But Billy was looking at her with a strange look on his face. “What’d you just say?”
Margot took another step toward the open door, only a couple of feet away. She’d walk calmly through it, and once she got out of his sight, she’d run straight to the police station. “Oh, I just said she looks cute.” Margot smiled, but her voice was tight. “Thanks again for the coffee.”
But just before she reached the door, Billy closed it and sighed. “That’s not what you said.”
Margot mustered a confused little laugh. “Uh. I’m sorry, but I really should get going.”
He shook his head, not quite meeting her eye. His face had fallen. Margot stared at his enormous shoulders, his thick forearms—muscles hardened from decades of work on a farm. She willed him to just open the door. “I think you know what you said. And I…” He hesitated, running one hand through his hair, the other still firm on the doorknob. “And I think you know what it means. I can see that you do.”
Margot shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I loved her, you know.” His face crumpled. “It was an accident.”
Everything in Margot sank. The door was closed and he had confessed. He wasn’t going to let her walk away now.
As if to confirm it, he said, “I’m sorry. But I can’t let you leave.” Then he twisted the dead bolt into place.
Panic coursed through Margot’s body. She stood, shaking, mind racing. She needed to get out of there. But how? Billy was blocking the front door. She could make a run for the door in the kitchen, but he was too close for her to do that now. If she tried, he’d outrun her, overpower her. She took the smallest step backward. She needed time to increase the distance between them, then she’d run.
“Really,” she said, her voice weak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You can stop acting. It’s obvious from the way you’re looking at me that you know. It’s the same look Krissy had when she found out.”
Margot froze. Despite her almost blinding fear, she felt momentarily sidetracked. Krissy had found Billy out too? Krissy, who’d been shot in the head with one of Billy’s guns. Krissy, who’d been found by Billy, not somewhere private but in their entryway. I know Krissy, Jodie had said, and she didn’t kill herself. “Did you”—Margot swallowed—“did you kill her too?”
“I had to,” Billy said. “She found out what I’d done and I could tell she wasn’t gonna let it go. She was gonna tell Jace—I saw a letter in her purse saying so.”
Margot was inching backward when what he’d said snagged in her mind. A letter? In none of the letters Jace received from Krissy had she implicated Billy. And the last thing she’d ever written to her son was— “Her suicide note. But that was just an apology to Jace. It didn’t say anything about you.”
“The top part was an apology. But there was more. She told him she’d found something out about me.”
Margot’s eyes darted around the hallway as she worked out what must have happened. On the day she died, when Krissy met up with Luke to tell him he was the twins’ father, Luke must have told her something about January’s death. What it was, Margot couldn’t imagine, but it had clearly led Krissy to the truth about her husband. She’d written it in a letter to Jace, and when Billy discovered it, he’d torn off the incriminating bottom half and left the top to look like a suicide note.
“I obviously couldn’t have her telling anyone what I’d done,” Billy said. “And I—”
But Margot had heard enough. She didn’t know what exactly he had done to January, but he’d shot his own wife for knowing less. Margot needed to get out of there. Heart pounding hard in her chest, she took one more step backward, then spun around and ran. As she did, Billy lunged after her, his footsteps fast and heavy. Margot rushed into the kitchen toward the back door, but when she wrapped her hand around the doorknob, it rattled futilely.
“No,” she breathed as she fumbled with the lock, the sound of Billy’s footsteps fast behind her. Her body felt electric with the need to flee, but the lock didn’t seem to be working properly. Then, finally, she managed to twist it and fling the door open. But just as she did, an enormous hand reached over her head and slammed it shut.
Billy crashed his body into hers and Margot flew sideways, clattering hard against the kitchen floor. Her shoulder and head lit up with pain. She tried to clamber to her feet, but Billy got to her too fast. He reached out, grabbing her by her hair. Tears sprung to her eyes.
Then he was dragging her and she was kicking, punching, slapping his arms, but his grip was too strong and too soon he stopped in front of a closed door. Billy swung it open and the house’s basement gaped before them like a wide, screaming mouth. And suddenly, although most of her mind was on struggling and clawing and shouting, some dark part of her brain flashed to January all those years ago—dead at the bottom of these very stairs, killed by this very man.
Margot thought of Krissy, of Natalie, of Polly, of all the girls in Elliott Wallace’s box and all the girls across the world who’d been trapped alone in rooms with men just like him and others just like Billy, men who, in one way or another, threw girls away. To so many, those girls were nameless and faceless, numbers on a sad and growing list. There was nothing she wouldn’t do, Margot thought, as Billy dragged her closer to the basement doorway, to keep him from turning her into one—just another forgotten girl added to another list.
EPILOGUE
Billy, 1994
It had all started with a phone call.
Or perhaps, it had all started years earlier, back in the summer of ’87 when he’d first started hanging out with Krissy Winter and Luke Davies, but when Billy looked back over the course of his life, it was the phone call he would undo.
The line rang twice before Dave picked up. “Jacobs?” he said after Billy told him who it was. “What’s up? Everything okay?”
Billy pulled the receiver from his ear to give it a baffled look. Normally, whenever Dave heard it was Billy on the line, he’d make up some excuse and hang up. But something was different about Dave’s voice tonight. It sounded thick, wet.
“Everything’s fine. Just watching TV.” Billy hesitated. After so long without talking to his friend, he felt rusty doing it. “I started thinking about that night, the one on the football field, with the weed killer.” He laughed. “Remember that?”
“How could I forget? God, we were such idiots back then.”
“Yeah,” Billy agreed, although that wasn’t actually how he felt. He loved Krissy and the kids—of course he did—but marriage and fatherhood weren’t exactly how he’d imagined them. For him, that summer was the best time of his life. “Well, anyway, just thought I’d give you a call. It’s been awhile.”
“Yeah.”
Billy’s gaze roamed around the kitchen where he stood next to the landline. Maybe it had been a mistake reaching out to Dave, maybe he should just hang up now before it got any more awkward. But just before he could, Dave said, “Hey, you wanna go for a drive? Like old times? I got a six-pack I could use a hand with.”
Again, Billy gave the receiver a look of disbelief. Not only was this an unusual invitation—he and Dave hadn’t hung out in years—it was already almost midnight. But he didn’t care. Krissy and the kids had long since gone to bed, and he deserved to have a little fun. A smile spread slowly over his face. “That sounds great.”
Ten minutes later, he and Dave were driving outside town past cornfields that sprawled for miles. The streetlamps were few and far between, and the only other light was that from the thin sliver of moon. Dave was unusually quiet. Whenever Billy tried for conversation—“Remember our teacher Mr. Yacoubian? God, I hated him.” Or, “Remember that party in the cornfield when Robby O’Neil got into a fight with Caleb Shroyer?”—Dave would just nod vaguely in response.