There’s a rifle on her lap.
I watch her reach out, lift the glass with a shaking hand, drain it. I study her movements. They are slow and deliberate. Like I said, the bottle is near empty, and now so too is the glass. I debate how to play it, but again I’m not in the mood to stall. I creep over to the back door, raise my foot, and kick it in right above the knob. The wood of the door gives way like a brittle toothpick. I don’t hesitate. Using the momentum from the kick, I cover the few feet between the back door and the kitchen table in no more than a second or two.
Beth is slow to react. She’s just starting to lift the rifle to aim when I snatch it away from her in classic “taking candy from a baby” style.
She stares up at me for a moment. “Hello, Nap.”
“Hello, Beth.”
“So get it over with already,” she says. “Shoot me.”
Chapter Thirty-three
I unload the ammo and toss it in one corner, the rifle in the other. I use Maura’s app to tell them that everything is fine, to stay where they are. Beth stares at me with defiance. I pull out the chair across from her and join her at the kitchen table.
“Why would I want to shoot you?” I ask.
Beth’s looks haven’t changed much since high school. I’ve noticed that the women from my class who are now in their midthirties have grown more attractive with age. I’m not sure why, if it’s something about maturity or confidence or something more tangible like a toning of the muscles or a tightening of the skin around the cheekbones. I know only that as I look at Beth now, I have no trouble seeing the girl who played lead violin in the school orchestra or won the biology scholarship at senior award night.
“Revenge,” she says. I hear the slur in her voice.
“Revenge for what?”
“To silence us, maybe. Protect the truth. Which is dumb, Nap. For fifteen years we never breathed a word. I would never say anything, swear to God.”
I don’t know how to play this. Do I tell her to relax, that I’m not here to hurt her? Will that make her open up? Or do I keep her on edge, make her think that the only way to survive this is to talk?
“You have a family,” I say.
“Two boys. They’re eight and six.”
She looks at me now with naked fear in her eyes, like she’s sobering up by the second. I don’t want that. I just want the truth.
“Tell me what happened that night.”
“You really don’t know?”
“I really don’t know.”
“What did Leo tell you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You had a hockey game, right?”
“Right.”
“So before you left, what did Leo tell you?”
The question surprises me. I try to go back there now—to earlier that night. I’m in my house. My hockey bag is packed. The amount of equipment you need is ridiculous—skates, stick, elbow pads, shin guards, shoulder pads, gloves, chest protector, neck guard, helmet. Dad finally made a checklist for us to go through because otherwise I’d arrive at the rink and invariably call and say something like, “I forgot my mouth guard.”
Where were you, Leo?
What I remember, now that I think about it, is that you weren’t in the front foyer with us. When Dad and I would go through his checklist, you were usually there. Then you’d drive me to the school and drop me off at the bus. That was more or less the routine.
Dad and I would go through the checklist. You would drive me to the bus.
But you didn’t that night. I can’t remember why anymore. But after we finished going through the checklist, Dad asked where you were. I shrugged maybe, I don’t know. Then I walked to our room to see if you were there. The light was out, but you were lying on the top bunk.
“You going to drive me?” I asked you.
“Can Dad do it? I just want to lie here for a minute.”
So Dad drove me. That’s it. Those are the last words we shared. I didn’t think twice about it at the time. When people suggested a double suicide, I did wonder about it for a moment maybe—not so much your words, but your solemn mood, lying in that bunk in the dark—but I never put much stock in it. Or if I did, maybe, like Augie with his police visit to the base that night, I pushed it aside. I didn’t want your death to be suicide, so I made myself forget about it, I guess. That’s how we all are. We pay attention to what works with our narrative. We tend to dismiss that which does not.
“Leo didn’t tell me anything,” I say now to Beth.
“Nothing about Diana? Nothing about his plans that night?”
“Nothing.”
Beth pours some more whiskey into her glass. “Here I thought you two were close.”
“What happened, Beth?”
“Why is it so important all of a sudden?”
“Not all of a sudden,” I say. “It’s always been important.”
She lifts the glass and studies her drink.
“What happened, Beth?”
“The truth won’t help you, Nap. It will only make it worse.”
“I don’t care,” I say. “Tell me.”
And she did.
—
“I’m the only one left now, aren’t I? The rest are dead. I think we all tried to make amends. Rex became a cop. I’m a cardiologist, but I work for the most part for the underserved. I started a clinic to help indigent people with heart problems—preventive care, treatment, medication, surgery when required. People think I’m so caring and selfless, but the truth is, I think I do good because I’m trying to counter what I did that night.”
Beth stares at the table for a long moment.
“We are all to blame, but we had a leader. It was his idea. He set the plan in motion. The rest of us, we were too weak to do anything other than go along. That makes us worse in some ways. When we were kids, I always hated the bully. But you know who I hated more?”
I shake my head.
“The kids who stood behind the bully and got off on watching. That was us.”
“Who was the leader?” I ask.
She makes a face. “You know.”
And I do. You, Leo. You were the leader.
“Leo got wind of the fact that Diana was going to break up with him. Diana was just waiting for that stupid dance to be over, which was a really sucky thing to do. Using Leo like that. God, I sound like a teenager, don’t I? Anyway, first Leo was sad, and then he grew livid. You know your brother was getting high a lot, right?”
I give a half nod.
“We all were, I guess. He was the leader in that way too. Personally I think that was what had driven the wedge between Leo and Diana. Leo liked to party; Diana was the cop’s daughter who didn’t. Whatever, Leo started getting really jacked up. He was pacing back and forth, shouting about how Diana was a bitch, about how we needed to make her pay and all that. You know about the Conspiracy Club, right?”
“Right.”
“Me, Leo, Rex, Hank, and Maura. He said the Conspiracy Club would get revenge on Diana. I don’t think any of us took it seriously. We were all supposed to meet up at Rex’s house, but Maura didn’t even show up. Which was weird. Because she’s the one who disappeared that night. I always wondered about that—why Maura ran when she wasn’t even part of the plan.”
Beth lowers her head.
“What was the plan?” I ask.
“We all had a job. Hank got the LSD.”
That surprised me. “You guys were taking LSD?”
“No, never before that night. That was part of the plan. Hank knew someone in chemistry class who made him a liquid version. Then Rex’s job, well, he provided the house. We would all meet in his basement. I would be the one who got Diana to take the stuff.”
“The LSD?”
Beth nods. “Diana would obviously never do it on her own, but she was a big Diet Coke drinker. So my role was to spike her soda. Like I said, we all had our jobs. We were all waiting and ready when Leo went to pick up Diana.”
I remember Augie talking about this, about how he thought Leo was high, how he wished like hell he could go back in time and stop Diana from walking out that door.