by Ivy Smoak
“The only escape is death?” Tucker was staring at me like his words should have meant something.
I shook my head again. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw the floorboard where you were counting down the days. You etched into the wood that the only escape was death. But that’s not the answer. Coming out here isn’t the answer. Just talk to me. I can help you.”
I was trying to make sense of what he was saying. “My bedroom was in the front of the house. It overlooked the street.”
He lowered his eyebrows slightly.
“The guest bedroom overlooked the backyard. My mom would stay in that room when she was bad.”
“Bad?”
I felt nauseous. This was my chance. I could come clean about everything. I had his undivided attention. But I still didn’t know if I could trust him. Luckily a backup plan was finally forming in my head. “There’s exceptions to every rule, right? Like just because you believe something doesn’t mean there aren’t situations in which you’d change your mind?” I needed to be able to change his mind. I had to. I’d already lost so much. I didn’t want to lose him too.
“It depends on the circumstances, but yes. There’s exceptions to every rule. Of course there’s exceptions.”
He sounded genuine. But I knew I was scaring him. He was worried I was going to fall. But the ice was solid here. Farther in, maybe not. I was banking on the fact that it wasn’t. “I’m a monster.”
“You are not a monster, Violet.”
“You lied about one thing. I lied about everything.”
“That’s okay.”
Why did he keep saying that? It wasn’t okay. “I need you to take care of Zeke for me. Make sure he knows that I love him more than anything in this world. No matter what happens, I need him to know that.”
Tucker stepped out onto the ice. It cracked under his feet and he quickly retreated back to the dirt. “Violet please. I need you to get off the ice before it breaks.”
Rip the Band-Aid off. “When my stepfather and mother found out I was pregnant they wanted me to get an abortion. They insisted it was the only way.” I touched my stomach. “I couldn’t do it. I refused. So they said they were going to take me away from here. Henry bought a home down in Florida and everything. He said he thought it would be better for my mom. Sunnier. I was only18. I was still hung up on Joel. I thought he’d come back. I was young and dumb and I thought he’d come back for me. I didn’t want to go with them.” Stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying. It was so ingrained in me that it was hard to stop. But the words weren’t lies. They were just a piece of a story. The innocent piece. “When I say they wanted to move I use that term lightly. Henry wanted to move. My mom…she wasn’t there. She was on new medicine. She was just checked out. I know she was sick, but God I needed her. I needed her to stand up for me for once.”
I wasn’t sure Tucker was paying attention. His eyes were focused on the ice beneath my feet.
“My mother met Henry on one of her good days. She didn’t have many of those days near the end. Barely any really. I’m pretty sure he thought she tricked him. Tricked him into falling for her. She didn’t mean to be the way she was. She was just…sick.” Like me. “And honestly even on her lucid days she was cruel. She used to drag me out here when I misbehaved and would hold my head under the water. Henry used to laugh.” My own laugh sounded strangled. “She was awful. I never told anyone how awful she was.”
“Violet, if your mother abused you, you had every right to fight back.”
“That’s not…” I shook my head. “I knew how to handle her. It was Henry that I couldn’t fight off.” God. Do it! “I looked like my mom. He…” Damn it! “I think he thought it was only right that he got me instead.” I was going to be sick. “Zeke isn’t Joel’s baby. I never even slept with him. I couldn’t.” It felt like I was holding my breath. “Henry would…he never asked. He just took everything from me. For years. I told my mother and she said I was lying. She didn’t believe me. Why would I ever think that someone else would if my own mother didn’t? She’d lock herself in that damn room and just let it happen. She let him ruin me.”
“Violet.”
There were tears in his eyes. I hadn’t even told him the worst of it.
