Natalie’s hand grasped the railing as she circled down the concrete-and-steel stairwell, until she’d reached sublevel one of the hospital’s enormous underground parking garage. She pushed open the metal door and shouted, “Grace! Wait up!”
She jogged past row after row of parked cars in search of her sister’s Mini Cooper, but couldn’t find it anywhere. She heard the screech of tires echoing throughout the cavernous space, and it took her a moment to realize Grace was gone.
She went bounding back up the stairs to level two and got in her Honda SUV, chucking Grace’s leather bag in the backseat. She fumbled for her keys, gunned the engine, and backed out of the parking space, fear galvanizing her as she turned the wheel sharply through the descending levels. Something damp touched her psyche as she punched her ticket, paid the fare, and shot out of the garage.
Now where to?
Natalie dug her iPhone out of her bag and dialed Grace’s number, but of course the ringtone began playing inside her own car. “Beautiful Day” by U2.
“Fuck!” She spotted a distant set of taillights taking a right onto Garland Drive—Grace’s Mini Cooper. She followed the car along a series of back roads until she finally caught up with her sister, who was driving erratically through a residential neighborhood, red taillights dancing on the road ahead like a pair of drunken, blood-soaked eyes.
The night felt colossal and immense as she followed her through the countryside, snaking around corners and hitting potholes. They were heading for the eastern end of the lake, where the granite cliffs rose eighty feet or more. Natalie stubbornly dogged her sister’s taillights down one pitch-dark meandering road after another. She caught her breath every time Grace swerved across the center line.
The Mini Cooper surged over the next hill, and Natalie floored the gas pedal, speeding after it and grinding up the incline. As soon as she’d crested the hill, she could see the accident down below. Grace had crashed into a tree.
Natalie roared downhill toward the scene, feeling her pulse in her neck, then hit the brakes and swerved onto the soft shoulder. She switched on her high beams, threw her elbow into the door panel, and got out. All she could hear was the muffled thundering of her own heart.
The Mini Cooper was wedged against a tree, hissing steam. The front end was crumpled. The back windshield was cracked. The doors were blown open, and things that’d once been inside the vehicle were strewn across the road.
“Grace?” She ran toward the wreckage and looked inside. It was empty. The interior smelled of burnt rubber. There was an old parking sticker on the windshield. The keys were in the ignition. She straightened up and looked around.
“Grace, where are you?” she called out.
Her sister was nowhere to be found. Stars glittered overhead. A throbbing pain began at the back of Natalie’s head, like two fists hammering against her eyeballs.
“Grace?”
The wind caressed the moonlit trees. In front of her was the steeply wooded hillside that led up to Devil’s Point. She heard a rush in the thickets midway up the hill—twigs cracking and popping. She stood very still, craning her neck toward the noise. Her sister was taking one of the hiking trails to the top of the cliffs.
“Grace?” she hollered. “Whatever’s going on, we can deal with this.”
No response.
“Grace? Answer me!”
Natalie stepped back and looked around for the trailhead. She spotted a road sign for Devil’s Point ten yards away, grabbed her flashlight from the glove compartment, and jogged down the road. She took the overgrown trail into the woods, anguish gripping her. Willow had once humiliated Grace up there, many years ago—egging her on, pushing her into a dangerous situation. Now they were both in danger. Natalie dug her heels into the steep grade and it felt like running underwater.
Clouds were gathering overhead. Another storm was moving in. Natalie’s legs burned on the rugged ascent. The trail wound treacherously through thick woods, past huge boulders, thorny thickets, and clusters of poison ivy. She shouldered her way up the hillside trail, adrenaline coursing through her veins, and braced herself for confrontation. Near tears, she shouted, “Grace, wait for me, okay? I’m coming!”
She kept her flashlight aimed at the undergrowth, avoiding pitfalls, while sweat poured down her face. She stepped gingerly over gnarled roots that grew across her path. As the wind picked up, blowing through the pitch pines with an eerie wail, she took a series of crude steps carved into the rock face all the way to the top, where the trail leveled off. Natalie stepped out onto an exposed granite ridge.
