You’ll never leave me to become the awesome woman you were meant to be. You’ll never reach your full potential as long as I’m there to hold you back, and I know I’ve been holding you back, Ambi. All these years we’ve been together you’ve been burdened by me, my family, my stuff. It’s time I cut you free of all that.
I want you to go to LA. I want you to become someone even more amazing than you already are. I want you to help poor, dumb bastards like me who can’t seem to ever get it together, because they’ll need your help even more than I did. I want you to soar, not stay here with your wings clipped.
By the time you read this, I’ll be gone. It’s better this way, but I know you might not understand that right now. You didn’t make me do this. No one did but me. It was my choice. Mom and Stacey will have the life insurance money to get them through the next couple of years, you’ll get to go off to UCLA, and I won’t wreck anyone’s life ever again. Mom is going to help me make it not look like a suicide, but you can’t tell anybody that or she won’t get the insurance money. I left her a note, too, so she’ll know what to do.
Please know that I love you forever. And if forever ever ends, Amber, then I’ll love you from the beginning, all over again.
Spence
I FOUND MRS. SPENCER SITTING in a chair in the backyard. My mom had told me that Stacey was being looked after by her best friend’s parents. Bailey and I stood next to the gate, watching Mrs. Spencer sit in her chair, staring into space, and for a moment I felt such tremendous loathing for her—such seething anger—because I’d figured it out. I’d put it together the morning after Spence died. She’d been the one to stage the break-in in his room. She’d stolen the money from his hiding place and the SAT test key. She’d made the anonymous call to UCLA to tell them that Spence had cheated. She’d done it all to ruin his chances of coming with me, and having a life free from her clutches.
And now he was dead because of her.
After working it out, I’d snuck out of the house without anyone knowing, and to keep Bailey from barking as I left, I’d taken her with me.
Her leash slipped through my hand as she approached Mrs. Spencer and laid her head on the woman’s lap. She could sense the heartache and the pain. But I hardly cared what Spence’s mother was feeling.
I approached and stood in front of her. At last she lifted her head like she’d just become aware of me. We stared in silent antipathy at each other for a long time, each blaming the other for the light in our lives winking out.
“What’d you do with the gun?” I finally asked her.
She didn’t answer, but I saw her eyes flicker to the shed behind me. She must’ve hidden it there. I turned my head toward it to let her know that I’d caught the subtle tell from her eyes.
“You helped him,” I said, unfolding the note I’d carried clutched in my hand. “You’ll need to help me.”
She considered me for a long time in silence, but there was interest now in her eyes to go with all that hate. She was eager to comply, but also wary. She’d be taking another risk.
I didn’t care. About anything. Nothing meant anything to me without Spence, and no matter what he’d said in his suicide note, I was to blame. I’d pushed so hard for him to come with me, and clung so hard to him, helping him with everything, that he’d never gained the confidence to know he could survive without me. And I couldn’t live with myself knowing that his death was partially my fault. I’d loved him too much, and let him love me too much. Neither of us could survive now without the other.
I realized that the car backfiring that I’d heard in the school wasn’t a car at all, but Spence shooting himself in the heart. That devastated me most of all, I think. He’d shot himself in the space he’d reserved to love me. I hadn’t heard the second shot. I’d probably been with Jamie when Mrs. Spencer arrived in the field to find her son dead or dying, and she’d taken the gun from his hand, held it over his chest, and pulled the trigger again.
The coroner could’ve suspected one bullet wound as having been a suicide, but two? That was murder. And Cole’s life insurance policy would be swiftly paid out to the grieving mother and sister. He’d keep his promise to take care of them.
“When?” she asked me, eyeing the note in my hand. I knew she was curious about it. I knew she wanted to take it from me and keep it. I’d let her have it if she did the deed.
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Jamie’s going to arrange a dinner for Spence’s friends. My parents will go. You should decline. I’ll decline. The back door will be unlocked.”
The sun was starting to come up then, those first rays streaking across the backyard to touch the branches of the tallest trees and bathe them in pink embers of light.
“And if I say no?” she said glaring at me with such hate that I knew she only said it to toy with me. I could clearly see she blamed me entirely for Spence’s death. The same way I blamed her, and I knew in that moment that she wanted me to die as badly as I did.
Still, I played along. “Then I’ll show everyone the note that Spence left for me. I’ll let them all know that he killed himself so you could get your hands on that insurance money.”