“How was I supposed to tell the boy I was falling in love with that I lost my innocence when I was 12 years old? I was ashamed that I didn’t know how to stop it. I was ashamed that my mother thought I was lying. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to stop it.” I stifled my sob. It was just part of the story. I had to tell him the rest. He needed to know. “When Joel found out I was pregnant, I tried to tell him but he was so mad. He had been so patient with me. I told him I needed time before I was ready to sleep with him. I was just trying to find the strength to tell him what was going on in my house. But he left before I could explain. He wrote me off so fast. Even if I was able to get the words out, I think he would have left anyway.” I needed him and he left.
“His foster father, John, overheard our conversation. A few weeks after Joel left, I was at the lake waiting for him like an idiot. John said he’d been trying to get me alone for weeks to talk about what happened. That he’d had foster kids before with the same issues as me…he said he understood. He knew what I was going through and he believed me. I never meant…I shouldn’t have asked for his help.” Stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying. I shook my head. “He went to go talk to my mother and stepfather right away. He said he’d get me out. I thought he could save me. For once in my life I thought I was lucky.”
I wiped away the tears from my cheeks.
“The conversation didn’t go well. John kept saying he was going to call child protective services if Henry didn’t let me leave with him. When John pulled out his phone, Henry took a swing. It escalated quickly. Henry had his hands around John’s throat. I still remember his eyes bulging.” I swallowed hard. “I didn’t know what to do. I kept yelling for my mom to help. But she just stood there watching like it didn’t matter. She had that blank stare in her eyes that I hated so much. I did the first thing I could think of and grabbed a shovel from the garage and swung it around. I was just trying to break it up. I…it didn’t work.” I could still picture John’s body falling to the floor with a thud. I didn’t know someone could feel so much horror and relief at the same time. Because when Henry turned around there was a pocket knife sticking out of his chest. “John had stabbed him.” I touched the center of my chest. I had never been so relieved in my life. “Henry died.” I said it like it happened instantly. But it was slower than that. He gurgled and spat for a few minutes as I tried to resuscitate John. “They both died.” I didn’t give a shit about Henry. But John? I could barely live with myself. It was my fault that he was dead, just as much as it was my fault that Henry was dead.
“I kept yelling for my mom to call 9-1-1. I told her to get help. When I finally stopped trying to resuscitate John to call an ambulance myself she was standing there with a gun. Pointed at me.” I shook my head. “I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, Violet. Big lies have big consequences,” I repeated her words. I couldn’t look at Tucker. I stared down at my boots. Stop lying. Stop lying. Stop lying. “She used to say that before she’d shove my face in the water. I thought after all the years of abuse she might actually believe what Henry had done to me. But like I told you before, my mother never loved me.” I wiped away my remaining tears. I didn’t have any left to shed. “She turned the gun and shot herself in the face.” I could still see the blood seeping into her shirt. The blood was everywhere.
“I didn’t think my mother would ever actually do it. I’d feared it, but only in a far-off sense, like how a kid worries about her parents getting divorced.” I wished my life had been that simple. “If I’d ever seen that floorboard, maybe I would have known. I wish I had known. Maybe I could have at least stopped one death. But I didn’t know. And I’m what everyone says I am. I’m a monster. It’s my fa
ult they’re all dead.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes it is. I killed them.” God it felt good to say it out loud. “That happened because of me. I could have just left. I could have figured it out. But I ran to someone else for help and look what happened? Three people are dead. Three. Because of me.” Three. Three. Three. I was haunted by that night. It was so easy to get pulled back into the moment. Whenever I was upset or agitated or nervous, I’d see all three bodies. I couldn’t escape the memory.
Tucker stepped onto the ice and it started to crack under his foot. “Shit.” He pulled his foot back. “Violet, please get off the ice. None of that was your fault.”
“All the rumors are true.”
“No they’re not. You are not what people say you are. You are good and kind and sweet. You’ve listened to the assholes in this town for far too long. We’re going to get all this cleared up. Please, just get off the ice, Vi.”
I looked down at the ice. There was a crack trailing toward me. It was too late.
