by Jeff Abbott
Sharon could hardly look at her.
“She said she hardly remembered any of it, but being back in that house she remembered me, in my crib, crying. Crying so loud, because my mom was occupied with your cheating garbage husband because neither of them had a lick of self-control. She said it was an accident. Her, arguing with me, pleading to leave you alone. Saying she’d do whatever it took if I would leave you alone. Then she attacked me. She wanted to kill me there, in my own home, to protect her dear mother. Kill me, the last of my kind. I killed her on the spot for that. I strangled her dead.”
Sharon screamed.
Lizbeth grimaced. “Oh, does that hurt? Poor you.” Her words were a whip. “I found the email and the password she’d set up to communicate with you, written down on a card in her purse. So I didn’t need her. As long as Andy was getting money from Jake to pay back a nonexistent debt, he was happy and quiet. As long as Jake wasn’t enjoying his success and was under a cloud, he was happy.”
Sharon sobbed, raging. “You killed my daughter.” The gun shook.
“You killed my sister.”
“Don’t kill anyone else,” Mariah said. Quietly but firmly.
“You have no room to talk,” Lizbeth said. “You and your dad.”
A coldness shifted in Mariah’s chest. This woman was insane. She’d say anything.
“Sharon, I’ll let them go if you’ll come with me. I’ll take you to her. But you have to put down the gun.” Lizbeth’s voice was soft and cajoling.
“What do you want to let us all go?” Jake said. “How much?”
“You, rich nerd, came so close to giving her a great life”—Lizbeth held up her fingers, a centimeter apart—“but I stopped you.”
“You even tried to ruin Jake’s deals,” Mariah said, remembering Karen’s words. “When he met with my mom’s company, you vandalized the cars when he didn’t get a deal with them.”
“I followed him. In the parking garage, he was walking to his car and I heard him calling his office and angrily telling them the deal was off. So I vandalized the cars, two days in a row, in the reserved exec spaces there to make Jake look bad. Why should he be happy?” Lizbeth said.
Jake snapped at Lizbeth. “You don’t love your family. You never did. You saw them suffer, but you think you’re owed something. Is money going to make it right? Fine. I’ll give you all mine. Take it. I’ll sign it over to you.”
She laughed, keeping Mariah between them like she was a shield.
Mariah said, calmly, “She’s going to kill us all and make it look like Andy did it. Sharon, shoot her.”
The porch was silent. Sharon was crying, the gun she held now on Mariah steadying. Praying under her breath. Lizbeth aimed her own gun at Sharon.
Jake stepped in front of Sharon.
“Move!” Lizbeth yelled, as if she couldn’t start shooting elsewhere. But he’d read her, her gaze fixed on the woman she blamed for everything wrong in her life.
“You killed my girl,” Sharon said, trying to contain her rage.
“You’re responsible for all of this,” Lizbeth said. “What kind of person does what you did? You and Mariah, just the same, leave someone in the street…”
“Stop it!” Mariah screamed. Her mind swam with images, thoughts that made no sense. Her father’s face. Her mother’s voice. She wrenched her arm free of Lizbeth. She pulled away and fell off the porch.
“Like you’re better! I followed her that day. I saw what happened!”
Leave someone in the street. I saw what happened. Words in the air, false words, they had to be false words.
Turn around and see the monster behind you. What if no one was there? What if the monster was herself?
Mariah jumped back onto the porch, reaching for Lizbeth, grabbing at her arm. Sharon screamed and began firing wildly. Jake launched himself into Mariah and knocked her back off the porch into the dirt.
The two women, firing their guns, hate blinding and binding them.
Mariah screamed, and the birds exploded in flight from the trees.
60
THE POLICE FOUND the two bodies buried next to each other on the Bastrop land—Bethany Curtis and Beth Dunning. The investigation concluded that Lizbeth Gonzales had killed them both: Bethany for revenge and Beth in an attempt to get evidence left by Bethany. Presumably, this evidence was the DVD containing the video from the day Lizbeth’s sister, Penny, died.
