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She is a loose cannon.
“Forgive me,” she demands.
“Sylvia,” I say calmly. “You’re sick.”
“You think I’m sick?” The coffee is now a steady stream over the tip of her cup. Her cheeks heat with anger. “How dare you say that. You have no idea what I’ve been through.” The cup drops from her hand and shatters on the tile floor. “Howdareyou, Rhett.”
“Sylvia, stop deflecting.” I remain calm. “There is no going back now. I know what you did, and I want to know why you did it.”
She pushes away from the counter, a swinging pendulum of emotions. Snarling anger and spurts of sobs. She begins pacing, manically raking her fingers through her greasy hair, her bare feet stepping on broken shards of glass. She doesn’t notice.
“I’ve given youeverything,”she snarls.“I’ve helped you, taken care of you. It’s because of me you’re not back in jail. I’ve given youeverything—and riskedeverything.” With a growl, she viciously jerks a clump of her own hair. “My God, what the hell is wrong with me?”
I step forward, gently grab her elbow and guide her off the broken glass, now speckled with her blood. Still, she doesn’t seem to notice that she has shredded the bottom of her feet.
She swats away my advance. “Do you have feelings for me or not?”
I blink, the question catching me off guard. “I don’t have feelings for you, like that, no, Sylvia, I don’t.” I step forward again. “Sylvia, you’re cutting the bottom of your feet—badly. Come here. Please, come here, please.”
She shoves me backward. “What is so wrong with me? What isso wrongwith me?” She begins screaming the question, over and over and over, tears streaming down her cheeks.
What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me?
“Sylvia, stop,” I yell, my adrenaline spiking. I hate the noise, the screams. “Stop, I—we—need to get you help.”
Her eyes flare, bugging out of her skull. Her entire face contorts with madness. “My mom never loved me either, do you know that? Shebeatme, Rhett. Physically abused me. It started with slapping me and my sister across the face, almost daily. But after Anna died, it got worse. She’d be drunk—she would drink a box of rosé for breakfast and I would be on the floor curled and in pain by noon. When she sobered, she wouldn’t remember a single moment of it.” Her eyes are wild, unnerving. “But you don’t believe me, do you? Because she was nice to you, nice to everyone. Bitch found God.” She snorts. “Un-fucking-believable, isn’t it? Beats her child, then one day, just…” She snaps her fingers in the air, “Finds God and,boom,quits drinking and decides she wants a real relationship with me. Decides to become a totally different person.”
“So why did you kill her, Sylvia?”
“I killed her for you! Don’t you see that? I did it for you.”
“You’re a liar. You’re lying. You didn’t kill her for me. You framed me.”
“BeforeI knew you—and I’ve spent every day regretting what I did.”
“Bullshit. You’re lying. Why did you kill your mother?”
She explodes. “I killed her because she deserved it, okay! People who beat their children don’t deserve to live.”
“Bullshit, Sylvia! Why did you kill her?”
“Fine! I killed her for money, okay?” Spittle flies from her lips. “Money! She told me the week before that she was giving her savings—my inheritance—to support the construction of a new church in the area. I couldn’t believe it. This woman who beat me was becoming a huge hero in the community—while cutting me out of my inheritance. She was the liar, Rhett, not me.”
“So you wanted to kill her before the money went away, so you could get your inheritance. Okay, revenge, greed, fine. I get it. But why framemefor it, Sylvia?Why me?”
She shrugs. “You showed up. It was the perfect opportunity. It was just all so perfect. I didn’t realize she’d hired someone to do her cabinets—it was the perfect opportunity. I started following you immediately to try to find an angle, and that’s when I heard about the home break-ins that were happening at the time.”
My jaw drops. “You arekiddingme.”
“I’m sorry, okay? I told you I’m sorry.”
I snort. “Sorry. You’resorry?Jesus, Sylvia.” I shake my head. “But the letters… you wrote them, right? That was you.”
“Yes,” she snaps—like why am I asking the obvious.
“Why, though?Why start everything up again, twenty years later?”
She turns away.
