by Kara Thomas
“Then think of something. Even if it’s telling me how much you hate me.”
I raise myself up just enough to support my weight on my elbow. “You really want to know what I’d like to say to you?”
Jesse swallows. “I’m sure I deserve whatever it is.”
“I think your mother would be disgusted with you.”
Jesse’s jaw goes rigid. In the corner, Amos lets out a seal bark of a laugh and says, “Shit, that was cold.”
I roll onto my other side, facing the wall, my heartbeat quadrupling in pace.
Jesse’s voice is quiet when he finally speaks. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
I yank the bedspread up to my chin, breathing through my mouth to avoid its musty smell. “Mike could have killed me.”
“You weren’t supposed to get hurt,” Jesse says. “You weren’t supposed to be there, on the trail, on the way down. We thought you made it back to the lake house.”
I clench my jaw so tight it feels like my molars might shatter. “So it’s my fault?”
“No—that’s not what I meant, obviously.” Jesse shifts on the bed next to me. “I don’t know what Kat and Amos have told you, but we didn’t do it for the money.”
“I don’t care why you did it,” I say, even though it’s a lie. I just want to use every tool I have to hurt Jesse.
“Her dad was abusive,” Jesse finally says. “It got to a breaking point, and when Kat asked her grandma for help, she told her she wouldn’t pay for her to go to BC unless she broke up with me.”
The pounding between my eyes reaches a crescendo. I don’t know if I’d be able to process what Jesse’s saying even if Amos hadn’t beamed me in the head with a shovel. “Back up,” I say. “Her dad abused her?”
It’s Amos who responds. “You really didn’t have any idea?”
When I turn to face him, he’s frowning, the Jack Daniels bottle wedged between his legs. The look on his face makes my mouth go dry.
“How did he abuse her?” I ask. “Like…sexually?”
“You watch too much TV,” Amos says.
“Then what did he do to her?” I catch Jesse’s eyes. I wonder if any answer will be good enough for me; if there’s anything Kat’s father could have done to her to justify any of this.
Jesse breaks my gaze. In the corner, Amos fiddles with something from his pocket: a cigarette lighter.
“Why wouldn’t she tell me?” I demand, when their silence becomes too infuriating to sit with anymore. “If her father was abusive, why wouldn’t she tell her best friend?”
“She never said anything to me either,” Jesse says softly. “Not until she was forced to.”
“No one had to tell me,” Amos says. “I saw for myself.”
I’m quiet as I rewind through thirteen years of memories of Mr. Marcotte. Yes, he was hard on Kat.
“Once when we were kids, we were fucking around, playing with her dad’s stuff,” Amos says, turning over the lighter in his hand. “He had this engraved cigar torch I was obsessed with. He caught me playing with it and picked me and Kat up by the backs of our shirts. Dragged us outside and held me over the deck railing. He stuck the flame right in my face. Kept saying, You want to see what fire does to the body?”
Amos sets his lighter down, looking at neither Jesse nor me.
My stomach turns over; if that’s what Mr. Marcotte was willing to do to his nephew, what was Kat’s punishment? “But if he was that bad, why didn’t she tell anyone years ago?” I ask. “We could have gotten child protective services involved—”
Amos laughs. “Do you know how hard it is to get a kid taken away from their family? Especially when it’s a family with money and everyone in it is either in denial, like my aunt Beth, or an extremely skilled liar, like my grandmother.”
“She knew?” I stare at Amos. “She knew Kat was being abused and didn’t do anything?”
Amos snorts. “My grandmother’s been covering for his ass since he was in diapers. Why do you think no one knows the real reason Johnny left the air force?”
Real reason? “I thought he retired,” I say.
“He was forced to retire. He was such a nightmare that his subordinates threatened to sue for harassment. They got rid of him quietly before it could become a whole thing.”
I glance over at Jesse for confirmation. He’s studying his hands, folded together, thumbs hugging, almost as if he’s praying. A crush of fear hits me that’s so powerful, it wipes my mind of everything: Mr. Marcotte, Marian, Kat, what they did to me.
I need to get the fuck out of here.
“What are you guys going to do with me?” I ask.
Amos lowers the bottle so it’s resting on his kneecap. “We haven’t decided yet.”
“What are you waiting for? People could be looking for me.”
“But they aren’t,” Amos says. “Not yet. I checked your phone—your parents think you’re at school.”
“Where is Kat?” I ask.
“She had to go do something,” Amos says. “She’ll be back soon.”
“Are you sure about that?” I say.
This prompts Jesse to break his silence. “What do you mean?”
I shrug. “She obviously doesn’t care who she screws over to get away.”
I turn to face the wall, pulling the blanket over my body. Before I do, I see the worry flickering in Jesse’s eyes.
* * *
—
They’re watching me in shifts. I don’t know what they think I’ll do if I’m left alone up here; jump thirty feet out the window onto packed snow and ice, breaking every bone in my body?
Amos, Jesse, Amos, Jesse, Amos. I get the sense he never strays far from this room.
The sky is deep indigo and shot through with gray clouds when Jesse opens the door. He’s holding a TV dinner, steam rising from the surface.
