Wretching, I heaved into the toilet, but nothing much came out, only spit and bile.
Porcelain cold against my skin, I remembered how John had been here, watching me do the same, only two days ago. It sickened me that that was one of the last times I’d seen him, ill with alcohol and guilt and shame.
I couldn’t believe I’d never see him again.
I stood, washed my hands and splashed water on my face, then ambled to the bedroom. I opened the top drawer of the dresser, pushed aside my mother’s scarf, and retrieved John’s note, which I’d tucked away next to the photos last night. I traced my fingers along his handwriting.
Please don’t tell Vera. I’ll call you soon.
What had gone wrong?
I lay in bed all afternoon. I knew I should call Vera, should go over, hold her tight, but the guilt was too much, the sensation that I had done this, brought this tragedy to them.
Davis raced through my mind. His blond hair, his thick intellectual glasses, his body, nowhere near overweight, but softened from his graphic designer desk job. He wasn’t the sort to live at the gym, and I’d liked that about him. He didn’t seem the type to be able to kill, but he hadn’t seemed the type to hurt me, either.
Could he really have done this?
I remembered a day, early on, sitting on the sofa in our underwear at Davis’s place, before I’d moved in, our legs tangled like pretzels, a glass pipe on the coffee table, weedy ash scattered around like black snowfall. “Would you ever forgive a partner for cheating?” he’d asked me.
“You got something to tell me?”
He grabbed the back of my calf and squeezed. “Of course not. Just hypothetical.”
I pursed my lips. “As long as you’re not going to use this as your road map for cheating later . . .”
“I would never cheat on you,” he said. “Scout’s honor.”
I’d laughed, the gaping, guffawing type that only came out when you were deep in the chemicals of love. “Then I probably could forgive, if it was a one-off and not a whole drawn-out affair, and if the person, not you, since you would never cheat, confessed to me on his own instead of leaving me to snoop. You?”
His hand stroked the back of my leg. “I could forgive you,” he said. And then the stroking stopped. “But I’d have to kill the guy.”
I’d laughed again. It had felt funny at the time.
Now my hands felt clammy, and my stomach twisted, tying itself up in knots. What if?
What if he’d found me, seen me, followed us to the hike, and then—somehow—tracked John?
It wasn’t possible, it wasn’t—
My stomach churned as I remembered the way Dusty’s leash had been cut, the pocketknife Davis always kept on him.
What if that had been his weapon?
A crude tool, a blade so short, he’d had to stab John six times to kill him?
Fingers shaking, I dialed Ellie’s number, praying I was wrong—but there was no answer.
I dialed her again. And again and again.
After who knows how many Hi, you’ve reached Ellies, I tossed the phone onto my bed, shaking my head. It didn’t matter. For a second, I didn’t even care. John was gone. I would never hear from him. I would never meet him in our little hideaway in the Adirondacks. I would never kiss him or hug him or tear myself up about my feelings for him again. I would never be able to tell him everything I’d been thinking about these past two days. I’m sorry, but I’m not. This can never happen again, but part of me is glad that it did. I’ve fallen for you, but I’ve fallen for her, too, and there’s no good solution, but all that matters is that I don’t want to lose either of you.
Please don’t tell Vera.
I heard a noise outside and jolted out of bed. I flipped on the lights frantically, wiped beneath my eyes, then approached the door. Maggie. Part of me wanted to turn around, hide under the covers, make everything—and everyone—go away, but she’d already seen me.
Slowly, I opened the door. “Hi,” I said.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes narrowed in concern. “I saw the police come by.”
“I—” I couldn’t even get a word out. Tears swam in my eyes.
“Oh my goodness,” Maggie said, rushing in without waiting for an invitation, wrapping me in a hug.
She led me to the sofa, and I found myself sinking down, spent. She took a seat next to me, Dusty jumping into her lap.
“Lucy, what happened?” she asked.
I stared at her, blinking back new tears.
John was dead. Stabbed. Fuck.
“Are you hurt?” she asked. “Did someone, did someone attack you?”
“No,” I managed. “It’s just—” I took a deep breath. “We went on a hike yesterday,” I said, voice wavering. “Just a regular hike that John and Vera go on all the time, and John fell.”
“What?” Maggie asked, her jaw dropping. “What do you mean, he fell?”
Already, I was messing this up. I needed to get my new story straight. “I mean, he went up ahead to take some photos, and he disappeared. We couldn’t find him, but we saw his backpack, and so we thought he fell and we called the police. His camera was at the bottom of the ridge, so we—”
“Oh, Lucy,” she said, eyes narrowing. “Is he, was he all right?”
“No,” I said, scooting away from her, attempting to calm my breaths. “The police think . . .” I bit my lip, wondering if I should tell her everything—only it hardly even mattered now. “They think someone murdered him. They found his body this morning.”
She gasped, and Dusty, looking back and forth between us, began to whine.
“Murdered?” she asked. “Here?”
I nodded weakly.
The implication in her words wasn’t hard to read. That sort of thing didn’t happen, not here, in this quaint little town hours away from the city.
Not here, where things were safe—not even to people like John.
“But why do they think— How do they— Is Vera okay?”
“Vera’s fine,” I said, but even as I did, I knew it was a lie. Vera was alive, sure, but she was far from fine. Wouldn’t be fine for a very long time. Maybe ever. And it was all my fault. “I mean, she’s safe, yes.”
