by S. F. Kosa
A tear slipped from her eye.
Move, part of her whispered. Please.
Don’t move, whispered another part, the part that knew all the history and maybe the part that knew the future, too. This will all be over soon.
Sunday, August 9
By the time I reach the workshop, Scott’s already emerging with his nail gun, slamming a butane cartridge into its chamber. “I’m going to kill him.”
“He might still have her,” I say as we head for the back of the yard, the path that connects the two properties. Scott pushes ahead of me, and I put my hands up to keep from getting blinded by the thin branches that whip into my face as I jog behind him. My head is full of Mina and what she might have done.
That cake wasn’t meant for her parents. It was meant for Phillip.
That episode of food poisoning that landed him in the hospital—now I’m sure it was something else.
Except he’s still alive.
After several yards, we emerge into a backyard lined with woods and brambles all around. There’s a large garden plot full of sunflowers, tomatoes, beans, and peppers, and next to it is a compost pile nearly as tall as I am. A pitchfork sticks up out of the middle. The house is a Cape, just like the Richardses’, only painted maroon. To the left is an empty carport. Maybe they’re out.
Maybe that’s best.
“Phillip,” roars Scott as he lumbers by the garden and clomps up a set of wooden stairs leading to a back door. He rips open the screen door and pounds on the back door, then tries the knob.
It’s unlocked. We enter the kitchen to find Phillip standing at the stove next to the kettle, his face white. “Scott,” he says. “And…Alex?”
“Where is she?” I ask.
“Wh-who?”
“Mina,” Scott shouts. “What did you do to my daughter, you bastard?”
Phillip puts his hands up, a tremulous smile wavering on his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
As they’re arguing, my gaze sweeps the kitchen until it reaches the top of the fridge. My stomach drops. “She was here, Scott,” I say, alarm bells clanging in my head as I point to the cake carrier, pale blue with red flowers all over it, made of tin with metal handles. It’s right there. In plain sight.
Phillip looks up at the cake carrier. “Oh,” he says. The blood drains from his face. “It’s Sharon’s…”
I’m already in motion. “Where’s the basement?”
Scott points to the door right next to me, just across from the back door in the small entryway. “I’ll be upstairs.”
“You have no right,” Phillip is saying as I descend the stairs and pull a thin chain to get the lights on. Dank, humid air settles on my skin as I reach the bottom. It’s not finished, and it’s mostly empty. Just a cement floor, a water heater and large heating oil tank, a shelf with stacks and stacks of board games, a table holding a boxed-up chess set, a single bed covered in a green blanket, and absolutely no sign of Mina.
It hits me hard, the now-dead hope that I would find her down here alive. Sure, maybe bound and scared and hurt, but alive. A part of me is glad—finding nothing is still better than finding her body. There’s still hope. Scott’s searching other parts of the house.
When I come back up the stairs, though, I realize the search is over. Scott stands at the entrance to the living room, and Phillip is now hovering next to a utility closet.
He has a handgun pointed at Scott.
“We shouldn’t have left him alone,” Scott mutters.
“Alex,” Phillip says. “Stand where I can see you.”
I gauge the distance from me to Phillip and the fact that there’s a kitchen island between us. I might have a physical advantage here, but there’s no way I can get to him before he shoots. His finger is on the trigger.
Scott stares at Phillip with a cold, bleak kind of hatred in his eyes. “Where is she?”
“I want you to get the hell out of my house.”
Scott’s hand is still wrapped around that nail gun. “You have her cake carrier.”
Phillip opens his mouth, possibly to make some excuse, but I say, “Mina was seen two Mondays ago, loading a cake carrier into her car.” I jab my finger at it. “That cake carrier.” There’s no mistaking it. It’s not some plastic, dime-a-dozen thing. It’s an antique, and she loves it. She wouldn’t have left it behind.
Especially if it contained incriminating evidence.
