The flash of anger in Ivy’s eyes was black and absolute. “When you’re dead, and I’ve taken everything, then it will be enough.” She leaned against the doorjamb, braced the gun with her left hand cupping her right, a small smile playing on her face.
“Do you know how easy it was? To slip the syringe in his little mouth and push? He went away almost immediately.”
Sutton stopped moving. “No, Ivy. Don’t. Stop. Stop!”
“No pain, no struggle.”
“I’m warning you—”
Ethan was on his feet now, too, stepping to Sutton’s right side so they formed a wall. His fury was barely contained; Sutton could feel it coming off him in waves.
Ivy didn’t notice, or didn’t care, so lost she was pulling them into hell with her.
“I saw you find him, did you know? I was in the closet, waiting. I wanted to see your reaction. When I came in the house you were drunk, snoring. Ethan was in his room, out cold. I watched you both. And then I watched him. I very nearly changed my mind. Dashiell was innocent. I nearly went back to my house, got my gun, and came to shoot you both instead.
“But I knew that would be much too easy on you. You needed to hurt. You needed to bleed. Now, you’re going to.”
And she fired.
DEATH, AND REBIRTH
In the moments after, three things happen at once.
Ivy pulls the trigger again.
Ethan dives to the right.
Sutton rushes forward, something like a growl emitting from her throat, toward the woman who is her child, a glint of silver in her hand as the trench knife that Ethan keeps hidden in the couch cushions slashes down toward Ivy’s throat.
It is like Sutton has become someone else. A switch has been flipped. She’s felt it flip once before, when she was thirteen and locked in heated battle with her stepfather.
She feels it again now.
It is rage, pure and incandescent, the power and fury of the angels in the palm of her hand. It courses through her, blinds her, eliminates judgment and worry, makes her a machine.
There is a flash of silver in the moonlight.
The knife is hot in her hands.
The blood is thick on her palms.
Ethan is by her side, holding Ivy down.
Sutton drops the knife and sinks to her knees.
The growing wail of the siren accompanies her heartbeat.
Her husband kneels beside her and holds her to his chest.
“It’s over, Sutton,” he says, again and again through his tears. “It’s over. It’s over. It’s over.”
And when she comes back to herself, oh so many minutes later, the blank eyes of the woman who tried to take away her life stare up at her. Cold, empty eyes. The monster that claimed to be hers, staring, staring, staring.
JUST WHEN YOU THINK IT’S OVER
Six months later
“I hate you.”
Sutton said the words simply. A recitation of fact.
Ethan laughed. “You don’t. You love me. You love us.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t hate you.”
It had become something of a joke between them. The more she said she hated him, the more it meant she loved him. Most of the time.
Her aunt Josephine had once told her that making love is the most honest thing you can do with another person. So if you’re not ready to lay bare your soul to a boy, she’d said, you should probably wait.
Sutton wished she had waited. She wished she’d done so many things differently. Especially facing the demons when they’d come for her, instead of running away. There was a life to be led now, one fraught with terror. She caressed her stomach, the life within her. Yes, she was scared. So very scared. But there was hope again. A chance for them to start anew.
Therapy had helped with the guilt. With the pain. The knowledge her own child had created an untenable world for her, had manipulated her, had murdered her son, and tried to kill her and Ethan as well, was hard to fathom. Surreal, at times.
That Sutton had killed her daughter in turn was difficult to live with. It would never get better. She would always carry the blame, the sense that if only she’d acted differently in her teens, Ivy wouldn’t have turned into a monster.
The therapist made her understand that it wasn’t her fault. That Ivy’s actions were her own.
Joel Robinson had defended her in court, and she was finishing her probation next week. She’d gotten off lightly, and she knew it. The government had good cause to throw her in jail, but Robinson was as good as they came, and the plea deal was very satisfying to all parties involved.
Through it all, Ethan had been a rock.
They weren’t fixed, the two of them, but there was hope. They’d been changed by the horror of all they lost, and what it had cost them. Changed by purposefully forgiving themselves. Changed by visiting the grave of the woman who’d wreaked terror in their lives. Changed by retreating to their art and each other, the only things they ever truly needed. Changed by finding truth in their love.
Things were almost too perfect. Sutton decided not to think about it. If she didn’t, perhaps things would stay this way forever.
However you looked at it, they were healing, cleanly. Together.
In the afternoons, they sat on the porch, in the swing. Touching, always touching. The air was cool now. Forgotten leaves littered the lawn, a final spray of gold and rust. Today, Sutton’s head was in Ethan’s lap. His right hand rested on her burgeoning belly; his left held a book he’d been asked to endorse. It was quiet. Calm. Normal. The breeze and the book’s pages whispered together.
They were quiet again for a moment. Sutton stared at the ceiling of the porch. “We need to repaint those boards before the baby comes. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to be up all night and day and—”
Ethan leaned down and kissed her. Ran his hand along her palm. Kissed the scar, white now, thick and twisted and shiny, from where the knife had slipped that horrible night. She’d been marked, in so many ways.
“The ceiling will wait. I’ll need something to do to get me out of tour.”
“You can’t get out of tour, and you know it. The book is too important. It’s too good. It’s going to change lives, Ethan.”
“It’s changed ours, and that’s all that matters to me.”
They’d talked about it before, his book, the one that would change lives. She truly thought it could. It was searing, honest, real. The reviews were already insanely good. There was talk of Pulitzers and National Book Awards.
To his credit, Ethan had done his best to ignore them. Oh, a spark of pride popped up now and again, but Sutton knew—hoped—it was more a function of profound relief that he’d managed to write another book, and that she had loved every word.
Ethan set aside the novel he was reading. “How is your book coming? You haven’t said much about it this week.”
She sighed, a happy sound. “I finished the last scene this morning. I think I can move to the epilogue now.”
Ethan’s smile was huge. “Honey, that’s great. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Holly called and I got sidetracked. I’ve only remembered now. Pregnancy brain.”
“What did our favorite detective want?”
“She’s going to stop by tonight. Said she has a surprise.”
“I hope it involves wine.”