The knowledge settled around me, a thick cloak knitted from the terrible secret I could never tell. I knew I must be an awful person to be this way, but once the realization came, I didn’t fight it any more. I sank into it, reveling in the thought, wondering just what Oliver might have done to end him.
Did he beg, the way I’d begged him? Did he fight for his life?
No, I decided. Oliver wouldn’t have got his hands dirty. It would have been swift, an unfair fight. Caught by surprise, just as he thought he’d escaped from me.
I hoped he regretted ever assuming I would just lie back and give him what he wanted.
I hoped he died thinking of me.
Ethan arrived home and called me right away. We made plans for that night, but Oliver found me first, like I knew he would. I was running my route around the lake, my breath fogging the early-morning air, when he fell into step beside me, matching pace for pace.
I didn’t speak for another mile until I felt the burn in my lungs and slowed, bending double in a clearing.
‘Did you have a very merry Christmas?’ Oliver asked, arch as ever.
I straightened up. ‘No,’ I replied, studying him. That night had shifted something between us too. I wasn’t intoxicated any more, breathless and off-balance. I still felt the curious pull, that desire snaking through me just to look in his eyes, but there was clarity too; hard-edged, cautious.
I knew his secret, and he knew mine, too.
‘Anyone ask any questions?’ Oliver began walking, and I followed through the woods. The path was frozen, but we hadn’t had snow for weeks. ‘About your dear professor.’
‘What kind of questions?’ I replied quickly, looking around. ‘It was an accident.’
Oliver turned, his lips tugged upwards. ‘Nobody’s here, Chloe. You don’t need to act the fool with me.’
His eyes met mine, dark and victorious. The truth was there, clear as day.
He’d done it.
He’d killed Ashton.
A wicked thrill spiralled through me ‘It was a tragic crime, miles away.’ I said carefully. ‘Nothing to do with us.’
He gave me an amused smile. ‘Someone’s learning fast.’
I held his gaze, bold. ‘I had an expert teacher.’
He laughed, walking for a moment before he spoke again. ‘You know, there was a chance you’d go running to your sheriff the minute my back was turned.’ Oliver said it conversationally, but I detected the faint thread of tension in his tone.
‘What would you do?’ I asked, on edge. ‘If someone did come asking about it.’
He paused, looking thoughtful. ‘I could run, but running says you’re guilty. Far better to stay and stick it out. See if they could get anything on me. I doubt it. The police in this town . . . ’ He rolled his eyes. ‘Please. I was careful, I didn’t leave any loose ends.’
‘Except me.’ I realized with a shiver.
Oliver turned. ‘Except you,’ he agreed.
My heart beat faster. We were standing here, talking about a murder and cover-up as if it was no big deal, and the most chilling thing of all was that it wasn’t, not to me.
Not any more.
Now, I met his eyes and wondered about Ashton’s final moments all over again.
‘Ask me.’ Oliver leaned closer, knowing in an instant the question I was holding back. He knew, he always knew. ‘Don’t you want to know?’
I bit my lip. Would anything be as good as the deaths I’d imagined for Ashton, the many dark scenes I’d played out in my mind since then?
‘It didn’t take much,’ Oliver added, dropping a kiss on the hollow curve of my neck. I shivered. ‘You did a fair amount of damage yourself,’ he whispered. ‘Poor guy was barely walking.’
His lips lingered over mine. I caught my breath, barely moving, feeling the light shock of his touch.
‘But you were careless,’ he whispered against my mouth. ‘You left a scarf in his car.’
I jerked back, my blood rushing in panic. I saw police and sirens, lawyers and a cell. And questions, so many questions--
‘Relax.’ Oliver laughed, looking amused. ‘I caught it. The scene was clean. I don’t make mistakes.’
I wondered for the first time if he’d done this before, but then he was kissing me, hard and slow, and I realized I didn’t care. I felt the adrenalin crackle through me, exhilarating.
‘We got away with it,’ I whispered, feeling a secret thrill. Oliver looked at me with an expression I couldn’t decipher. ‘What?’ I asked.
He shook his head slowly. ‘I just . . . I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d be like this.’
‘You thought I’d be guilty and weeping?’ I challenged him boldly. ‘You told me not to pretend any more.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ Oliver watched me. ‘And here you are, the real Chloe. At long last. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.’
He took my hand and bent his head, touching his lips to my knuckles in a grazing kiss.
He lifted his eyes to me, bright and victorious. ‘What fun we’re going to have.’
We ran, steady, along the rest of the loop, emerging from the woods that bordered the back of my house. I opened the kitchen door, and he followed me in to find Mom trying to make tea, mopping spilled milk off the table.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, shrinking back. ‘The carton slipped.’
‘There, there.’ Oliver spoke up. ‘No use crying. Spilled milk, get it?’
I quelled him with a look before turning back to Mom. ‘It’s OK, I’ll clean it up. Did you eat?’
She nodded. ‘Toast and honey.’
‘Good.’ I nodded. ‘Go to the craft room now, you can watch TV until lunch. I’ll finish this.’
