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All of Dennis’ usual casual, jovial nature was completely gone, like sidewalk chalk after a rainstorm. He sounded tired, as if confronting her was some sort of chore he needed to check off his to-do list. Daisy gripped the folder tighter, her knuckles flexing under the skin of her still-mud-flecked hands. Before she turned to face him, she started recording a video on her phone, which she shoved into her pocket and hoped it would at least pick up audio.
“I — this is just a few poems.”
“There’s no need to lie to me, Daisy. I know all about Hana’s little note with that message for you. I should’ve figured you would find it even after I hid it. I didn’t want to do this. Man, your brother is going to be pissed.” Dennis put down the takeout bags and sighed, pulling a small handgun from his briefcase.
Daisy froze, and her vision went black around the edges for a second, but she managed not to faint from the panic. Her ears rang, and she was sweating like she just ran a mile outside in the humid August heat.
“Is this how Hana died?” Daisy blurted it out without thinking.
Dennis had the gall to laugh at her. “No, I didn’t kill Hana. Cover up her death, yes, but that’s just my specialty.”
“So, you did hire Hansen to kill Mr. Holm. And you killed Hansen.”
“Yes, I did. And here I was thinking you were too busy crying to figure things out. But you just had to see through my meticulous cover up, didn’t you?” He took a step toward her.
“It wasn’t that meticulous, clearly. Hana figured it out. I just followed her train of thought.” Daisy just had to keep him talking and stall until she could figure out how to get help.
Dennis seethed and slid a butcher’s knife out of the block on the island. Daisy’s pulse hammered. Maybe her own body would make her heart give out before Dennis got the chance to do anything.
“Let’s get this moving. Noriko will be home soon, and I don’t want her to find you after you’ve used this knife to kill yourself. She still has nightmares from finding Hana. I’ll take the first responder duties this time,” Dennis said. He lunged forward and gripped her arm hard enough to bruise with the hand holding the knife, and when she tried to jerk away, he pressed the barrel of his gun to her neck.
“We’re going to walk upstairs, and you aren’t going to fight me, okay? I can make this easier on you,” Dennis said. His voice was eerily calm, and an overwhelming sense of clarity washed over Daisy.
He would kill her, and the only way out of this would be going along with him until she saw an opening for escape. If she could hold him off until Noriko got here, she would be fine. Or maybe Will would wake up and see her message and decide to come find her instead of waiting for her to get home.
“How did Hana die?” Daisy asked. Her phone was still recording, and she hoped she would be around to turn it over to the police herself.
Hana’s ghost appeared at the top of the stairs, vengeful anger on her face. Daisy wished Dennis could see her, but he didn’t react to her appearance at all. Hana’s ghost was still only seen by Daisy, her memory kept alive by the love they shared and Daisy’s devotion to finishing what Hana started.
“She was too smart for her own good. Everyone else moved on from her father’s death, but she had to go and stick her nose back in that closed case.”
Daisy dragged her feet, forcing Dennis to slow down as he tried to force her up the stairs. “But you said you didn’t kill her. What does the case have anything to do with it? Did you pay someone to do your dirty work again?”
Dennis growled in frustration and released Daisy’s arm, pushing her toward the stairs with the barrel of the gun when she didn’t immediately move. She fell, scraping her chin on the carpet of the steps. She let out a small cry of pain before scrambling back up to start her ascent. He’d just shoot her right here if she didn’t comply at least a little bit.
“No, this time I got lucky. Someone did it for free. Good timing too. I doubt Hana had anything good on me yet, but it's better safe than sorry. I mean, hell, he thinks he owes me for helping with the coverup.” Dennis laughed so coldly it sent a shiver through Daisy’s body, and all the hair on her arms stood up.
She forced herself to stay calm. “And you saved ten grand.”
“Well, yes, I guess I did. Plus, no mess this time. Getting Hansen drunk on expensive whiskey so he wouldn't fight back was also pricey. That man drank like a fish. But, in the end, worth it.”
“Why? Why do any of this?” Daisy asked.
Hana’s ghost moved aside when Daisy reached the top of the stairs, and Dennis walked right through her. He shuddered, and Daisy hoped he felt the anger and pain radiating off the ghost.
