He laughed. “I think you’re forgetting everything I know, Jordan. About you. And about Daisy.”
I stared at him, the gun so heavy in my hand now that my wrist began to ache. What did he know about Daisy? I shook my head.
“She didn’t tell you? She was driving last night,” he said. “She killed Myrtle.”
Daisy was driving? Daisy killed Myrtle?
“And that’s my secret now,” Jay went on. “Mine and Daisy’s.” He paused for a second, smiled another little smug smile. “It’ll keep her close to me forever.”
It’ll keep her close to me forever. Was Jay blackmailing her to run away with him, the same way he’d tried to blackmail me all summer? “No,” I said. “I won’t let you.”
“Oh, Jordan.” My name swelled with such arrogance in his mouth now. The heat in my veins turned to rage. “I’m the one with all the power here, not you.”
And that’s what it was, the thing that burned up inside of me most of all. That he believed I had no power. That everyone believed I had no power.
I had a lot of goddamned power right now.
I stepped out of the bushes, raised my arm up higher, pointed the gun straight at his chest. His face twisted, as he finally noticed what was in my hand. “What are you doing, Jordan? Put the gun down.” He spoke softly, slowly, the way he might speak to a child. He smiled with an easy sort of confidence, certain that I’d never pull the trigger.
I suddenly felt calm, the way I did standing on the green, judging the distance to the hole. I closed one eye, judged the distance now, aimed, squeezed. The bullet was faster, louder, hotter than any golf ball. Its noise startled and deafened me, and I screamed.
Water suddenly splashed up from the pool as Jay fell back. And then the water calmed into beautiful ripples. It was only when the water began to turn red that I truly understood what I had done.
* * *
WHAT HAD I done?
What had I done?
I could barely see the trees in front of me as I ran on the path toward Nick’s, because all I could see was Jay’s blood oozing into the pool.
I have all the power, he’d said, his voice curling.
I know your secret, Jordan.
I know Daisy’s secret, Jordan.
I’ll tell everyone, Jordan.
No, no, no. I was the one with the power. I had the power.
But then why was my entire body shaking? Why was it so hard to breathe? I stopped running halfway down the path to vomit, and I hung my head between my knees, gasping for breath.
I had to get out of here, had to keep moving. Except then I realized I still had the gun. I held it in my hands, my fingers numb with the weight of it.
When I finally caught my breath, I turned around, back toward the woods on the other side of Jay’s house. I’d bury the gun somewhere there, deep in the woods where no one could ever find it.
Halfway into the woods, I heard the sound of another gunshot, erupting into the air. And it was so close, so deafening again, that I thought, at first, I had done it myself, by accident.
But then I heard another sound, an unmistakable, horrible sound: my dear sweet Daisy screaming.
Daisy August 1922
WEST EGG
I DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THE MAN, aiming his gun straight at my head. But from the terrified look on her face, Catherine did.
“You,” he said to me. “You did this.” His voice was gravelly and drunken, and it was really just my terrible luck that I’d run into an unhinged vagabond in the woods, on the one morning in my life that I’d finally, finally figured everything out.
“George Wilson, put the gun down,” Catherine said, a feeble attempt to sound commanding. Her voice trembled, betraying her. George Wilson. She did know him.
George shook his head. “She killed Myrtle and now it’s her turn.”
Myrtle. Wilson’s garage. George Wilson.
I inhaled sharply and put my hand to my mouth. This man was not a vagabond. He was Myrtle’s husband. This was the man she betrayed with Tom? What a sad, terrible life she must’ve led.
“Jay Gatsby killed Myrtle,” Catherine insisted sharply. She stood up straighter, tucked a strand of fire-colored hair behind her ear, and looked altogether instantly more composed than I felt.
“No.” George shook his head. “They both did.”
Catherine shot me a penetrating look and I bit my lip. What could I say to her that wouldn’t cause George to shoot me dead right here, in these woods? Well, yes, I was in the driver’s seat but Jay had grabbed the wheel. You were drinking, Daisy, Jay had said. Everything was blurry.
It would be an awful way to die, to be shot and bleed out like a deer, hunted and filleted, underneath these oak trees. And what would happen to Pammy? I let out a little cry.
“George,” Catherine was saying now. “Why don’t you go up to the house. Jay Gatsby’s up there. He’s the one you’re angry at. He’s the one who did this. Yellow Rolls-Royce. The detective told me. That’s his car.”
George shook his head and waved his gun in the air. “He’s dead,” George said flatly. “Someone else got to him first. Maybe it was you, Cath.” He laughed, almost sounding maniacal. “But you don’t have the guts to shoot a man.”
He was dead? Jay was dead? I knew I should feel something, but all I felt was cold and empty and desperate to get out of these woods, to get back in my car, and speed across the village to the bright open safety of East Egg.
George stopped waving the gun, raised his arm, pointed at my forehead. If I turned and ran, I’d never reach my car. He’d shoot me in the back. “I have a daughter,” I said, my voice stretched and desperate. “A little girl. Pammy.”
“George, come on,” Catherine pleaded. “Put the gun down.”
“It was Gatsby’s car, but you were driving it,” George said.
“Daisy wasn’t driving, were you, Daisy?” Catherine turned to me when she spoke.
Jay was dead. Only the two of us were in the car; only the two of us knew exactly what had happened. He’d grabbed the wheel. You were drinking, Daisy. I won’t let you go to jail. I shook my head. “It was Jay,” I said. “Of course. It was all Jay.”
“You killed her,” George yelled at me, sounding delirious now. But he knew what he saw. I could lie to Catherine all I liked, but George had seen me, me in the driver’s seat as the yellow Rolls-Royce had sped through Queens. “She was mine, and you took her from me.” George was half yelling, half crying.
But he was wrong. She wasn’t his, and she wasn’t Tom’s, either. She was just a woman, just a poor, stupid fool of a woman. Just like me.
His finger reached for the trigger, and I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, waiting for it: the sound of the explosion and the burst of pain that would soon rise in my chest. I heard Rose’s voice so clearly in my head. Be good, Daise.
I tried, Rosie. I really tried. I wanted to. I was going to be. After today I was going to be.