by Dianne Dixon
He’s upset. And then, all at once, he isn’t. He’s spotted a scribbled sign—For Salvation Army. And there’s a brown suitcase, and a pile of discarded clothes. He grabs a T-shirt, khakis, and a pair of flip-flops. Then he ducks into an empty storage room, stripping off the cowboy stuff, pulling on the discards…the T-shirt and khakis.
He’s thinking about how easy it was to teach that bitch her lesson. He didn’t even need to duct-tape her eyes, the way he did with the others so they couldn’t see his face. She already had a towel over her head. And he didn’t need to bother taking panties to remember her by. What for? She was somebody he saw all the time. She—
The images jump, stop like a piece of broken film.
A noise. Something rustling. The sound of movement.
A snow-laden tree branch breaking and falling.
Burial.
His shroud thick and powdery, icy cold.
Morgan
Morgan was in the nursery, watching Sofie sleep, when she heard the noise. The muffled, unmistakable sound of screams.
Morgan ran toward the door that separated JOY’s kitchen from the dining area. She could hear Ali shouting, “Why did you do it? Why would you hurt me like that?”
As soon as Morgan pushed the door open, she saw Peter Sebelius on the floor—Matt charging toward him, and Peter trying to shove Matt away, asking, “What the hell’s going on?”
Ali, swaying and unsteady, was clutching the back of a chair. Staring at Peter, horrified.
Quinn was circling Peter and Matt, screaming, “Stop it! Stop it!”
And Matt pounded Peter with a blood-splattering punch.
Suddenly there was silence.
Then Ali’s voice, devastated, telling Peter, “At our housewarming, you said you were leaving to go to the hospital Christmas party. Then, after that, you came back, to the apartment. You came through the sliding door in my bedroom, with this sour smell on your breath, wearing that shirt and those boots. And you raped me!”
Out of the corner of her eye, Morgan glimpsed Matt close his hand around the neck of an unopened champagne bottle. Like it was a club. And he was preparing to commit murder.
In that same split second, Morgan caught the ghastly look on Ali’s face.
Ali’s eyes were locked on the video monitor. Her scream was deafening.
The video’s camera angle had widened, showing that Peter Sebelius wasn’t alone on stage. He was performing a duet. With a man who was also wearing a satin cowboy shirt, a horseshoe-buckled belt, and eggplant-colored ostrich-skin boots.
It was Logan.
Morgan watched Ali collapse into a chair.
Still gripping the unopened champagne bottle, Matt swung it in Peter’s direction, shouting, “What the hell was Logan doing there?”
Peter sounded dazed. “He’s a consultant at the hospital. His company sponsored the party. They paid for everything.”
Peter looked at Ali, horrified. “That morning, when you were moving, when I came by and the police were at your place…you’d been raped?”
Ali nodded.
“Christ.” It was obvious that Peter was in anguish.
“What are all of you talking about?” Quinn asked.
Peter pointed to the video footage, telling Ali, “That was back when I was drinking. I made a fool of myself. I was really loaded that night.”
Now Quinn was looking at the footage, too, saying, “Peter was drunk, but he wasn’t on duty. A lot of people who weren’t on duty were drinking. But the guy Peter’s onstage with…your friend’s husband? He was ten times more drunk than anybody else. He was coming on to every woman in the place. It was disgusting.”
Gasping for air, Ali asked, “What would any of that have to do with him raping me?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Quinn frowned. “But toward the end of the party—”
A killing wave of guilt raced through Morgan.
“—that’s when your friend’s husband checked his texts and got really pissed off by one of them. He started cursing and saying the person who sent it was a bitch—” Quinn stopped and corrected herself. “No. Not bitch. He used the C word. He said the message this woman sent was ‘Fuck you,’ ‘Screw you,’ something like that. He blew out of there looking like he wanted to kill her.”
Everything in Morgan went dead. The text Quinn was talking about was the text Morgan sent on the night of Ali’s housewarming. When Morgan had gotten Jessica’s phone mixed up with Ali’s. And the message Morgan intended for Levi was accidentally delivered to Logan.
Morgan was frozen by a single unspeakable thought: I caused my sister’s rape.
Unaware of Morgan’s presence, Ali was wandering the room, saying, “None of this makes sense. What reason would Logan have to hurt me? And how could he hide his clothes in my attic…in a suitcase I gave away to the Salvation Army?”
The agony in Ali’s voice sent Morgan’s thoughts to the knife she’d taken from Ali’s kitchen. She had intended to use it to punish Logan.
But now she was thinking, The person who deserves to be punished is me.
Six hundred ninety-three miles from JOY,
under the same star-filled sky.
Last rites.
The man, who a few moments ago thought he was going to die, remains trapped at the base of the tree, still hoping for rescue.
His thoughts circle back to where they were just before the tree branch broke and shrouded him in snow. He’s recalling how easy that particular one was. No need to blindfold her. No reason to take her underwear. What for? She was his wife’s best friend. He didn’t need anything to remember her by. He could see her, enjoy the misery he’d inflicted on her, anytime he wanted.
