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“I didn’t kill my sister,” he said, forcing a calm he didn’t feel.
“Bullshit!”
She wasn’t having it, so he lifted a shoulder. “Look, don’t make more of it than it was, okay? I just didn’t save her. And it happened years ago. So let it go, Ash. It’s over.”
He heard what sounded like a scrape outside. Fuck! He glared at the window. Was he going crazy? Or was there really someone out there? The hairs lifting on the back of his arms warned him of an unseen danger and he took a step toward the grimy panes only to spy a rat dart toward the fireplace, its tail slithering behind it as it scrambled into a crack in the mortar. He started for the window once more.
“You killed her,” Ashley accused again, and he stopped dead in his tracks. “Your own sister.”
“I already told you. I just didn’t—”
“Save her. I know. But you could have,” she charged, as if any of this was a surprise. “You were on the damned swim team!”
God, Ash was getting irritating, and this old lodge with its creaking beams and scurrying rodents was getting to him. “It’s not like I held her head down in the water.”
“Isn’t it?”
He remembered Nell flailing in the river, struggling to keep her head up, her wet hair floating on the water’s surface as she gasped. No one noticed but Tyson and he’d decided in a split instant of understanding about the rest of his life, and what it meant to be an only child, a single heir, what it would mean if he just let her lose her battle. “Like you care. It was a million years ago.”
“Right.” Ashley stared at the lantern as if it were a crystal ball, capable of predicting the future, while the lodge settled, ancient timbers creaking, the wind whistling through a partially open window. Somewhere far away he heard the hooting of a lonely owl. It all gave him a case of the creeps. How had he and Ashley, the only woman he’d ever loved, fallen so far from each other? And why didn’t she understand they were in it together and it was good, was for the best.
When she finally spoke, it was with less venom. “Maybe I didn’t care then. About Nell.” She swallowed hard. “And maybe I didn’t want to believe it. It was easier not to think about it. But that was a long time ago, before I had children of my own.”
“Oh, Jesus. Don’t go all Mother Teresa on me, babe. It’s too late now.”
But she was on a roll. “And then . . . then it was different with Holly and Poppy. You didn’t just let them die, didn’t let nature take its course like Nell and the river. Nuh-uh. You killed them, Tyson. You strangled those two little girls and hid them in the basement, like a dungeon, that’s what the press is saying. When I didn’t know . . . didn’t want to know the details, I could pretend that it was all just a bad dream, that it hadn’t really happened, but now . . .” Her voice cracked.
“It had to be done.”
“They were just kids!”
“They knew, babe. Remember? I told you. Holly found out about the old man and Margaret. She was a snoop and she came here, following her mother to this very place.” He gestured broadly to include this huge building with its warren of bedrooms surrounding this wide common area and stale, horrid memories. “This is where Dad and Margaret would sneak off to. They probably did it in every damned room and Holly knew. And if she knew, you can bet your sweet ass Poppy did, too. I’m just lucky I caught Holly up here that day, that I found out she’d seen them.” He remembered that hot summer day. “It was like a fuckin’ circus. That woman who rides the horses and gives lessons? Chandra Whatever?”
“Johnson. Maxie’s mom.”
“Yeah, right, right. She was here, too. Rode right on by like she was in a damned Fourth of July parade.” Tyson felt the old anger and worry about being discovered that he had on that sweltering day. “I don’t think Chandra saw anything. Well, except maybe Holly. But that was the problem, Holly was peering through the window and she watched her mother going at it with my dad and she, like, burst into tears.” Tyson should have taken care of Holly right then and there, he thought, before she put two and two together and figured out why her youngest sister didn’t look like Poppy or herself, but he hadn’t been able to take a chance. As it was, he’d ducked quickly behind a jagged stump, hiding in the brush and stirring up a hornets’ nest. He’d been stung twice and bitten his lip to keep from crying out before the damned horsewoman had ridden into the woods.
“You’re a monster,” Ashley whispered.
“And you?”
“I didn’t plan anything like this, you know it.”
“What I know is that if you hadn’t tipped Owen off somehow, if he hadn’t come back for Rose and taken her away, if he’d left her in the goddamned theater or let her go home, I might have had a chance to—”
“To kill her, too,” she finished for him. “But I didn’t—”
“You did! You knew, damn it. And you were a good girl, keeping your mouth shut, not even confiding in your husband.”
“Don’t bring Ryan into this,” she warned.
“Oh, come on, babe. As if you care.” He walked over to her, bent down and sat on his haunches so he could look her in the eye. “You only married him because you didn’t want anyone to suspect we were together. Just in case this all came out.” He touched the side of her face with the muzzle of his gun and she didn’t even flinch because that was the thing about Ashley, one of the things he loved about her. She was drawn to danger, liked the adrenaline rush of it all, the reason she’d agreed to go along with his plan all those years ago. Well, that and the promise of a fortune once his old man kicked off. How lucky for her she’d found a husband, a cover, with enough money to keep her happy.
If not satisfied.
She, like Tyson, was a restless soul and that, more than anything else, had bound them together for more than two decades. He drew the pistol down her jawline and she just stared at him with those wide, curious eyes. God, he was getting hard just looking at her. “It didn’t hurt that he had a buttload of money.”
“Stop it!” She threw herself to her feet and, lighting another cigarette, walked to the window at the front of the house.
