Ethan reared back as if she’d slapped him. “By that douche you slept with? Hell of a way to begin forgiving—”
She laid her hand on his. “Ethan, no. Oh my God, no. I was pregnant before I left. I swear. I thought I’d lost it. I took a test three weeks ago, and it was positive, but right after, I started to bleed. I assumed I was miscarrying. Maybe I was, or maybe it was a fluke. I took it as a sign. It seemed fitting. I was so afraid you’d hurt Dashiell, and if I were pregnant again, then we would both be in danger. I prayed not to be, and then I started to bleed, and I thought, for once, God’s answered my prayers.”
“I would never hurt Dashiell. Or you.”
“I know that now. I started feeling ill the first day I arrived in Paris. I figured I’d gotten into something on the plane. I didn’t think. No, that’s not true. I wanted to run away and pretend my life hadn’t turned out how it did.”
“When did you know for sure?” he whispered.
“Inspector Badeau noticed how sick I was during the interrogation and thought something was up. She brought me a test, and I took it.” She pulled it from her purse and handed it to him. The two lines stared up at him like slitted eyes.
She rubbed her stomach ruefully, one hand still tangled with his. “I am pregnant, and the baby is yours. Only yours. I screwed up royally in Paris, by leaving, by running away from all of this. And I know you won’t be able to forgive me for my stupidity in thinking that I’d be better off away from you. Now that we know Ivy was trying to ruin our lives... Well, it’s too much to ask you to open yourself to me again. But if you’re willing to make a go of this, of us, I am, too. And if not, I will understand.”
“And the baby?”
She smiled. “I will see him or her as a blessing, now and forevermore, no matter what happens.”
“So you’re keeping it?”
She nodded, a faraway look in her eyes. “Yes. I am. We’ve lost too much already, don’t you think?”
Ethan stood and walked out of the room.
Sutton sighed, sipped her tea. She couldn’t say she blamed him. It was a lot to dump on a man. I thought you killed our child, I thought you’d kill me, too, so I ran away and screwed another guy, and oh, by the way, now I’m back and knocked up, and aren’t you thrilled, it’s yours!
A minute later, she heard him coming back. She set down the tea and moved forward in her chair, leaning toward the doorway. When he appeared, her breath left her.
He held the pregnancy test she’d taken before she left in his hand.
Ivy was with him. And she had a gun to his head, and a crazy smile on her face.
“Hello, Mom. Did you miss me?”
THE RECKONING
Ivy tugged roughly at Ethan’s arm, pulling him into the room. His face was ashen. He was trying to tell Sutton something using only his eyes, but she couldn’t understand. She was too focused on Ivy, and the snub-nosed revolver, and the blood on her hand, casually trailing down her arm, disappearing into her sleeve. Where was the blood from?
“So, Mom, I must say, I’m impressed. You have it all figured out, haven’t you? You’ve written my villain’s speech and now we get to end things. Is that what you think?”
“The police—”
“Are otherwise occupied.”
Sutton heard the sirens now, insistent and frantic.
“What did you do? Oh, Ivy, what have you done?”
“I did what I had to. She should have left well enough alone. Now...” She shoved Ethan and he stumbled toward Sutton. “Sit. Both of you. We’re going to have a little chat.”
Ethan put his arm around Sutton, his grasp warm and sure. She felt his strength, felt him reassuring her. “Why are you doing this?” Sutton asked. “Why?”
Ivy’s voice was calm and eerie, disassociated and furious, all at once. How had they missed this, the rocket fire burning in this woman’s soul, as they talked and played with her day in and day out?
“You have no idea what it was like for me, growing up without you. I want you to know. I want you to understand.”
“You told me you had a great childhood. You said—”
“In my mind, maybe. It was hell. I was alone. Abandoned. Stuck in that jack hole of a place they have the audacity to call an orphanage, because the foster care people didn’t want me in the system.”
“Why not? What was wrong with you?” Ethan asked.
“Nothing was wrong with me,” she answered, voice rising, edging closer, her eyes narrowed. “Nothing has ever been wrong with me. I was made this way. Made by you, Mom.”
Her voice rang through the room now, bouncing off the books.
“I didn’t make you, Ivy. I took you in when you showed up in town, friendless, alone. You came in from the rain, sat dripping at my table in Starbucks, looking for all the world like a drowned kitten, knowing I would take pity on you and take you in. I introduced you to my friends, to my family. I allowed you in my world. I shared my life with you, willingly, happily. And how do you repay me? By drugging my husband, murdering my child, kidnapping a stranger and burning her to death, and trying to destroy my life? You’re sick. Sick and twisted and your soul is black.”
“I didn’t burn her to death. I strangled her first. She was expendable, a means to an end. But yes, you’re right. My soul is black. It’s the same color as my mother’s.”
“You’re insane.”
Ivy laughed. “That I’ve known for a long time. Other people saw it immediately, and cast me aside. Not you. I find it amusing that you of all people never, ever guessed. You are so stupid. So vacuous. You’re incapable. You’re empty. You and your silly, embarrassingly bad little books. Even Ethan thinks your ‘work’ is shit.”