“ ’Bout time,” Amos says. “I gotta piss.”
Jesse’s gaze doesn’t move from me as Amos gets up, cracks his shoulder. He plods out of the room, across the hall, closing neither the bedroom door nor the bathroom door behind him. When Jesse finally speaks, it’s over the rushing sound of Amos peeing.
“You hungry?”
“I’m not eating that.”
“They’re actually not bad,” Jesse says. “We’ve kind of been living off them.”
“I’m not worried about the taste.”
“You think I did something to it?” Jesse gapes at me. “Come on, Claire.”
“You left me for dead on that mountain.”
“I wanted to go back for you. Make sure you were okay. Mike and Amos—” Jesse throws a glance over his shoulder. Across the hall, the toilet flushes. “He’s out of his mind.”
“You expect me to believe Amos is the ringleader here?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Kat is the only one of you who’s smart enough to pull all of this off.”
Jesse looks down at his hands. “I know that.”
I stare at him, anger rising higher in me with each second he spends staring at his goddamn hands. “You think what you did is okay, because it’s what she wanted? What you did to me is okay?”
“It’s not what she wanted—we didn’t have a choice.”
“That’s bullshit.” I sit up. “You could have waited until she turned eighteen and her family couldn’t tell her what to do anymore.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered as long as her dad was in the picture.” Jesse massages his eyelids with the heels of his hands. “Claire, you have no idea who he really was. The things he did.”
Jesse’s voice cracks. He lowers his hands, finally looks me in the eye. “He was a monster, Claire. The world is better off without him.”
“How do you know that’s not all Kat ever wanted?” I ask.
“To get rid of him and have his blood on someone else’s hands?”
“That’s not what she wanted,” Jesse says.
“How do you know?”
“Because I know her.”
The implication is clear: Jesse knows Kat, and I never did. And she’s changed Jesse, or maybe I never knew him, either.
“Five years old,” I say. “She and I have been friends since we were five years old and she was willing to let me die to get what she wanted. If you think she won’t do the same to you, you’re an idiot.”
Jesse presses his fingers together, tents his hands over his mouth. Stares at the wall. “Then I guess I have to hope she never stops wanting me.”
“I’m glad that’s your answer,” I say, rolling over to face the wall.
“Why?”
“Because now I can finally get over you.”
KAT
NOW
The Dolans think that my name is Kaylee Brewer, which matches the name on the driver’s license Amos got for me in Burlington. The New York State hologram is too detailed to be fake; I asked Amos where the real Kaylee Brewer is and whether she’ll be missing her driver’s license, and he snorted and said she was a friend of a friend who died of an overdose years ago.
Not that it matters. Mrs. Dolan and I never speak for more than five minutes at a time. She hasn’t strayed from her favorite topics (how smart Ellie is, what a scumbag the girls’ father is) long enough to inquire where I go to college, let alone ask to see my ID.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Mrs. Dolan says when she opens the door. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this.”
Her gaze moves from me to the girls, who are barreling toward me screaming KayleeKayleeKaylee. Maddy throws her arms around me, her hard little shoulder smushing against my still-tender nose until my eyes water.
Mrs. Dolan reaches into her wallet as I’m hanging my coat in the hall. “I’ll leave you guys cash for pizza?”
The girls peel themselves off me and change their chant to pizzapizzapizza! Mrs. Dolan shouts that I can text her anytime and disappears so fast there’s no doubt she’s off to get laid.
I can do this, I think, letting Maddy tug my hand and guide me into the kitchen. It’s just a few hours away. Amos will never do anything to Claire with Jesse around.
After dinner, I suggest a movie, because it might keep the girls quiet long enough for me to think of a way out of the situation with Claire. Ellie says she wants to watch Toy Story, which sends Maddy into a full-on meltdown because she doesn’t want to watch that.
“What do you want to watch?” I ask, patience thinning.
She sniffles, wiping her nose with the collar of her Elsa pajamas. “I don’t know.”
“There are more movies in the family room,” Ellie says. “Finding Nemo is upstairs. She likes that one.”
I feel a rush of gratitude for Ellie, followed by sadness. I see it every day, how adept she is at managing her sister. It’s a role she didn’t ask for, and one she’ll be stuck with the rest of her life.
Pick up your toys, or Daddy will get mad. Don’t interrupt him while he’s on the phone. And don’t ever, ever tell him not to yell at Mommy.
By the time I get upstairs to the family room, I’m shaking so violently from nerves that I have to sit. I collapse into the desk chair, bury my head in my lap.
I’m not a murderer. But if I go home, they’ll call me one. For what happened to Mike, what happened to my father.
I will go to jail. Because now, Claire knows everything.
Downstairs, Maddy shrieks. It’s a piercing, awful sound, like an animal in distress. And then: “Ellie, that’s MY SODA!”
I sit up, blink away the bright spots swarming my vision.
“I’ll be right there,” I yell down to the girls, swiveling in the desk chair to face the computer.
Mrs. Dolan told me the password to the computer, in case I ever needed to use it. EleanorNoelle, in case she wasn’t obvious enough about her feelings toward her kids.