Dennis guided Daisy into Hana’s room and closed the door. “Love, of course. I love Noriko, and she should be mine. I’m just clearing the path to her.”
“Just for love? Not for the partner spot?”
“Oh, you are clever, aren’t you? I didn’t even notice that you were on the trail before today, so kudos to you for that. But you’re a fool, just like Hana, for thinking you could outsmart me.”
“I did outsmart you,” Daisy said. She didn’t know if it was wise to tell him he was caught no matter what, but she needed to say it.
“Why do you think that?” Dennis asked. His voice was condescending and sickly sweet, like he was talking to a toddler.
“Because I sent all the evidence Hana collected to Will. He’ll be here any minute,” Daisy said.
Dennis let out a real laugh at that statement. “Will? You think Will is going to take any of this to the police? Who do you think killed Hana?”
The words reverberated through Daisy’s skull, and she looked towards the door, where Hana’s ghost stood, also frozen in shock.
“Will ... No, Will wouldn’t do that. Will wouldn’t kill Hana. He wouldn’t — stop lying!” Daisy shouted.
Dennis shoved her, hard, and she fell to the floor, dropping Hana’s letter as she went. “It was a crime of passion, not premeditated at all if it makes you feel any better. When I showed up, he was still in shock, covered in blood. He’d ridden his bike here for some godforsaken reason, and I didn’t even know he was here until I came looking for Hana.”
Daisy remembered that day. Will let her take the car to her final to cheer her up because she was still brokenhearted over Hana.
Daisy stared at Dennis, still unbelieving. “And you ... helped him cover it up. Because he did you a favor, didn’t he?”
“He did. I don’t know exactly what Hana knew, but I had a feeling she was getting too close. I was going to come and reiterate what I wrote in my note to her, but Will beat me to it. And now, well, even Will would believe that you killed yourself after you discovered the truth. Your own brother killed the girl you loved. Who could blame you for it?” Dennis taunted, staring at his reflection in the knife for a second before setting his sights back on Daisy.
“No, no, no,” Daisy chanted under her breath, looking around. Maybe Noriko would be home soon, maybe she could still make it out of this.
“And it’s not as if your father won’t be glad. Hell, he went on and on all morning about what a disgrace you are and how ashamed your mother would be of you. No parent wants a kid like you,” Dennis spat.
Daisy flinched back at that. “That’s not — you’re lying. He’ll come around.”
“I’m sure he was planning on coming up with some placating thought about you coming out so he could sweep it under the rug and start dropping eligible bachelors in your path. He thinks you’re obsessed with Hana’s death, and he’s right. Of course, he thinks you’re obsessing over an open and shut suicide. Really, I’ll just use all of this to make the story I tell about your suicide more plausible.” Dennis waved the gun around as he spoke, and Daisy hoped that maybe she could disarm him by distracting him somehow.
“You should’ve been a writer,” she said. “You’re very good at making up stories.” She backed up against a wall and stood up again. She needed to keep stalling long enough to come up with a plan or for someone to come save her.
Maybe if Will came, he could tell her the truth — he could clear up Dennis’ terrible misunderstanding and make things right again. There was no way he really killed Hana. Daisy was still trying to process the possibility of her brother killing the girl she loved, but her struggle didn’t stop Dennis from droning on, sounding unhinged.
“It’s easy to make people believe something when it’s all they want to hear. Those who are grieving just want to understand, and if they believe they know what led to someone’s death, they move on. Mark’s death was seen as an unthinkable, unpredictable, and unpreventable tragedy, when really it was a complete setup. It took me weeks to lay the groundwork for Jake Hansen to do it. I left him anonymous letters, cash, and eventually the entire price of the hit. He didn’t even know it was me until the night he died when I showed up with his final payment and a bottle of whiskey. I couldn’t have had it go any better if I wanted it to. Fate heard me and decided that it was my time! Finally, things worked out for me, the forgotten brother, always in second place!” Dennis declared, spit flying from his mouth as he yelled at her.