“We can fix this together. That gun I found under your floorboards. Was that the gun?”
I nodded.
“Great. You said you got rid of it, can we get it back? We’re going to need that for evidence. Who’d you sell it to?”
“No one will ever believe me. Everyone’s already made up their mind. I just wanted one person to believe me. I needed you to believe me, Tucker.”
“I do believe you. And the gun will help prove your innocence. There are so many ways to get you out of this. We can clear your name. Where is the gun, Violet?”
“That gun isn’t going to fix it. I’ve cleaned it so many times.” So much fucking blood. “I know I should have called the police right away, but I didn’t have a choice, Tucker. Everyone had already made up their mind about me after Joel left. They were calling me a slut to my face. No one would talk to me. I lost all my so-called friends. I didn’t have anyone to ask for help. And it looked bad. There were three dead bodies in my house.
“I knew no one would side with me. My peers had already made that clear. I was worried everyone else would believe the rumors going around about me. I sat there for a long time, trying to figure out what to do. When it got dark, I thought maybe I’d drive the bodies out of state. I put one of them in my truck, but I freaked out. There’s too many tolls. Too many places where they could be seen. So I…I wheelbarrowed their bodies through the woods, lined their pockets with rocks, and dumped them in the lake. It made the most sense at the time. My mother always liked the lake.” The crack in the ice had almost reached me.
“When any neighbors would ask, I just said they were on vacation. When they never came back…more rumors spread about me.” I could see it on his face. He didn’t understand. “I hated Henry. But Zeke? I knew I was going to love him so much. He was already a part of me. And he was going to be so good. He was going to be everything his father wasn’t. I needed to protect him. If I got locked up, who was going to protect my son? I didn’t want him to become the monster that his father was. He needed me.”
“I understand why you did it, Vi. I understand.” His eyes were focused on my feet instead of me. “We’re going to get you off. Everything’s going to be fine. Just…just get off the ice and tell me where that gun is.”
I looked down as the thin crack reached my feet. “It’s with all the bodies. Underneath me.”
Chapter 28
Tucker
The cracking noise reverberated through the woods. I was already running onto the ice as she fell through.
“Violet!” I ignored it cracking beneath my feet, shoved off my jacket, and dove into the part of the lake that wasn’t frozen over. She wasn’t allowed to die. She wasn’t allowed to drop that on me and then leave. For six years she’d let everyone in this town convince her she was a monster. She wasn’t. She was just a kid when it’d happen. She was scared. And alone. She wasn’t alone anymore.
My eyes stung as I opened them under the water. I didn’t see her anywhere. I swam underneath the ice, trying to find her. Farther. I was running out of air.
I couldn’t actually promise her that I’d be able to clear her name. If there were really bodies in this lake…if she really took the time to secretly put them here? That was fucking bad. That made her look guilty. But I didn’t care about clearing her name. That was what backup plans were for.
I turned around in circles searching. The last air bubbles escaped my lips. Where are you?
I swam back out to the middle of the lake and barely made it to the surface in time before I inhaled water instead of air. I took a huge gulp of air and was about to dive back under when I saw her. Her head was bobbing above the water a few feet away from me. Her lips were blue, but she was fucking alive.
“You scared me half to death,” I said as I swam over to her.
“I’m sorry, I…”
I silenced her apology with a kiss. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about any of it. She could have killed them and I didn’t think I’d care.
She clung to me like I was her lifeline. And maybe I was. Maybe all she needed was one good person in her life to take away all the bad.
“I threw the gun into the lake.” Her breath was hot against my neck.
That gun wasn’t going to get her off. I was just trying to tell her whatever she needed to hear to get her off the ice. And now I needed to get us both out of this water before we froze to death. “We’ll get it later, okay? The water’s too cold to search right now.” She didn’t resist when I pulled her back over to the ice and hoisted her up, hoping it wouldn’t crack again. We both made it back to dry land and I draped my dry coat around her shoulders.
