“Stop, Zoey,” I yell. “You’ve done enough.”
“Why couldn’t you just leave me alone?” she shouts. “Why couldn’t you have listened to everyone?”
She returns her hands to my neck and squeezes. She grips tighter and tighter, until I’ve lost the strength to fight back. Then I see Zoey’s face turn, and a spray of blood exits her mouth and lands on my chest. It’s enough to make her move away from me. She slides off, raising herself on her knees. As she moves, I see Darcy standing behind her, clutching a fire poker in her hands. Darcy whacks her again, and Zoey’s limp body falls into the pool.
For several seconds, I remain seated. I stare at Zoey face down in the water. I look at Darcy. She’s dropped the poker, her eyes focused on the pool.
“Go inside and call 911,” I tell her.
I catch my breath and stand, moving toward the water. Darcy grabs my arm.
“No,” she says. “Don’t.”
“She’s knocked out,” I say, pushing past her. “If we don’t do something, she’ll drown.”
“If you save her, what will she do next?” Darcy looks at me, rage lighting her eyes. She’s not asking about now. She’s asking what Zoey will do in the forever of years to come. Who will she hurt? Who else will suffer? My body fills with both shame and understanding.
“Go inside,” I say.
Darcy obeys, leaving me alone to choose Zoey’s fate. I descend the steps leading into the water. My clothes soak from my ribcage down. Zoey’s body is near me. So close I can touch her. Flip her over. I could hoist her onto the ledge and give her a chance.
Instead, I do what everyone has told me to do all along.
I do nothing.
Forty-Six
2014
Brian will never leave prison. He avoided a death sentence because he agreed to disclose the locations of the other missing women, including Amber. Her body was found in a patch of woods near our house. Why he went after her remains a mystery. Did he figure out I’d been asking questions about him? Had she decided to confront him after our conversation, and he lashed out by taking her life? I don’t think I’ll ever know what brought them together that weekend, but I know if I’d acted on my suspicions sooner, she’d still be alive.
I often imagined what life might have been like with a different Brian, or no brother at all. Sometimes I imagined Amber’s life, too. I liked to think she would have left Wilsonville. I don’t know what she would have done, who she would have been, but she would have existed, and that is enough.
I also think he pleaded guilty to save Mom from further scandal. Everyone I’ve talked to since then—the therapists and counselors—have all told me Brian is incapable of thinking about anyone other than himself. He’s devoid of feelings and compassion. I still don’t know if that’s true. His narcissism would have pushed him to proclaim his innocence for years, despite the piles of evidence they eventually collected. And yet he confessed for Mom. To spare her a trial.
We do things for the people we love. That’s why I visited Brian for as long as I did. I would have been happy never seeing him again. The conversation we had in the hallway that day could have easily been our last. But out of respect for Mom, I continued to go. At least for the first few years. I never said much. I usually waited for Mom to have her conversation and only agreed to speak with Brian after she pestered me.
Eventually I stopped. All those knowledgeable people—the therapists and counselors—said it was for the best. Keeping Brian in my life would only continue my pain. I believed them on that one. I’ve never regretted not seeing him, and he finally took the hint and stopped sending letters.
On my last visit, I had recently graduated college. I was older than his victims ever were. I was engaged to Danny and had only come because Mom threw a fit. She wouldn’t leave until I agreed to talk with him, so I begrudgingly followed the officers down the narrow hallway. I sat in front of Plexiglas and saw Brian on the other side. He’d shaved his head and bulked his shoulders, but he still had a handsome face. I wondered what he might have become if he’d committed his mind to anything other than evil.
He lifted the phone, and, out of habit, I did the same.
“Mom doing all right?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said, looking away. “As good as can be expected.”
Seeing his face, hearing his voice, brought back all the memories. The cruelty and the cunning. Dad. Brian held the power to resurrect my ghosts.
“And you?” he asked, looking at the ring on my finger.
I quickly slid my hand under the table. “Damn it,” I said. “She said she wasn’t going to tell you.”
“You know Mom likes to share good news.” He smiled, wanting me to show some kindness in return. All it did was make me cringe. “I always saw a spark between you two.”
“I don’t want to hear what you saw in us,” I said, slapping my palm against the tabletop.
Brian looked down. “You deserve to be happy, Della.”
“You’re damn right I do.” I took a deep breath. I refused to cry in front of him. It was the one thing I’d promised myself.
He waited, looking at me. “You know, I don’t blame you for putting me in here.”
“You shouldn’t,” I said. “You should blame yourself.”
“I do,” he said, straightening. “I’m in here because of what I’ve done. I know that. I just want to make sure you know, too.”
“Why wouldn’t I know that, Brian?”