Grace was standing on the rocky overhang with a panoramic view of the lake. She was weeping silently, hugging her fleece jacket close.
Natalie’s world froze. “Grace?” she whispered so as not to alarm her.
Her sister was balanced on the precarious overhang, just a few feet beyond which was a deadly plunge off the cliff. Grace’s back was to the woods and her gaze was pinned on the lake—silently debating what to do next.
Natalie’s stomach cramped. “I’m right behind you,” she said. “Be careful.”
Grace spun around.
“Be careful!”
Her sister looked like a specter—glassy eyes, a halo of golden, punked-out hair.
“Whatever happened,” Natalie said, “we can figure it out together. Okay? But first, I need you to step away from the ledge, Grace. You’re scaring me.”
Her sister swayed a little. “You don’t understand.” Eyes pinwheeling. Labored breathing. “Bunny will talk. Lindsey will talk. They’ll all talk.”
Natalie struggled to comfort her, but words failed her. On the far side of the lake, trees feathered toward a darkening sky.
Grace shook her head. “It’s so freaking ironic.”
“What’s ironic, Grace?” Natalie asked with a helpless look.
She brushed away the tears. “Nobody can keep a secret in this town. And yet, the four of us did. For years.”
Everything thundered to a halt. “Grace. Step away from the ledge, okay?”
“And here’s the weird part…”
“Grace, I’m serious. Take my hand.”
“We all agreed … we had to stick together … we told ourselves we had a pact. A coven. A sisterhood.”
“Stop talking,” Natalie said heatedly. “Do you understand? Not another word.”
Grace shook her head fiercely. She looked at Natalie as if she were already dead inside. “None of us said we should stop. Not a single one of us questioned what we were doing. Isn’t that disgusting?”
“Grace, listen to me,” Natalie pleaded. “Whatever you say can and will be used against you.”
Grace shook her head violently. “Yeah, I get it. You want to protect me.”
“It doesn’t matter that I’m your sister … do you understand? Please stop talking. I’m advising you … you don’t want to incriminate yourself.”
Grace rested her fingers delicately on her forehead. “It felt like a dream. Lindsey went first … then we all took turns, while Willow screamed and tried to get away.”
Natalie’s arms flew up, trying to push away the words. Trying to find a way out of this nightmare. So tangled up in the revelation that any attempt to free herself would only make it worse, like a crow caught in a snare.
“I couldn’t believe it was happening,” Grace confessed. “Willow was lying on the ground, crying and trying to defend herself, and then … Lindsey handed me the knife and told me to do it. But I just couldn’t. Do you believe me, Natalie? I couldn’t do it. But Lindsey threatened me and said that if I didn’t do it, they’d have to kill me, too. They’d stab us both. Me and Willow. So I did it. A fog came over me, and I thought, Oh God, is this really happening? I was stabbing my own sister. I was totally freaking out, and I stabbed her again and again. We were all screaming and yelling … We went ballistic.”
Tears sprang to Natalie’s eyes. “Shut the fuck up.”
“We had it all planned. We tricked her into it. I begged and pleaded with Willow to drive me over to the farm that day. I made up some bullshit excuse … so we drove over there, and Lindsey, Daisy, and Bunny were all waiting. We surrounded her, and Lindsey hit her over the head with a log, and Willow went down. At the time, I remember thinking—why should she get everything, when I get nothing? That was stuck in my head. I hated her. But I wasn’t alone, you see. We all hated her, because she was so fucking perfect and everybody loved her … all the guys wanted to fuck her. Gregg, Brandon, Justin, all of them. We couldn’t compete. It made us sick. And so we hatched a plot. I didn’t think I could cross that line, but it’s much easier than you think. I’m not a bad person, Natalie—you know that. I don’t know what happened to me that day … something cracked inside my head, and for the rest of my life I didn’t want to believe it. I’d almost convinced myself Justin killed her. I can even picture it in my head. I told myself it was just a bad dream, you know? That we didn’t really do it…”
Natalie’s veins had filled with ice. “Grace … please. Say it isn’t true. Tell me you’re mixing things up in your head.”
