seem like? Mia was always so eager to be seen as older, and Russ is so wonderfully childish.”

  “Keep going, Grace.”

  “Why?”
I sobbed. “Is this getting you off? Is this getting you hard, Benny? You disgusting fucking psychopath.”

  “Before this all started – when I first joined book club – you know, I actually wished I was a psychopath. I reckon it’d make getting revenge easier. But I’m not.”

  “Why do you want to hear all this? It’s so messed up.”

  “Yeah, it’s messed up.”

  A pause lengthened and I felt he was waiting for me to continue. My gaze moved around the hallway, over his trainers, over his daughter’s pink roller skates. There was nothing to do. There was no way out. His forearm was metal across my throat.

  “Troy’s an amazing father,” I said. “He has his hang ups, fine, especially when it comes to his career. But… you should’ve seen him with Mia when she was younger, the games they used to play, the worlds they used to create together. Russ likes building dens, making things, and Troy helps with that, but he doesn’t like the imaginative stuff, not like Mia did. Mia and Troy would sit around for hours dreaming up fantasies. She never got tired of it, and Troy would talk so passionately about writing a series of children’s books based on the worlds they invented together.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No,” I croaked. “He didn’t. Please let go of my neck, Benny. You’re hurting me.”

  He didn’t let go, but he relaxed his grip a little.

  “I can choke you out anytime I want. So don’t try anything.” I felt him thinking, the tics of his face, so close to mine, the way he was breathing, like a man pondering a problem. “This is a bit of a mess, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” I somehow laughed, bitter and low. “I’m…”

  “You’re what, Grace?”

  “I’m sorry you hit Hope with your car, and that she wouldn’t have been there if it wasn’t for me. I’m sorry you’ve lived in hell since it happened, and I’m sorry for what your dad said, and that Lacy cheated on you, and that your life has been harder than it would’ve been without me. Okay? I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. That means a lot, really. But it’s time to go to sleep.”

  “Wait, what?”

  His arms tightened.

  He kept me alive long enough to apologise and now he’s going to kill me.

  “Go to sleep, Grace.”

  He squeezed and squeezed and squeezed the life out of me.

  56

  The bed jostled up and down with the familiar motion of an excited five-year-old on a Sunday morning, the scent of bacon drifting up from downstairs and the almost undetectable sound of Mia’s brushstrokes against the canvas, which I shouldn’t have been able to hear, but I could. It was a beautiful sound, my daughter making art, my husband making breakfast, my son making mayhem.

  “Mummy, Mummy.” Russ pawed at my face. “I know you’re awake.”

  “Nah-uh.”

  “You are. Mummy, you said we could go to the park and have bacon and have a great morning adventure, that’s what you said, I remember you said that. But you’re in bed and even Daddy’s up and we’ll have to eat the bacon before the park but that’s okay. Mummy.”

  “Mmm,” I moaned. “Five minutes.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “But wake up, Mummy. Wake up.”

  “I said five minutes.”

  “Wake up, wake up… Grace, come on, wake up.”

  The bed stopped jostling up and down; Benny had finished tying my wrists in front of me with more duct tape.

  My ankles were tied with rope to pipes on either side of the wall, pulled taut. My arm was throbbing and felt like it had twisted, but the pain was faraway. Everything was taking on a dreamish quality, as if I’d slipped into an upside-down land.

  Benny was standing across from me. The cut on his face was long and thin, dried blood crusting around it from where I’d slashed him with my fingernails. He was just shy of my legs. My arms weren’t tied to anything, only each other, so it was conceivable I could flip my body up and maybe get my hands on him, probably breaking my ankles in the process.

  And then what? I’d had my best chance and I’d ruined it.

  “I think my arm’s broken.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Bruised. Sprained, maybe. If it was really broken, you’d know about it, trust me. Here.” He lifted a Frozen plastic cup and two pills, gesturing with them. “Ibuprofen. For the pain.”

  I stared at the Frozen cup, grotesquely out of place, Elsa in her sparkling blue dress looking hopeful and self-assured as she gazed back at me.

  “I hope blackcurrant’s okay.” He moved carefully over to me, as though afraid I’d leap at him again. “It’s all I had.” He read my look. “It’s just ibuprofen. I promise. Plus, I’m pretty sure they’ve got caffeine in them. It should help.”

  “Fine,” I said, and Benny leaned forward and helped me to gulp the pills down, leaning back cautiously as though I might lash out again.