This was not any version of Dennis that Daisy knew. This was not the man who gave speeches at the holiday office party and made Noriko laugh at Thanksgiving. Maybe this was who he really was under his charisma and grandiose speeches. Daisy was too scared to respond, but this didn’t stop Dennis and his tirade.
“And everything was going perfectly, so perfectly, until Hana went and dug her grubby little fingers into the case. She should’ve just left it, but instead she started her clumsy investigating. She wrote that stupid short story and made Nori and I read it as if I couldn’t tell what she was doing.”
“What are you talking about?” Daisy asked, unable to stop herself.
“Oh, didn’t she tell you about it? About her little creative writing project where she wrote about her father’s death without writing about her father’s death? She probably thought she was being so clever, acting all innocent and using those doe eyes on me. Maybe if she looked more like Nori and not my stupid asshole of a brother it would’ve worked, but it didn’t. I’m too smart for someone like her to bring me down, some embodiment of the wrong choice that Nori made decades ago.
“And it’s kind of funny because I was going to kill her anyways before Will beat me to it. You Polos are always becoming unwitting accomplices to my murders. Your father was the one who made sure the police barely bothered me during the investigation of Mark and Hansen’s deaths. And your brother did all the dirty work for me here. I mean, Hana helped too, of course. She was acting so strangely in the weeks leading up to her death; she was withdrawn, quiet, too placating, uninterested in her old life, distancing herself from her loved ones. After the fact, everyone said they never saw it coming, but they should have. There were so many signs that no one noticed. When we said that Hana’s death was a suicide, of course everyone believed us. Hana was too damn paranoid to ask for help, so no one knew about what she was investigating. But then I found her stupid letter, and I knew I had to keep an eye on you,” Dennis said.
“You knew about the letter?”
Dennis laughed, and the malice in the sound shook Daisy to her core. “Of course. Where did you think all her physical notes went? I took her notebook and ripped all the pages out after Will killed her. I found the note, too, but Noriko was on her way home so I just stuffed it in the journal and hid it with the others on her bookshelf so I could come back for it after the cops left. Noriko would never come in here, wouldn’t want to read Hana’s journals, but then you had to come and take it. Of course you did,” Dennis yelled, gesticulating with the knife while still holding the gun steady, trained right on Daisy.
If Daisy was going to die, she wasn’t going to roll over and take it. A fire burned in her veins she never felt before, and she took a steadying breath to stop herself from doing anything too brash. “I knew she didn’t kill herself. I had to look for proof.”
“And look where your little proof led you,” Dennis laughed. “The same fate as your beloved little Hana.” He mispronounced Hana’s name, making the first “a” harsh and nasally, the way that substitutes and teachers would pronounce it before Hana would correct them.
Time was running out, and Daisy had no more ways to stall. “No one will believe I killed myself.”
“Of course they will. It’s a classic scenario, one for the ages — the poor star-crossed lovers take their lives. What a shame, that poor Daisy Polo. The final straw was that her own father didn’t accept her, so she killed herself in her dead girlfriend’s room. You’ll be a cautionary tale of not accepting your children — you’ll be martyrs. You’ll be famous. Maybe you should be thanking me,” he mocked.
He took a step towards Daisy, and she roared forward, pushing him with all her might. She managed to throw him off balance, but when she tried to run past him, he stuck out his arm and pushed her backwards. She screamed and fell, hitting her shoulder on Hana’s vanity. Dennis clicked off the safety of the gun and raised it to shoot at Daisy, abandoning his original plan for her staged suicide. She closed her eyes, not wanting to look her death in the face. She didn’t hear the footsteps of whoever darted into the room, only felt herself being pitched to the side as the gunshot rang out.
When Daisy opened her eyes, she thought for half a second that Hana’s ghost was the one who knocked her out of the way and took a bullet for her.
“Oh no, no, no, this wasn’t — Noriko, no, I didn’t mean to,” Dennis cried, watching in horror as Noriko staggered back against the wall and slid down it, clutching her side. Dennis lurched forward, cradling Noriko close to his chest even as she struggled against his grip. He took off his blazer and applied pressure to the gunshot wound in Noriko’s side, murmuring apologies until they sounded like nonsense.