“Well, I’m on the inside. You’re the one living in the world. Dealing with the whispers and Mom’s hysterics. There must be a part of you that thinks you caused this by turning me in.”
“Don’t play games with me,” I said, poking my finger at the glass. This was what Brian did. He wormed his way into my mind. Tried to pull out my deepest thoughts. “I know I did the right thing. You wouldn’t have stopped killing otherwise. If turning you in hurt Mom, so be it. I had to do something.”
“I just wanted you to hear me say it,” he said. “I see what coming here does to you. You don’t have to do it for her. Or me.”
“I just don’t understand why, Brian.” My lip quivered, and I blinked hard in an attempt not to cry. “Even after all these years, I don’t understand why you did what you did.”
“I don’t either—”
“No, there has to be a reason,” I said. “Maybe you need to dumb it down for me to understand, but you have to have a reason. You have to tell me.”
“I just…” He clenched his jaw, and I saw his eyes watering. “I’ve always had this darkness inside me. As messed up as it sounds, it only lifts when… I do what I did.”
“That’s sick,” I said, leaning back in the chair and taking him in. His jumpsuit and his smile lines and his stupid shaved head.
“You know, when we were kids you always talked about how I was smarter. You had to work for stuff. Figure it out on your own. I didn’t try to be smart, but you didn’t try to be good.” He smiled at me, a genuine, even jealous, smile. “You just were.”
Maybe people are wired differently. Maybe there’s something within each of us that makes us who we are, and there truly isn’t any reason behind it. The whole world knew Brian was a monster now. That same monster had moments of light only I remembered. The day he saved me from Jeremy Gus. The night he let me cry after Dad died.
“Are you trying now?” I asked. “To be good?”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. I stood to leave, and I could see the loneliness consume him. He would return to his empty cell with its rules and restrictions. I might carry the weight of Brian, but at least I could carry that weight into a world of my choosing.
“You’re right, Della,” he said, before I left. “I wouldn’t have stopped.”
That was the last time I saw him.
Epilogue
Fall 2020
I’m not going back to Victory Hills High School, at least not this year. The baby will be here in December. It’s a convenient e
xcuse. Those halls house memories I’m not ready to face.
Darcy isn’t returning either. Her parents enrolled her in an online learning program for her senior year; I offered to help her with any English assignments. We keep in touch through text. No one thinks I’m crazy anymore, but she’s the only person who really understands what happened that day.
“So, Evergreen Mist or Cobalt Tide?” Danny lifts two paint swatches, waiting on an answer. We’ve debated for weeks which color we should paint the walls of our guest room, which is now being repurposed as a nursery.
“Try both,” I say, sitting in the wooden rocker. It’s the only furniture in the room. We’ve bought loads more but won’t arrange it until the painting is complete.
“Okay. Get going,” Danny says from his seated position on the floor. He looks up and smiles.
“I think I’ll be all right.” I plant my heels and rock back.
“You will,” he says. “But the baby doesn’t need to be around fumes.”
“You’re putting swatches on the wall. There’s not enough paint to bother him.” I rub my stomach, which seems to have doubled in size this past week. “Besides, he’s a fighter.” This baby has already withstood a hit to my head and the fight with Zoey.
Zoey. She never walked out of the pool that day. Sometimes I can still see her floating in the water, her black hair branching outward. She was close. I only needed to take a few steps to touch her, and yet I didn’t. I let her stay. I let her drown.
It was what Darcy wanted. In the moment, she was fueled by learning that Zoey had attacked her. That Zoey manipulated her in the weeks following Spring Fling. Darcy made a rash decision with a teenaged mind. I was the one who could have stopped it. I was the one who could have saved her.
Police were suspicious at first. However, it didn’t take much digging for them to piece together what had happened. Darcy and I gave them our account. We confirmed she attacked both of us. Then I told them everything else I’d uncovered. For once, someone took what I had to say about Zoey seriously and investigated.
They eventually strung together a parade of evidence. As I’d suspected, the emerald cross on Darcy’s keychain belonged to Abigail Morrison. She’d been known to wear the necklace almost daily, and her mother was always disturbed that it wasn’t recovered with the body. After that, they found more proof: DNA and cell phone data pinging Zoey’s location around the time Abigail went missing.
They found journals, too. The essay she wrote wasn’t her first account of what happened with Darcy. She liked to relive her attacks through writing, providing details only she could know. Within days, police stopped asking questions about what happened at the pool. Ms. Peterson was released, eventually leaving Victory Hills and her own collection of secrets behind.