  “Now what?” he asked when I was done.

  “You’re asking me?” I laughed hollowly. “You’re the grand conspirator.”

  “I wasn’t recording, by the way.”

  “What?”

  “Before, when I had the camera out and you were telling me about the evening Hope died, I wasn’t recording.”

  “Then why…”

  He scratched his face, at the shadow of a beard on his lean cheeks. “I guess I needed to hear you say it. I needed to make it real, if that makes sense? All those times at book club when you mentioned it, and all those times I overheard you at the café with Yasmin… I don’t know. Shit. I told you. I started to doubt my own mind. But it’s the truth, isn’t it? You talked her into it.”

  “Yes,” I said, voice raw. I’d already admitted this. How many times did he need me to say it?

  Benny sunk down on his haunches, resting his forearms on his knees. “This is really tough, because I want to let you go. But let’s face it. I’ve done a lot of illegal shit these past few months. Blackmail, extortion, I mean – goddamn – hacking. Not to mention assault, kidnapping. What’s to stop you from going to the police?”

  “I won’t,” I said. “I have everything to lose. My family, my parents, my life. I can’t let this come out. I made our relationship into something beautiful after her death, but it was a myth, nothing more. I made it bright so I could avoid the truth. It was dark. I was a selfish teenage girl and she was my annoying little sister. I bullied her. I loved her, I know I did. Deep down. But I bullied her and it led to her death.”

  “But I can never be sure. If you went to the police, they might be able to go back and trace me somehow. And then it’d be my word against yours. Even if you admitted you’d talked her into riding down the hill, would they care? Are there laws for that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do I.” He bit his fingernail, dropped his hand, and rolled his neck from side to side. “I don’t want to hurt you. More than I already have. As weird as it probably seems, it’s meant a lot, being able to share all of this with you.”

  “If you let me go, I swear this ends here. We never have to see each other again. Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone.”

  “But the police…” He ground his teeth, looking like an animal debating a kill. “I guess there is a way, actually, a way that’ll make it pretty likely you’ll never tell anybody. But I’m not sure you’ll like it.”

  “I don’t care. I want to see my children again.”

  He nodded and rose laconically to his feet, prowling over to the staircase. He knelt down and picked up the camera. This time, he pressed a button and it made a beeping noise. A red light on the front lit up, watching.

  “What really happened that evening, Grace?”

  I knew he could be lying; he could knock me out and send this video to my family the second it was recorded. And yet, for some bizarre reason, I trusted him, this man who had toyed with me like I was a child’s doll. Maybe it was the Frozen cup or the look in his eyes when he talked about his dead d
og or the fact we both had children.

  Or maybe I was gullible.

  Maybe he was still going to kill me.

  57

  I sat in the passenger seat next to the man who half-killed my sister, an open bottle of vodka in my good hand. The street beyond the alleyway was dark where the lamp posts had switched off. My throat burnt with the vodka, but it took away some of the throbbing in my arm and the ache in my neck.

  I looked at the clock and saw it had gone two in the morning. Troy and Mia and Russ were going to be driving themselves delirious wondering where I was.

  “Don’t drink too much,” Benny said, as I swung back another acidic mouthful. “Just enough to seem out of it. To smell of it. You don’t want to forget your story.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, what do you remember?”

  An urge: shatter the vodka bottle on the dashboard and stab the spiky edge into his throat and saw up and down until all the blood spurted out of him. But of course I wasn’t going to attack him; he had the video.

  “I remember,” I said forcefully.

  “Humour me.”

  “Clive fired me this afternoon and I was too ashamed to go home. So I went to Olivia’s and we had a few drinks, and a few drinks turned into a few too many. Then I wanted to sleep it off at hers. I was embarrassed to come home and admit I’d failed my family.”

  “And your injuries?” he asked, staring at the inky road. “Your arm. The light bruising on your neck? The redness on your cheek? That might come out as a bruise tomorrow, but it’s always hard to tell. They might not even notice. But if they do?”

  “I fell when I was drunk.”

  Benny nodded. “I’ll sort it with Clive and Olivia. If anybody asks them, which I doubt they will, but if they do… their stories’ll match, all right?”

  “How helpful. Are we becoming best friends, Benjamin?”

  “My mum used to call me Benjamin.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  He shrugged. “Not as much as I used to.”

  “I hate you,” I said, the confession surprising me more than it bothered him.