Bethany had been strangled; Beth had been killed by a blow to the back of her head.
Lakehaven had been wrong about Craig Dunning.
* * *
The news stations gave the story of the three Beths national coverage: the disturbed young woman who had orchestrated a horrifying revenge on the family that had wronged hers. Bill Gonzales, to avoid prison, confessed to his role in helping his adopted daughter with what he called “her project.” Andy Candolet, in exchange for immunity, confessed to his part in the framing of Bethany Curtis for the embezzlement and the extortion against Jake Curtis. Julie quickly broke it off with Andy and moved to California with her son, Grant.
Reveal’s producers flew out to the crime scene and to his hospital room in Austin, to hear his pitch. He got the deal. American Unsolved started streaming on a service a month later.
Sharon lived, a bullet striking her in the shoulder. Lizbeth died, a bullet piercing her throat, her hate finally dying with her. Sharon confessed to the cover-up that had lasted years and destroyed two families. She was taken back to Houston, but considering she had lost her husband and daughter in revenge, the prosecutor decided not to file charges. Her church in Austin closed ranks around her in support for the person she had become rather than the person she once was, and she mostly remained in her house—a prison of its own—until the media glare died down.
The death of Jeffrey Marshall was ruled an accident, a fall down the stairs, resulting in a broken neck and skull fracture.
Jeffrey Marshall might have thrown himself down the stairs—he had financial troubles. He might have slipped. Broussard wrestled with his conscience. There was no proof of Craig’s involvement, he decided, and the file was closed.
And Sean Oberst, glad to be rid of a stepfather he didn’t like and who was rough with his mother, never mentioned to his mother or to the police the man who came asking about his stepfather.
Lakehaven was forced to reevaluate its opinion of Craig Dunning when his wife’s body was found. Neighbors who had not spoken to him showed up on the Dunning porch, bearing dinners and apologies. He accepted both. His accounting firm asked him to return to work at the office; his former clients clamored for his advice. We were wrong, they said in their roundabout way. We’re so sorry we judged you. Forgive us and let us feel good about ourselves again. Craig smiled a lot and nodded and said thank you, all while wishing he was somewhere else, but Mariah needed this return to normalcy.
Mariah had gone to dinner with Jake—second time this week—and come home early and sat down on the couch with her father. TCM was on, but muted. It was another Hitchcock film, Vertigo, where identity and memory are intertwined—and where we see what we want to see, we are who we wish we could be. She left the film on mute.
Craig had decided he didn’t need the recliner anymore and sold it, and he sat next to his daughter on the couch. Leo waddled in, sat close on the floor, imploring eyes locked on them to see if a treat was a possibility.
“Nice date?” he asked.
“Yes. Jake’s a good guy. I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but I enjoy his company.”
“You don’t look like you enjoy it.”
“I don’t have a right to enjoy it, Dad.” The silence between them was awkward. “Karen offered me a job again at Mom’s old company. It would be great. But I can’t move forward with my life. I haven’t told you something Lizbeth suggested to me.”
“What?”
“Lizbeth kept hinting that I left Mom in the street. Why would she say that?”
His mouth twisted, and
he took her hand in his. “Because she was insane.”
“But everyone knows now Lizbeth killed her and buried her.”
“Because it’s a lie.” He tightened his grip on her hands.
“She also said that Bethany’s memory of Penny’s death was suppressed by the trauma. I think mine was, too. Bits of it have come back.” Now she looked at her father. “That day Mom vanished…I was sick. On medication. But I think…I found out about her and Andy. Somehow. I didn’t like him from the first moment I met him, even before I had reason to.”
“Mariah….”
“You accused her of having an affair. Lizbeth said he was sleeping with Mom.” She asked the terrible question. “Did you know?”
He forced the words out like they were painful to speak. “Yes. I had followed her the evening before, seen her meet him. That was what we argued about. Beth and I agreed to meet at the lot. I wasn’t feeling ill; it was just an excuse to leave work and not come back. But she didn’t want to have this discussion at home, with you there sick.”