I gnaw the inside of my cheek until I taste blood; when the internet browser finishes loading, I search, fentanyl overdose.
* * *
—
Mrs. Dolan promised she’d be back by ten, but it’s a quarter after when the front door lock stirs. Maddy is asleep, her head on my lap, a finger hooked in her mouth. Ellie is curled into the opposite end of the living room couch, her chest rising and falling steadily under the shirt of her poop emoji pajamas.
Footsteps behind the couch; Mrs. Dolan comes into view, unbuttoning her coat. She surveys the scene in front of her and smiles, puts a hand to her chest. Awww.
I wriggle from under Maddy, laying her strawberry-blond head gently on the couch cushion, and follow Mrs. Dolan into the kitchen.
“Did you have a good time?” I whisper, because I don’t have anything else to say to her.
“Oh, it was fine,” she says, stripping off her coat. “Were they monsters?”
“They were great,” I say.
Ellie and Maddie were so awful, I thought about calling and turning myself in to the FBI just to get away from them. But now, watching Mrs. Dolan shake the dusting of snow from her scarf, I feel a bone-deep sadness.
I will probably never see her and the girls again. I won’t step through that door Monday morning and have Maddy come flying at me, chin covered with Lucky Charms grime, shrieking that she needs help finishing her homework before the bus comes.
“Won’t you let me drive you home?” Mrs. Dolan looks me up and down. I reach for my coat, breaking eye contact before her gaze can settle on the concealer botch-job over my eye. “I already texted my brother to pick me up. Thank you, though.”
Mrs. Dolan spotted Amos once, leaving our driveway. I told her we’re twins, and she asked if he shovels driveways. I only ever bring him up to get her to stop offering to drive me home.
She frowns and for a moment I think she’s going to say something like Is it just you and your brother in that house? Instead, she opens her wallet and hands me a crisp fifty.
“Get home safely, Kaylee.”
* * *
—
The lights in the farmhouse are off; the sight puts a pit in my stomach. I lock the front door behind me, stomp the snow off my shoes, and cringe at the skunky smell of marijuana.
Amos is seated at the dining room table. In front of him is a bottle of Diet Coke, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and two glasses.
“Are you expecting someone?” I ask.
Amos tilts his head back and blows out a smoke ring. “Have a drink with me, Katherine.”
“Where are they?” I ask.
“Claire is asleep, or pretending to be. Jesse is stationed outside the door.” Amos tosses something onto the dining room table as I sit across from him. Claire’s phone.
“It’s been quite illuminating,” Amos says, pouring several inches of whiskey into one of the empty glasses. He knocks it back as I reach for the phone.
“She gave you her passcode?” I ask.
“She doesn’t have one. Some people have no sense of self-preservation.”
The pit in my stomach widens as Amos pours another glass of whiskey. Almost as an afterthought, he adds some to the glass next to it. He pushes it toward me. “She’s been talking to my ex. They traced the IP address from the burner I’ve been using to look at Zoe’s blog.”
I can’t speak. That he would do something so stupid—that he can sit here and tell me about it without a trace of shame—makes me want to grab the glass on the table and slam it against the wall.
I inhale deeply. “You told me you covered your tracks. Is there anything else I should know about?”
Amos sips his drink, his eyes never meeting mine. I shut my eyes, think of every step, every precaution we took. Amos had gotten rid of the burner he’d l
ent me—I was so paranoid about being seen ditching it, worried that even if I chucked the phone into the bay in the middle of the night, someone would see me—we planned for Amos to retrieve it from the heating vent in my house, under the guise of checking on the dog for my parents while they were in Sunfish Creek for the search.
My eyes fly open. “Amos. You got rid of the phone, right?”
He drains his glass, my insides frosting over. “Amos. Answer the question.”
Amos sets the glass down. Watches me with bloodshot eyes, says, “I didn’t get it in time. There were county police going through your room when I stopped by. I thought I had more time—but when Mike got killed I knew I had to get the fuck out of town. I went to your house to get the phone—I was all shaken up, and I forgot about the alarm. I put in the wrong code and the system flipped out at me.”
“You told me you got it and destroyed it,” I say, my vision blurring at the edges.
“Because I didn’t want you to worry and do anything stupid like turn yourself in,” Amos snaps.
“You were worried I would do something stupid?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly, okay? I fucked up. What does it matter now?”
Mistakes always matter.
“When Claire doesn’t show up for class on Monday, people are going to notice something is wrong…” Amos sounds a bit mournful as he studies the rim of his glass. “You know we have to do it, Kat.”
I don’t say anything. Claire’s dying would fix Amos’s mistake.
“It’ll be painless,” Amos says, taking my silence as assent. “She won’t even know what’s happening.”
“No one else is being killed because of us.”
“I’m not going to jail, Kat.” Amos’s voice hardens, as if the thought of jail were worse than death. He shakes his head, refills his glass.
“What would you do if I tried to stop you?” I ask.
“You won’t.” Amos drains his glass, sets it down. “Because we’re family.”
CLAIRE
NOW