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“I stabbed you.” My voice breaks on the words, even though I know the memory’s not true.
She’s quiet. All I can hear is the hammering of my own heart.
“I remember it,” I say. “The blood. Slipping on the blood. And feeling gleeful, like I’d gotten away with it. Looking down at your body and feeling the way I did—the memory still seems so real. Like something that no one could make up, because it was so awful. And how I was—It’s worse than feeling nothing, like you’re just psycho. It’s much worse to think you enjoyed it.” I’m glad we’re in the dark. It is impossible to imagine saying all this to her face.
“They were supposed to kill me,” Lila says. “Barron and I were in your grandfather’s house in the basement, and he grabbed my arms. At first I thought he was kidding around, that he wanted to wrestle, until you and Philip walked in. Philip was saying something to you, and you just kept shaking your head.”
I want to say that it isn’t true, that it didn’t happen, but of course I really have no idea.
“I kept asking Barron to let me get up, but he wouldn’t even look at me. Philip took out a knife, and that’s when you seemed to change your mind. You walked over to me and looked down, but it was like you weren’t really looking at me. Like you didn’t even know who I was. Barron started to get up, and I was relieved, until you took my wrists and pressed them down on the shag rug. You pressed them down harder than he did.”
I swallow hard and close my eyes, dreading what she’ll say next.
Steps on the stairs make her clam up.
“Tell me,” I whisper. My voice comes out louder than I planned. Probably not loud enough to get their attention. “Tell me the rest.”
She presses her bare hand against my mouth. “Shut up.” She’s whispering, but she sounds fierce.
If I struggle, I really am going to make noise.
“I don’t want you to tell Anton,” Philip says. He sounds close, and Lila’s body jolts. I try to slide my hand against her upper arms to gentle her, but that only seems to make her shake worse.
“Tell him what?” asks Barron. “That you think Cassel’s going to flake? Do you want this whole thing to come apart?”
“I don’t want it to blow up in our faces. And Anton’s acting more unstable.”
“We can take care of Anton when this is over. Cassel’s fine. You baby him too much.”
“I just think that this is risky. It’s a risky plan and Cassel needs to be on board. I think you forgot to make him forget.”
“You know what I think?” Barron says. “I think that bitch wife of yours is the problem. I told you to cut her loose.”
“Shut up.” I hear the growl under Philip’s seeming calm.
“Fine, but he was hanging around her last night after dinner. She obviously figured out enough to leave.”
“But Cassel—”
“Cassel nothing. She told him what she suspected. And he did a little fishing to find out if it was true. See how you’d react. He doesn’t know anything yet, unless you freak out. Simple. Case closed. Now let’s go.”
“What about Lila?”
“We’ll find her,” he says. “She’s a cat. What can she do?”
I hear the front door slam. We wait what feels like ten minutes and then slide under the pole to open the closet door. I look around the room. It’s trashed, but no more than it was before.
Lila steps out behind me, and when I look back at her, her mouth curves up at one corner. She turns toward the bathroom.
I catch her wrist. “They’re gone and I still want to hear the rest. Tell me. Please. How you got away from Barron. Why you lured me up to the roof of Smythe Hall with that crazy dream.”
“I wanted to kill you,” she says, that slight smile widening.
I drop her wrist like it’s burning me. “You what?”
Here I was, eating my whole heart over her, forgetting what she was actually like back then.
“I couldn’t do it,” she says. “I hated you even more than I hated them, but I still couldn’t do it. That’s something, right?”
