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Instead, he looks back at Callie. “You always underestimate her,” he says. “It’s a mistake you’ve made Ivy’s whole life. It’s a mistake you’re making now.”
“Shut up!” Callie says. “You don’t know anything about me. You and your family, you took everything from us. Now I’m taking everything from you.” She glances at me. “Maybe once he’s gone, you’ll be able to remember what really matters.” Her finger moves on the trigger.
I don’t even think about it. The room goes silent, like a bomb’s gone off and knocked out my hearing. My vision pinpoints to the single spot on Callie’s chest, the vulnerable target right in the hollow of her rib cage that Ash told me about. I raise my arm and send the knife flying, hard and straight and true. I don’t wish for it to be a direct hit; I already know it is one. Sound returns in a rush, flooding in as the knife sinks into Callie’s body with a wet thwacking sound. She gasps in a choking breath, stumbles backward, the gun still clutched in her hand. Bishop is up on his feet before I can move, snatching the gun from Callie’s limp fingers. She doesn’t try to take it back, just looks down at the knife handle protruding from her chest and then up at me. She drops to her knees, falls over to her side with a guttural moan.
“Callie,” I say, skidding across the floor to her. I land hard on my knees, barely feel the sting of contact with the cold tile. “Callie.”
She rolls over onto her back, stares up at me. Her hand is wrapped around the knife handle and before I can stop her, she bares her teeth, her lips white and shaking as she yanks it from her chest, lets it clatter to the floor. That’s what makes it real to me: the smell of her blood bubbling up from the gaping wound, the sound of it rushing out of her body, the color of it, more black than red. Not the kind of blood you see when you skin your knee or make a shallow cut. This is dying blood.
“Oh, Callie,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
It takes her a moment to find the breath to speak, and even then her words are weak and thin. I can hear air whistling from her chest. “I should have known,” she says on a thready whisper. “I should have known you’d choose a Lattimer over us.”
I take her bloody hand in mine, but she yanks it away, surprising me with her strength, even now.
“You’re just like Mom,” she says. A tear slips down her cheek. “We were so close to having it all.” She sucks in air, her chest heaving with the effort. “It should have been ours.”
“Callie.” I grab her hand again, and again she pulls it away. The third time, though, she leaves her hand in mine. I don’t kid myself that this means she’s forgiven me, or even that she loves me. It only means she no longer has the energy to resist. Her eyes flutter closed and her chest rises and falls so slowly I can count to ten between each movement. Every time I think it will be the last. My breath is sobbing out of me, but there are no tears. I’m a husk now, dried to bone.
Bishop shifts, slides down to sit sideways behind me. “Ivy,” he whispers, voice heavy with sorrow. He presses his forehead against the top of my spine, wraps his arms around my waist.
“Remember,” I say to Callie, “remember when we were little and we’d build a fort in your bedroom? We’d hide under there and you’d tell me ghost stories? And sometimes”—my exhale shudders out of me—“you’d braid my hair. I always liked that.” I take her hand and press it against my heart. “I wish we could have loved each other more, Callie. I wish we’d learned how.”
Callie doesn’t respond, doesn’t open her eyes or squeeze my fingers. Her face is waxy now. Her lashes dark against her snow-pale skin. Her chest rises. Falls. Rises. Falls. Does not rise again.
I hold Callie’s hand and Bishop holds me, and in the bruised and terrible silence I am not alone.
Chapter Nineteen
I stumble out of the courthouse behind Bishop, my hand in his the only thing keeping me upright. He pushes through the back door and I follow. The cold air smacking into my face reminds me that this is real, this is happening. I just killed my sister. I still have her blood etched into the lines of my palms. I can still hear the whistle of her failing lungs.
Something wet hits my cheek, and I flinch. Snow. Fat, fluffy flakes drift down from the slate-gray sky. I tip my head up and let them land on my face, melt against my feverish skin. Maybe if it snows hard enough, I can fool myself into believing I’m crying, pretend I’m actually able to shed a tear for my dead sister.
“Ivy,” Bishop says softly.
It takes a long time for me to look at him. When I do, he is standing right in front of me, his eyes drinking me in. “Do you think I did it on purpose?” I ask. My voice sounds like my throat is lined with sandpaper. “Do you think I wanted to kill her? Is that why I came back here?” I remember how much I hated Callie that day in the courtroom, how I longed to rip her apart. How much I wished her dead.
Bishop brushes a snowflake off my lip with his thumb. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “Only you can answer that question. But I know you’re not a cold-blooded killer. If she’d given you an out, if there had been another option, you would have taken it.”
Wherever Callie is now, I can picture her laughing, calling me the worst kind of hypocrite. And she’s right. Because it turns out I do have it in me to kill. I can live with blood on my hands. I just can’t live with it being Bishop’s. I don’t know what to do with my body, don’t know whether it wants to fold in on itself or fling itself outward, smash and destroy. I open my mouth, but all that emerges is a faint wail. My eyes burn, but from dryness, not tears. Bishop steps forward and gathers me against his chest, and I push my face into the hollow of his neck. My hands fist into his coat until my knuckles scream, and I think maybe if we can stay like this forever, static and safe, maybe I will find a way to be okay.
But the world doesn’t work like that, I’m discovering; it hardly ever gives you a chance to catch your breath. As if to prove my point, Bishop stiffens, pushes back from me just a little.
“Where are Caleb and Ash?” he asks.
I whirl around, eyes scanning the tree line where they were supposed to wait, but there’s no sign of them. “I don’t know,” I say.
Behind me, t
he courthouse door bangs open and as I turn, Bishop shoves in front of me, hand already reaching back for his rifle.
“It’s just me, it’s just me,” Victoria says, hands raised partway in surrender. She glances between Bishop and me. “Where’s Callie?”
“She didn’t…” Bishop pauses. “She didn’t make it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “She…”
“She tried to kill me,” Bishop says. Not lying, exactly, but subtly shifting the blame for what happened in that hallway from me to him. “You’re going to have some explaining to do, Victoria. I’m sorry about that.”
