24
"Daniel,” Abby said, and I saw her whole body loosen with relief. "Thank God.”
Rafe eased back, slowly, on the sofa. "Cute entrance,” he said coldly. "How long have you been listening at the door?”
Daniel didn’t move. “What have you told her?”
“She was remembering anyway,” Justin said. His voice was shaking. “Didn’t you hear? In the police station? If we didn’t tell her the rest, she was going to ring them and—”
“Ah,” Daniel said. His eyes went to me, one small expressionless flick, and then away again. “I should have guessed. How much did you tell her?”
“She was upset, Daniel,” said Abby. “Stuff was coming back to her, she was having a hard time dealing with it, she needed to know. We told her what happened. Not who . . . you know. Did it. But the rest.”
“It was a highly educational conversation,” Rafe said. “All round.”
Daniel took this in with a brief nod. “All right,” he said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Everyone’s emotions are running high”—Rafe rolled his eyes and made a disgusted noise; Daniel ignored him—“and I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by continuing this discussion right now. Let’s leave it for a few days, really leave it, while the dust settles and we take in what’s happened. Then we can talk about it again.”
Once I and my mike were out of the house. Before I could say anything, Rafe asked, “Why?” Something in the roll of his head, the slow lift of his eyelids, as he turned to stare at Daniel: it hit me, with a vague shapeless warning, just how drunk he was.
I saw Daniel realize the same thing. “If you’d prefer not to resurrect it,” he said coolly, “believe me, that’s fine with me. I’d be delighted never to have to think about this again.”
"No. Why leave it?”
“I told you. Because I don’t think any of us are in any state to discuss this rationally. It’s been an excruciatingly long day—”
“What if I don’t give a fuck what you think?”
“I am asking you,” Daniel said, “to trust me. I don’t often ask you for anything. Please do me this favor.”
“Actually,” Rafe said, “you’ve asked us to do a lot of trusting you, this last while.” He put down his glass on the table with a sharp little click.
“Possibly I have,” said Daniel. For a fraction of a second he looked exhausted, drained to the last drop, and I wondered how exactly Frank had kept him for so long; what they had talked about, the two of them alone in a room. “So a few more days can’t really do that much harm, can they?”
“And you were listening behind that door, like some gossip-starved housewife, for long enough to work out exactly how far I trust you. What are you afraid will happen, if we keep talking about this? Are you afraid Lexie won’t be the only one who wants to leave? What will you do then, Daniel? How many of us are you prepared to kill off?”
“Daniel’s right,” Abby said crisply. Daniel coming home had calmed her down: her voice sounded strong again, certain. “All our heads are wrecked; we’re not making sense. In a few days’ time—”
“On the contrary,” said Rafe, “I think I may be making sense for the first time in years.”
"Leave it,” said Justin, barely above a whisper. “Please, Rafe. Leave it.”
Rafe didn’t even hear him. “You can believe every word he says is gospel, Abby. You can come running when he snaps his fingers. You think he cares that you’re in love with him? He doesn’t give a damn. He’d get rid of you in a heartbeat, if he had to, just like he was ready to—”
Abby finally lost her temper. “Fuck you, you self-righteous bloody—” She shot up off her chair and fired the doll straight at Rafe, one fast vicious move; he threw up a forearm reflexively and smashed it away, into a corner. “I warned you. What about you? Using Justin when you need him—you think I didn’t hear him going downstairs, that night? Your bedroom’s under mine, genius. And then when you don’t need him, you treat him like shit, break his heart over and over and—”
“Stop it!” Justin shouted. His eyes were squeezed tight and his hands were pressed over his ears; his face looked like he was in agony. “God, stop it, stop—”
Daniel said, “That’s enough.” His voice was starting to rise.
“It’s not! ” I yelled, loud enough to cut straight across everyone. I’d been so quiet the last while, letting them run with it and waiting for my moment, that all of them shut up and whipped round to look at me, blinking, as if they’d almost forgotten I was there. “It’s not enough. I don’t want to leave it.”
“Why not?” Daniel inquired. He had his voice back under control; that perfect, immovable calm had slammed down across his face the instant I opened my mouth. “I would have thought you of all people, Lexie, would want to get back to normal as quickly as possible. It’s not like you to obsess over the past.”
“I want to know who stabbed me. I need to know.”
Those cool, curious gray eyes, examining me with detached interest. “Why?” he repeated. “It’s over, after all. We’re all still here. There’s been no permanent harm done. Has there?”
