Thursday, August 19
Woodstock, New York
Oh my god,” I said, backing away. “You were with George that morning.”
“What?” Jack asked, eyebrows scrunching up. “I wasn’t. I came up to speak to the police about Willa.”
“The paint,” I said. “How did the paint . . . how did it get in your hair?”
“Paint?” he asked. “What are you talking about?”
I remembered when I had painted that stupid door I’d loved so much, when I’d dripped some on my ponytail, how some of it still clung, even after several showers. “Wear a shower cap or hat when you paint next time,” Rachel had told me, when I’d complained. “Mom and her DIY ways really should have taught you better.”
Jack hadn’t had time to protect his hair. He’d been too busy . . .
“The words—on the wall—it was, it was—”
“Mary, are you okay? You’ve been through a lot, I know, but you sound a bit paranoid right now.”
Morales had agreed with me, that the graffiti might have been nothing more than a diversion. I’d thought it was Willa’s diversion, but it was Jack’s.
“I think you should go,” I said.
“Mary,” he said firmly. In a flash, something passed across his face, and his whole demeanor changed, and for the first time, I saw it in his eyes: raw, vicious anger. “It’s the middle of the night. It’s pouring. You can’t just throw me out.”
I stepped farther back, my legs bumping into the coffee table. My eyes scanned the room for my car keys, but I couldn’t see them. Everything had been tossed down in a drunken mess. Jack was in front of me, blocking my only exit to the door.
“What’s got you so scared?” Jack asked. “Willa is in custody. There’s no one out there. I walked around the whole place.”
I took another step back, but the leg of the table caught me. I fell, my hands landing against the cups of tea Willa had spilled earlier. An awful clattering, and Jack looked down, towering above me.
“I’m not scared,” I lied. “I’m just . . . I’m tired.”
“Come now, Mary,” Jack said. “You’re being silly.”
He reached for my hand, grabbed it, then leaned over, practically pinned me against the coffee table.
“Why?” I asked. “Why were you there that morning? Why did you write that on the wall?”
“Write what, Mary?” And then he cocked his head to the side, eyes widening as if he’d only just remembered. “ ‘Die rich pig,’ pretty clever, don’t you think? George always going on and on and on about the damn break-ins, how they were driving his family crazy.”
My breaths came short, but Jack only leaned forward now, pressing me even harder into the coffee table. Something solid dug into my back. It took me a minute to realize it—my phone—was 911 still keyed in?
Jack stared at me, nothing but rage there in his eyes. I’d ruined everything, I realized. I never should have said a word. Never should have asked. Should have pretended I never saw the wallet. Never saw the paint in his hair. I thought of Alex, Alex who I was supposed to get in only a matter of hours. I had to get back to my son.
“Please,” I said, my voice begging. “I won’t say anything, I swear. There’s nothing to say, anyway. Willa killed George. Willa’s in custody.”
“Willa.” Jack spat the word, droplets landing in my face. “You know I loved her, was getting ready to propose and everything. Thought she was a perfect mother to little Jack. And she was, for a while. Until I found out she was fucking around on me.”
Desperately, I tried to give him what he wanted. “She was a bad person,” I said. “She did that to everyone. Not just you. But she’s arrested now. She’ll be locked up for a long time. This is over, if we want it to be.”
“George brought this on himself, you know. He invited me, Mary,” Jack said, his hands squeezing so hard I winced. “He asked me to come when I called him Sunday night, when I got the alert that Willa had used my credit card up here. Told me he was going to be with you all day anyway, that his brother had already met with the contractors and left. Told me he was on his way to winning you back. That the place would practically be mine.”
I tried to wriggle from him, but he only pressed harder, squeezing me against the table.
“But George didn’t expect me to get in early, did he? Didn’t expect me to see Willa walking out of his place, hair a mess, clothes barely on. He knew I loved her. He knew she was everything to me. He knew I was heartbroken when she cheated on me, when I threw her out. I told him everything, Mary, don’t you see? I bared my soul. While he went on about stupid shit like the goddamn break-ins, some meaningless graffiti, and I’m telling him how the love of my life, the only person I ever felt even a tiny bit happy with since my wife’s accident, how she’s been fucking around on me. And the whole time it’s with him. And when I confronted him, he didn’t even have the decency to deny it. Calls Willa a filthy slut and says he did me a favor. A favor! Fucking the love of my life!” Jack’s face was red with anger, his forehead sweating, his hands squeezing against my arms.
