And there was my answer. I knew I would be haunted by this for the rest of my life, and tomorrow Shannon would get up, have a hearty breakfast, breathe in the crisp air, and just go on, not a single ruffle against his soul. I envied him that.
“Hey, do you want to go to Paris? It’ll be spring soon. I’ve heard Paris is nice in the spring. You could see some of your friends,” he said.
I had never before seen him this happy and animated. This peaceful—like all the pieces inside him suddenly fit together right.
“What about my plants?” Once again, my mind wandered to the fate of all of the professor’s plants. And now I was worried about leaving my own for an extended time.
“We’ll be gone a couple of weeks maybe.”
“Yeah, Paris sounds great.” But my voice was flat. I didn’t even bother asking how we’d accomplish that. He’d figure out fake IDs and passports or whatever we needed. I was sure he knew a guy, and all would be taken care of as if by the wave of a wand.
“Good. We’ll make a quick stop at the house when we get back and check on the cat and your plants. We’ll get in late—well after all the nosy neighbors are asleep. We can let them believe we’re still in Thailand.”
I wondered if he’d planned this all along, to get me somewhere off far away for a week or two to distract me from what I’d participated in.
When we stopped for the night, it wasn’t a run-down motel. It was some place much nicer. It was the kind of hotel you take someone you love, though by this point I was sure, if Shannon didn’t understand regret, he could never understand love.
More than ever, I saw him as a wild animal trying to live inside an artificial habitat. He was a predator who didn’t belong here in our world. It wouldn’t matter if he was ever caught and put in jail. He was already caged just by the constraint of trying to blend with society, to look normal.
I stood in the middle of the hotel bedroom while steam from Shannon’s shower poured out of the bathroom. I stared at the gleaming gun on the bed. He’d removed the silencer.
I felt at that moment, that it was me or him. It had to be. I wasn’t sure which outcome was worse.
I didn’t think, even after everything, that I could pull the trigger to end myself. And if I killed him, here, now, in this nice hotel, I’d go straight to prison unless I could convince them it was self-defense. A credible story started to unfold in my mind. I would tell them I was that missing girl. I would make them remember. He had kidnapped me. I took the one opportunity I had to free myself. I had to do it, don’t you see? I had to. It was me or him.
I picked the gun up and pointed it at the bathroom door in time for Shannon to emerge from the mist.
“What are you doing, Elodie? I thought we trusted one another.” His voice was calm and steady, and I knew he wasn’t even a little worried I’d shoot him, which only made me want to pull the trigger more. I inched my finger closer to the small lever that would end him.
“Do you even know how to use that gun?” he asked. “The safety’s on. You might want to take care of that.”
I was afraid to look too closely at the gun, afraid Shannon would rush and tackle me. And then what? I flicked the safety off with my eyes still on him, the barrel of the gun still pointed at the center of his chest... the chest water was dripping off of down into the folds of the towel secured around his waist, while he stood serene. Confident.
“Is it hot?” he asked.
“What?”
“Hot. Is a round chambered or do you need to rack the slide? You don’t know, do you?”
I didn’t. And I wasn’t sure how to find out. I could just pull the trigger and if nothing happened, then I’d know.
“What’s your plan after you shoot me? You want to go to prison? Haven’t you been in enough of those lately?”
“I already figured that out. I’ll tell them who I am. I’ll tell them you were holding me prisoner. They’ll find all your weapons. They’ll believe me.”
Shannon nodded. “Very good. And the questions? The media? I thought you didn’t want that.”
“I’ve got my memories. I can handle it now.”
“Can you?”
My arm was starting to feel weak from holding the gun up, so I steadied my grip with my other hand.
“I don’t think you can pull the trigger. You don’t have it in you. You already proved that once tonight while I cleaned up your mess.”
“I was protecting you.”
“Great job,” he said. The sarcasm dripped off him as he stared bluntly at the gun. He sighed. “Well, do it if that’s what you want.”
Did he have no self-preservation instinct? I knew he did. He wouldn’t have been so careful, so meticulous if he didn’t care about his fate. But I knew why he wasn’t troubled. We both knew. I couldn’t shoot him.
I turned the gun on myself, and for the first time since this drama had started, Shannon looked scared.
“Elodie, point the gun back at me,” he said urgently.
“So you know I won’t shoot you, but you’re not so sure about whether or not I’ll shoot myself.”