Daisy pressed herself back against the wall and watched the scene play out in front of her like a daytime television drama. Dennis was unworried about the gun that fell to the floor during their struggle, only focused on helping Noriko.
“What have you done?” Noriko asked, looking around wildly as if something in this room would explain the web that Dennis weaved, the one they were all trapped in now.
“Don’t try to talk right now. You’re losing a lot of blood,” Dennis said, pushing harder against the growing bloodstain in his blazer. She tried to move again, but he held her in place.
“Hana didn’t kill herself? And you knew?” Noriko asked, demanding an answer.
“I didn’t kill her. I just helped cover it up so it would be easier to move on, so it would be easier for us to be together,” Dennis explained, searching his pockets for his phone.
“Yes, so we can ... be together,” Noriko said. She reached towards him, but instead of caressing him she picked up his discarded gun. His face turned stormy when she held it to his head with shaking hands, and he rocked back on his heels, his hands raised in the air.
“Nori, what are you doing? I did this for us, I did all of this for us, and this is how you repay me?” he said it as if he was a knight in shining armor, and she was angry at him for slaying the dragon.
Noriko clicked the safety off the gun and pointed it directly at his forehead. “Daisy, go,” she said.
“You ruined everything, you stupid little girl, and I’m going to—” Dennis screamed, his face the picture of fury. Before he could do anything, though, the front door slammed open.
All three of them froze.
“Daisy! Daisy, I’m here!” Will called, his footsteps pounding up the stairs. He ran into the room and froze at the scene in front of him, dropping his bike helmet.
“What — what’s going on? Daisy, are you okay?” Will asked, turning his entire attention on her, as if Noriko bleeding on the floor with a gun aimed at Dennis was inconsequential in all of this.
“She’s fine, but she knows the truth now. She knows what you did,” Dennis said, his voice cruel and dark. Will glared at the older man, and Daisy shrank back from the pure hatred and rage in his eyes.
“You tricked me. You told me you were helping me because you cared about me and cared about my future, not because you wanted Hana dead,” Will bit out.
“What is he talking about,” Noriko asked, her voice weaker than before. Daisy didn’t know how much longer Noriko could hold the gun up for. Hana’s ghost was back at Daisy’s side, trying to urge her towards the door, trying to protect her once again from the chaos around her, but Daisy didn’t want to run. She wanted the truth, all the painful parts of it laid out in front of her in unavoidable detail.
“I killed Hana,” Will said. “Dennis found me afterwards and helped me cover it up. I just didn’t realize how much experience he had faking suicides.”
Dennis glared at him, and Noriko’s gaze flickered over, trying to discern the truth of Will’s statement.
In the moment of distraction, Dennis reached for the gun, and Noriko fired it, though she only managed to hit the round light on Hana’s ceiling. The glass around the bulb shattered and rained down, making both Dennis and Noriko shield themselves while Will threw himself over Daisy. She dropped to the ground and lurched towards Noriko, grabbing the gun out of her weak grip and standing up again, backing towards the door. She felt in her back pocket for her phone, but it must have fallen out at some point during her struggle with Dennis.
“Has anyone called 911?” Daisy asked, her voice eerily calm. Will took a step towards her, but Daisy turned the gun on him, stopping him in his tracks.
“Daisy, what are you doing?”
The gun shook in her hands. “What am I doing? You killed Hana!”
Will held out his hands in a pleading motion. “It was an accident! We were fighting, and I just pushed her, and I thought — I didn't think she would fall over, and then she hit her head, and she wouldn't wake up. I just, she hurt you so bad. And she didn't even seem sorry. I got so mad. I just went there to try to find out why she did what she did so you could move on and find someone who could love you like you deserve and not treat you like shit,” Will explained, as if anything he said would make what he did okay.
Daisy shook her head at him. “You killed the love of my life. She was my best friend, and even after I told you to leave things alone, you just had to come talk to her. I’m eighteen! I can stand up for myself. You didn’t have to ... you shouldn’t have—”
“You said you wished for once she would deal with the consequences of hurting you. I was just going to yell at her.”