“Please,” I said. “Let me go. I have a child. He needs me. I won’t tell anyone.”
Jack’s mouth morphed into a cruel grin. “Oh, now you want to be the good mother,” he said. “Even though you knew what Willa did to me and you still were running around with her up here. You’re as bad as she is. But joke’s on all of you,” he spat. “George fucked Willa, but now he’s dead, and she’ll go down for it. And now I’m in your bed. The one thing he really wanted was to have you back. But I got mine instead. How’s that for karma?”
I stared at him, and it was suddenly so clear. All of this. Jack showing up at the bar tonight, being nice to me, when he could have gone back to Brooklyn, when he’d already gotten away with it all. No, he wanted to have his cake and eat it, too. Take something of George’s. Because Willa and I, we were no more than possessions to these men.
I realized something awful then—I was no different than Willa, was I? She said herself she fit herself into boxes, into the spaces men needed filled. But didn’t I do it, too? Wasn’t I contorting myself to be what they all wanted? George or Cassandra, Willa or Jack? I was afraid to be on my own. Only moments ago, I’d been looking at Jack, at a monster, wondering if something could happen between us, if I could twist myself to fit the hole left by his wife, then left by Willa, so we could build something together, so I wouldn’t have to figure it all out on my own.
Fuck that.
Alex, I thought. Alex, I love you. More than anything.
And if I make it out of this, I’m going to stop trying to find someone else to complete me.
It’s going to be you and me, buddy, and we’re going to figure it all out.
I looked at Jack then, and I saw murder in his eyes. And I had to get out of this. I had to. For Alex. For the life I could live on my own.
I sent my knee right to his crotch, and he unclenched my hand, keeled over.
I flipped around, saw the phone still there, 911 waiting, tapped to make the call.
A wrench in my shoulder, and Jack spun me around, the phone clattering to the ground. “Why the fuck did you do that?” he asked, both hands on my shoulders now, shaking. “You think you’re going to beat me?”
I shook my head, tears in my eyes now. “You won’t get away with it.”
Jack tilted his head to the side and again pinned me back against the coffee table. “Don’t you see? I already have. I’m the one who killed him. I’m the one who grabbed that stupid paperweight on his bookshelf, slammed it against his skull. Proved to him that you can’t take something that belongs to someone else, turn another man into a fucking cuck. And when Willa came back, probably begging for more, I’m glad she found him dead. Glad that whoring around finally caught up to her.”
His elbow came up then, his forearm squeezing my neck, pressing, cutting off air, as he hefted the whole weight of his body against mine.
The edges of my vision went blurry, and I scrambled to kick, to fight back, but I could barely move. He was so strong, and I was nothing beneath his power, his anger.
The room began to spin, and for a second, I imagined George doing the same thing to Willa, pressing his hands to her neck. And in that moment, it seemed like all the men in the world only existed to overpower us. Henry, George, Jack. Maybe Willa had only been surviving, all this time.
It was time for me to survive, too.
Jack’s body pressed harder against mine, but I managed to wiggle my arm away, scramble for anything still left on the table. And then there it was, ceramic and hard, the last drops of cold tea spilling from it as I grabbed a handle.
I took every bit of energy I had left, and I lifted it, and then . . .
Smack!
Suddenly, Jack was falling away from me, and I was gasping, choking, desperate for air, Jack prone on the floor near the table.
“Holy shit,” I heard.
I looked up, and she was there, a shovel in her hand.
She rushed forward and lifted it above her, bringing it down on Jack, again and again and again, until he wasn’t moving.
Then she stopped, looked down at me, still holding the shovel in her hand, straight out of American Gothic. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
I nodded, pushing myself up, and let her take my hand.
My old friend. Who I hadn’t come through for, when she needed me. Maybe if I had, we could have avoided all of this.
But she’d come through for me in the end.
Cassandra.