Saturday, 2:32 p.m.
If not for Goose’s interest in Meredith’s garden, it would’ve taken longer for Olivia to realize what Meredith had done. But when she and Thea rounded the corner chasing after Goose, who had sprinted in the direction of the Clarke house—again—it was hard to miss.
Meredith aimed a hose at the flames that shot along the grasses that separated their houses. She’d actually started a small fire to protect her own house at the risk of everyone else’s. It appeared to be under control, but with the wind, Olivia knew there were no guarantees that would last.
A dull anger gathered, but before she could shout at her neighbor, Olivia caught sight of Goose digging just beyond Meredith’s garden.
Olivia dropped Thea at the Clarke patio. She ran back to the car for Thea’s noise-canceling headphones and her iPad, then turned Thea’s chair toward the house. Thea had already witnessed one blowup between her mom and Meredith that day. No reason for her to witness round two.
It wasn’t hard to convince Thea to stay. She’d been avoiding her parents all day, and truthfully, Olivia was tired of her daughter’s attitude.
Olivia strode toward Meredith and stopped about twenty feet away. She felt her eyes widen in incredulity.
“Are you trying to set my house on fire?”
This wasn’t how the day was supposed to go. This should’ve been a moment of triumph, or at least of closure. She checked the time and released a long breath. An hour left on the countdown, but she thought, Screw it.
“Well, Meredith, it looks like in addition to the two hundred and fifty thousand, you’re going to pay me whatever the insurance doesn’t cover if you burn down my house.”
Meredith’s eyes narrowed. “I knew it was you.”
Olivia laughed, the harshness of it burning her throat. “You didn’t or you would’ve set your little fire closer to my house.”
It had been such an elegant plan that Olivia was disappointed it hadn’t occurred to her sooner: Rattle Meredith. Force her to make a mistake. Get her to admit that she knew what had happened to Adam. But Olivia hadn’t yet gotten the money or the answers she was owed.
When Meredith spoke, her voice trembled with poorly concealed fury: “At first, I thought it might be my ex-husband, but when I saw what you’d done to the painting of Grace—” Her voice cracked.
Olivia was genuinely confused. Painting? What painting?
“John would never do that. No one else would either,” Meredith said. “The only person who hates Grace enough to do that is you.”
Olivia shook her head. “I have no clue what painting you’re talking about, but if it bothers you this much, I’ll take the credit.”
Meredith cocked her head as if trying to understand. “If you were bent on revenge, on making me suffer, why not turn my broker in instead? That would’ve ruined me.”
This woman. She still didn’t get it. She was still making it about her, as she always did. Olivia thought of how many times Leyna had come to her home as a child, the need in her eyes so transparent that Olivia’s heart broke, and she’d tried to fix it by frosting cupcakes or brewing tea. But mostly, she thought about Adam.
“I’ve never cared about your suffering,” she said.
The dog whined as he scratched at the ground, and Olivia moved closer to the garden. What was Goose doing? Why was he so interested in—
Olivia froze as a terrible understanding dawned. Goose’s unflagging interest. The careful way the ground was maintained. Even the shape of it.
This wasn’t a garden. This was a grave.
Olivia grasped at reasons for why it wasn’t Adam—garbage left to compost, or the large pet of a friend buried there as a favor. Or Grace. Olivia’s stomach heaved at the thought, but she clung to it with everything in her.
Oh God, let it be Grace.
Olivia tried to pull her eyes away from that horrible plot of earth, but she was transfixed. If she’d planted the bouquet of wildflowers closer, she would’ve seen the grave days ago.
“That’s why you’re always so angry when Goose is in your garden, isn’t it?” Her voice was quiet because that was all she could manage with her limited breath, in limbo between knowing and not knowing; her chest burned. “Who’s buried here, Meredith?”
She waited for her neighbor to tell her she was wrong, that it wasn’t a grave at all. She waited for the inevitable and snarky comment about Olivia’s dog defecating in the yard or how grief had made her stupid.
