Forever, Again

  I pushed away the thought and tried to focus on Cole. On me. On Lily Greeley. No, wait, that was wrong. Amber Bennett.

  I put my hands up to the sides of my head. Why couldn’t I get my name right?

  “Lily?” Cole said again, and I felt his hand on my arm. I closed my eyes, trying to get a grip.

  Why, Amber? I asked. Why are you doing this?

  “Hey,” Cole said. “Come on over here and sit down before you pass out.”

  I felt him guide me to the bed and sit me down, but my eyes were closed and I tripped a little on the rug. I plopped down indelicately and that helped to jar me back into myself.

  “Can I have some water?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. I heard his footsteps hurry away. Taking a few deep breaths I focused on my name. Lily Bennett. Lily Bennett. Lily Greeley.

  “Dammit!” I muttered, and opened my eyes to glare at the floor. “Get out of my head, Amber!” I whispered.

  But she wasn’t letting up. And then, I noticed something odd on the floor. The rug was now askew and there was something weird about the floorboards underneath. Amber bulleted into my thoughts again like a battering ram, and I sank off the bed to my knees with the force of it. Her attack on my psyche was so forceful that it stole my breath, but then it receded and I hovered there on all fours panting. I stared at the floor again and saw that I’d slid even more of the rug aside.

  Next to my hand was a very small latch. “Here,” I heard from above me. Cole had come back with the water.

  I ignored him and instead pushed the rug farther out of the way, then sat back on my knees, pointing to the latch. “Look,” I whispered.

  “Whoa,” he said, squatting down next to me. “What the hell?”

  Again Amber battered at my thoughts and my mind flashed with a memory of a window open in this very room, the rug pulled to the side, the trapdoor open and Spence frantically digging into the well, searching for something he’d never get back.

  “Lily?” Cole said. I was breathing hard again trying to fight Amber off.

  I didn’t answer him. Instead, I reached for the trapdoor and pulled it up. And there, in the light of the room, I could see something familiar. Lifting it up, I handed it to Cole.

  “Holy shit!” he said. “It’s the murder file!”

  I looked back inside the well. There were three pieces of paper there. One of them was splattered with small droplets of dried blood. I took that one out first and opened it carefully.

  I read the words out loud to Cole.

  Dear Amber,

  I know what I’m about to do won’t make sense to you, and you might hate me and never forgive me for it, but it’s the only way I can make sure you follow your dreams while I keep my promise to take care of Mom and Stacey.

  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.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” she said, stroking Bailey’s head
.

  I picked up the leash and gave it a slight tug. Bailey followed after me, and I never once looked back as I left the yard.

  I HEARD A SOUND COMING from the yard, but I was too focused on the letter I’d just read to Cole to pay it much attention. For his part, Cole had slid to the floor and was propping himself against Ben’s chest of drawers, looking like he might pass out himself.

  “How did it get here?” he asked me, pointing to the letter.

  I reached into the well again and pulled out another letter. I unfolded it, saw that it was the letter Spence had written to his mother, telling her that he’d taken his life, and he was out in the field by the high school, waiting for her to come and make it look like a murder so that she could collect the insurance money.

  I read it silently, my lower lip trembling before I handed it to him. He took it with shaking fingers and read it, too.

  Cole let his hand holding the letter fall to his lap. “Why?” he said, as if he couldn’t really fathom any of it.

  I reached into the well again and pulled up another piece of paper. Unfolding it, I saw that it was a series of letters, next to a sequence of numbers. The letters ranged from A to F, and I understood almost immediately what it was.

  I showed it to Cole. “The test key,” I said.

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he opened them again and picked up the first letter from his lap. “Whose blood?” he asked.

  Everything depended on the answer. We both knew that.

  “Amber’s,” I told him. I knew it as certainly as I knew my own name. Lily Bennett.

  I smiled sadly, and whispered, “Lily Bennett.”

  The moment the words left my lips, the pressure that’d been constant in my mind for these many long weeks lifted, and that overlap of consciousness that I’d had with Amber vanished. In an instant, I was once again Lily Bennett, and only Lily Bennett.

  “What are you doing here?” a voice behind us demanded.

  Cole and I both jumped and turned to find Mrs. Spencer standing threateningly in the hallway.

  Cole got immediately to his feet, holding tight to the letter from Spence with Amber’s blood on it. His grandmother’s gaze went to the note, then to him, then to me, then back to the letter again.

  “That’s mine,” she said evenly.

  “No,” I said to her, once again fueled by a burning anger for the injustice done to Amber. “It’s not. It belonged to Amber Greeley. And you killed her.”

  Mrs. Spencer’s eyes narrowed. They were murderous, and very quickly I realized just how dangerous she actually was.

  “I took care of Amber,” she said softly. “And I can take care of you, too, Little Miss Nosy.”

  Cole stepped in front of me. His grandmother was tall, but she was no match for Cole. “No, Gram,” he said. “No, you won’t.”

  “Cole, honey,” she said, wide-eyed and reaching for his hand, but he pulled it away. “This can all be fixed. No one has to know. We can make it look like an accident. She’s been having those anxiety attacks, right? We can make it look like she had another one of those while she was driving.”

  I sucked in a breath and backed away a step. Was she serious?

  “Lily,” Cole said firmly, keeping his gaze focused on his grandmother, “stay behind me. I’m not going to let her hurt you.”

  “Think of your mother,” his grandmother said. “She benefitted from that money, too, Cole. If this comes out, we’ll both have to pay it back!”

  “She won’t care,” Cole said. “And I’m really surprised you don’t know that about her, Gram.”