Your arsenal, Frank had said. The lethal last-resort grenade Lexie had left me, passed from her hand to Cooper’s to mine; the jewel-colored flash in the dark, bright and then gone; the tiny switch that had set all this in motion. My throat closed up tight till it ached even to breathe, and I shouted through it, “I was pregnant!”
They all stared at me. It was so quiet all of a sudden, and their faces were so absolutely still and blank, I thought they hadn’t understood. “I was going to have a baby,” I said. I felt light-headed; maybe I was swaying on my feet, I don’t know. I didn’t remember standing up. The sun streaming across the room turned the air a strange, holy, impossible gold. “It died.”
Silence, still.
“That’s not true,” Daniel said, but he wasn’t even looking to see how the others had taken it. His eyes were fixed on me.
“It is,” I said. “Daniel, it is.”
“No,” said Justin. His breath was coming as if he had been running. “Oh, Lexie, no. Please.”
“It’s true,” Abby said. She sounded terribly tired. “I knew, before any of this even happened.”
Daniel’s head tipped back, just a fraction. His lips parted and he let out a long breath, soft and immensely sad.
Rafe said softly, almost gently, “You bastard fuck.” He was standing up, in slow motion, with his hands curled in front of him as if they were frozen there.
For a second, taking in what that meant—my money had been on Daniel, no matter what he claimed to Abby—used up all my mind. It was only when Rafe said again, louder, “You fuck,” that I realized he wasn’t talking to Daniel. Daniel, still framed in the doorway, was behind Justin’s chair. Rafe was talking to Justin.
“Rafe,” Daniel said, very sharply. “Shut up. Now. Sit down and pull yourself together.”
It was the worst possible thing he could have done. Rafe’s fists snapped closed; he was bone white and his top lip was pulled back in a snarl, and his eyes were gold and mindless as a lynx’s. “Don’t you ever,” he said, low. “Don’t you ever tell me what to do again. Look at us. Look at what you’ve done. Are you pleased with yourself? Are you happy now? If it hadn’t been for you—”
“Rafe,” Abby said. “Listen to me. I know you’re upset—”
“My—Oh, God. That was my child. Dead. Because of him.”
“I told you to be quiet,” Daniel said, and there was something dangerous growing in his voice.
Abby’s eyes flicked to me, intent and urgent. I was the only one Rafe would listen to. If I had gone to him then, put my arms around him, made this into his and Lexie’s private grief instead of a public war, I could have ended it there. He would have had no choice. For a second I could feel it, strong as reality: his shoulders slackening against me, his hands coming up to circle me tight, his shirt warm and clean-smelling against my face.
I didn’t move. “You,” Rafe said, to Daniel or to Justin, I couldn’t tell which. “You.”
In my memory it happened so neatly, clean distinct steps, as if it had been choreographed to perfection. Maybe that’s just because I had to tell the story so many times, to Frank, Sam, O’Kelly, over and over to the Internal Affairs investigators; maybe it wasn’t like that at all. But the way I remember it, this is what happened.
Rafe went for Justin or Daniel or both, a straight headlong charge like a fighting stag’s. His leg hit the table and it toppled, high arcs of liquid glittering through the air, bottles and glasses rolling everywhere. Rafe caught himself with a hand on the floor and kept going. I got in front of him and grabbed his wrist, but he threw me off with one huge fling of his arm. My feet slid on spilled vodka and I went down hard. Justin was up and out of his chair, hands outstretched to keep Rafe off, but Rafe slammed into him full force and they both crashed back onto the chair, skidding backwards, Justin letting out a terrified moan, Rafe on top and scrabbling for traction. Abby got one hand twisted in his hair and the other in his shirt collar and tried to haul him off; Rafe shouted and heaved her away. He had his fist pulled back to punch Justin in the face, I was coming up off the floor and somehow Abby had a bottle in her hand.
Then I was on my feet and Rafe had leapt backwards off Justin and Abby was pressed against the wall, as if we had been blown apart by a bomb blast. The house was frozen, stunned into silence; the only sound was all of us breathing, hard fast gasps.
“There,” Daniel said. “That’s better.”
He had moved forwards, into the sitting room. There was a dark gash in the ceiling above him; a trickle of plaster fell onto the floorboards, with a light pattering sound. He was holding the World War I Webley in both hands, easily, like someone who knew how to use it. He had it trained on me.
“Drop that now,” I said. My voice came out loud enough that Justin let out a wild little whimper.