Chapter 48
Alice
Mel's voice breaks as her story cuts off, sadness rising off her like dry ice.
"I chased after you but couldn't find you," she tells me. "And then I went back. I had to ... clean up, and ... Pete and ..."
She swipes angrily at her tears and stares off into space. When she speaks again, it's like she's alone now, talking to herself. "I tried to hide Ella's backpack with Theo, but I lost my nerve. I couldn't bring myself to open the suitcase, so I stuffed it into the trunk. I didn't think anybody would ever find it."
She turns to me, pleading with me to understand. "I never meant for any of this to happen. I only wanted to talk some sense into them. But I had to protect myself. And Finn! He's only little, he needs his mom."
From where I was standing at the tree line, I never saw Mel hidden behind the crumpled car. Only my dad bent over a body. The fury on his face wasn't for me; it was for Mel. He knew she was responsible for his wife's and daughter's deaths. What a massive betrayal he must've felt. And then, seeing me standing there, he must've been terrified, afraid for my life.
He didn't shout, "Run, you're next" but "Run, we're next." A warning that Mel was going to kill us, not that he was going to.
My heart is breaking, shattering like glass smashed against the pavement. I was wrong about everything. About everyone. Jinx, who is kind and honest, and Maya, who betrayed my mom and me, and my dad, who wanted to warn me, not kill me, and Mel—worst of all, Mel—my aunt who pretended to love me but killed my family.
All this time, I thought she was grieving, because she was grieving. But her grief, the scent of torn leaves and lightning strikes, it wasn't just grief. It was evil . It floats around me now, sticky, like black mold spores filling the air, blotting out the light.
I want to say something, want to ask where they are now, where she hid their bodies. But the air has turned brittle. If I speak, it will shatter everything, millions of razor-edge shards that will slice us both until we are torn, bloody strips of nothing.
And anyway, the drugs have paralyzed my tongue. It lies fat, thick as a slug inside my mouth. I let my body relax and my breathing go steady and even.
"Go to sleep." Mel drags a blanket from the back of the couch over me. Her lips brush my forehead, her breath icy cold, mingling with a sudden draft that whooshes through the house.
My eyelashes flutter open. But instead of Mel, I see Isla.
My guilt, my conscience, this girl who died before my family disappeared, getting all tangled and twisted in my mind. As an emotion, guilt has so much power. It's the strongest sense I feel in people, the color, of bruised aubergine; the scent, of cracked winter bark and mildew; the weighted feel in the air, hot and heavy, like stepping out of a shower.
It's so conflicting, so contradictory. Because I am glad to be alive. But when someone dies, when you blame yourself, even though now you get to live, that guilt, that regret , is a heavy, heavy burden.
So how do you set it down?
I want so much to fix what happened. To mend the past. But I guess the truth is, you can't fix things. You can only carry them.
But maybe, one day, maybe I'll be able to set them down. I see that now.
That cold breeze stirs again, pulling at Isla. The edges of her wobble and sway, and she begins to disappear like ripples in water.
"Don't go," I mutter. I don't want to be alone.
Her voice is a whisper in my ear. "Hold on."
But I can barely hear her. I am a bird, soaring on a white cloud. But the cloud bursts, drops of water splattering me. And then I'm falling. Down, down, down to the sea. I hit the surface and I'm no longer a bird. I'm just me. Just Alice. All alone, diving beneath the rough waves. Something is pulling on my ankle, tugging at me.
I try to scream, to kick against it, to get back to the surface.
"It's all right, sweetheart, I've got you. Just let go."
I'm sinking down farther and farther beneath the cool black water, into the darkest, darkest place.
I don't even bother fighting it. I let the sea take me under.