“So I went with you to the lot? But I was sick.” Mariah’s voice was a whisper.
“I…I told you about the affair. About her and Andy Candolet. I wanted you on my side. And I thought if you knew, your mother would break it off. We would be back to being a family. I’m sorry.”
“You are not dragging our daughter into this.” Karen’s quote of her mother’s words on that overheard phone call at the office. He must have threatened, during that phone call, to tell me. And then he did.
“Lizbeth said she was following Mom, trying to see if she had the DVD Bethany had stolen from her. She was following her that day because Mom told Andy that Bethany had given her something. She kept hinting that she saw what happened.” Mariah took a deep breath. “Tell me what happened.”
He shook his head. Tears in his eyes.
“Dad. You have to tell me. We can’t go on this way.” He’s going to confess the most terrible thing, she thought, and I have to be here for him. We can’t be like Sharon and Hal and hide this away. It destroys a person.
“You were out of your mind with anger toward her. Especially after she had criticized your bad choices in school. The meds and the fever weren’t helping. She tried to reason with you. She grabbed your arms; you pushed her; she fell. Hit her head on a rock. So much blood. I panicked. You lost your mind. I had to get you out of there. Your mind had shut down. I couldn’t find a pulse for Beth; I thought she was dead. I panicked. I couldn’t have you in trouble, not over a disagreement between her and me. I had dragged you there, and this was my fault. So I took you home, got you into bed. You just shut down. You believed you had killed her.”
Mariah couldn’t look at him. He cleared his throat. “I came back to get her, and her body was gone. The rock was gone. Someone had taken her body. Lizbeth, who was watching her.” His voice shook. “I didn’t know what to do. Had someone else found her body? If so, where were the police? They’d be treating it like a crime scene. I thought maybe in blind panic I had missed her pulse, she had crawled or wandered off. But the rock was gone as well, and the blood. Like she had never been there. If I told the truth, I destroyed your life.”
Just like Sharon’s reasoning. Mariah started shaking and couldn’t stop.
“When I got home I waited for the police to call me, to say they’d found her. But they never did. You woke up and you acted as if it hadn’t happened. As if you had no memory of the day. I thought at first you were faking, but you weren’t. It was as if it hadn’t happened.” His voice broke again.
“Lizbeth said the same about Bethany.” Mariah could barely manage the words, and they felt like a defense. If she didn’t remember, then it didn’t happen. “But I remember looking for her…”
“I told you we’d done that. I just kept telling you and finally you believed it, because you didn’t want to think about the reality.”
Mariah’s mind felt like it was about to break.
“So I said nothing. I thought someone took her and was going to blackmail me. It never happened. She was just gone.” Craig took her hand. “But I swear, I couldn’t find a pulse.”
“Lizbeth had a list. Of things Mom said in her ‘last hours.’ Lizbeth took her to that house, didn’t she? Mom was still barely alive, horribly injured, and that woman tried to make her talk.” Mariah’s hands shaped into claws and she dragged them through her hair in rage at herself. “I killed her.”
“No. No. What you said to me when you thought, a few days ago, that I’d killed her: I could forgive an accident. It was an accident. You didn’t mean to hurt her. Never, ever.”
Mariah made an indecipherable noise.
Craig’s voice was cool, trying to calm her with her own words. “But listen to me. You know the police found Beth’s DNA in that bedroom of Lizbeth’s, with all the pictures. She was alive, for a while, and I think Lizbeth took her to question her. To find out what she knew. She took her to Bastrop and she died there in that bedroom—Lizbeth wouldn’t have brought her into that house if she was already dead—and you didn’t kill her. Do you understand me? Lizbeth killed her by not getting her medical attention. Or me, for not calling for the police and doing too much to shield you. But not you.”
“I shoved her. It’s my fault…it’s my fault…”
“Listen to me,” he said. “You hurt her. It was an accident. But the person who killed her is Lizbeth. I never could have dreamed that someone would take her.”
