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“Your lawyer what?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “None of your business.”
The problem was that he wasn’t afraid of me. He saw me as Nina’s dad. The smiling guy who’d picked them up from parties before they were old enough to drive themselves. The guy who made pancakes on Sunday and threw extra bacon in the pan when Simon showed up uninvited.
I stood up and hit him as hard as I could across the forehead with the butt of the gun. He gave a grunt of pain. A cut opened up on his forehead and blood spilled down into his right eye. He pressed his hands to it, and I stepped back again, keeping some distance between us.
“Tell me what happened.”
“You hit me.” He held his hands away from his face, looked at the blood, and then stared at me.
“Yes,” I said. My voice was steady. “And I’ll kill you, Simon. I’ll shoot you and leave your body here for the next hiker to find.” I didn’t mean it. It was just talk, but I had to find a way to make him afraid. I kept talking, my voice low and steady. “Who knows, maybe I’ll kill myself. I don’t have a whole lot to live for right now. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but my life is a shit show. People think I’m a pedophile. I’m losing my business. My family is broken. If I kill you, I could maybe take your gear and hike to Canada and build a new life, right? That’s an option. You only have one chance here. If you tell me the whole truth, if I believe you when you’re done, then I will let you live.”
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You’ve lost your mind.”
I nodded. “You might be right about that. But it shouldn’t matter to you if I’m sane or insane. All you need to know is that there is only one way that you are going to walk off this mountain. You’re going to tell me what happened to Nina. You’re going to tell me where her body is buried. I’ll record your confession on my phone, and I’ll send it to the police, and maybe you’ll go to prison for a long time. But you’ll live. I guess you have to decide if you want to die, here, tonight, or not. That’s up to you.”
“I didn’t kill Nina,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. Okay? But if I had, and I told you, you’d kill me for sure.”
“You’re still lying.” I stepped back and sat on the bed frame. My legs were tired. Some of the energy was leaching out of my body. I felt like I knew where this was going to end up. He would never admit that he’d killed her. I didn’t want to let him go. He was a cancer. Malignant.
“I’m not lying. I didn’t touch her, okay?”
“Tell me the truth, everything that happened, and I’ll let you walk away. I came here for the truth, for me and for my wife. If she knows what happened, she has a chance of healing. Especially if she knows you’re going to prison. Prison won’t be fun, even though your dad will probably pull some strings and get you into a country club. But you’ll get out, eventually. Have some kind of life. That’s better than me shooting you right here in this shitty little hut. And who knows? Maybe your lawyer will get you off. A confession to me with a gun on you is probably not admissible evidence. So those are your choices. Die now. Right now. Or tell me the truth, and maybe get away with it. Choose.”
I saw him think about it. I watched him consider, then decide against, telling me the truth, and the knowledge that Nina was dead truly sank in, settling on me like a stone.
“Oh, Simon,” I said.
He heard it in my voice and he saw it in my eyes. I think he knew what I was going to do before I did. I stood up and raised the gun.
“She provoked me! She fucking knew what she was doing. All I ever wanted to do was love her. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. Why couldn’t she just leave things as they were?”
I did not lower the gun.
“She was sleeping with other men,” Simon said, frantically. “Lots of other men. Imagine if that was your wife? What would you do? And it was an accident!”
“Nina was the best thing that ever happened to you,” I said. I eased back the safety. “It wasn’t an accident. You didn’t get carried away. The only thing she ever did wrong was not want to be with you anymore. And you fucking killed her for it.”
I took slow and careful aim. I pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Jamie
I fell asleep on the couch on Friday night and woke up alone, in the dark. I had a sickening headache and a disgusting, sour taste in my mouth. I went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water at the sink. I drank it all, but the water sat uncomfortably in my stomach. The house was very quiet. The kitchen clock said it was 5:00 A.M., and it was still dark outside. It was cold in the kitchen. Rory must have come in late. Had he thought about waking me or had he just gone straight to bed? I told myself it didn’t matter one way or the other. I thought maybe I was hungry. The fridge had cold chicken and fruit and yogurt and salad. All I wanted was a slice of warm chocolate cake, but I didn’t keep anything like that in the house. I ate a grape and closed the door. I moved through the house like a ghost, floating from room to room. There were so many, and so many of them unused. Why did we have this huge house, for two of us and one child who was about to leave?
I made my way downstairs to Simon’s room. The door was firmly closed. I leaned my forehead against the wood and I closed my eyes. I wanted to go in, to sit on the bed and put my hand on his cheek, to smooth his hair back from his forehead. I wanted to wave a magic wand and for him to be a little boy again, so that I could start from the beginning and get everything right this time. Be a better mother. I opened the door. His room was dark, but I could make out the shadow of his bed, his bedside tables, his footlocker. The bed was empty.
“Simon?” I whispered his name into the darkness. I cleared my throat and tried again, louder. “Simon?” I reached for the light switch and turned it on. The room was empty. The bed was unmade. I went to the bathroom and turned on the light there. Empty. I’d just been through the entire house, but I went through it again, getting more and more frantic until I was running from room to room. I started calling his name, louder and louder, until I was shouting. Rory emerged from our bedroom, half-asleep and irritable.
“For Christ’s sake, Jamie.”
“Simon’s gone. He’s missing.”
“He’s not gone.”
I ran back down the stairs to the basement. I checked the laundry room, the games room, and the gym. Nothing. I went back upstairs. Rory was still standing there.
