Chapter Forty-Three

Forty-Three

Maurice told me I would be driving the rest of the way there. I complied. It occurred to me that this was the first time during the whole ride that Maurice had told me what to do. From the initial plan to come here together to the bottle of water I'd been drinking from, he'd made me feel as though everything we did had been my idea. It was masterly, really. Manipulation skills clearly ran in that family.

My heart thudded against my ribs. I wanted to listen to Willie Nelson again, just to calm my jangling nerves, but I didn't want to anger Maurice with a request. He didn't seem to want the music on. He preferred talking instead.

"Sky was the one who looked me up. You know that?" he said. "I hadn't seen her since her mother died, and she was just a little kid then. I get this call from her, at the casino where I was working. About three years ago. She remembered this one day when I took her here. Well, not here. But Marblehead. She remembered walking along the beach with me. How I bought her a vanilla soft-serve ice cream with rainbow sprinkles, and I told her she was the brightest and toughest little girl in the world—bright and tough like a diamond. See, I don't remember that at all. But she did. Sky remembered it. She said she's aimed to be a diamond ever since."

He jabbed the gun into my ribs. "Make a left," he said.

I did as I was told. "You were a good father to her," I said. "She remembered."

"No, I wasn't," he said. "That isn't the point of the story at all. The point is, she's a good daughter . She's grateful and kind, and when she had a chance to call me, she did—even though I'm still married and my wife and other kids don't know about her, other than her being my boss. She worked around my life to bring me into hers, just because I gave her that one nice day a million years ago."

I nodded. Thinking about it, I was sure there were other, shrewder reasons—leverage, for instance. I was willing to bet that even if he hadn't bought an ice cream for his little diamond of a daughter, Sky knew that Maurice would do anything for her now—so long as she didn't tell his wife about their family ties. "My other kids, they're nowhere near as grateful as she is," Maurice said. He told me to take a right, and I did. We drove down a desolate beach road to The Dunes, which was just as Maurice had described it—a crumbling mess of a motel that almost looked abandoned, save for three beat-up cars in the lot. A light on in one of the dirty windows. A pit.

Maurice told me to park the car and forced me out of it, the barrel of the gun pressed to my neck. The storm was more forceful now, the wind biting at my cheeks, bits of ice flying into my hair, my eyes.

"I didn't mean to insult her," I said. "Sky is tough and bright. That's what I meant. Dylan couldn't have done what she did because he isn't either of those things."

He marched me toward a room on the first floor, shoving me ahead of him as he unlocked the door and pushed it open. "Let me tell you something. Shooting Sky. That was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life," he said. "I feel like I could shoot anybody after that, and it wouldn't even faze me."

"Great," I whispered.

Inside the room, the lights were off. It was pitch-black, except for a tiny, muted TV—news about the storm. I read the caption on the screen: It's expected to get worse.

"You brought her," Sky said. "The great, soon-to-be-late Sunny Randall."

Slowly my eyes began to adjust. Sky was on the bed with Dylan. He wasn't moving, and I could smell him more than I could see him—a rank, rancid odor. He clearly hadn't bathed in weeks. "Say hello to Sunny," Sky said. She reached over and yanked something from his face. A gag.

Dylan screamed. "I thought I could trust you! I thought you were my friend!"

Sky got up on her knees and pressed something to his throat. "You want to wake the neighbors? Is that what you want?" She flicked on the light on the nightstand. My eyes ached. It took a while for them to adjust, different things coming into focus. Empty pizza cartons. Liquor and pill bottles scattered on the floor. The antithesis of Sky's pristine apartment. I remembered that just yesterday Sky had called Dylan "kind of a slob," and all the while, she'd been coming to visit him here, in this pigsty, feeding him, giving him drugs, recording his voice, framing him.

And now he'd clearly outlived his usefulness. When my eyes adjusted, I could see everything. Sky in the sweats I'd brought to the hospital, one arm in a sling, a hunting knife in her good hand. She was holding it to Dylan's throat.

Dylan looked at me. "Sunny," he said. "Can you tell me how Bella is?"

I swallowed hard. For the first time, I actually felt sorry for him. "She's…she's gone, Dylan."

He started to shake, tears spilling down his cheeks. "Sky told me she was still alive. She said she could feel her pulse. She said she was bringing her to the hospital."

"She didn't make it," said Sky, who had apparently dumped her in the river.

"I called you for help," Dylan said. "I always called you for…for…"

"Maybe it's time you learned to help yourself." Sky said it without a hint of emotion. I remembered Trevor. The way she'd flatly referred to him as "that lab tech."

Dylan started to cough. Tears streamed down his cheeks. "I killed her," he said. "I gave her those drugs and I…Bella brought me to urgent care, and I didn't do that." He looked at Sky. "You…you said you were going to take her to the hospital."

"Enough talking," Sky snapped.

I looked around the room. Tried to collect my thoughts. My gun was in my purse. My purse was in the MINI. Maurice had Dylan's gun. But as far as I could tell, Sky's only weapon was the hunting knife. And that shoulder and arm were a serious liability. For some reason, I thought of Spike. If only he'd taught me judo.

