There was no point in checking to see how badly Billy had been hurt. That frozen glimpse she’d had of him when the front bumper hit him had been enough. She had no doubt he was dead. No one could have survived an impact like that. Even if he was still alive, he wouldn’t live long.
“We have to get help. We need an ambulance,” she said, but Jon just sat there, immobile, until after what seemed like several minutes, he finally spoke.
“We can’t do that,” he said.
“Why not?”
In the darkness, she could barely make out Jon’s expression, but the impression she got was that this wasn’t even him. It was someone else, some heartless creature posing as her boyfriend. His lower lip was trembling, and he whimpered as he took a short, gasping breath.
Kiera started to open the passenger’s door to get out, but Jon grabbed her by the upper arm and pinned her against the car seat. Their faces were close as they eyed each other, barely able to see each other in the darkness.
“We have to take care of this ourselves,” Jon said.
Kiera struggled as he held her back until she realized it was useless to resist.
“What do you mean . . . ‘take care’?”
After another long silence, Jon said, “Do you realize what will happen to me—to both of us—if anyone ever finds out?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Kiera said, her voice tight with fear. “It was an accident. Even if he’s . . . dead . . . It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident!”
“You think anyone will believe that?”
Jon’s grip on her arm got painfully tight. He shifted in the seat until he was between her and the windshield. Raising his other hand, he pressed her shoulder against the car seat and leaned so close his breath was warm on her face.
“This will ruin me,” he said. “I want to go to college. If I—Jesus, no college in the world will accept me if I’ve been arrested for murder.”
Kiera was so scared she was afraid she would wet herself, but she told herself to calm down. She could make him see that they had to do the right thing.
“You didn’t murder anyone,” she said. “It was an accident. I’ll swear to it.”
But even as the words left her mouth, she had her doubts; and all these years since, she still had her doubts. It had all happened so fast she could never be sure, but she couldn’t forget how, as soon as Billy stepped in front of the car with the rock over his head, Jon had floored it and driven ahead on purpose.
“We have to check him,” she said.
After a long, intense moment, Jon relaxed his grip. Kiera didn’t think she had the strength to stand up, but somehow she opened the door and stepped out onto the uneven ground. The injury to her head made the world spin uncontrollably.
“Turn the headlights on,” she said.
Jon, still in the car, didn’t do as she said. She saw him lean down and fumble around in the car until suddenly a flashlight came on. He shined the light into her eyes, blinding her for a moment. She covered her eyes quickly, but after he shifted the light beam away, a streaked afterimage made it impossible for her to see clearly.
“Thanks,” she said as she reached into the car and grabbed the flashlight from him. “You coming?”
For a long time, Jon stayed where he was until, finally, he opened the door and got out. By then, Kiera’s eyesight was better. She swept the beam of light back and forth across the ground. The river was close by. It looked like a wide sheet of black plastic as it flowed with a deep gurgling rush of water over stones. A short, rock-covered bank led down to the river’s edge. Waist-high weeds and small saplings grew between the rocks.
When she didn’t see Billy’s body in front of the car, she felt a spark of hope that maybe this really hadn’t happened. If only it could all be a dream that would be over soon . . .
Maybe Billy had seen the car coming at him and ducked out of the way.
Maybe he was hiding in the brush or already running back to town.
But then she froze. The narrow beam of light came to rest on a human hand that lay across a rock. The fingers were curled up, looking like a hawk’s talons. Even in her initial shock, Kiera knew there was no strength left in that hand. It wasn’t clinging to the rock. It just rested there motionless . . . lifeless.
She heard footsteps behind her and turned around, shining the light on Jon, who was walking toward her. When he stopped beside her, she shined the light back on the hand, moving the beam slowly, following it up to Billy’s elbow . . . then his shoulder. A sour, sickly taste filled her mouth, and she almost vomited when the light showed Billy’s head. He was facedown on the rocks, so she couldn’t see his face, but the glistening splash of dark blood on the ground told her everything she needed to know.
No! . . . He can’t be dead!
A sense of total unreality swept over her. Jon was standing behind her, but she had the distinct feeling that someone else—someone hiding in the deepest shadows of the night—was watching them, waiting to see what they would do next.
Billy’s head was oddly distorted. One side was dented in, and something that might have been a piece of bone was sticking out from underneath his hair. Kiera wanted to believe it was just a trick of the light, but she knew the rock had smashed his skull when he fell. There was blood everywhere, and the sight of it made Kiera’s stomach heave.
“Satisfied?” Jon asked simply.
His voice made her cringe.
“You killed him,” she whispered, her voice so weak she wasn’t sure he heard her or even if she had spoken out loud. Moving the flashlight beam away from Billy, she tried not to think how, only seconds ago, he had been a living, breathing person.
And now—just like that!—he was gone.
It was incomprehensible. Even at the time, Kiera knew she would never be able to comprehend this, much less accept it. She lost any sense of the time as she stared into the swelling darkness across the river. The faint gurgle of water became a soft backdrop that lulled her, making her feel as though she was floating downstream.