She hugged herself and gazed across the lake. “I’ve ruined everything, and I have no idea how it happened, because I’ve always followed the rules. But I must be bad, right? There must be something wrong with me, Natalie. Because look at all the grief I’ve caused. You don’t know how many times I wished I could take it all back. But we went a little crazy that day. A little insane. I can’t explain it. I’ve had to live with it for years now, and I just can’t face it anymore. I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“That’s okay,” Natalie whispered. “I’m here.”
“When it was over, we stood there with blood on our hands, blood on our raincoats,” Grace said tonelessly. “We had to blame someone, so we made up a story about Willow breaking up with Justin—we chose him. I called him from Willow’s phone and pretended to be her. I could mimic her voice perfectly. I told him to meet me at the farm in half an hour. Then we covered our tracks as best we could, and it was raining really hard by the time we left. We got rid of Willow’s phone and threw the knife in the lake. Then we drove to Lindsey’s house, since her mom wasn’t home, and washed the blood off our raincoats and used bleach for the bottoms of our shoes. I’d learned a lot from Dad about covering up a crime. It wasn’t just you who was listening.”
Natalie stood in stunned silence.
“It feels like I’ve been living inside a nightmare for twenty years,” Grace said. “It drove Bunny crazy—literally. It drew me closer to Daisy than ever. So close, she trusted me a thousand percent. Completely. Absolutely. This was our deepest, darkest secret. Our sisterhood. But then, everything fell apart when she got pregnant … because, fuck, it was horrible. She totally fell apart once she realized the baby was coming. She blamed herself for her previous miscarriages—she thought it was punishment for what we did to Willow. But this time, she told me, she couldn’t live with the lies. She wasn’t going to keep our secret anymore. She said … and this was her reasoning … she couldn’t bring a child into the world without a clear conscience in front of God.” Grace made a face. “Can you believe that? She was never a religious person. She and Brandon barely went to church. But now, all of a sudden, she wants to confess everything. She was going to tell her minister about it … to confess her sins to him.”
“Grace, listen to me. We can figure this out. Come back to the car and let’s talk.”
“No, baby girl,” Grace said sadly.
Tears sprang to Natalie’s eyes. “Just come back with me … please.”
“I tried talking her out of it—Daisy. I told her to let it go, but she wouldn’t listen to reason,” Grace went on, needing to unburden herself. “I couldn’t believe my best friend was about to ruin everything. It had taken the four of us forever to get over it and put it behind us and build up our lives. But now, Daisy was going to destroy everything in a heartbeat and take the rest of us down with her. She was going to ruin everything, and I couldn’t let that happen. I just couldn’t. She told me her minster was a good guy, that he’d keep it confidential, but that wasn’t her decision to make. It was supposed to be the four of us deciding together. This wasn’t about me, it was about Ellie and Ellie’s future. It was about our children and everything we’d built for ourselves in this town. I couldn’t let her guilt-trip me into destroying my daughter’s life. I had to stop her.”
Natalie didn’t dare move, fearing that the fragility of Grace’s emotional state would disintegrate if she reacted in any way.
“It happened so fast,” Grace whispered, deep lines of stress forming on her lovely face. “I didn’t plan it that way. I went over to Daisy’s house after school to talk her out of this crazy notion that somehow the truth was going to save her. I was convinced I could change her mind. I was on a mission. I was determined to save us all, no matter what … but then, before I knew it, she was dead.” Grace gasped for breath, her hands balled into fists. “I’m so sorry, Natalie. I haven’t slept in days, and my head’s all messed up … but I’m not a cold-blooded monster. You know that, right?”