  And then the pathetic, whimpering old woman vanished, and Mrs. Spencer stood tall as she reached behind her and pulled out a gun.

  I squealed and shuffled back to the bed, but she trained the muzzle right on Cole.

  “Do you know what it’s like to shoot your own flesh and blood, Cole? Because I do.” She spoke in a voice so cold, so deadly, that it frightened me more than I could say.

  “I shot Ben while he was taking his last breath.” I gasped and her gaze flickered to me. “Oh, yeah,” she said, turning her attention back to Cole. “He was still alive when I got to him. And I wasn’t gonna do it, I swear I wasn’t, but then he said that whore’s name. Not mine. Hers. I didn’t even flinch when I pulled the trigger, and I loved that boy a whole hell of a lot more than I love you.”

  I cringed away up the bed until my back hit the headboard. It was hard to fathom someone so clearly psychotic.

  “I’ve also staged a robbery or two in my time,” she continued, “and no lawman has ever suspected that it was me. I’m just a lonely old woman who’s had a series of tragic things happen to her, and this’ll be just one more. The police will come, they’ll look around, and they’ll tell me as I cry on their shoulders that it was probably some drugged-up junkie who broke in here, started rummaging around my murdered son’s stuff when my only grandchild and his girlfriend walked in, and he shot them both. Tragic stuff happens to good people all the time. Maybe they’ll even set up a fund to help me while I grieve.”

  Cole hadn’t moved a muscle since his grandmother pulled out the gun, and while I trembled on the bed, he stood rigid and still. I didn’t know what was about to happen, but I prayed for Cole in that moment. With every ounce of me, I prayed that he could do or say something that would make her lower the gun.

  What he said next came out slowly in an almost gentle tone. “Gram, do you remember last summer when I went to DC and took that future-agents-in-training seminar at Quantico?”

  She didn’t answer him. Instead, she glared hard and raised the gun a little higher while her gaze focused on his chest. I thought she might’ve been aiming for his heart, which made me almost physically sick. She was considering shooting her grandson in the same place she’d shot her own son.

  “Anyway,” Cole said, and I saw that his stance had suddenly relaxed, “the agents took us through some weapons training on the last day we were there. And the funny thing about that gun in your hand, Gram, is that it’s not going to hurt anybody.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned.

  “Don’t believe me?” he said, widening his stance and crossing his arms. “Go ahead. Shoot me.”

  Something awful glinted in Mrs. Spencer’s eyes and before I could even shout, “No!” she extended her arm slightly and pulled the trigger.

  The gun clicked harmlessly.

  She pulled the trigger again and caused it to click harmlessly a second time. Then again. And again, until Cole reached out and grabbed the barrel, twisting the muzzle up and away. With his other hand he pried it out of her fingertips and tossed it to the floor. Then he grabbed his grandmother and held her by both wrists.

  Pulling her close to him he said, “You left the safety on, Gram. I’ll be sure to mention that to Detective Hasslett when he shows up.” Looking over his shoulder at me, he added, “Lily, could you get all the evidence together and the gun—use a sheet to pick it up so you don’t get your fingerprints on it—and head to the kitchen to call Detective Hasslett? Don’t tell anybody else but him what’s going on.”

  With my heart still pounding hard in my chest, I hurried to do just that.

  Several hours later, I sat in front of my own grandmother, my mother at my side, feeling nervous but determined.

  “Well, Lily,” my grandmother said tersely. “What is this little meeting that you insisted we have together?”

  I decided to go for the blunt truth. “I know about the lake house in Bumpass,” I said.

  My grandmother’s eyes narrowed a bit. “What about it?”

  “I know that David Bishop has been living there rent-free for the past thirty years, and that you’ve held that over my dad’s head as leverage as much as he’s held it over yours. It’d probably wreck your world to have it leak out that Dr. James Bennett cheated on his SAT scores and committed fraud to get into Yale. It could even lead to his medical license being revoked, right? And I bet it’d be ev
en worse for you if it also leaked out that you knew about it, covered it up, and persuaded the police to blame Amber Greeley for the murder of Ben Spencer.”

  Grandmother sat up and leaned forward angrily. “Such a petulant young lady,” she snarled. “What do you want, Lily?”

  “I want you to make up with Dad,” I said. “I want you to stop trying to control all of us. I want you to talk him into settling the divorce with Mom so that we can move out of the guesthouse, and then I never, ever, ever want you to get involved in our business again.

  “I don’t want to take over the Bennett enterprises,” I continued. “And I don’t want this estate or anything to do with it, except for one thing, which, to you, will probably be pretty small, but, to me, will mean everything.”

  Grandmother studied me for a long moment, at the end of which I could’ve sworn there was a hint of amusement and perhaps even pride in her eyes. “And that is?”

  “When I graduate from college, I want you to fund an animal rescue. A sanctuary for lost, abandoned, and abused animals. Mom and I will take care of building it, and I’ll run it, but I want you to fund it, and I want your name on it, too. I want people to know how generous and kind you are, Grandmother, because under all of that attempting to control the truth about what happened to Ben and Amber, I know that you have a real heart. Because of what you did for Gina Greeley when the grief of losing her only child nearly killed her, I know. And, I also know that you could’ve paid off David Bishop, but you knew he’d never get another teaching job, and he was probably a pretty lost soul, too, so you took care of him, as well. So it’s in keeping with that same charitable spirit of yours, Grandmother, that I want you to help a lot more souls. And I want you to get the credit, because it’ll be deserved.”

  My grandmother studied me for a long moment before she suddenly laughed lightly and brushed her nose delicately with one finger. Eyeing my mother, she said, “She gets that confidence from me, you know.”