“Did you eat the cake, Phillip?” I ask. “I know you have a sweet tooth.” For a second, I have to marvel at the diabolical plan Mina must have had. The way she’d finally decided to eliminate the man who hurt her so much, so many times. “Must have been a rude awakening when you realized.”
Phillip’s mask of innocence falls away. “She poisoned me!”
Scott starts to raise the nail gun, but Phillip takes a step closer to him, the gun aimed squarely at Scott’s chest. “She came here to kill me,” Phillip tells him, glancing over at me every few seconds. “She nearly succeeded.”
“Why?” Scott asks. “Why would she do that?”
I can see in his eyes that he knows exactly why.
“She was crazy,” Phillip snaps.
Was. Oh God. “What did you do to her?” I ask, remembering the book, Lawrence’s hands around Maggie’s throat, her despair in those moments. The sickness and rage coil inside me.
“I didn’t do anything,” Phillip shouts, his wiry frame emanating an agitated tension that I hope doesn’t extend to his trigger finger. “I didn’t lay a hand on her!”
“You have the cake carrier,” I say. “And you moved her car, right? You dumped it in Beech Forest. You knew people might think it was a suicide. You killed her. You fucking killed her.” It’s the first time I say it aloud, and those words hit me like a heavy dose of poison, turning everything black. “You killed my wife.”
“No! I never hurt her, and I never moved the car!”
I take a step closer to the kitchen island.
Phillip points at me while keeping the gun aimed at Scott. “Another step and I’ll kill him. Don’t make me do this!”
“You’re already a murderer,” Scott snarls. The nail gun twitches in his hand.
“No,” shouts Phillip. His hands are shaking, but his finger is now tight on that trigger. “I swear I didn’t kill her!”
“Liar,” Scott roars, his face crimson, his eyes wild. “You killed my daughter!”
“No,” says Sharon, her silhouette framed in the open back door. “I did.”
Chapter Sixteen
Like that amaryllis reaching for sunlight, Maggie’s thoughts stretched up and out of the despair. Up and out of the years and years keeping her where she was. It wasn’t like that anymore. She wouldn’t let it be.
If I win, we play a different game.
Her hands tightened around Lawrence’s wrists. She pulled. She saw the look of fear in his eyes. She’d never fought back. She’d always frozen, always yielded, always been a good, good, perfect, quiet girl.
This is a different game.
She breathed. One tortured, racked breath. His fingers loosened in a trembling spasm. His weight was going slack all around her.
The poison, doing its work.
With a grunt, she shifted her hips and bucked him off her. He slid off her body in a sickening parody of the way it had happened in the past. Sated and spent, her purpose served. Herself no threat at all.
She shuddered and shoved him, sucking oxygen through a bruised throat, adrenaline billowing through her veins. She scrambled away and crouched near the overturned table, watching him like the snake he was.
Lawrence lay on his back, panting. His effort to snuff the life out of her had exhausted him. He stared up at the wooden ceiling as if it held all his answers.
She crawled toward him. A whole bottle.
Thirty pills, all a powder in the spice grinder. Three was supposed to be enough, and she’d given him a huge slice of that cake. He’d scraped the icing off the plate. What if he had a tolerance, though? She’d seen the bottle in the medicine cabinet.
But probably he had taken some today already. That would help, not hurt.
His mouth was moving as she leaned over him. Soundless words. She surveyed his face, the sun spots, the gray stubble, the loose skin, the folds and wrinkles. This was her monster. This was the terror of her dreams. How had she ever allowed such a pathetic creature to control her?
Lori had reminded her that a predator’s methods were insidious. And that the mind’s focus was on survival, not truth. Put the two together, and evil men could get away with evil things.
“Did you think I would let you get away with all of it forever, though?” she murmured. “Had you just decided I would always be weak?”
He blinked up at the ceiling as his chest trembled. Up and down. She could see the vein fluttering in his neck. Pumping all that irresistible heaviness along his bones, his muscles, pushing it deeper. Into capillaries and cells. A slow-rolling takeover.