Goose waddled back to her, tired of digging. With his flat face and narrow nostrils, he often had trouble breathing, and the smoke and heat didn’t help. Olivia glanced at Thea, still curled up in one of Meredith’s patio chairs, headphones on. The smoke and heat weren’t great for her daughter either.
She looked at Meredith again. The other woman’s face was a mask. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. But Olivia noted the way her shoulders had started to sag.
Olivia covered the distance between them in seconds, stopping just a few feet short of her. Near her ankles, Goose wheezed.
Olivia’s body shook with the effort of containing a hundred different memories, a thousand different kinds of pain. Adam’s first smile, all gums and drool. His first day of school, his tentative steps as he trudged forward in his oversize Green Arrow T-shirt. The pain of all the lasts, too, grieved only in hindsight.
Adam. Had he really been this close to her for the past sixteen years? She wanted to be wrong. Her stomach roiled with the longing, so fiercely she feared she might vomit. Stars pricked her vision, which had started to go black.
Meredith cocked her head, and her mask slipped, revealing—guilt? “I think you need to sit for a second.”
Fuck this woman’s fake concern.
Olivia retreated to Meredith’s garage, then returned with a shovel. She fought an urge to swing it at the other woman’s head.
“What did you do?” Her voice held unexpected steel.
“Really, Olivia, you don’t look well.”
Olivia stamped toward the grave and began digging. The first layer was soft as if recently overturned, but the ground below was hard, and the dirt she dug up was meager. For a few minutes, Goose pawed at the ground too, then collapsed, exhausted, to watch.
After ten minutes, the shovel struck bone. When Olivia uncovered the top of the skull, she released the shovel and dropped beside the grave. She brushed dirt from the yellowed bone, her gestures frantic, until the jaw was clear—she was seized by the irrational thought that he needed to breathe. When she was able to see the skull and several of the ribs, Olivia pressed her palm tenderly on the frontal bone where once she’d placed wet washcloths to help with fever.
It was Adam. It had to be.
Olivia looked up at Meredith, who watched from a spot several feet away. She stole a glance at Thea, and then, in a voice as low as she could make it and still be heard, she asked, “Is it him?”
Tears of frustration stung her eyes. She should’ve recognized her own son’s bones. She hated that she had to ask Meredith for confirmation.
Meredith didn’t answer, her attention drifting, concern obvious on her face. Olivia turned to see what had her neighbor worried. What could be more important than this?
Leyna had emerged from the forest, half jogging, half stumbling. Olivia straightened, steeling herself to tell Dominic and Richard about Adam. Thea, too, if she hadn’t already figured it out. Olivia glanced toward the patio, reassured when she saw her daughter’s head still bent over her iPad.
But that didn’t mean she hadn’t seen or heard something.
Olivia turned back toward the tree line and waited for Dominic to break through, winded but voice strong. Steady, as he’d been the summer he’d taught Adam to walk.
She waited for him to call to her: I’m here, Mom. I’m okay.
Instead, Leyna drew close enough that the wind and distance wouldn’t swallow her words and stopped. There was blood on her shirt.
Why was there blood on Leyna’s shirt?
“Richard says you have a wagon in the garage?”
Olivia knew which wagon she meant: the heavy-duty one with the all-terrain wheels they took camping. She shook her head—they no longer had it—but why was Leyna asking about the damn wagon?
But then she knew. All that blood on Leyna’s shirt that obviously wasn’t her own.
Olivia’s knees turned to rubber, and her hands flew to her ears. Whatever Leyna had to say, she didn’t want to hear it. Because she recognized the expression on the young woman’s face. She’d seen it before. She closed her eyes to keep from seeing it now.
But the image had already been seared into her memory, and several minutes later when Olivia opened her eyes again, Richard had broken through the tree line too, his body bowed with the weight of what he carried.
Who he carried.
Shock kept Olivia’s hands pinned to her ears, but Richard’s words found her anyway.