“What are we going to do?” she finally asked.
Jon was standing right behind her. She couldn’t see him, but she could feel his presence the same way she felt the other presence that was somewhere close by, watching her with eyes that she was sure could see in the dark.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Jon replied solemnly.
Kiera was relieved to hear a sympathetic tone in his voice. She wanted to believe this had all been a terrible accident. She had to, if only for her own sanity.
“We can’t just leave him here.” She heard the hollow-ness in her voice and cringed. “Someone will find him. It will come out eventually.”
Jon didn’t say anything for a while, but then he cleared his throat. Even with him behind her, she could feel him looking at her like a hawk about to swoop down.
“It doesn’t have to,” he said.
Too numbed to know what she was feeling, Kiera turned and looked at him. His silhouette was etched against the star-filled sky. Behind him, the trees lining the riverbank looked like black lace against the dark sky. She caught a hint of motion as something moved in the densest shadows under the trees, sensing that someone other than Jon was watching her. A powerful feeling of dissociation came over her.
“You have to stop and think,” Jon said. “Both of us will end up in jail. Even if they believe it was an accident, we’ll go to jail.”
“It will be worse if we don’t report it. Hit and run is a lot worse if we get caught.”
“So,” Jon said with a shrug, “we won’t get caught.” He came down the rocky slope until he was at her side. “You broke up with him to go out with me, right?”
Kiera nodded even though she thought the motion was wasted in the darkness.
“And he’s been really depressed about it ever since, right?” Jon said, pressing.
Again, she nodded.
“And everyone at school knows it. He never stops talking about how much you
broke his heart.”
I did break his heart, Kiera wanted to say, but she was too frightened and too numbed to speak. She no longer felt like she was standing on the riverbank. She had become a disembodied soul that was hovering in the darkness by the river. It occurred to her that maybe the someone else she thought was watching her from out of the darkness was Billy or his ghost.
“If we roll him into the river, and he floats downstream, and someone finds him, they’ll think he committed suicide, right? They’ll think he jumped into the river to kill himself.”
“Jon . . . Please, don’t.”
“Even if his head’s messed up, they’ll figure he banged against some rocks or something in the river. And that’s only if they find him. They might never find him.”
I can’t believe you’re even saying this, Kiera wanted to scream at him. Instead, she nodded agreement. She was numb with grief and guilt and fear, and she couldn’t stop wondering how she’d ever be able to go on with her normal life, pretending this had never happened. She was sure of one thing—she would never be able to face the consequences of what they had done and were thinking of doing.
It was an accident, she kept repeating to herself. And there’s nothing I can do about it now.
“Think you can hack it?” Jon asked.
She flinched from the steely tone in his voice as he came close and put an arm around her shoulder. She shivered as he pulled her close and wanted to push him away and scream at him that it didn’t matter what he wanted to do; she was going to the police to report the accident. She had to do it. It was the right thing . . . the only thing to do. She owed it to Billy.
“Can I . . . Can I hack what?” she asked, dreading the answer but knowing what Jon was going to say before he said it.
“Knowing we killed someone and didn’t tell anyone.”
The feeling that someone was watching her was still there, but Kiera closed her eyes and nodded, wishing desperately she could be someone else . . . someone who wasn’t here . . . someone who didn’t know what she knew and would have to live with for the rest of her life.
The feeling of dissociation was still strong, and she felt like someone else, not herself, when she finally said, “I guess I’ll have to.”
She had the distinct impression the words weren’t coming from her, that someone else was speaking for her. The feeling of being detached from reality was only getting worse as she considered what she was about to do.
Could she really do it?
“Okay, then,” she said softly.
“Keep the flashlight down . . . in case anyone comes by,” Jon said. “If someone sees the car, they’ll think we’re parking and probably leave us alone.”
“Unless it’s the cops.”
Jon cast a worried glance up the slope, but from where they stood, they couldn’t see their parked car.
“We’ll have to hurry then.”
He made his way down the slope to Billy’s body and knelt down beside it. He pressed his fingers against Billy’s throat and obviously didn’t detect a pulse. Kiera sat down on the rock-strewn riverbank. Shielding the lens of the flashlight with her hand to dull the glare, she watched in mute horror as Jon lifted Billy’s body and dragged it down to the water’s edge.
“He’s heavier than you’d think,” he said, sounding entirely too blasé about what he was doing.
“Just hurry up.”
“I could use some help down here.”
The edge in his voice frightened her, and for the first time, Kiera wondered if Jon would have acted the same way if she was the one he was dumping into the river. She cringed at the hissing sound Billy’s body made as Jon dragged it over the rocks. Finally, when he was close to the water, he made sure his footing was good and then lifted the body.
Kiera lowered the flashlight so she wouldn’t have to see what happened next, but her imagination was bad enough. The cold inside her made her chest and stomach hurt, and she cringed as she imagined Billy’s ghost, lurking in the darkness, watching everything they did. She wished she had the courage to yell to Jon, to tell him they couldn’t do this! They had to report the accident. Maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as he thought if they both swore it was an accident.