"Sunny complicates our story," Sky said to Maurice. "If he just offs himself because he can't handle the guilt…hmm. Maybe he kills her first?"

"That's it," Maurice said.

"Explain it to me like I'm five," Sky said, the knife still at Dylan's throat.

"Okay, kid. Here's what we're telling the cops," Maurice said. "With my help and yours, Sunny here tracked Dylan down to this room. Rather than go back with her and face justice for the crimes he committed, he shot and killed Sunny, then he turned the gun on himself." He looked at his daughter. "We survived. But it was traumatic. We'll never be the same. But on the bright side, we're heroes."

"Good narrative," Sky said. "I mean, if I killed two people and tried to murder my best friend, I'd probably want to end things, too. It's believable."

"It's not what happened," I said. "You'll be living a lie."

"Truth is just a matter of perception," she said. "If you're dead, you can't perceive anything, so you don't really have a say."

"What about Dylan's parents?" I said. "What about Lydia? Don't you care about her at all?"

She gave me a sweet smile, the knife tight in her hand. "Lydia adores me," Sky said. "I'm the daughter she never had. I'll help her through this difficult time. I mean…if need be, I could even move in with them."

My heart sank. I'd been suspicious about Sky for so long—but I hadn't said a word about it to Lydia.

Sky glanced at Maurice. "I made Dylan's audio confession this morning," she said. "It's moving, I think."

"I have no doubt, kiddo," Maurice said. "You are a talent. We've got to get the show on the road, though. Cops will be coming soon."

"You called them?" Sky asked.

"Sunny did, back in the MINI," he said. "She told her dad to call them. She didn't have time to implicate us, though."

Sky helped Dylan to his feet. He was frighteningly compliant. She moved him to the dresser and leaned him up against it, Maurice holding the gun on me the entire time. "Hey, Sky?" Maurice said.

"Yeah?"

"No more murders after this, okay?" he said. "I mean…I do have a family to think of."

She gave him a long, probing look. "As long as I have everything I want, Daddy," she said, "you've got nothing to worry about." She glanced at me. "You know, if you hadn't texted me to say you were coming by the hospital, Maurice wouldn't have known to head over there so he could run into you. You'd still be alive."

"What's your point?" I said.

She shrugged. "I dunno. Transparency is overrated?"

I glared at her. "I'll keep that in mind."

Sky started to untie Dylan's right arm. "You ready?"

"Bella's gone," Dylan said quietly, his whole body lax and useless. "I killed her. I may as well kill someone else. And I don't give a shit whether I live or die."

Maurice placed the gun in Dylan's hand. "You try anything," he said, "she'll cut you."

Dylan seemed to barely notice it. He was focused on Sky. "You were the one who sent me those texts," he said. "?‘Murderer.' Because you knew that's what I was."

Sky backed away from Dylan, Maurice holding his free arm, aiming the gun at my head.

"You've never been a very good person, Dylan," she said. "Even before you overdosed Bella."

His head lolled to one side, greasy hair flopping in his eyes, Maurice posing him like a mannequin.

I waved my arms at Dylan, trying to wake him up.

"People need you!" I shouted.

"No, they don't," he said.

"Your parents need you. Your mother needs you. Please don't do this to Lydia. She's a good person. And you're her entire world."

For a moment, I thought I saw a spark in Dylan's eyes—as though a tiny part of him was coming to life.

Maurice wrapped both of his hands around Dylan's right one. He pulled back the trigger. I closed my eyes. I heard a loud crack —the bullet hitting the ceiling. And then I opened my eyes to see Dylan, his arm in the air, Maurice grappling with him, Dylan thrashing. I jumped at Sky, wrestled her to the floor, and sat on her. It was easy, what with that bad arm of hers. She cried out, "You're hurting me!"

"To be fully transparent," I said, "I don't give a damn."

The hunting knife was on the floor next to the bed. I grabbed it fast. Dylan freed himself of Maurice and shot the lamp. It exploded, bits of plaster flying everywhere.

"I've got your daughter, Maurice!" I called out. "I've got the hunting knife. Let go of Dylan's arm or I write a new fucking narrative."

Maurice jumped back, leaving Dylan with the gun. "You're a shitty person just like me," Dylan said to Sky, who whimpered beneath me like a child. "And just like me, you get to live with yourself for fifty, sixty, seventy more years. It will be just like living in this disgusting room. You'll never be able to escape."

Dylan shot through the windows, the bed, the cheap linoleum floor. Icy winds pushed into the room, sleet seeping through holes in the walls, everything cold and wet and brutal.

And Dylan kept firing, again and again. He shot the bathroom door, the mirror, the toilet. He kept shooting, the rest of us ducking, our heads down, our eyes shut tight. He murdered the motel room—a place he hated as much as himself—until he ran out of bullets and in the near distance, through the wind and rain, we finally heard the sirens.