She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes starting to glisten. Sky seemed broken—bandaged on one side, hooked up to IVs on the other. She looked tired, too. Frail, just from the act of remembering.
I noticed something on the bed then, resting against Sky’s bad side, her bandaged side. A hint of jade green, bordered in gold. I recognized it immediately. Her mother’s compact. Maurice must have brought it to her.She’s had a lot of visitors.
“Sky,” I said. “I’m going to ask you a question. It isn’t an easy one. It will probably hurt. But for your sake, and ultimately for Dylan’s, I need you to answer honestly.”
Sky closed her eyes. “All right. Shoot.” She winced. “God, talk about a poor choice of words.”
“You’re ready?
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I said. “Is there any reason why Dylan Welch would want you dead?”
Sky shut her eyes tighter. Tears seeped out of the corners. She stretched her good arm across her body and plucked the compact off the bed, clutching it like a rosary in that one small hand, twirling it in her fingers, bringing it to her cheek. “I don’t know,” she said. I glanced at the monitor. Her heart rate was steady.
“Do you think he’s capable of trying to kill you?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice was so soft I could barely hear her. I hated doing this, but I had to.
“Remember, Sky,” I said. “This is me you’re talking to. The Welches aren’t here. I won’t tell them.”
Her jaw tightened; the fist of her good hand clenched. “You promise?”
“Yes,” I said.
She exhaled shakily, opening her eyes again. They were thick with tears now, a few slipping down the sides of her face. Again, I told her it was okay, that I wouldn’t tell Dylan’s parents.
And then, finally, she spoke. “I told you about that fight we had before he left,” she said. “When he locked himself in his office? Remember?”
“Yes.”
“I told you it was because he was using. And he was. But that was only part of it. He’d stolen from the company. I know theWelches told you, but I saw the discrepancy in the numbers before Martin did, and it was a lot more than he knew. For weeks, I kept quiet. I was moving money around, trying to fix it. I was even putting some of my own personal savings into payroll, just to make up for the loss, but it was getting out of control. And I knew it was going to drugs. Weapons of self-destruction. That’s what Dylan used to call the stuff he did, back when we were in college. I wonder if he remembers that…I mean, he really did want to destroy himself. He was aware of it.”
I remembered Dylan’s letter to Rhonda. The way he’d spiraled following Daisy’s death, taking his guilt out on himself, on other people like Teresa.
Sky cleared her throat, clutching the compact tighter. “Anyway, I brought it up to Dylan and…I’ve never seen him like that. He can be awful when he’s backed into a corner.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t, though…not really…Not until that day. He got this look on his face…like a wild animal…”
More tears spilled down her cheeks. I went looking around the room for Kleenex. I didn’t see any, so I ducked into the bathroom and grabbed a wad of toilet paper. Sky accepted it gratefully, holding the pile of tissue up to her eyes for several seconds before finally she was able to speak again. I looked at the monitor. Her heart rate sped up slightly. “For the first time, I was…I was scared of him, Sunny. I realized, I mean…I honestly have no idea what he’s capable of.”
I thought of theMurderertexts Dylan had received, the idea that he might have killed someone else before Trevor. Before he tried to kill Sky.Not to make assumptions. We never make assumptions.But still, it was compelling. “Sky,” I said carefully. “Are you sure you didn’t see his face? The man who shot you?”
She shook her head. And then she started to cry again. Harder now, her body quaking from the sobs, the compact clutched in her hands. Her heart rate grew faster. I told her to relax, to breathe. She held the toilet paper up to her face and I ran to grab more for her—a giant wad of tissue, practically the rest of the roll—and she sobbed into it, her shoulders heaving, as though what she was feeling, this grief, this horror, had suddenly grown big enough to consume her. I moved closer to her bed and she buckled onto me, her good arm around my back. I stroked her hair and told her it was okay, because I didn’t know what else to do. She cried more and I kept trying to comfort her, horrified at the thought of anyone walking in—a nurse or, worse yet, the Welches, Lydia shrieking at me,What have you done to her?
Again, I told Sky to breathe deeply, and she did. I gave her water and sat back down on the chair, Sky holding my hand along with the Bakelite compact—so tightly, I was afraid she’d break it. Or my hand. Or both.
At long last, she calmed down. She closed her eyes. Her heart rate slowed. I watched her for a while, unsure of how to phrase the next question. I was worried she’d start sobbing again, but I had to say it. I needed to know. “Sky,” I said. “If youdidn’t see his face, why that response? What was it that you remembered to make you cry like that?”
“His voice,” she whispered. “I heard his voice.” She took a deep breath and looked straight at me, her eyes now dry as stones. “Right before he shot me, I heard Dylan’s voice.”
Thirty-Three
Sky agreed to talk to the police, but she wanted to tell Bill and Lydia first. Alone.
And so, after the nurses took her vitals, I left the room and let the Welches know that Sky wanted to see them. “She has something important that she wants to share with you,” I said, adding, “It isn’t good news.”