Natalie didn’t know how to respond to any of this. She could barely remember who Grace was or what she used to represent—all the best parts of her. “You’re my sister, and I love you,” she said mechanically. “I’m here to help.” Desperate now. “Please, Grace, step away from the ledge.”
Grace shook her head. “I’m an average person. A normal, everyday teacher and mother, for God’s sake. But now people are going to think I’m a terrible human being, and I can’t live with that. I tried making up for it, Natalie. We all did—we tried to make amends. But with Daisy, I had no choice. She was going to ruin our lives. And that was something I couldn’t allow.”
Police sirens wailed in the distance, and Grace turned her head.
“Careful,” Natalie said, trying to focus on getting them down off the cliff. The second she had the opportunity, Natalie would grab her and not let go.
“I did it for Ellie,” Grace admitted. “I did it to protect her.”
Natalie’s insides hurt, a horrible sinking feeling. “Let’s go sit in my car and talk things over. Next steps,” she said gently. “I promise you, everything’s going to be all right. I’ll make sure of that.”
Grace shook her head stubbornly.
“Please, just … take my hand.”
“Listen to me. I love you, and you’re going to be fine. Better than fine, Natalie. You’re going to have an amazing life.”
She saw the crazed determination in her sister’s eyes and realized what she was up against. “No…”
“Promise me you’ll take good care of her?”
Natalie inched forward. “I’m going to protect you both. Understand? I’m going to do what’s best for you and Ellie. Trust me.” She sprang into action, all hope vanishing. She lunged forward, but Grace fought back, fiercely lashing out and slamming her fist into Natalie’s nose.
Despite the throbbing pain, Natalie grabbed her sister by the wrists, and the crumbling rock face gave out, and Grace went over the side of the cliff with a scream.
Natalie landed on her stomach, clinging to her sister’s sweaty wrists and slowly sliding toward the edge. “Hang on! I’ve got you!”
“Let go!” Grace shrieked, freeing one of her hands and batting at Natalie’s arms, then digging her nails into her sister’s flesh. “Let me go!”
“Please,” Natalie sobbed. “Don’t give up!”
Grace fought ferociously to free herself with more strength than Natalie could’ve anticipated, swinging her body wildly against the side of the cliff and digging her nails so deep into the backs of Natalie’s hands that they drew blood.
Natalie clung to her sister with every last ounce of willpower, stars exploding inside her skull, but the pull of gravity and the slipperiness of their combined sweat was too much. Terror burned through Natalie as she lost control, and Grace slipped out of her grasp. Natalie screamed and clutched at nothing, fingers grabbing air. She could sense her entire body fighting the pitch of the ledge as a stampede of gravel followed her sister over the edge, skipping and zinging out into the night.
Natalie lay flat on her stomach on the granite ledge, breathing hard and listening to the dull echoey sound of a body impacting rocks, then a splash, and then nothing.
“Grace? Grace?”
She could smell dirt up her nose. It burned whenever she inhaled. Her arms felt like stretched-out socks, pawing at nothing, molecules slipping through her fingers.
“Grace?”
She felt a searing pain and numbness bloom inside her chest as she leaned over the edge and stared down into the abyss. The lake at night, so cold and indifferent, was pitch-black, with just a dribble of moonlight splashed across its surface.
She strained to hear her sister’s voice above the booming of her own heart. But there was nothing. No screams. No gasping for breath. No cries for help.
The slow withdrawal of all feeling. Shock.
Trembling. Struggling.
Everything thundered to a halt.
Natalie wanted a do-over.
Let’s hit Replay. Let’s rewind the tape.
But that was impossible.
Make the call. Call for help.
She got on her phone and said, “Send rescue units to Devil’s Point. Get everybody down here. There’s a body in the water.”
She pushed back her fear and tried to figure out her next move. Dead silence below. No one could have survived a fall like that. It was time to act. Do something. Go back down the hillside and help coordinate the search-and-rescue teams. Talk to backup. Debrief Luke. Act like a professional. Behave like a cop.
But Natalie simply couldn’t abandon the spot where her sister had once stood.