The Last Resort

by Marissa Stapley

  But then she did stop. Because Miles was holding a knife against the woman’s throat.

  And it wasn’t Grace he was dragging away. It was Shell.

  She had been so stupid, so careless, so foolish. So cowardly. She had crept away from the scene between Miles and Ruth instead of stepping in. She had let Ruth’s cruel words paralyze her. And now she was getting what she deserved. Ruth had been right about that, at least. Such an easy place for Shell to default to: Your fault, your fault. But it was. Everything was. He had grabbed her and dragged her down the hallways and outside. And she hadn’t been able to do anything to stop him.

  The raging wind, his arms around her, hard as the steel of his knife pressed against her throat. How stupid she had been to imagine he would not be able to find more ways to hurt her. And how truly surprising it was, to find out how badly she wanted to live, when just days before she had been sure she wanted to die.

  She thought of Johanna’s words, that afternoon on the beach, when they had been skipping rocks and Shell had told Johanna she would have wished to die, had she been in her shoes when the man had walked into her office with a gun. I know what you feel when something like that happens to you, Johanna had said to her. You want to live. Even if you think you don’t. You understand what your life is worth. You see the light you couldn’t see before.

  “You still have a chance, you know,” Miles shouted. “I can really see you, I can see who you really are! I’ve always been able to! You could still join me, and none of this would happen to you! It doesn’t have to be this way!”

  “What do you mean, join you?” she screamed, and felt her words get lost in the storm. She could shout for Colin but he would never hear her. He was probably still sleeping, unaware she was even gone. What a fool she was. She could still be in there, safe with her husband. She struggled, but it was no use. Too late.

  “I am the leader!” Miles screamed. “Let me be yours!”

  She tried to jerk away. “Let go of me!”

  He was very still for a moment, holding her in a vise grip. “No,” he said. “I won’t.” And then he was pulling her up the outdoor restaurant stairs and her legs were bumping along uselessly. She knew this was the very last place they should be right now. When the most powerful part of the storm arrived, she imagined this restaurant detaching itself from the side of the cliff and tumbling away, into the waves. She knew Miles wouldn’t care what happened to her.

  But up at the top of the stairs in the main part of the restaurant they were slightly sheltered from the wind. Miles lowered his head, touched his lips to her ear. “You are a sinner,” he said. “You are a worthless sinner.” She struggled against him, but it was no use. He held the knife against her neck and she felt the sting of a shallow cut, felt blood dripping down her chest, just like she had felt his saliva there, two days before. He was intent on marking her, this man. He was not going to stop until he had ruined her.

  Movement. She saw someone, at the top of the stairs leading to the restaurant. She thought it was Colin but then she realized it was Johanna. And that she was advancing toward them, her hand held high. Shell remembered their moments together on the beach again. She saw Johanna throwing rocks into the water, showing her what to do. But this was not a skipping stone. Johanna held a rock the size of her fist. Shell wanted to shout, He has a knife, but she didn’t get the chance. Johanna unleashed the rock. My dad taught me to pitch baseballs, Johanna had told Shell that afternoon on the beach. And: You want to live, she had told her. And: It’s so easy, Johanna had said. Once you stop thinking about what you’re doing. Just throw. Shell closed her eyes and whispered, Please—to whom, she did not know. Please, let her aim be true. Please, save me.

  A thud. Then Miles fell backward, pulling her with him. But she was able to pull away just before he hit the floor with a sickening thud. She stumble-ran away from him and slid over the wet tile floor toward Johanna. Thank you, she was going to say. But as she got closer to her, she saw that there was no triumph on her face. Only terror.

  Shell turned around.

  Miles was up already. His head was bleeding, but he was moving forward, roaring like a demon. She barely heard his words, only the ugly sound of his voice, not that different from the banshee shriek of the wind.

  “Jezebels!” That horrible, cajoling, wheedling shout. “Slatterns!”

  He was coming closer. “You filthy whores. You evil snakes. I will fucking kill you. I will.”

  She had always told herself, after Zoey was born, that she would try to make the world a place worthy of her beautiful daughter. And, she realized, even though she was gone, she felt the same. She knew it was magical thinking, but she couldn’t help but believe it in that moment: that if she could make it a world worthy of her daughter, maybe Zoey would come back to her.

  And a world worthy of her daughter could not possibly contain a man like Miles Markell.

  Shell took three steps forward, arms outstretched. Three more. She was pushing him backward, pushing him away from them, pushing with the strength of everything she had lost.

  He had been right. She really was powerful. She knew he saw this as his body flew over the ledge and down.

  Johanna locked the door of the main villa behind them. She and Shell gazed at one another wordlessly. Rain dripped from their bodies to the floor. “I need to go to Colin,” Shell whispered. Johanna put her hand on her arm, but she didn’t know what to say to her. Shell just shook her head, then disappeared into the darkness.

  Johanna checked inside every room, opened every door she passed. Finally, she found a door that led to a staircase. She hesitated, thinking that up would be the last place Grace should go during a storm—but something told her she may have had no choice. That she may have needed to go to the last place she thought he was going to look.