“Dominic’s hurt.”
Leyna moved back toward Dominic but stopped when Olivia called, “Stay the hell away from my son.”
A few minutes later, Rocky returned to the Duran house with his truck. Taking immediate stock of the situation, he ran to help Richard. He scooped a semiconscious Dominic into his arms and loaded him into the bed of his Chevy. Rocky retrieved a first aid kit and a couple of bottles of water from his go bag and took out a packet of ibuprofen. He helped Dominic swallow the pills and used the rest of the water to quickly rinse the skin broken by the steel jaws.
Richard was saying something about a bear trap near the old squatters’ cabin. She knew she should be paying attention, but she couldn’t focus on anything beyond her son. She placed a hand on his neck. The skin was clammy, his pulse thready. His skin had gone several shades paler. How much blood had her son lost?
Dominic’s face went slack, his body limp, his breathing shallow. Olivia felt powerless. She’d insisted on installing thousands of dollars of surveillance equipment to protect their children, yet now she could do nothing for her son.
Rocky closed the tailgate of his truck. “I’ve got some first aid supplies at my place. Some stronger painkillers too.” He got in front of Olivia so his face was only inches from hers. “I’ll grab them and get him somewhere safe,” he said. “Promise.”
He forced something into her hands, then got in his truck and drove away.
Olivia realized she was kneeling only when her thighs began to cramp. Gravel bit into her knees. She welcomed the cramping and she ground her kneecaps into the tiny bits of rocks, but the pain remained dull, distant. Not nearly substantial enough to distract her from the other, larger hurt.
Another son lost. Another worst-ever pain.
No, not lost, she reminded herself. Certainly no one died from getting his leg caught in a bear trap? He would be stitched up at the hospital. Rocky would find a way.
Aware of a stabbing sensation in her clenched hand, Olivia opened it to see what Rocky had given her. Dominic’s keys. He must’ve taken them from Dominic’s pocket. Her son’s Toyota 4Runner was a better choice than their Audi.
The fire. For a moment, she’d forgotten about the fire.
Olivia felt abruptly woozy. She leaned forward to catch her breath, palms planted on her thighs for support, knees peppered with gravel.
Richard squeezed her shoulder but said nothing. What was there to say? He’ll be okay? A lie. He’s not conscious, so he’s probably not suffering? She would’ve slapped him.
How much had Thea seen? How was she going to tell her all of it? She couldn’t find the words to get it straight in her own head. How was she going to break the news to her ten-year-old daughter? Thea hadn’t known Adam, so his loss had never seemed real to her. But she adored Dominic, as he did her.
Olivia looked around but saw no sign of Thea. She must’ve left her daughter on Meredith’s patio. Goose too. Her head throbbed. She didn’t know how much she had left in her.
“I’ll tell her,” Richard said as if reading her thoughts, which maybe he had. About their daughter, at least, they’d always been in sync.
While she’d expected the grief, a new swell of anger caught her off guard. Unlike the pain in her gravel-pocked knees, this sensation was substantial enough to eclipse all else.
“She’s still at Meredith’s. I’ll get her.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about Adam. Not yet.
As she approached the edge of the Clarkes’ property, she spotted them in the middle of their backyard. Meredith’s arm was around Leyna, a gesture of comfort. Even from that distance, she could tell that Leyna cried.
How dare they grieve her loss?
The anger gave her weight and tethered her so she no longer felt like she might float away. She was firmly in the world again, with all its horror and injustice.
Olivia caught the woodsy smell of smoke. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled. The fire tempted her with its promise of permanent release.
She felt an irrational urge to walk toward the unseen flames as a tingling in her feet. She took one small step. Then another. She imagined the fire burning along some not-too-distant hillside. If she set out in that direction, how long would it take for her to meet the fire? And when she caught it, how long would it take before she burned to bones?
But, Olivia realized, she wasn’t the one who deserved to be destroyed by fire. She imagined the flames erasing the Clarkes from her life forever.