Now he’s reliving a specific moment, right after the rape…
He’s coming out of the storage room, in the underground garage. He’s dumping the cowboy outfit into the brown suitcase that’s on the Salvation Army pile, knowing it’ll be hauled away, lost forever in a load of junk nobody gives a shit about. Then he’s running for his car. Thinking what a fucked-up left turn this night has taken—a night that started off sweet and smooth with the story to Jessica about missing his plane and being stuck in San Francisco, the easy lie that put him onstage at a party packed with hot young nurses instead of doing time at a half-assed, suburban housewarming. Then that fucking arrogant “Go screw yourself” text had shown up…and Ali, the haughty cunt, had needed to be put in her place.
He’d been angry enough to kill her when he jumped in his car and went to her house, not really knowing what he’d do when he got there. Then, while he was parked in the dark at the curb, he saw her leaving—alone. And he remembered how she’d told him Matt worked into the wee hours of the morning, and how Jessica said she was always bitching about a broken lock on her goddamn patio door. That’s when he shot across town—and arrived at the apartment complex a little ahead of her, just in time to make it to the pool area and see her walking, all by herself, into that empty apartment.
He had really enjoyed bringing her down, teaching her a lesson…just as much as he’d enjoyed bringing all the others down. He’d done her quickly and at night, grabbing her from behind. The only thing different with her was he didn’t slap a piece of duct tape over her eyes. Except for that, he did her the same way he’d done all the other women.
There had been so many others. One of the ones he’d liked the best was that time in Rhode Island, right after his wedding. A young rookie cop had refused to let him talk his way out of a ticket, and she’d made him furious. So the next night, when she got off work, he followed her—yanked her off a jogging trail and dragged her into somebody’s greenhouse. The air inside was sticky with the smell of night-blooming jasmine, and he’d raped the hell out of her.
That was a good one, but some of his favorites were the ones he’d done in California, while he was travelin
g on business, all over the state.
There was that green-eyed woman—the hospital emergency room nurse who hadn’t given him any respect, hadn’t treated him like he was special. He’d flirted with her and charmed her, and she told him to take a number, kept him sitting for an hour and a half before she bandaged the minor injury he’d gotten while playing golf. He’d raped her at the end of her shift, deep in shadow, on the top floor of the hospital’s parking garage, as she was getting into her car. And while it was happening, the duct tape came off, and her green eyes had been so wide open.
The droplets of blood on the blanket of snow were from one of the ones he’d done a long time ago—from a college girl named Lynn. A virgin who wore underwear monogrammed with a tiny L. She’d been in a crowded bar, high in the Sierras, at a table near his, and she said he was an asshole, told him to shut up, while he was in the middle of telling his colleagues a loud, raunchy joke—a joke he liked to tell. A few hours later, he followed her and brought her down, after she’d left her friends and was walking alone on the dark, snowy road that led to her rented vacation condo.
And the hot sand had been in a resort town called Rancho Mirage, not far from the corporate office in Palm Springs. While he’d been talking to an attractive hotel clerk about a problem with his bill, he’d seductively run his hand down her thigh. People in the lobby, including his boss, overheard her when she called him an idiot. A couple of weeks later, he returned to the desert and raped her at the sandy edge of a vacant lot. While the tail of a lizard flicked against the bare skin of her ankle.
He had hated every one of the women he raped. They had belittled him and made him feel small.
He believed they deserved to be punished for that.
Morgan
Ali repeated her question: “What do you mean…you know how that suitcase got into my attic?”
“I put it there.” Saying those words took every ounce of courage Morgan had.
Morgan and Ali were in the restaurant’s kitchen now, just the two of them, at the long wooden table. Matt had stayed in the dining room with Peter and Quinn.
Morgan died a thousand deaths as she explained the story of the suitcase. “While I was at your apartment complex, when I was helping with the move, I took that brown suitcase off the Salvation Army pile. It was practically brand-new. It seemed like a waste to throw it away. All I was trying to do was—”
“How the hell did it get into my attic?” The question was angry.
There was nothing Morgan could add that would make this right. All she could do was finish the story as quickly as possible. “After I got to your house that night, Ava was unpacking things in the kitchen. While I was waiting for her to finish, I put away stuff I’d brought back from your apartment, the vacuum cleaner and some towels. The suitcase didn’t seem like you’d be using it a lot, so I put it in the attic, along with a bunch of empty moving boxes. Ali, it was the suitcase that Dad’s stupid wife, Petra, gave you as your wedding present. You always said it was kind of heavy even when there was nothing in it. It never occurred to me that there was anything inside. I thought it was empty when I put it away. I thought—”
The vicious look Ali gave her almost knocked Morgan out of her chair.
“I don’t give a shit about your opinion of the suitcase. How did those clothes get inside?”
“Ali, I don’t know. I swear.”
“But you do know things, things you kept secret. You knew it was Logan who raped me. And you knew it before tonight, didn’t you?”
“I only figured it out a couple of days ago. And then—”
Ali kept her eyes locked on Morgan. “Why did Logan attack me, out of nowhere, out of the blue?”