“Call 911,” he rasped.
“That kind of defeats the purpose here.”
“Maggie.” He took a swipe at her, uncoordinated and weak.
“Lawrence,” she said. “You aren’t expecting company are you?”
She saw the moment he understood, and she almost smiled at the terror in his eyes. By the time he managed to nod, a frantic little jerk of his head, she knew it was yet another lie.
“Good,” she said. “That would have been unfortunate.” She felt like a spider now, watching her prey struggling in the web. “I can’t figure out if you thought what you were doing to me was okay, if you were really that sick, or if you knew you were a fucking pedophile and just thought you could gaslight your way to getting away with it.” She offered him a pretty smile. “I’ve been to therapy. I know either is possible.”
I’m sorry, he mouthed. His eyes on her. Pleading. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She leaned closer. “Your words don’t matter anymore.”
“Help,” he coughed out, trying to roll toward the door. “Help!”
She stroked his chest. Touched his face. Moved into position. “Shh,” she said. Pushing her face right over his. Smelling his scent and gritting her teeth. “Shh, Lawrence. Listen to me.” She made sure he was looking up at her. Put both hands on his cheeks. Registered the horror in his eyes and understood it as justice.
“Good boys are quiet boys,” she whispered.
Then she covered his mouth with her palm and pinched his nostrils shut.
Sunday, August 9
Get the nail gun from him,” Phillip orders as his wife enters the kitchen.
Sharon approaches Scott from the side, careful not to step into Phillip’s line of fire. “Hand it over, Scott,” she says. “You shouldn’t have come over here with that.” She sounds like she’s scolding a stubborn teenager.
Scott gives her a look that could burn a normal person to the ground, but he hands over the nail gun. She takes it, steps well to his left, unclicks the safety with a practiced nonchalance, and aims it at me. “I didn’t want this to happen,” she said. “I feel sorry for you most of all.”
“Why?” That’s the only word I can choke out. It’s the only thought I can think in this moment. Why?
It covers the maelstrom deeper inside me. Mina is dead. My love is dead. My lungs lock up with the truth. My heart won’t beat properly. Disbelief and despair are a tangle in my mind.
Please let this be a lie. A joke. Yet another nightmare. Anything but reality. Please.
“Sometimes you have to fight for what’s yours,” Sharon is saying. “And my husband is mine.”
“Sharon has a book group on Monday nights,” Phillip says, keeping his eyes on Scott. “I’m guessing Mina knew that. Rose probably told her. But Sharon came home just in time.”
“He’d eaten a big ol’ piece of cake,” says Sharon. “The fruit of the poisoned tree.” She shakes her head, and her silver hair flaps by her ears. She’s not a big woman, but she holds the nail gun steady. I wonder how much damage she could do to me before I get it away from her. I’m guessing her husband would shoot me before I find out.
“I walked in on them,” she continues. “I was standing right by the stove, right where you are now.”
“You said you loved her,” I say. “You went on and on about what she meant to you.”
“You don’t understand,” she replies. “You don’t understand what it’s like, losing him over and over.” She casts a narrow-eyed look at her husband before returning her attention to me. “After all the love I gave her, she decided to steal from me. Again. You married a little whore.”
I take a step toward her, my hands rising from my sides.
She fires the nail gun. I flinch and look down at myself.
“Cabinet,” says Scott, his mouth barely moving. I look over to see a three-inch framing nail embedded halfway in the cabinet door less than a foot from my head.
“Stay still, Alex,” she says. “You have to understand it was all in self-defense. She was in my house. And she threatened me.”
“You’re a fucking liar.” I stay where I am this time, though. My hands are at my sides again, but my phone is in my pocket. If I were alone, I’d run for it and hit Detective Correia’s number as soon as I was in the yard, but Scott is right in Phillip’s sights. And as weedy as the guy is, Phillip looks like he knows what he’s doing with that weapon. “Whatever you did,” I say to his wife, “you did it in cold blood.”