“Not true,” Ethan said, but Sutton talked over him.
“At least I’m earning an honest wage. What do you actually do, Ivy? You’re certainly not a stockbroker, like you claim. All those business trips, all the stories you told about things you did on the road, the places you saw, the people you met. All lies, aren’t they?”
Ivy went to the window, looked out. “Oh, I’m so much better than a broker. You think the hack I did on your world was something? You should be proud, Mom. You gave birth to a certifiable genius. I’ve forgotten more about computers than you will ever know. More than Jobs and Gates combined. I can make them do whatever I want. Attack. Siphon. Inform. All without a trace.”
“You left traces here,” Ethan said. “You changed the password on Sutton’s computer between the time you got into it for me and when I handed it over to the police. Ethan killed our baby was a bit over the top, don’t you think?”
“I think it was highly appropriate, and I left the trace because I wanted you to know. Did you think I was going to let you walk away unscathed from all of this, either of you? Things have gone perfectly. Exactly how I planned, from start to now. The big finish.”
“Oh?” Sutton said, an eyebrow cocked. “So perfectly the police know who and what you are? They’re going to hunt you down like a dog.”
Ivy laughed again. Sutton realized she was enjoying this.
“Did you know, Mom, I was almost adopted once? It was a foster family, and I’d been so good. It happened when I was nine. I was theirs for less than three months before they sent me back. They didn’t like me. They thought I had an edge. That’s what they told the orphanage. I had an ‘edge.’”
“I can imagine,” Ethan said, sotto voce, but Ivy was lost in memory, and ignored or didn’t hear him. She was stroking her cheek with the edge of the revolver, gently caressing herself with the metal.
“They had a dog. Oh, don’t get all weepy, I didn’t hurt the dog. They were assholes. I put steak bones in their bed one night so the dog would attack them. How’s that for an edge?”
“You are utterly and completely mad,”
Sutton said.
Ivy grinned, a perfectly sweet smile Sutton had seen on her face hundreds of times before. “Oh, yes, I am, thanks to you. You abandoned me. You didn’t want me. What sort of woman doesn’t want her child? Oh, that’s right. You. You’ve never wanted a child. Not then, not with Dashiell, and not now.”
“I was thirteen, Ivy. I was in jail. What did you expect, that the moment I got out I’d go searching for you and we’d live happily ever after?”
“Sutton,” Ethan cautioned, but Sutton wasn’t going to sit back and be cowed.
“Ethan, let’s be real. Ivy’s holding a gun. She’s already killed two people herself and had two more murdered in her name. We aren’t going to talk her out of killing us. Bullets in our heads are a foregone conclusion.”
Ivy laughed. “You’re right. You’re both so dead. No one’s coming to save you. There’s been a sighting, you see, down in Murfreesboro. The ones who aren’t tied up with the little situation on the square are already on their way south. By the time they realize they’re mistaken and get back up here, you’ll be dead, and I’ll be gone.”
“Planned it all out, did you?” Ethan asked.
“I’ve been planning this for years, you swine. You’re terrible in bed, by the way. Limp dick. Couldn’t get it up. Sloppy kisser, too. I don’t know how she stands it.”
And to Sutton, in a completely new tone, curious, watchful. “I thought you’d at least recognize me when I found you.”
“You look nothing like me.”
“Oh, but I do. If you cross me with your sweet punk rocker, Hayden Stone, add in some red hair, and give me blue eyes, I am a dead ringer. Can’t you see me? Or are you being dense, Elizabeth?”
Sutton flinched at the use of her given name. She flashed back to the stringy black hair and sophomoric homemade tattoos of Hayden Stone. She could barely pull his face into her memory, her hazy memory, so conveniently erased after all these years removed from the situation she placed herself in. At least she knew, now, who’d gotten her pregnant that night. Bile rose in her throat.
“He was a sick fuck. Taking advantage of me like that. If he is your father, I see you get your psychopathy naturally.”
“He told me you wanted it. He told me you asked for it. Yes, that’s right, Mom. I talked to dear old Dad. He remembers you fondly. Remembered, I should say. He’s gone now, too. Don’t think I did it for your honor. He was a waste of space, like you are.”
Sutton shook her head, her newly dark hair raining around her face like a shroud. “What a disappointment you are, Ivy. After all this time, instead of simply telling me who you are like a normal person, you had to make this into an event to make yourself feel more special.”
Sutton stood up. The gun wavered briefly.
“Sit down.”
Sutton took a step, then another. “I could have been a mother to you. I was a friend, but clearly that wasn’t enough. Nothing will ever be enough for you, will it? No one will ever be enough.”
The flash of anger in Ivy’s eyes was black and absolute. “When you’re dead, and I’ve taken everything, then it will be enough.” She leaned against the doorjamb, braced the gun with her left hand cupping her right, a small smile playing on her face.
“Do you know how easy it was? To slip the syringe in his little mouth and push? He went away almost immediately.”
Sutton stopped moving. “No, Ivy. Don’t. Stop. Stop!”
“No pain, no struggle.”
“I’m warning you—”
Ethan was on his feet now, too, stepping to Sutton’s right side so they formed a wall. His fury was barely contained; Sutton could feel it coming off him in waves.