And it was an accident, wasn’t it? . . . Jon never would have killed Billy on purpose.
Before she could say anything, she heard a loud splash from the darkness below. She let out a low groan when she saw a dark ring of disturbed water spread out from the shore and then flatten out with the fast-flowing current. Something dark that she tried to convince herself wasn’t really a human body drifted slowly away from the shore, spinning as it was floated away downstream.
“Fuck!” Jon shouted as he staggered away from the riverbank. “I almost fell in with him.”
Kiera didn’t say a word as she watched the dark shape move downstream and dissolve into the darkness. Gasping for breath, Jon clambered back up the slope to her.
“You okay?” he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.
Kiera was speechless. She couldn’t believe what they had just done, and she wondered how she’d ever be able to keep this to herself. In the end, though, that’s exactly what she had done. For almost thirty years, she shared this horrible secret with Jon and no one else—not even her husband when she got married. Even after Jon moved to Colorado following college, this secret bound them in ways she had never fully understood.
But now, for some reason, that bond was beginning to break, and the thought of what might happen terrified her.
3
“You okay?”
Nate’s voice was soft and full of sympathy, and it pulled Kiera away from the memory of that night more than twenty-five years ago. Still lost in her thoughts, she stared at him with a blank expression on her face. They were driving west, and the sun was setting, so a rich golden glow illuminated his face in stunning detail. Kiera tried not to think how much it reminded her of Billy’s face in the glare of Jon’s headlights.
“I didn’t . . . You know I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said.
Kiera licked her lips, wishing she could think of something to say, but chaos and confusion filled her mind.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said.” Nate glanced at her quickly before looking back at the road ahead. The tenderness she saw in him made her heart ache. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that. She was having a hard enough time tearing her thoughts away from that night so long ago.
What’s okay? she asked herself, and a voice inside her head answered, Absolutely nothing, that’s what!
It bothered her that she couldn’t tell her husband what was bothering her, but it had been like that ever since they got married. What she had to admit to him now was too huge.
He’d never understand why I kept this from him . . . It’s too late . . . for both of us. Sadness pressed down on her, making it difficult to breathe. After a long, uncomfortable silence, Nate leaned forward and glared into the rearview mirror.
“What the fuck is his problem,” he whispered.
It took Kiera a moment or two to realize he was talking about the vehicle behind them. She turned and saw a dark car tailgating them. The sun glinted off the windshield with a laserlike glare, so she couldn’t see the driver.
“Slow down and let the idiot pass,” she said tiredly, but she’d lived with Nate long enough to know it didn’t take much for his road rage to kick in.
“Fucking asshole,” he muttered as he sped up a bit even though they were on a stretch of road where the person could have passed them.
It didn’t matter, though, because the driver seemed intent on tailgating them, not getting past them. He sped up just enough to stay close on their tail.
“Will you slow down? Please?”
“Com’on. I’m just driving here,” Nate said, shooting her a harsh glance. “What’s his problem?”
“What’s your problem, is more like it?
Just slow down and let him pass. It’s not a race.”
She looked at him and saw the grim set of his jaw and knew he wasn’t going to give an inch.
What is it about men that makes them take offensive driving as some kind of personal insult? Why can’t they just let it go?
“Our turn’s coming up,” Nate said, sounding almost disappointed that the duel or whatever it was would be over.
Kiera was relieved when he eased up on the gas, slowing for the turn. The problem was, the car behind them was also slowing down. She knew Nate must be tempted to step on the brake pedal just to give the jerk a scare. Instead, he clicked on the turn signal and slowed for the turn.
“Why the fuck do people have to drive like that?” he said. His face was flushed, and not just from the glow of the setting sun. She could tell he was furious, and she wondered what he might have done if she hadn’t been in the car with him. They probably would end up pulling over and getting into a shouting match or a fistfight.
“As long as you don’t drive like that, let the fool go his own way.” She wanted to inject some humor into the situation, but Nate’s lips were compressed into a thin grimace when he looked at her. Kiera shrugged, all helpless innocence, and said, “Hey. I’m just saying.”
“When he passes us, get his plate number,” Nate said. “You got something to write with?”
“What are you going to do, call the cops?” Kiera sniffed with laughter.
“It wouldn’t hurt to report the jerk in case he causes an accident up the road.”
She didn’t know why, but having a car follow them so close bothered her a lot more she was letting show. She felt suddenly light-headed, as if she’d had too much to drink. When she turned and looked back at the car, she had the freaky sensation her head kept turning until it rotated in a complete circle. A wave of nausea swept over her, making her stomach feel like it was floating. She let out a faint whimper and fought the feeling that she’d lost her balance and was going to fall. She grabbed the back of the car seat for support.
Nate was driving with such intensity he didn’t even notice her reaction. His gaze flicked back and forth between the road ahead and the rearview mirror where the car was practically on their bumper. Kiera thought he was still going too fast for the turn, and she braced herself as they went screaming around the corner. The tires squealed loudly on the asphalt.
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