Or maybe—after seeing myself on that laptop screen and all those memories of Margaret that are suddenly so raw and real—maybe I need to believe it, too.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, quieter now, embarrassed at the sound of my own voice.
Detective Dozier stops mid-step and turns around slowly. His hand is still hanging off the knob as he looks at me, eyebrows raised, a tug of satisfaction on his lips, like he’s just won some kind of dare between us.
“I never said you did.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
THEN
I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, still in my nightgown. I shut the window earlier, even though it’s still hot in the house—even though, without the breeze, the air is sticky and still. I can’t stand the smell anymore: the smell of the marsh. The smell of death, the way it comes creeping through the cracked windowpane, snaking its way beneath my nostrils like a finger beckoning me close.
“You’re going to have to listen to me very carefully,” Dad says now, his voice urgent and low. I can’t bring myself to face him, sitting next to me on the bed, so instead, I stare at the carpet. “Izzy, the police will be here any minute. They’re going to want to talk to you about what happened last night.”
“But I don’t know what happened last night—”
“That’s right,” he says. “You don’t know. You were sleeping.”
I look up at him, eyebrows bunched. His unspoken words hang heavy between us, an implication that it would be wise to do exactly as he says.
“But sometimes, you know…” I stop, look back down at my lap as I try to work out how to phrase it. “Sometimes, I get up and do things—”
“Not last night,” he says, shaking his head. “Last night, you were asleep the whole time. You don’t even need to bring that up.”
“But when I woke up—”
“When you woke up, you came downstairs and found your mother and me seated at the kitchen table,” he interrupts. “And that’s when we told you what happened.”
“But whatdid happen?” I ask, my voice painfully shrill. I’m tired of dancing around it; tired of speaking in code. I have a feeling, deep down, that I know what the answer is, but I just need to hear him say it. “Dad, what happened to Margaret?”
“She’s… gone, Isabelle. She died.”
I knew it from the way my parents had looked at me in the kitchen—my mother, those waxy eyes, and the way she pushed past me so angrily. I knew it from the moment I rolled over and noticed Margaret missing from bed, really. It was like an instinct, barely there. Like the world was somehow different, smaller, without her in it. After all, death haunts this place—it always has. In a way, it almost feels like it’s been picking us off, one by one. Like it’s some kind of toll, and our debt is not yet paid.
I hear the sudden slam of car doors outside, signaling the police have arrived. Dad gets up quickly and pats my leg, looking down at me one last time.
“Only speak when spoken to,” he says. “Don’t say anything unless it’s in response to a question.”
I nod.
“Exactly as I said,” he repeats. Then he slips into the hallway and shuts the door behind him.
I’ve been listening to the noises downstairs for a while now: the murmuring, the whispers. The sound of people walking around the house, inspecting things. Finally, I hear a knock on my door—a gentle, polite pounding that says:I don’t need your permission; I’m coming in anyway.It’s nothing more than a courtesy, I know. An opportunity for me to steel myself, steady my breathing.
I glance at the door.
“Isabelle, sweetheart, this is Chief Montgomery.” My dad pokes his head inside before pushing the door open. I see another man beside him: tall and lanky with a head the shape and shine of a cue ball. “He’s here to ask you a few questions.”
I nod, look down at my hands clasped in my lap, and repeat Dad’s lines in my mind over and over again. It doesn’t feel like a lie, really, because I don’t know what happened—I wouldn’t even know if Iwaslying—but somehow, it doesn’t feel like the truth, either.
“Hi, Isabelle.” Chief Montgomery walks across my bedroom, taking a seat next to me on the mattress. I hear the springs creak, feel my weight tilt toward him. “Do you mind if I sit here?”
I shake my head, even though he’s already sitting.
“Can you tell me what you remember about last night? Anything unusual happen?”
I look up at the man, the way his forehead seems to connect seamlessly with his scalp, both shiny and sleek with sweat. He reminds me of a copperhead Margaret and I found in our backyard once: the pointy nose, the slit-like eyes. Margaret wanted to keep it, give it a name, but Dad decapitated it with a shovel without a second thought. I’ll never forget thecrunchit made when that metal made contact; the mucusy strings of blood and entrails that hung out of its neck like soggy noodles. The way the body kept moving for a minute, writhing around on the ground like it didn’t even know it was dead.