Ivy didn’t notice, or didn’t care, so lost she was pulling them into hell with her.
“I saw you find him, did you know? I was in the closet, waiting. I wanted to see your reaction. When I came in the house you were drunk, snoring. Ethan was in his room, out cold. I watched you both. And then I watched him. I very nearly changed my mind. Dashiell was innocent. I nearly went back to my house, got my gun, and came to shoot you both instead.
“But I knew that would be much too easy on you. You needed to hurt. You needed to bleed. Now, you’re going to.”
And she fired.
DEATH, AND REBIRTH
In the moments after, three things happen at once.
Ivy pulls the trigger again.
Ethan dives to the right.
Sutton rushes forward, something like a growl emitting from her throat, toward the woman who is her child, a glint of silver in her hand as the trench knife that Ethan keeps hidden in the couch cushions slashes down toward Ivy’s throat.
It is like Sutton has become someone else. A switch has been flipped. She’s felt it flip once before, when she was thirteen and locked in heated battle with her stepfather.
She feels it again now.
It is rage, pure and incandescent, the power and fury of the angels in the palm of her hand. It courses through her, blinds her, eliminates judgment and worry, makes her a machine.
There is a flash of silver in the moonlight.
The knife is hot in her hands.
The blood is thick on her palms.
Ethan is by her side, holding Ivy down.
Sutton drops the knife and sinks to her knees.
The growing wail of the siren accompanies her heartbeat.
Her husband kneels beside her and holds her to his chest.
“It’s over, Sutton,” he says, again and again through his tears. “It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.”
And when she comes back to herself, oh so many minutes later, the blank eyes of the woman who tried to take away her life stare up at her. Cold, empty eyes. The monster that claimed to be hers, staring, staring, staring.
JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT’S OVER
Six months later
“I hate you.”
Sutton said the words simply. A recitation of fact.
Ethan laughed. “You don’t. You love me. You love us.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t hate you.”
It had become something of a joke between them. The more she said she hated him, the more it meant she loved him. Most of the time.
Her aunt Josephine had once told her that making love is the most honest thing you can do with another person. So if you’re not ready to lay bare your soul to a boy, she’d said, you should probably wait.
Sutton wished she had waited. She wished she’d done so many things differently. Especially facing the demons when they’d come for her, instead of running away. There was a life to be led now, one fraught with terror. She caressed her stomach, the life within her. Yes, she was scared. So very scared. But there was hope again. A chance for them to start anew.
Therapy had helped with the guilt. With the pain. The knowledge her own child had created an untenable world for her, had manipulated her, had murdered her son, and tried to kill her and Ethan as well, was hard to fathom. Surreal, at times.
That Sutton had killed her daughter in turn was difficult to live with. It would never get better. She would always carry the blame, the sense that if only she’d acted differently in her teens, Ivy wouldn’t have turned into a monster.
The therapist made her understand that it wasn’t her fault. That Ivy’s actions were her own.
Joel Robinson had defended her in court, and she was finishing her probation next week. She’d gotten off lightly, and she knew it. The government had good cause to throw her in jail, but Robinson was as good as they came, and the plea deal was very satisfying to all parties involved.
Through it all, Ethan had been a rock.
They weren’t fixed, the two of them, but there was hope. They’d been changed by the horror of all they lost, and what it had cos
t them. Changed by purposefully forgiving themselves. Changed by visiting the grave of the woman who’d wreaked terror in their lives. Changed by retreating to their art and each other, the only things they ever truly needed. Changed by finding truth in their love.
Things were almost too perfect. Sutton decided not to think about it. If she didn’t, perhaps things would stay this way forever.
However you looked at it, they were healing, cleanly. Together.
In the afternoons, they sat on the porch, in the swing. Touching, always touching. The air was cool now. Forgotten leaves littered the lawn, a final spray of gold and rust. Today, Sutton’s head was in Ethan’s lap. His right hand rested on her burgeoning belly; his left held a book he’d been asked to endorse. It was quiet. Calm. Normal. The breeze and the book’s pages whispered together.
They were quiet again for a moment. Sutton stared at the ceiling of the porch. “We need to repaint those boards before the baby comes. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to be up all night and day and—”
Ethan leaned down and kissed her. Ran his hand along her palm. Kissed the scar, white now, thick and twisted and shiny, from where the knife had slipped that horrible night. She’d been marked, in so many ways.
“The ceiling will wait. I’ll need something to do to get me out of tour.”
“You can’t get out of tour, and you know it. The book is too important. It’s too good. It’s going to change lives, Ethan.”
“It’s changed ours, and that’s all that matters to me.”
They’d talked about it before, his book, the one that would change lives. She truly thought it could. It was searing, honest, real. The reviews were already insanely good. There was talk of Pulitzers and National Book Awards.
To his credit, Ethan had done his best to ignore them. Oh, a spark of pride popped up now and again, but Sutton knew—hoped—it was more a function of profound relief that he’d managed to write another book, and that she had loved every word.
Ethan set aside the novel he was reading. “How is your book coming? You haven’t said much about it this week.”
Lie to Me Page 33