And yet, my questions still linger. Did I do the right thing? Should I have given Zoey a chance? Had Zoey been my child, would I have wanted someone to save her? I think of Brian, and his sad, hypnotic eyes behind the glass on the last day I visited him. His final words. I wouldn’t have stopped. I don’t think Zoey would have stopped either. I cling to that.
“What do you think?” Danny asks. I blink and look ahead. In my mind, I was back in that day, wading in the water. I forget I’m different now. That I’m thirty pounds heavier and sitting in my future child’s room. My future son’s room.
“I really like it,” I say, swallowing down the urge to cry.
“Which one?”
“Either.”
Truthfully, I’m happier now than I ever thought I would be. I didn’t realize how much I’d been longing for a new adventure. I’d associated having children with continuing the past. Some days, I still worry. As Dr. Walters once said, there’s always a chance a person could be bad. My child will be no different, but I choose to hope for the best. I choose to see the good.
“I agree,” Danny says. He balances the brush against the paint can and crawls toward me. He leans against the chair’s curved legs and rests his head on my lap. “It’s going to be a beautiful nursery.”
I lean over to kiss the top of his head when I feel a tight tug in my middle. I flinch.
“You all right?” Danny asks.
I smile. “Fine,” I say. “I think the baby’s moving.”
Danny puts his hand on the center of my stomach. I shift to the left and wait for the little one to nudge again.
“Kicks will get stronger toward the end,” he says.
“I think that’s my favorite part. You really feel him moving in there. It makes it real.”
“I’m around pregnant women all the time, but it’s different now that I’m having one of my own. It’s got to be weird for you, right?”
“I’m getting used to it.”
“What does it feel like?”
I lean back and look at the ceiling. I rub my belly, waiting to see if he will move again. I close my eyes. Try to envisage his face. Try to envisage his future.
Then I say, “It’s like a flutter.”
If What I Know had you hooked from start to finish, you’ll love Some Days Are Dark, a twisty and completely compelling tale of a woman fighting to clear her name—regardless of the danger.
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Some Days Are Dark
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I was happy my husband died, but I couldn’t admit it, otherwise people might think I killed him.
Before
Olivia knows she is lucky. She has a loving husband, Frank, an adorable son, Jake, and a beautiful new home. It couldn’t be more different from her childhood on the outskirts of Whitaker, dirt poor and dreaming of getting out. But at the end of long days with no one to talk to, always feeling like she’s not quite good enough, she starts to wonder if there’s a better life waiting…
After
Everyone in Whitaker knows who Olivia is. She’s the woman who left her family for no-good Dane Miller, and the one who most likely shot him. Now, there’s gossip about her everywhere she goes, she’s too scared to leave the house most days, and she barely gets to see her beloved son.
But if the police and the world think she’s guilty, there’s only one thing she can do—prove her innocence herself. Even if that means putting her own life in danger…
An absolutely gripping, heart-pounding suspense novel about bad choices and second chances. Perfect for fans of Gone Girl, Karin Slaughter and Lisa Gray.
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Books by Miranda Smith
What I Know
Some Days Are Dark
Available in audio
Some Days Are Dark (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from Miranda
Dear Reader,
Thank you for taking the time to read What I Know. If you liked it and want information about upcoming releases, do sign up with the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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Most story ideas have been building in my mind for months, even years. The idea for this book developed very quickly. I was intrigued by the concept of someone growing up alongside a disturbed sibling and being resilient enough to overcome that trauma. I wondered, how would a person with such a background react when confronted by another dangerous individual? Della’s story was formed, and it was an emotional and exciting story to tell. I hope you enjoyed it.
If you’d like to further discuss the novel, I’d love to connect! You can find me on Instagram, Facebook or my website. If you enjoyed What I Know, I would be thrilled for you to leave a review on either Amazon or Goodreads. It only takes a few minutes and does wonders in helping readers discover my books for the first time.
Thank you again for your support!
Sincerely,
Miranda Smith
www.mirandasmithwriter.com
Acknowledgements
Most importantly, I would like to thank my readers, especially those who reached this page after reading Some Days Are Dark. I very much enjoy writing these novels, and your readership makes that possible. Thank you.
I’d also like to thank all the bloggers and reviewers for promoting my books. The best way to sell a book is through word of mouth. Nothing makes me happier than reading an uplifting review. I appreciate your support.
Thomas Sheridan’s Puzzling People: The Labyrinth of the Psychopath was a great resource in writing this book. It’s an insightful, common sense explanation of why people do the things they do. Check it out!
I’d like to thank my editor, Ruth Tross. Thank you for continuing to champion my writing. I’ve very much enjoyed working with you on these books. Your brilliant Zoey suggestion made this book even scarier.
What I Know: An utterly compelling psychological thriller full of suspense Page 29