“I also told you to stay out of it, it’s amazing how selective your hearing is,” Daisy snapped. Will flinched back, and Daisy took a deep breath, holding the gun steady and looking around the room.
“I didn’t call 911,” Noriko said. “I saw you through the window when I pulled in the driveway and came straight up.” Noriko acted as though Daisy and Will’s fighting wasn’t happening. The color was draining from her face and her breaths were getting shallower.
“I did. I told them you were in danger,” Will said.
“You’re an idiot, just like your father,” Dennis seethed. “You’re going to get eaten alive in prison.”
Daisy pointed the gun back at him. “Shut up. You don’t get to manipulate any of us anymore. You’re done playing your games.”
“Am I?” Dennis taunted. “I’m the top defense attorney in the state. Do you know how many murderers I’ve gotten off? Do you know how flimsy a years old cold case is? Do you even know how much I can get a sentence reduced for being an accomplice who’s willing to cooperate with the prosecution?”
Daisy didn’t remember firing the first shot, only the expression on Dennis’ face when it hit him square in the chest. Will lurched towards her, yanking the gun out of her hand. He fired the rest of the clip, hitting Dennis two more times before deliberately shattering Hana’s vanity mirror with his other shot. He dropped the gun to the ground and sank to his knees, watching Dennis intently as if he was going to recover from the shot that hit him squarely in his throat.
“Why did you do that?” Daisy demanded.
“Your shot didn’t land. He needed to pay,” Will said. His eyes flicked towards Daisy’s phone, which had fallen out of her pocket at some point and was now face up. The video was still recording, the screen only showed blackness from where the camera was pressed against the ground.
“He’s right,” Noriko said, her eyes fixed on Daisy as well. Before Daisy could respond, she heard the police announcing themselves and thundering up the stairs, their guns drawn. Will and Daisy put their arms up, and Noriko struggled to lift her arms before passing out cold.
The next two hours were a blur. Daisy and Noriko were taken to the hospital in separate ambulances, even though Daisy insisted she wasn’t hurt and didn’t need to go. One of the paramedics pointed out the gash on her shoulder she got from falling into the dresser, something she didn’t feel until they mentioned it.
She didn’t remember a single one of the questions the police asked or any of the answers she gave, only that once she handed them her still-recording phone the questions stopped. She could almost hear her father’s voice in the back of her head telling her to lawyer up the second any cop started questioning her, but she didn’t heed his advice. She was too numb to think through anything.
Reality snapped back with startling clarity when her father ripped open the curtain surrounding her bed at emergency room, his eyes wide with panic.
“Daisy, oh my god, you’re okay,” Henry said, running to her side and pulling her into a hug.
“You should see the other guy,” she joked before promptly bursting into tears. Henry just held her while she cried.
“I’m glad that you’re okay,” Henry said gruffly once the worst of Daisy’s sobs were done.
Daisy smiled weakly at him, still sniffling. “Will killed Hana. And Dennis, he ... he got Mark killed, and he—”
“I know, Daisy. They explained it all when they called me. Will used his one phone call for me.”
“I’m sorry. It wasn’t ... Where’s Noriko? Is she okay?”
“The doctors wouldn’t tell me much, just that she was in surgery and that they’d ask her if I could see her once she wakes up. If she wakes up.”
“I made a real mess of things, didn’t I?” Daisy asked.
“This ... this wasn’t your fault. I’m gonna go find a nurse, see if we can get you discharged soon.”
“Okay, Dad. I’ll be here.”
Henry strode away and Daisy curled her knees into her chest, startling when Hana’s ghost appeared at her side.
“It’s time for me to go. Thank you, Daisy,” she said. She smiled Daisy’s favorite smile, the one Hana reserved just for her. What would their life have been like together if Hana had never tried to investigate her father’s death, if she never cheated on Daisy last Halloween, if things had gone the way Daisy used to think they would?
“I’m always going to love you,” Daisy murmured, hoping no one bustling around the emergency room would hear her.
“I loved you from the moment I knew you until my heart stopped beating.”
Daisy closed her eyes and sucked in a shuddering breath. Hana’s ghost squeezed her hand, one last time.
When she opened her eyes, Hana was gone and Daisy was left, once again, with only the living.