“I didn’t,” Sharon says, her voice going shrill. “What I saw was that woman in my kitchen, seducing my husband again!” Her cheeks are stained crimson. Her eyes have gone glassy. “Can’t you understand that? I swallowed all that humiliation for years. I tried to be the bigger person, and what did that get me?” She stomps her foot. “First Rose got him, then, as soon as Mina turned eighteen, she went after him, too. Like mother, like daughter. Two bitches in heat, I guess. And apparently Phillip can’t control himself around them.”
I’m trying to wrap my head around what she’s saying, but it’s so twisted that I only manage to gape at her. “You don’t actually believe—”
“I don’t have to believe,” she shouts. “I know. I know that Rose stole him away. He admitted it! And a few years later, Mina did the same! I knew that baby was his, and she didn’t even have the decency to let us raise him!”
“Are you fucking serious?” I ask. “He raped her. And you’re surprised she wouldn’t let you raise the baby?”
Sharon scoffs. “Rape? What a crock. Do you have any idea how it felt to see her last week, up to her old tricks?”
“You could have kicked her out of your house,” Scott says. “You could have—”
“I did what I should have done all those years ago!” Sharon shrieks. “I grabbed my frying pan and gave her what she deserved!”
My stomach turns, imagining it. “Sharon—”
“I didn’t mean for her to die,” she wails. Then she draws in a shuddering breath. “When I realized she’d poisoned him, though, oh, I was glad I got her. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” She glances over her shoulder. “Isn’t that what you and Rose believe, Scott?”
He stares at her, his eyes glittering with tears. “Where is my daughter, Sharon?”
“Phillip,” she says, ignoring Scott. “We have to figure out what to do with them.”
“You’re not going to be able to hide this,” I tell her. “If you do anything to us, that’s it. Rose knows we’re here.”
“I’ve been waiting for something like this,” Sharon tells me. “I’ll figure it out.”
“They’re in our house. They brought a weapon,” says Phillip. “We hav
e a right to defend ourselves. We can say that they tried to frame us, too. For the whole thing.”
For Mina’s murder, he means. I scan the room. “Sharon,” I say. “You’re really willing to go to prison for the rest of your life for this guy?”
“I forgave him for cheating,” she snaps. “He’s weak, but he’s a good husband.”
“He’s a fucking pedophile.”
Confusion flits across her face, followed by rage. She aims the nail gun square at my face and moves a little closer to me but still too far for me to get to her before she fires. “Do you write fiction, too?” she asks, her lip curling in contempt. “How dare you—”
“It’s true,” says Scott. “We know it’s true. He abused Mina for years.”
“He had an affair with Mina,” Sharon says. “She was eighteen. An adult. She knew what she was doing.”
“He started molesting her right after the affair with Rose,” I say. “When she was twelve at the most. He threatened Rose. He made her send Mina over here in exchange for keeping Scott in the dark. For all we know, he was trying to get to Mina all along.”
“Don’t believe them, Sharon,” says Phillip. “They’re lying.”
“He was trying to protect Mina,” Sharon says, rattling the nail gun in a way that makes me take a step back. “Trying to give her time away from that nightmare of a family she had.”
“Chess. Lessons,” I say, annunciating every syllable. “You mentioned Phillip played, and I saw the table downstairs, with the chess set.” I look over at him. “Except that wasn’t really what you were doing, was it? I saw the bed down there, too.”
When you win, we play a different game.
“It’s a lie, honey,” says Phillip. He looks nervous, though, his twitchy gaze shifting from Scott to Sharon to me and back. “I sleep down there sometimes, when my snoring gets to be too much for her. Ask her.”
Sharon nods, but she looks troubled, like a seed of doubt is germinating.
“You know what I’m saying is true, Sharon,” I tell her. “You know what he did to her. And he lied to you for years.”