  Soon she was at the top of the building, and the wind was howling louder. A door, a suite of rooms: someone lived up here.

  She opened the door and saw skittering movement, someone retreating into the shadows. “Grace?”

  Grace stepped forward. “I thought you were him,” she said, and she was crying, too, shaking almost in unison with Johanna. “He’s going to come for me. I’m so scared. He’s going to come for both of us, now that you’re here. He has a knife.”

  “You don’t have to worry. He’s not going to come.”

  “How do you know that? How?”

  How could she tell her what she had done? What they had done, together? And yet, how could she not? Miles was either dead, or seriously hurt. Not telling anyone, leaving him out there, was murder. But telling Grace, making her the one to choose—Johanna knew what would happen. She knew Grace would do what she thought was right. And, remembering the maniacal, murderous look in Miles’s eyes, she knew that in this case there was more than one right decision. That if there was any chance Miles was just injured and not dead yet, she needed to take the choice away from Grace so that Grace would be safe.

  Miles wasn’t the only one who could play God.

  “I just—I saw him sleeping,” she said. It wasn’t quite a lie, not entirely. Maybe he was sleeping. Sleeping forever.

  Grace sagged with relief, sagged into Johanna’s arms and put her head on her shoulder. “I thought I messed it up. I tried to give him the Zopiclone in coffee so he wouldn’t taste the bitterness, but he wouldn’t drink it. So I dissolved more pills in water, but I was rushing. I—I had Cleo’s pills there with me, too, from the safe. And, the way he was acting, I started to think I accidentally gave him those instead of the sleeping pills.” She looked up. “What did you say was in them?”

  “Cleo’s pills?” A slow dawning, a prickle of dread as she considered what might be found in his system, and the possibility that it could be traced back to her. “Ketamine, I think. You—you put them in water? The pills Miles ultimately took?” He would have tasted the sleeping pills in water. But Cl
eo had once told her the pills she had given her had no taste, that Johanna could dissolve them in any liquid if she was having trouble swallowing them because of their size.

  “How did they make you feel, when you took them?”

  “I never took a whole one. I only cut them in half, if the migraines got really bad. They took the pain away, but I didn’t like the way they made me feel. Jumpy. Jittery. I hallucinated once, and it was scary.”

  “I’m so glad that’s not what I gave him.”

  It explained so much—but she couldn’t tell that to Grace. Not now. She needed to offer her comfort. “There’s nothing to worry about. And now that he’s asleep, I think it might be best for us to go downstairs.” The lantern burned out as she said that. She waited for her eyes to adjust in the dark.

  But all she could see was Miles, first toppling like Goliath, then flying over the edge of those rocks like a fallen angel. “Come on,” Johanna said. “Take my hand. We’ll find the door. We’ll get out of here.”

  Shell pushed open the door of the office she and Colin had been resting in earlier. Colin was awake. She saw his worried, frightened face in the dimming light of the flashlight he was holding. He walked toward her. “Where were you? Why are you soaked?”

  “I needed the bathroom. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Did you go outside?”

  “I took a wrong turn, I went out the wrong door.”

  “Shell.”

  She was shaking. He could see it all, could see right through her.

  “Oh, Colin,” she whispered, accepting his embrace. “I didn’t know what else to do.” Then she began to whisper it in his ear, the awful story. He kept her in his arms, but she could feel him stiffen.

  “Why did you go alone?” He moaned. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Now he pulled away and looked down at her. “He’s still out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “If we leave him out there, it will be—”

  “Please, don’t say it.”

  “I should go out there. I should see if I can—”

  A groaning sound outside interrupted him. Shell knew it was the wind, but still, she imagined it was Miles, grown larger than life and coming for her, for both of them, all of them. The wind was so strong for a few minutes she didn’t know if they were inside or out. And then, all at once, an eerie silence.

  Colin reached for her hand, Miles forgotten. “It’s getting stronger. We need to get to the middle of the building,” he said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  They closed the door behind them, and in the slam of it she heard so much more: a crushing secret, a horrible act, one she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep behind a closed door forever. But for now, she clung to Colin’s hand and tried to imagine that none of it had happened, that it was just a bad dream.

  As they moved down the hallway, she saw someone running toward them. It was Johanna’s husband, Ben. He was soaked through, too, as soaked as if he’d been swimming in the ocean. As soaked as she was. “Have you seen Johanna?” he said through chattering teeth. Shell didn’t know how to answer him. “Please, have you seen her? I’m afraid she might be outside!”

  “She’s not out there,” Shell finally said. “I know Johanna isn’t outside.”

  “We’ll run, tomorrow,” Grace said to Johanna. A reminder, as she followed her through the room, that there had to be a light at the end of this tunnel.

  “Tomorrow, when this is over.” Johanna’s voice, ahead of her in the dark. “Yes. We will.”