“You were willing to bear all this guilt, Dad. You let Lakehaven hate you. You could have said something…”
“I had to protect you. Always protect you.” He embraced her. “I’m so sorry. This is my fault, not yours. But I truly thought she was dead and you were so upset…I could only help you, in that moment. You, Mariah. We all make our choices, good and bad, and then we have to make the best of them. When it was clear you didn’t remember, I had to make the best of it. To protect you.”
Mariah closed her eyes.
She had loved her mother so much, and now the truth hadn’t set her free; it had caged her. The fragments of memory made sense now: her mother’s surprised face, the words We are not doing this now, which lit the fuse of the fatal argument about love and infidelity and a family in tatters, the sense of Mom pointing past her to the monster behind.
But Mom, that ghost in her broken memory, was pointing at her. The monster was her.
The time she’d imagined Jake killing Bethany, the loss of control, the violent shove—that had been an echo of her reality. Fainting at Jake’s house when she saw the panorama of Lakehaven—including the lot where she’d so badly hurt her mother. Hearing those words again, We are not doing this now, an echo in her ear as the sight of the land and the road where her family had ended overwhelmed her.
“No, baby, you’re safe,” she heard her mom’s voice say. “You’re safe now. You’re safe now.” A kaleidoscope of memories: growing faint even at the sight of the land from the view on Jake’s house, the remembered feeling of her mother’s hands on shoulders before she pushed her: Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry I’m so sorry please wake up Mommy please please I didn’t mean it…
EPILOGUE
Eight weeks later
MARIAH STOOD BY the empty lot. The memories had come back, slowly, like smoke rising into a room through door and window.
And she knew what she had to do. She waited.
She had fainted when she saw this lot, from Jake’s house, for the first time since her mother vanished. She could not live this way.
Her father drove up in his car, dressed in a suit, as he’d returned to his regular work. He had been quiet for the past two months, seeing how she coped. Giving her space.
“Hi,” he said. He hugged her, held her close. “Why are we here?”
He sounded a little afraid.
“Because I remember enough now to tell Broussard exactly what happened here. And I need to. But I can only do that if you’re all right with it, Dad.”
&n
bsp; He said nothing. She thought of what all he had sacrificed for her: his reputation, his career, his peace of mind, all to protect her. She tried not to think too much of Jeffrey Marshall. But that had been ruled an accident, and he’d tried to hurt her father. So she could push those suspicions aside.
“I think you need to do what you need to do,” he said quietly. “I left you out of the decisions for so long. You must decide now.”
“What will happen to us?”
“He might arrest us both. You could be charged with assault or attempted murder. Me with obstructing justice. Or he might tell us to go home. I don’t know. But I can face it with you.”
“I need to tell the truth, Dad,” she said. “All of it. I can’t live with myself if I don’t.” She closed her hand around his. “But that means you tell, too. We can’t make Sharon’s mistake. And we can’t say it was all Lizbeth.”
He slowly nodded, as if he’d known this day would come. “Do you want me to call Dennis?”
Broussard’s car approached them and parked, and Broussard got out. “I just asked him to meet us here,” Mariah said.
Dad nodded.
“I think it will be a relief, Dad.” What had Reveal said to her at their dinner: “There’s no cure like the truth.” He was right.
Craig closed his eyes for a moment, but Mariah took his hand, and they walked toward the police chief together.
“Hey,” Broussard said.
“I know you loved Mom. You know we loved her,” Mariah said.
Broussard nodded.
“Do you remember at the coffee shop when we looked at the DVD and you said if my dad killed my mom, you knew it had to have been an accident? That he never would have willingly hurt her. And maybe he panicked and covered it up, and I helped him?” Mariah took a deep breath. “Do you remember?”
Broussard nodded, looking at them both.
“You were right. But it was me that hurt her, and he protected me. I hurt her. I didn’t mean to. Dad only tried to shield me. I didn’t even remember that I had done it, and he got me away and Lizbeth took her.” She extended her hands, as if for forgiveness, or handcuffs. “I don’t know what to do to make it right with the world. Will you make it right? I can’t be like Sharon and her husband. I can’t live with the secret.”
