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The house had begun to whisper again, the wind moving under the eaves and around the corners. Adam’s question hung in the air. Could I bear to hear him say what I already knew must be true? Could I bear to leave this thing between us, unspoken?
“Tell me,” I said.
“I was just going to make her delete the pictures. That was all I wanted. But she’d already sent them.” His face darkened. “It was cruel, what she did. And she was so damn pleased with herself, too. Laughing at me with her mouth all lopsided and hanging open. She was going to ruin my life,ourlife, and she waslaughing. It just made me so angry, I . . . I grabbed one of those chocolates and stuffed it in her big ugly open mouth, as far back as I could get it. And I watchedher choke on it.” He stopped, looking into the distance. Lost in the memory. “I didn’t think it took so long for someone to choke.”
I thought about running. Hiding. Snatching my phone from his hand and calling for help. I thought about how alone I was here, in this huge and empty house surrounded by acres of wood on three sides and miles of ocean on the fourth. If I called the police, it might take thirty minutes before they got here.
I thought about the look on Adam’s face when he said,I didn’t think it took so long for someone to choke.
“What are you thinking about?” he said. He reached for my hand again, and I let him take it. As if it made a difference now, whether or not I let him touch me. But when I looked at his fingers intertwined in mine, I felt like I wanted to vomit.
“You killed my grandmother. You killed Shelly. What now? Are you going to kill me too?”
He actually looked hurt. “How can you ask me that? I killedforyou. How many other men can say that? Everything I did, it was for you.”
I looked at the ring on my finger. “Was it? You knew I was going to inherit this money. And god, you’ve been in a hurry since then. Wanting to get married in Vegas. What was going to happen if we did? Would we have even made it to California before something bad happened to me?”
“It was never like that,” he said, desperation creeping into his voice. “I’d die before I ever hurt you. I just wanted to start my life with you, that’s all. Nothing has to change, Delphine. We can still be together, we can still go to California. All I want is to go to California with you. I’ll take care of you just like I promised I would. It’ll be just like you wanted.”
“None of this is what I wanted,” I said.
“Then what do you want? Just tell me. I’ll do anything.”
“Would you? What if I asked you to turn yourself in? What if I want you to pay for what you’ve done?”
He stared at me for a long time. “I don’t believe that,” he said finally. “If that’s what you wanted, I don’t think we’d be talking right now.” He looked down at his hand, my phone still in it. “And I don’t think I would be holding your phone. Can’t call the police without this, can you?”
“You could give it back to me.”
“I could,” he said. For a moment, I thought he might actually do it. But then he frowned, shook his head, and shoved the phone into his pocket. “No. I know you. You don’t need this,” he said. “You don’twantthis. There must be another way.”
I still think about this moment. The look on his face, the sound of his voice, the certainty that I wouldn’t turn him in. The muttering of the house behind us that became more urgent as the wind rose.
Maybe it was because he did know me, and I knew him in the ways that mattered most. Or maybe I was starting to believe in spite of myself: in things that were meant to be, in stories that come full circle.
What I know is that I never felt closer to my grandmother than in that moment. I never felt braver, colder, or more reckless.
I took a deep breath. “You’re right,” I said. “There is another way. Let’s take a walk. One last time. Down the pine path.”
“And then what?”
“And then we’ll see how this story ends.”
We walked without speaking: down the stairs, out the door, around the back of the house and through the garden, leaving silent footprints in the snow. The night was thick with fog and either one of us could have bolted, but we stayed close, as if we were still tethered to each other, bound together by a story that wasn’t finished yet. I thought about him walking here with Mimi, on that last night. Her last walk. How had he done it? A kiss to wake her, maybe. A familiar silhouette in the dark. An old woman wrapped up in a young woman’s memories, rising at the touch of her sweetheart’s hand. The house quiet around her. Her family, sleeping blissfully through it all so thatshe never even remembered they were there. If only I’d woken up . . . but I didn’t.
He spoke as though he’d read my mind. “It wasn’t your fault, you know. I put something in your wine so you’d sleep.”
I remembered stumbling up the stairs that night, how I’d felt suddenly, terribly drunk. “You drugged me.”
“I’m sorry.”
The moon was rising, cold and distant against the sky. We had reached the entrance to the pine path. His breath hovered cloudy in the air.
“Tell me what you did,” I said. “Tell me how it was, at the end.”
He hesitated. “I could tell... she knew the way,” he said. “She kept getting ahead of me and then teasing me, saying I needed to catch up. She could still move so fast. And in the moonlight, she looked... young. But not like a kid, not like a girl. Ageless. It was like you could see who she was and who she’d been, all at the same time. All these different versions of her, looking out through one set of eyes. She really was beautiful.”
The wind moved high in the trees, the forest tossing and creaking around us, a carpet of frost and dead leaves crunching beneath our feet. The fallen tree loomed ahead. I thought he might hesitate there, but he climbed over easily and so did I, the bark slimy beneath my palms. My armpits were soaked with sweat.
