If that had been all he said—if he had stopped, if he had left it there—I might still have turned and walked away. Walked out the front door, dropped the revolver in the bushes, kept right on going. Perhaps it was enough to know the truth. Perhaps that’s all people mean by closure. To understand what happened, to understand you can’t undo it, to find the strength to walk away.
Ethan didn’t stop there, though. He didn’t leave it. “Be careful, Caroline.” His voice was so low I had to strain to hear. “Be very careful. I’d hate for anything ever to happen to Frannie.”
“You bastard! You wouldn’t.”
But, yes, he might. Ethan Sinclare stood there, his eyes like dull coal and his lips stretched in a dangerous smile. At my hotel this morning, when I had lain in bed imagining this conversation, it had uncoiled in grainy black and white. It had been like my Ingrid Bergman nightmares: a long buildup, tension ratcheting scene by scene. But I never made it all the way to the end, to this precise moment. His face had kept dissolving. The picture kept fading to black. Before my finger wrapped around the trigger. Before I had to make a choice.
Ethan and I looked at each other and I thought I saw him twitch right.
Now it was my turn to move and I reached for my bag and he reached for me and his hands were on my neck and my finger was on the trigger and I pulled.
It is amazing how steady you shoot when you can hold the gun with both your hands.
? ? ?
I SHOT HIM twice.
Two times.
Bang. Bang.
There would have been a nice symbolism to shooting him once more—one bullet each for me, for Boone, and for Sadie Rawson. But he was already facedown on the kitchen floor, lying on his stomach, black blood spreading like tar across the tiles. I forced myself to count to ten. He did not move.
My hands were trembling and my ears roared and only one thought cut through the noise: Get out of here. I grabbed his cell phone and dropped it into my purse. With a napkin I swiped shaky circles along the top and side edges of the counter. I had been keeping track of everything I touched, had been careful to clean my prints from the lemonade pitcher before I’d placed it on the table. I would need to wipe down the front doorbell on my way out. What else?
I glanced down and realized dark droplets were sprayed across my white blouse. His blood. With unsteady fingers I began undoing buttons. One of them was slick and wet and I thought I might be sick. I would have to wear my wool overcoat with nothing underneath until I could retrieve my overnight bag and a fresh shirt. I would wad this soiled one in a plastic sack and carry it with me until I could shove it deep into a Dumpster somewhere. I was still fumbling with the buttons when I heard something. From behind me, from the far corner of the kitchen, came a whimper.
I spun around. Standing in a low doorway, such as might lead to a laundry room, or to the back stairs, stood a woman. A petite, blond, older woman wearing a tennis skirt and white sneakers. Her eyes wide with shock.
Impossible.
“What have you done?” she moaned.
I had a five-shot revolver. I had three bullets left.
I raised my arm and trained my gun on Betsy Sinclare.
Fifty
* * *
How long have you been standing there?”
Her lips flapped like a fish but made no sound.
“How long have you been standing there?” I bellowed again.
Even as I asked, I knew it did not matter. It didn’t matter what fragments of conversation she might have heard. She would never fess up to the police about how Ethan had threatened Frannie, or how he had squeezed his strong hands around my neck. No. What she would tell them, what she would be able to describe with gorgeous precision, was this scene before her now: her husband, unarmed and shot twice through the gut; me, leaning over him in a half-buttoned, blood--spattered blouse, the gun still hot in my hand.
She suddenly bent over double, gripped her bare, freckled knees with her hands, and vomited. When she had finished, she wiped her mouth on the hem of her tennis skirt and tucked her hair behind her ears. Then—ignoring me, ignoring the gun in my hand—she staggered to her husband and sank to her knees. “Ethan? Ethan? Please, no, please, no, no, no.” Her hands roamed over him, seeking to stanch the blood. At last she cupped the back of his head, watching him carefully, just as I had done moments before, waiting for confirmation that he was truly gone.
After some minutes she rocked back on her heels and raised her face to me. I was bracing myself to find grief and terror there. Instead her mouth was twisted with hatred.
“Betsy?” I breathed. “Mrs. Sinclare?”
“Don’t speak to me. Don’t you dare speak my name.” This was said with such raw anger that I felt each word as a brick, smashing against my temples. I was the one holding a gun, but I wasn’t about to shoot a defenseless old lady, and she looked as if she knew it.
“Do you know who I am?”
“I know you. I knew your whore of a mother.” Sweet Betsy Sinclare hoisted herself to her feet, hawked, and spat in my face.
Unexpected.
I reared back. Dried my cheek with the napkin and tucked it into my bag. “I gather you know that your husband and Sadie Rawson were lovers. You know that he killed her? And killed my father, too?”
“What I know,” Betsy snarled, “is that there was an accident. A mistake. A terrible mistake, that my family has been paying for, for more than thirty years. And it was over and no one knows and now you show up. And do this!” Her voice rose to a shriek.
I wanted to explain. Wanted to make her understand. But the drumbeat was back in my ears, cutting across her words, booming, Get out of here.
“Betsy, where do you keep rope?”
She gaped at me as if I were even crazier than she’d imagined.
“Or string? Ribbon?”
“What are you talking about? I’m calling the police.”
I raised the gun again. Through gritted teeth: “Where. Do. You. Keep. Rope?” She didn’t move. We were standing eight, maybe ten feet apart. “I’m begging you not to make this harder than it has to be.” Still she didn’t move. Okay, I take it back. Maybe I would shoot a defenseless old lady. Just in the foot, just as a warning. It’s true what they say. It gets easier after the first time.