  “No matter what.” But it was in Grace’s head, that pounding refrain: No. No. No. She could feel it growing louder. It had started when Johanna had come into the room. When Johanna had told her not to worry, that Miles wasn’t going to come for her. Just before the lantern went out she had seen it in her eyes. A terrible knowledge, and a change in her. Something awful was happening. Somehow, Miles was going to take all this away from her. She knew this the way she knew things about her clients, when all she had to do was close her eyes and let herself feel—and there it was: the secret and the truth.

  Grace paused. The cacophony of her thoughts had distracted her from the fact that everything else had gone silent, all at once. The storm noises had stopped completely—no wind, no rain. The world was a vacuum.

  Johanna stopped feeling her way through the dark, but she had kept hold of Grace’s hand. “What’s going on?” she asked in the stillness. It felt like a miracle, but Grace knew it wasn’t.

  “It’s the eye of the storm,” she said. “It’s here. And I don’t know if we have time to get downstairs now. We can’t be on the stairs when the other eyewall hits. The walls are thin. They could be torn right off, and us along with them.” She squeezed Johanna’s hand. “Follow me, now.” She felt her way along the wall, back the way they’d come.

  There was a drop in pressure so sudden Johanna’s head began to pound. It was as if all the air was being sucked from the room. Grace tugged her hand harder and they stumbled across the room, blind in the dark. A door, and Johanna had to shove it open, hard. It slammed behind them. Was there any air left in this tiny room? Yes. Yes, she could breathe. “The tub! Come on!” Grace pulled Johanna down into the tub. They lay side by side, bodies pressed together. “It’s hitting us now. The other side of the storm.”

  “But Miles,” Johanna said. It had seemed so right, earlier, to do nothing. But now Johanna felt panicked. Now, she knew beyond any doubt there would be no going back. What was done, was done. And she hadn’t been able to keep it inside her. “He’s still out there. I left him out there. I’m so sorry. It’s true, what you suspected: he ingested the wrong drugs. He was violent. And then—”

  The sound of glass breaking. There was no time for Grace to respond to what Johanna had said. Maybe she hadn’t even heard her. “Close your eyes, squeeze them shut.”

  Johanna did as Grace had told her to do, burying her head in Grace’s hair as glass rained down on them both. The wind screeched above them, and Johanna thought maybe the roof had been pulled off the building. If I die now—but there was no way to finish that thought. There were noises all around: bangs, shatters, crashes, groans of walls and beams. Johanna knew she should be more frightened than she was. But she was in Grace’s arms, and there was no fear there. She put her lips on Grace’s, because wasn’t that what you did when there was a storm? You sought shelter. You found safety.

  What would you do, if it was your last night on earth? Had anyone ever asked her that? The answer was this: She would kiss Grace Markell’s soft, beautiful lips and she would hold her face in her hands. She would say, “You are perfect. I’m so glad we met. No matter what. I’m so glad.” And Grace would say, “Me, too, you saved my life.” She would hear Grace’s voice above all else, even the wind.

  Hours or minutes, she didn’t know. But the wind died down and the world came back into focus. When Johanna finally moved, her entire body was cramped. The dull ache from the pressure drop was still in her head, but otherwise she was fine. She moved her head slightly away from Grace and looked into her eyes in the dim morning light now flowing in through the broken window. Johanna’s body flooded with relief and she kissed her again.

  The door flung opened suddenly just as they stopped. It was Ben. He took them in, huddled in the tub, saw Johanna’s hand tangled in Grace’s hair, saw their closeness because there was no way not to see it. Johanna opened her mouth, but closed it when she realized what she had been about to say: Nothing happened. A reflex, to deny. But saying nothing had happened would have been the biggest lie of her life. The storm had come and washed her away. It had made her new. She had to be true to this new person she had become. “Come on.”

  Yet, somehow, Ben seemed to see none of it. Maybe he saw only what he wanted to see. Maybe he always had. “You both need to get downstairs, now. We
have a serious problem. Hurry. Before anyone sees us.”

  Johanna was afraid, but still found herself marveling at the fact that they had survived.

  But not everyone had. She knew that, perhaps more than anyone.

  And she also knew that what was to come next would take even more bravery.

  Day Eight

  Dawn

  Her: This is what really happened. This is what no one knows. I went outside looking for Miles. And I saw every single thing that happened. And then—well, you can be the judge. [A pause.] Please. Judge me. Someone needs to, now that he’s gone. I tried to give him one last chance, in my own defense. I gave him the chance to say he was sorry. He wouldn’t. He said terrible things instead. He hurt me again. And so I was the one who killed him. I loved him, but he had hurt me so badly. I just couldn’t take it anymore. All of a sudden, I needed to end it. So he would stop hurting people. So he would stop hurting me.

  The five of them walked toward the restaurant in the strange silence of the aftermath of the storm. They were on high ground, and Grace could see some of the damage to the property: the bungalows were slumped, some of them roofless and filled with sand. Most of the palm trees had snapped in two. The roof of her house was gone. To Grace, it looked like the wreck of a property she and Miles had bought more than a decade before, after Hurricane Wilma. It was like none of it had ever happened, like she was getting a chance to start over.

  Except.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Ben. “Why are we out here?”