‘Thank you, sweetie.’ Mom managed a trembling smile before slipping obediently from the room. When we passed her on our way upstairs, she was sitting quietly, knitting yet another scarf.
Oliver arched his eyebrow. ‘Look who’s behaving,’ he drawled.
‘She just needed some incentive to keep it together,’ I told him, closing my bedroom door and stripping off my jacket. ‘It’s either me or a psych ward.’
‘Why don’t you pick the latter?’ Oliver sauntered closer, slipping his arms around my waist. I breathed him in, the shiver of connection that laced us together. ‘You should commit her, it would get her out of your hair.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘She’s depressed, not crazy.’
‘So, what’s the difference?’
‘I just can’t. Not in a place like that.’
‘You’re going to have to leave her eventually.’ Oliver pulled me back towards the bed. ‘A month from now, or a year from now, you’ll go. The only difference is how much time you’ve wasted here, waiting around for her miraculously to be healed.’
I shivered at the picture his words painted. ‘Another year? God, I’d rather kill myself.’
Oliver’s lips quirked in a smile. He lay back and I climbed beside him. ‘That’s rather unproductive. And unnecessary. You can escape this life without it being permanent.’
I looked over.
‘Disappear,’ Oliver continued. ‘Change your name, start fresh somewhere.’
‘But I like my name.’ I leaned closer and bit down lightly on his shoulder.
Oliver made an impatient sound. ‘Chloe doesn’t suit you.’
‘What’s wrong with it? I think it’s a pretty name.’
‘Pretty, sweet, nice.’ Oliver announced them like cardinal sins. ‘But we both know, you’re none of those things.’
His eyes caught mine. I caught my breath. ‘Are you saying I’m not pretty?’ I teased him.
‘You’re fucking beautiful and you know it.’
I felt my cheeks colour. Even after everything, he could still affect me, right to my bones. ‘So what should I be called, O wise one?’ I said lightly.
‘Hmm, let me see.’ Oliver studied me, propping one hand under his chin in an exaggerated pose. ‘Something bold a
nd dramatic, I think.’
‘Scarlett,’ I suggested, smiling. ‘Juliet. Boudicca.’
Oliver shook his head impatiently. ‘You’re . . . Vivian.’
I blinked. ‘Vivian is my middle name.’ I sat up, thrown. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I know all sorts of things about you.’ Oliver smiled up at me. ‘Anyway, you’re missing the point, Vivian. It’s already listed on your birth certificate. You wouldn’t even have to get it legally changed.’
I laughed again. ‘Now wait a minute, who said anything about legal stuff?’
Oliver looked at me, as if I was talking crazy. ‘If you’re going to be Vivian, you need to do it properly. No use half-assing when you’re creating a whole new identity. You want your mom showing up out of nowhere?’
I felt a flicker of unease.
‘Let’s not talk about it any more,’ I said quietly, tracing circles on his chest. ‘I’m not going anywhere, not right now.’
‘But you can’t stay here.’ His voice was quiet. ‘It’s killing you, slowly, every day. I see it when you’re with him.’
He didn’t say Ethan’s name. I hadn’t asked him not to, but somehow, it had become the unspoken rule.
The loose end. The one thing still keeping me from Oliver.
‘He loves me.’ I said it matter of fact. I didn’t have to pretend to be guilty or shameful, not with Oliver. ‘He tells me all the time.’
‘Of course he does.’ Oliver pulled back, angling his head to look at me. ‘You’re the best thing that ever happened to him,’ he said, almost amused. ‘But he’s just another mediocre thing that’s keeping you down.’
‘Don’t,’ I said, but he sat up.
‘You really don’t see it, do you?’ His eyes were hard on mine. ‘Your potential, what you could be if you just let them all go. Your mom, Ethan, everyone holding you back, making you pretend to be less than you are.’ Oliver gazed at me and I could see the promise there, the glimpse of something brighter.
I ached for it, that other life. At first, it had been wistful, a soft and melancholy kind of longing that drifted over me, late at night; but every day that passed now, it grew sharper, taking on a life of its own. It was demanding. It refused to be silenced.
Why should you be stuck here, playing nursemaid for the rest of your life? it asked me, every time I fixed her dinner. Why do you have to worry about pleasing everyone else? Whycan’t you get what you want, just once?
‘We should get going,’ I said. ‘I have to go to work.’
‘Not yet.’ Oliver’s hands stopped me, closing around my body. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, his lips resting against the curve of my neck.
‘You could come with me,’ his voice whispered.
I froze.
His hands roamed lower, possessive.
‘Where?’ I said softly.
‘Anywhere. It doesn’t matter. New York. LA. London. Europe. I know people all over.’
I closed my eyes, letting myself sink against him, into the sensation of his hands, and the vision he was promising. Gone from here, from Haverford, and with him . . .
No guilt. No hiding. Free.
‘One day,’ I promised myself.
His hands left me, and suddenly I was alone in the cold.
I turned. He was already at the door. ‘Don’t wait too long, darling.’ Oliver gave me a look. ‘I’m not like baby brother. I won’t hang around here for long.’
After that, I knew, I couldn’t stay. I was drowning there. This town had made a liar of me; an adulterer, a caged animal chasing my own tail.
