But I do know where Maya works. She’s an assistant at an accounting firm, which has their hours listed on their website. They’re in a half-empty strip mall between an employment agency and an empty storefront with a For Rent sign in the grimy window. I park my car at the back of the small lot by four thirty and wait.
“He fucking deserved it,” Savvy sings in my ear.
I close my eyes, my heart pounding. I don’t want to think about this, but I’m sitting here waiting for the only other person in the world who knows Savvy’s darkest secret.
“I killed—”
Savvy appears next to me, both feet up on the dash, blue toenail polish chipped. She flashes me a grin. “Want to know a secret?”
I nod.
“I killed a dude and I’m not sorry. He fucking deserved it.”
LUCY
FIVE YEARS AGO
Savvy was still staring at me expectantly, waiting for me to take her up on her offer to murder my husband.
“Even if we wanted to kill him,” I began slowly, “I think we’d be in way over our heads. Seeing as how neither of us has actually ever murdered someone before.”
“Speak for yourself.”
I barked out another laugh, but she didn’t crack a smile. Her demeanor shifted, something dark and serious flashing across her eyes.
“Wait, you…” I trailed off, my breath catching in my throat.
She lowered her gaze from mine and nodded, once.
I stared at her, my heart in my throat. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” The word was a whisper, but then she straightened, shaking her head like she wanted to clear it of bad thoughts.
“Yes, seriously,” she said, her tone now with a hard edge to it. “I killed a dude and I’m not sorry. He fucking deserved it.”
“Savvy.” I grabbed her hand. I didn’t think I believed her about not being sorry.
Or maybe I was wrong. Apparently I didn’t know everything about Savvy.
“It’s okay. I don’t have trauma about it.” She shrugged in a way that was supposed to convey how casual she felt, but it seemed forced to me.
“Who was he? What did he do to you?”
“Troy. An asshole I met in a bar who thought he could put his hands on me. He was wrong.” She flashed me a dark grin.
“Jesus, Savvy—”
“I’m fine.”
“Did you go to the police? It was self-defense, right?”
“The police.” She snorted. “No. I think the self-defense argument would have looked a little thin, given how many times I stabbed him.”
“How—how many times did you stab him?” My voice was a whisper.
“Maybe a few more times than was strictly necessary. Plus a couple more for good luck.”
I didn’t know whether I was horrified or impressed.
“I thought the blood would bother me more, honestly.” Savvy shrugged. “It was a mess, which was annoying. This guy saw me coming out of the restroom with blood all over my hands, and I panicked for a minute, and then just went, ‘Oh my god, my period is so bad today!’ You should have seen the look on his face.”
I gaped at her.
“And then I put him in my car, drove him out to the swamp, and dumped him in there. I thought for sure they’d find the body eventually, but I never heard anything. Maybe the gators ate him.”
Impressed. I was impressed.
“You put him in your car? A dead body? How did you even get him in there?”
“Hey.” She flexed her biceps. “I’m strong.”
“Lifting-a-dead-body strong?”
“He wasn’t a big guy.”
I gave her a skeptical look.
“It took fucking forever,” she mumbled. “Thank god I had a hatchback. I could just sort of drag the body in there and cover him with a blanket.”
I barked out a laugh. I quickly clapped my hand over my mouth to cut it off. “I’m sorry. It’s not funny.”
“It’s hilarious.” She poured a shot of tequila into a glass and nudged it in my direction. She poured one for herself and immediately tossed it back.
I lifted mine as well, but hesitated as I watched her fill her glass again.
“That’s why you left college,” I said quietly. “Your mom keeps telling everyone that you missed home, but that wasn’t it.”
She rolled her eyes and threw back the second shot. “Who the fuck misses Plumpton? No. I didn’t like college. I’m supposed to take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans just so I can sit in a lecture hall while a bored professor recites everything I just read in the wildly overpriced textbook? No thanks.”
I watched as she downed another shot. She lowered the glass to the bar, and I reached for her hand, lacing our fingers together.
“I’m sorry that happened to you.”
She shrugged.
“Seriously, Savvy,” I said softly. “You don’t have to pretend with me that it wasn’t a big deal.”
She nudged her glass with her finger, glancing up at me briefly. She lifted one shoulder, like no big deal, but her eyes told a different story. She squeezed my hand tightly.
“He deserved it,” she whispered. “And so does Matt.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
LUCY
Maya comes out of the office after five. There are only two other cars left in the lot, and I’m guessing hers is the purple hatchback. I lurk next to it.
She stops short when she sees me. Her car key is sticking out from between two fingers, like they always say to do to ward off would-be rapists.
“Lucy.” It comes out as a gasp, like she’s scared.
She probably is, come to think of it.
I raise both my hands in surrender. “I just want to talk.”
She squints at me. She was a teenager last time I saw her—eighteen, just graduating from high school and getting ready to leave for college.
“I shouldn’t have told her.” I can still see Savvy sitting on her bed in her tiny apartment with the sloped ceilings. “Fuck. She’s still a teenager, but…”
“You were a teenager when you killed him?” I’d guessed, and she’d nodded, clearly relieved I understood.
Maya stares at me. She and Savvy never looked much alike. Maya’s hair is lighter, the kind of blond that people usually have to buy from a bottle. Her features are sharper than Savvy’s were—the long nose and pointed chin are different from her sister. She’s wearing a full coral skirt and a button-up white blouse with a rounded collar. It’s a sweet outfit. Savvy didn’t do sweet.
But the eyes are the same. Blue, furious. Sweat trickles down my back.
“Can we go somewhere?” I ask. “It’s hot out here.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” She presses the button to unlock her car.
“Please, Maya…” I take a step forward but then trail off, because I don’t know how to start a conversation about this.
She glares at me. “Look, I know that everyone has decided you’re innocent now, but I still don’t want to talk to you.”
Everyone’s decided I’m innocent? That’s news to me.
“It’s not that,” I say. She opens her car door and throws her purse inside. I say my next words in a rush. “I know about Troy.”
She slides into her car seat, gathering her skirt up so it won’t get caught in the door. “I don’t know who that is.”
I grab the door before she can shut it. “The man Savvy killed.”
Her head snaps to me, her face draining of color. She stares at me for a minute.
“Get in the car.”
Maya starts driving, and then seems to think better of taking me wherever she was originally thinking. She pulls into the parking lot of a long-deserted restaurant and parks beneath some trees.
“That was his name?” she asks. “Troy?”
“Yes. She didn’t tell you?” I unbuckle my seat belt so I can face her. I can’t stop noticing how her white shirt is still pristine, even though it’s the end of the workday. I would have spilled my coffee and lunch on it by now.
She chews on her bottom lip and shakes her head. “And I didn’t ask. I don’t think I wanted to know.”
I’d wanted to know. I wanted to know his name and what he looked like and what blood smells like when there’s that much of it.
Maya looks at me quickly. “Do you know his last name? I’ve always wondered if maybe someone knew that it was Savvy and they’re the ones who—” She stops as I shake my head.
“Troy Henderson. I looked into it years ago. Hired a PI, actually.”
I didn’t have the money for it back then, but it was my only solid lead, and I refused to tell the police about him. I wouldn’t betray Savvy like that.