“I lost another freaking coat,” she said. It sounded like she was trying to make a joke, but I didn’t have time to react like a normal guy with a crush on a girl. We were running out of time.
“We need to get going.” I grabbed her hand and pulled us through the woods.
“Going where? I thought you said you believed me.” She was shivering. “That the gun was enough evidence…”
“Yeah, well we both confessed that we’re liars, Violet. I was just trying to get you off the ice.”
“You think they’ll put me away?” Her walking had turned into a jog to keep up with me.
“I think justice isn’t as black and white as people think it is. And that you shouldn’t go down for something just because there’s rumors that you’re guilty. We’re going to skip town.”
“We’re? I could never ask you to do that.”
“You’re not asking me. It’s my choice.”
“But I just confessed. I’m tired of hiding. If it wasn’t for Zeke, I would have turned myself in a long time ago. You’re a detective and I’m guilty of…”
“You saw three homicides occur. You’re not guilty of anything and I’m not going to let you go to prison for the rest of your life for something you didn’t do.”
“I’m so sick of living in fear every day. You asked me why I never moved. I’ve been terrified that if I left, someone would come along and go snooping where they shouldn’t. I thought someone would find the bodies. I had to stay and make sure my secret didn’t come out. Now that it’s out…”
“I’m the only one that knows. Your secrets will stay buried for as long as it takes to skip town.” I hope. “We’ll go get Zeke and then we’ll just drive. As far away as we can get from here.” We finally reached the top of the hill.
“Stop,” Damien said as we stepped out of the woods and onto her driveway. He was holding his gun up, aiming it at Violet. “Drop his hand, Violet.”
I wrapped my fingers more securely around Violet’s to prevent her hand from slipping. “Drop the fucking gun, Damien.” I pulled Violet toward my car, knowing full well he wasn’t about to shoot either one of us.
“They found a match for that tooth. It belonged to a John Fredrick. Joel’s foster father. He went missing six years ago too. Just like her parents. That’s too much o
f a coincidence.”
“I’m sorry,” Violet said.
She was not making this easy on me. Apologizing made her sound guilty. “It’s a misunderstanding,” I said. I shielded Violet’s body from him as I helped her into the passengers’ seat and then slammed the door closed.
Damien was pointing his gun at me now. “A misunderstanding? She just apologized for us finding the dude’s tooth in the middle of the woods. She clearly killed all three of them. You’re too infatuated with her to see it.”
“She didn’t. She told me the whole story. She saw them die, but she didn’t do it.” Even the gashes in the doorframe and flooring in her childhood home lined up with her story. They were the right size to be from the sharp end of a shovel. I could picture the scene so vividly in my head. I glanced at her truck. All the inconsistencies around Violet weren’t as inconsistent as they seemed. She kept the truck because she was worried about evidence. She stayed in these woods because she was worried about her secrets being unearthed. She’d done everything in her power to protect her son. She wasn’t the monster everyone made her out to be. And I wouldn’t let her be labeled as one because of a few rumors.
I walked back over to my side of the car. “I’m getting her and Zeke out of here so they can’t lock her up for something she didn’t do. The bodies are in the lake. I’m leaving this one to you. Clear her name for me.”
“The lake? What?! You can’t help her escape! Are you freaking insane? You can’t just believe anything that comes out of a beautiful psycho’s mouth.”
“She’s lied about a lot of things to cover it up. But she’s not lying about what happened.”
“You don’t know that.”
“She was young and scared and didn’t have anyone to help her out of it. She has me now. Would you lower your fucking gun? We both know you’re not going to shoot me.”
Damien slowly lowered his pistol. “She’s killed at least three people, Tucker.”
At least? Were they going to pin every death in this town on her? “She hasn’t killed anyone.” And I wouldn’t blame her if she had. Her stepfather had deserved a fate far worse than he got. A quick death after years of abusing her? I would have made it slow and painful.