It wasn’t out of the blue. For an instant, Morgan was ready to confess. It happened because of the text I sent from your phone at the housewarming. The “Go screw yourself” message Logan was pissed off about when he left the hospital party.
But this was information that would make Ali hate Morgan for the rest of their lives, something Morgan couldn’t bear. So she skipped over the details and said, “You weren’t attacked out of the blue… Logan hurt a lot of women. I figured it out. From the file folder in your closet.”
“What does the folder have to do with anything? Logan couldn’t have been mentioned in any of those articles. Jessica would have known.”
“No, he wasn’t mentioned specifically, but—” Morgan stopped talking. She couldn’t face it. Didn’t want to explain that having sex with Logan was how she’d found the evidence of his crimes. The panties in the drawer and buttercup.
Tears were in Ali’s eyes. “I don’t understand. Why did he choose me? He knew I didn’t like him, but how could that be enough? And why that particular night? I didn’t even see him that night. He never made it to the housewarming. Jessica said he was out of town. None of it adds up.”
Yes it does, Morgan thought. It makes perfect sense. Logan lied to Jessica about being out of town whenever he was tired of her…or when he was in the mood to go down to his boat and roll some random woman across his black silk sheets.
The boning knife she’d taken from Ali’s house was tucked into a side pocket of Morgan’s purse. The purse was lying on the wooden table. Morgan checked the side pocket, telling Ali, “I need to go.” Morgan said it just as Ali’s phone rang. Ali didn’t hear her.
Morgan’s fingers slowly traced the outline of the knife’s handle. What she had brought into Ali’s life was hideous. She needed to right that wrong. And the only way she could think to do it was to hurt Logan as much as he had hurt Ali.
Morgan picked up her purse, getting ready to leave. And was stopped in her tracks by Ali’s startled gasp.
Clutching her phone, Ali told Morgan, “The call was from Jess. Logan went to Deer Valley on the men’s version of that Perfect Ten ski trip she’s always talking about. They got into a big fight before he left. They weren’t speaking to each other. He had an accident. He’s been lying on the side of a mountain for days and she didn’t even know. Another skier, a stranger, found him a few hours ago. If Logan wasn’t such a lowlife, help would’ve gotten to him sooner. The people he went skiing with didn’t report him missing because they assumed he was off in a hotel room, fooling around with some woman he’d met.”
A beautiful calm came over Morgan. “How badly is he hurt?”
“Head injuries, spinal injuries. Jess said they told her his condition is too gruesome to describe.”
Morgan put down her purse, the knife still inside—wondering if she would have been able to go through with shoving that carbon-steel blade into Logan. Now it didn’t matter. “I’m glad he got what he deserved,” she said.
“I am, too.” Ali seemed lost in thought. Then she asked Morgan, “Why didn’t you tell me it was Logan who attacked me?”
Morgan opened her mouth to answer. No sound came out.
The “Go screw yourself” text. The appalling reality that she’d slept with a rapist.
They were secrets Morgan didn’t know how to tell.
Ali
They were still alone in the restaurant kitchen.
Ali looked at Morgan, knowing Morgan was keeping secrets and needing to hear what those secrets were.
The only thing Morgan said was “I’m sorry.”
For Ali, sorry wasn’t enough. It was clear that whatever Morgan was hiding was connected to Ali’s attack. And she wanted to make Morgan pay for shutting her out.
This impulse to deliberately hurt her sister was a level of rage Ali had never experienced before.
It felt wrong.
Ali moved away from Morgan. Opened the door to the walled garden and looked out into the night darkness. Remembering the feel of Morgan’s hand holding tight to hers as they walked, together, toward their first day of kindergarten.
And Morgan’s lovestruck thank-you at their sixth-grade dance reci
tal, when Ali whispered, “Don’t worry. If you fall down at the hard part, I’ll just fall down, too…like it’s a joke we made up, together.”
Together.
The way they were on the night Ali the homecoming queen rode onto the football field, and Morgan was waving from the bleachers, thrilled. Holding up a beautiful handwritten sign: My sister! The Queen!
Ali realized that hurting Morgan, or blaming her, for whatever she was hiding wasn’t what Morgan deserved.
In spite of her flaws and weaknesses, there was no part of Morgan that didn’t love Ali. In the same fierce way Ali had always loved Morgan.
They were sisters. Twins. They would always be what they always were—together. Every step of the way.
For the first time in her life, Ali understood what forgiveness was. The place where you don’t forget the hurts, but you let go of them, and hold on to the love.
“Come home with me,” Ali said. “Spend the night, like you used to, in Rhode Island. Let’s go back to being us.”
“We can’t go back.” Morgan’s voice had regret in it. But there was also something hopeful.
“Why?” Ali had a feeling she didn’t want to hear the answer.
“I’m moving away,” Morgan told her.
There was a sudden stillness—as if everything had stopped.
“I leave at the end of next month,” Morgan said. “The Getty Museum, in Malibu…they want me to come to work for them.”
Ali grabbed Morgan’s hand. Tightening her grip on her sister, and understanding it was too late. Their separation had already begun.
“What will I do?” Ali asked. “You’ll be so far away.”