“So you chose you,” I whisper back. “How did you do it? Bodies don’t bury themselves.”
“I made a phone call,” he says, his voice thick with shame. Of course he did. Boys like Chase can make phone calls. There were always whispers about his father. Entanglements with the sort of people who make problems disappear. Just like in the movies. Isn’t it glamorous? I picture him deep in the woods, all alone at the cell spot, desperate to catch a single bar of cell service, his phone glowing in his hand. He made a phone call. That’s all. With a phone call, he buried a body. One more puzzle piece. Another snapshot. Another image to immortalize. The last tarot card, and the rest writes itself.
I run back upstairs just as he’s discovering Mila. Who ledmy brother to his death, and kept the secret like a promise. No more. His scream is exquisite.
I wait outside Kennedy’s room, the princess tower, pink gauze and wood carvings and the memory of shattered glass. Someone should have told the Hartfords to read the Grimm brothers. Fairy tales never end without bloody revenge or haunting defeat. The mermaid dissolves. The stepsisters are savaged by birds.
The witch in the woods is burned in her own enchanted home.
Kennedy is halfway up the attic stairs to a panicked Chelsea, a mistake, but not her first. I pull her down and push the stairs back up.
She stares at me, stunned, from the floor. Untouchable Kennedy. Kennedy, who will always come out on top. Looking up at me. Even now she doesn’t look afraid. Just desperate. Searching. What to say to get out of this mess. I almost enjoy it.
“Don’t do this,” she says. Calm. Measured. “Everything will be different. We’ll go to the police. We’ll tell the truth.”
But I don’t think any of them know the whole truth anymore. They’re so tangled up in their own lies. The only thing left to do is destroy it all and start over.
“Is this what it was like?”
She shakes her head. Playing stupid. As if she didn’t know.
I grit my teeth. “When you killed him.”
A hard, cold burst of air escapes her lips. It’s not a gasp. It isn’t shocking, what she did. Not to her. She’s just cornered. Every breath she takes is stalling. “Emily. Please think. None of us would kill a friend. We had ups and downs. Sometimessmall ones.” She almost shows an emotion and it disgusts me. “Sometimes bigger. But our history was bigger than that.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t like him.”
She looks at me accusingly. Me. Like I’m the bad one for saying it out loud, for seeing the ugliness in her. “People grow apart. That’s life. It doesn’t mean he wasn’t important to me or that I stopped caring about him. Or that I haven’t relived that day over and over and over in my mind, trying to figure out what any of us would have done differently if we had a second chance. You were there too. Would you have been nicer to Mila? Because if you had, maybe she wouldn’t have felt like she had to leave the house. Would you still have smashed my head with a mirror? Because if I hadn’t been stuffed full of drugs, maybe I could have saved him. And if you hadn’t held us to that unforgiving standard of loyalty, you might have been there on the boat, and maybe he wouldn’t have gone into the water. But every second of our lives led to that moment. We have always been doomed for this. There was no other way, and Emily, you played your part too. You pushed.”
And that’s it. Kennedy Ellis Hartford has played her last card. I step past her wordlessly and pull down the attic door. She looks at me distrustfully and then turns and rushes up the stairs to Chelsea. There are sounds of joy. Reunion. Love. Chelsea rushes down the stairs first, and the relief on her face is palpable. Then her eyes fall on me.
My eyes trail up the ladder. Kennedy is still up there. Extinguishing candles. Breathing a massive sigh of relief. She should be leaving. Protecting herself and the one she loves. But she protects the house. I fold the ladder back up, push the trapdoorclosed again, then grab the hair-trimming scissors off Kennedy’s neat, meticulously organized vanity, and snip the pull string off.
Chelsea stares at me with a look of mixed horror and betrayal. “Why would you do that?” She jumps, straining to reach the lock on the attic door as Kennedy calls down to us in vain, but we both know it’s too high up.
“You know why.” I turn away from her, but she blocks my way out of the room. “If you don’t get it now, you’re never going to.”
“I loved him too, Em.” She pushes past me and positions herself behind the bed, throwing her weight against it. But with its heavy oak frame, it’s not going to move an inch. “You know why I wrote that note.”
“Because you didn’t save him. You didn’t call for help. You didn’t even admit he was gone. You may not have pushed him, but your silenceheld him under, Chelsea. You killed Ryan too.”
“I still loved him.”
“But you chose Kennedy.” I can’t say her name without bile rising to my tongue, venom.
She tries the vanity, straining from the effort, then pauses, gasping for breath. “I loved her more.”
I glare at her. I know she loved Ryan. Anyone knew who saw them together. And it hurts more that she let him die. That she buried him even before that. That she wouldn’t admit that she loved him until he was dead, because she wouldn’t dare risk Kennedy finding out. Wouldn’t risk losing the bigger prize.
“You kept him a secret,” I whisper. “That’s not real love. Loyalty doesn’t have two sides.”
She tries the last piece of furniture, the heaviest, thebureau, and starts to cry. I want to break her in half. “You were the one who convinced me I had to keep Ryan a secret or lose Kennedy. You always want us to choose sides. You don’t understand loyalty, Emily. I don’t think you understand love. All of us have loved you. You made the rules too strict. I’m sorry I broke Ryan’s heart, and I can’t forgive myself for not saving him. But we don’t deserve this. No one does. We’ve fought and made mistakes, but it’s still love that ties all of us together. Not Ryan’s death.” She believes all of this. I know she does, truly. But Chelsea lives in a fantasy. It is a murder that ties the rest of them together. And I have no love left in me.
She looks at me imploringly. “Let Kennedy go.”
“I am. I just wish you had.” I flee the bedroom, slamming the door behind me and pushing a decorative table in front of it. Chelsea screams, kicks the door, pummels the wood with her fists. I ignore her.
Chelsea. The willing witness. No more. Kennedy, the executioner, no more, sealed in with the melted wax and locked in with a cut cord. Your turn, Kennedy.