Beth stayed silent to keep her mother safe. But when Lily was home, she always hurt her mother, cutting her with words, punching her with accusations: Look at you. What’s wrong with you? You don’t care about me. You never cared. That’s why you sent me away every year.
One night, Lily and Mariana screamed at each other, Mariana with tears streaming down her face. You failed me, Lily shouted while Beth stood in the living room doorway, unable to stop either of them. You never loved me. I hate you. Everything that’s happened to me is your fault.
And Mariana: I didn’t know what else to do. I loved you so much, Lily. I loved you more than anything. I didn’t know what else to do.
It ended, as it always did, with Lily leaving, slamming the door behind her. Mariana, already half-drunk, drank more. But Mariana was on those pills: What were they? Uppers? Downers? Where had she gotten them? She was always so secretive, especially with Beth.
Maybe Beth could have stopped her mother from drinking so much and taking pills. Maybe she should have. But she looked at Mariana’s bleary eyes and her tearstained face, and the words rang in her head: I loved you more than anything. And Beth went to bed.
When she heard her mother leave her bedroom in the middle of the night, mumbling to herself as she walked down the corridor to the stairs, Beth got up and followed her. She watched as Mariana, clutched in some paranoid delusion that only she could see, went out the front door and got into her car. Beth listened to the car drive away, and she did nothing.
I loved you more than anything. The words went around in Beth’s head as she stood there.
Within an hour, Mariana was dead. Lily didn’t call or come home, and Beth was completely alone.
“Sometimes I think it was me who killed her,” Beth said now, twisting the knife into her half sister. “But then, she wouldn’t have mixed the pills with the alcohol if you hadn’t told her she failed you. That you hated her.”
“That’s a lie,” Lily said.
“Tell yourself that if you want.” Beth’s hand on the receiver was slick with cold sweat. “You’re the crazy one, not me.”
“Does it make you feel better to think of me as crazy?” Lily’s voice was sharp. “Does it make you feel smug? Are you sure you’re the sane one, Beth?”
It was so hypnotic, that voice. So convincing. Beth rubbed her forehead. Yes, she was the sane one. She had never killed anyone. Except Mariana, that night she stood and watched her leave.
Except everyone who came after, because she didn’t stop Lily when she’d had the chance.
“How long was it before you knew she was dead?” Beth asked. “You were gone. When did you finally know?”
There was another brief pause, and then Lily gave her the truth for once. “Three months. But part of me knew. I’d been living like she was already dead. Then I looked for her obituary in old copies of the paper, and I found it. I knew. That’s why I’d started looking at obituaries.”
For one moment, crackling over the phone line from jail, Beth felt her own pain and her sister’s pain mix together. It was still so raw, even now. Mariana, for all her faults, had been the only thing that both of them had ever wanted. Had they loved her? Did either of them even know what love was? For that matter, had Mariana ever known?
Yes, Mariana had known what love was. I loved you more than anything.
Did Beth love Lily? Maybe. But her feelings for Lily were too much like her feelings toward herself. Hate, pity, fear—and anger. So much anger.
And Lily . . . She wasn’t sure Lily knew how to love anyone.
Still, she opened her mouth to speak. Our mother is still in the house, she wanted to tell her sister. I hear her sometimes. She wants to open the bedroom door. Maybe Beth was the crazy one. Still, it was possible Lily would understand.
But Lily spoke first. “It’s your fault,” she said, and the moment of shared grief was over as she brought out her old weapons, anger and blame. “You let her die that night. You know you did.”
Beth went cold, and she put her confession away. “I’m going to get out of here. You know that, right?”
“You probably will. You weasel out of everything bad. You always have. I suppose I should say sorry that they arrested you instead of me, but I’m not sorry at all. It’s nice to see you suffer for once.”
Beth knew that tone. Lily was feeling victorious, untouchable. This was when she was at her weakest. “When I get out, I’m giving you enough money to go away forever. And then we’re never seeing each other again.”
Now Lily sounded interested. “I’m finally getting my half?”
“Anything,” Beth said, a note of desperation in her voice. “Anything you want. Anything to end this.”
“Then get out quick, dummy. I’m waiting.”
“When I get out, how do I find you?”
“You don’t,” Lily said. “I’ll find you.”
When Beth stood to go back to her cell, she knew her expression was hard. She knew the guard was watching her, that she’d go home and tell her husband that Beth Greer, the infamous Lady Killer, was the coldest woman she’d ever seen. She knew that in some ways, even if she won this game with Lily, she was damaged forever.
But it didn’t matter now, if it ever had. Since that November morning so long ago when she’d seen the writing on the window, this was always going to happen. She could see that now. They had been locked in this together, she and Lily, for all these years. And now they were coming to the end. At last.
Beth went back to her cell in silence and started reading Moby-Dick again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
October 2017
SHEA
The envelope from Ransom Wells was a treasure trove of information. Michael and I couldn’t process it all sitting at the table at the diner where I’d met him after work.
“I need my laptop,” Michael had said. “I have to verify this.”
That was how we ended up here, at his apartment. Just the two of us, alone. I was breaking another one of my rules, but it didn’t matter. I had to be here, going through this file.
Everything about Michael’s apartment said divorced guy who moved out in a hurry. The sofa was secondhand, definitely bought after the move, but the TV was big and new—he’d brought that with him. His fridge was full, but he didn’t have very many dishes. There were unopened boxes stacked against one wall, but there was artwork that he’d chosen over the sofa, a large framed print of the ocean taken from the top of the bluffs, the seabirds wheeling in the sky, the whitecaps breaking in an endless beautiful pattern. On one of the end tables was a framed photo of Michael in police uniform, standing with two men who looked almost exactly like him, obviously his father and his uncle.
“Ignore the mess,” he said sheepishly when he saw me looking around. He walked to a crowded, well-used desk in the corner—Ikea, likely bought and put together in haste—and picked up a laptop, bringing it over to the sofa.
“It’s fine,” I said, meaning it. “I’ve lived this mess.”
His eyebrows rose. “Meaning?”
“You brought your favorite things when you moved out,” I said. I pointed. “The family photos, the TV, the ocean print. Your work computer. You left everything else.”
“She picked out our sofa, and I always hated it,” he said, speaking my language. “So now I have this. The ocean print is a photo I took myself. I’m no photographer, and I don’t even have the best camera, but I lucked out that day. I’ve always just really liked that picture. My ex never understood why I spent the money getting it enlarged and framed. So, yeah, I took it with me.”