“How do they know it was murder? Could it have been an accident?”
“I don’t know,” I said, the lie coming easily. I couldn’t bear to share the details. Stabbed. It was too intimate, too personal. Maggie hadn’t even liked him. “They wouldn’t say.”
“Oh my goodness,” Maggie said. “That’s just, that’s just awful.”
Her eyes focused on a point somewhere in the distance, and I could see it, suddenly: her wheels turning, piecing something together.
“What?” I asked. Her eyes were still locked ahead, avoiding mine, and I reached for her arm. “Maggie, what is it?”
“Nothing,” she said, shrugging me off. “Only, someone murdered. Someone from our street. It’s horrible, isn’t it?”
“Is there something else you know, something you need to tell me?”
The clouds in her eyes seemed to clear, and they found mine again.
“Just that I’m so sorry,” she said. “I know how much you cared about him.”
I didn’t go over to the farmhouse until after seven. The walk was awful, my flashlight casting shadows everywhere, turning every last twig into something tall and foreboding. I strode quickly, trying to tune out the nefarious sounds of night in the country.
Vera’s car was in the driveway, and John’s truck, too, but no lights were on inside. I knocked anyway, waited.
I was about to turn back when she opened the door. Her eyes were puffy, her cheeks sunken. She looked like a ghost, a specter of herself, and she smelled overwhelmingly of cigarettes.
I opened my arms and she fell into them, practically collapsing. She felt so small and bony, her body shaking, her head knocking into my shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. She shook harder.
I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but eventually, Vera pulled away, her eyes avoiding mine. She ushered me in, and I followed her to the living room; she didn’t offer me a drink, only sat on the couch. I took the space next to her, wondering if it was the first time we’d been together here without some sort of alcohol lubricating our interactions.
After a moment, she stared at me. “Did John tell you anything?”
My pulse sped up. She knew. About that night, what we had and hadn’t done.
“What do you mean?”
“Something had to have changed,” Vera said, scratching a patch of skin beneath her ear. Her breaths came ragged, and her hand continued to worry at the same spot, and when she pulled it away, there was a flash of blood beneath her nail; a tiny trickle of red crawled down her neck. I grabbed a tissue from the pack I’d shoved into my pocket and pressed it into her hand. Vera held it to her neck. I watched her, crumpled like that, cracking beneath her grief, and for a split second, I wondered: Why had she gone to the cabin this morning? Were there things she wasn’t telling me? Things she knew but didn’t trust me with?
Was there any way she could have . . .
The idea sickened me, but it came all the same.
Could she have seen John and me, gotten angry, changed her plan . . .
“Vera,” I said, as carefully as I could manage. “Why were you over there? You were supposed to wait for him to contact you.”
She stiffened. “He’s my husband, Lucy, and I just knew—this morning, I woke up early, and, god, I just had this feeling,” she said. “I had this awful, terrifying feeling. I don’t know how, but I knew something was wrong, and I—I was right.”
Her shoulders sank, and sobs took her over.
Waves of nausea hit me, acid rising in my throat. I felt guilty for having asked the question, for doubting her even for a minute. She loved him, she was his wife, and now she’d lost him.
“I found him, just lying there,” Vera went on, her eyes clouding as she again began to scratch, this time at her throat. “In a pool of blood. It was awful. But even worse than that, he was just . . . blue.”
Trying to push the images away, I took her hand in mine, laced my fingers through hers, and squeezed.
“You really don’t know anything?” she asked.
I disentangled her hand from mine. “No,” I said softly. “No, of course not.”
Was that the truth? I knew Davis was angry, that he wanted to pay me back, that he could very well know where I was by now. That he kept a knife on him—always.
Careful, rigorous, perfectionist Davis. Murder was an escalation, but hardly an impossibility.
“I’m just as shocked as you are,” I said. “You have to believe me.”
She nodded, tears leaking from her eyes. “I do. I just . . .” She paused. “I don’t understand what happened. It was never supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be just us. It was . . .” She gasped. “It was supposed to be a new start for us.”
Her body shook all over, and I held her again, pulling her close. Then, suddenly, she looked up. “You’re not going, are you?”
“What?”
“Davis,” she said. “I know you were eager to leave, but you must see that you can’t now. I’m lost without John. You have to stay.”
Panic flashed within me, stiffening my limbs. She couldn’t think I could stay now, could she? Not with Davis out there, knowing or on his way to knowing where I was.
Not when I thought there was a chance he might have . . .
I blinked slowly, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, to put together a plan when the one I’d had had been ripped to shreds.
“I’m here,” I said finally. “I promised the police I’d go down to the station tomorrow and give a statement. Don’t worry.”
Vera’s sigh was so instinctual, so relieved, that I couldn’t bear to go on. Of course I had to leave; she should know that. I had to stay one or two more nights, or else it would look suspicious and I’d have McKnight on my tail before I even left town. If I did anything cagey, anything to make myself even more of a suspect, who knew how long he’d ask me to stay?
But after that . . .
I’d push for a speedy memorial—true crime documentaries had taught me the body wouldn’t be ready for who knew how long—then go. Back West, to L.A.—hell, maybe even to Seattle—back where I should have gone in the first place.
“I can keep you company,” I offered, too scared to be on my own.
Vera nodded. “I was hoping you would. Stay with me tonight—please. I need you now more than ever.”