A murderer.
More and more these days, I felt like a bundle of broken edges bound together with razor wire, swallowing down the sharpness, painting on a smile. I would find a way out, a way to be with Oliver, before he left me here for good. Before the cage burst open and the person I was hiding broke free.
So, I sat down at the table where I’d made that first, desperate plan, all those months ago. I dragged out Mom’s old address book and flipped through the pages, looking for answers. She was an only child, fallen out of touch with her college friends, drifted apart from the couples she and Dad had known as newlyweds.
It was useless. She had nobody who really cared but me.
But maybe I was looking at it all wrong, I realized hopefully, looking at the dog-eared pages. I didn’t need someone to agree to take her on; after all, I never had. I just needed the door to open, for someone to invite her in.
I called Mom’s cousin Carol in Atlanta, anxiously drumming my fingertips on the table as we exchanged pleasantries and fake laughter. She was in her forties, still unmarried. They’d had some kind of rift, years ago, and now, the only contact was the Christmas card that arrived every year, showing Carol with her arms raised on the finish line of her latest charity fundraising marathon; sinewy and determined.
‘We’re planning a trip,’ I told her brightly, tracing the beaming face on the front of her latest card. ‘Just a little getaway, Mom’s been down since the divorce, so I thought this would cheer her up. We’d love to come visit.’
‘Oh. Sure.’ Carol’s instinct for hospitality took over. You didn’t turn away family, it wasn’t polite. ‘I’d love to see you both. I mean, you wouldn’t be staying long?’
‘No, just a night or two,’ I reassured her. ‘We’ve got tons to see!’
I hung up with a promise to send our flight details so she could meet us at the airport. But I knew, only my mom would step off the flight.
Everything was falling in place, but still, I felt that treacherous pang of guilt. The pages of my plan were spread around me. I had last month’s paycheck coming and money set aside for household expenses. I would get by just fine, but what about her? Could I really send her off to be somebody else’s problem, wash my hands for good?
I walked silently to her bedroom and cracked the door. She was sleeping, tucked under the covers, motionless in the dark.
My mother. My anchor.
I felt a sob rise up in my chest. Despite everything, I didn’t want to leave her, but I knew, I couldn’t do this any more. I could feel my love for her being choked away with every passing day, stifled under the sheer weight of her helpless need. I was snapping at her more often now; every tiny little irritation a spark to my endless reserves of anger.
I didn’t like the person I was becoming around her, so impatient and brusque. I didn’t want my last well of affection to be smothered clean away. It would be better this way, I told myself, silently closing the door. It wouldn’t have to be forever. Maybe Carol could succeed where I had failed: sell the house, get Mom into a treatment centre. She was a grown-up, after all. She would know what to do.
All I knew was sending Mom away was my only chance of escape, to get away from this town. My heart ached for everything we’d become, but I knew, I’d spent too long trying to fix her, to hold what was left of this family together.
I called Oliver from down the hall, lowering my voice to a hush. ‘Next week,’ I said, hearing the finality in my voice. ‘The eighteenth. I’m leaving. Are you in?’
‘I already have plans for New York.’ Oliver sounded amused. ‘I’m going to stay with friends.’
New York. I felt a shiver of pure desire at the words. Busy streets and endless sidewalks. Bookstores and bars, and a whole world on one tiny island.
‘ Can I . . . come?’ I asked, hating that I needed to ask permission, feeling the weight of my future hanging on those few words.
Silence stretched, long enough to chill my blood, but then Oliver’s voice came again, amused.
‘I suppose there’s always room for one more.’
I hung up and stood there in the dark, my breath coming fast, feeling the wide expanse of possibility open up in front of me for the first time in what felt like forever. My world had been shrinking every day, penning me in, but this time, it felt wide open.
Some pieces couldn’t be glued back together. Some people weren’t for f
ixing.
Sometimes, the only thing to do was burn the whole fucking world down and start again.
Weber finally agrees to let me leave the hospital to pick up fresh clothes and supplies. Still, he’s not so lax as to let me step foot outside alone. He sends Blake along for company. ‘Protection,’ he says, but we both know the truth, it’s for him, not me.
I’m restless, still picking polish off my fingernails as Blake drives me silently through the dark neighbourhood and pulls up outside my house.
‘You need any help?’ he asks, already reaching for his cellphone.
I catch a glimpse of Candy Crush on-screen, and shake my head. ‘No, I won’t be long.’
‘Uh-huh,’ Blake murmurs, already absorbed. I feel the same spike of resentment that I do every time he’s around. He’s moved on from Crystal’s death with barely a backwards glance. Nobody called him wrong or bad, they just sighed over the tragedy, and said how brave he was to keep going.
Would they be so kind to us about Oliver?
I open the door and step inside, my mind already racing. Annette may be backing up my version of events, but until Ethan wakes up, I’m the only one left unscathed to face the questions.
So many questions.
I’ve been in slow-motion for hours now, but suddenly, there’s a panicked itch in my veins; the haze of shock and waiting giving way to something sharp and insistent, crying out for action. I race upstairs and go straight to my closet, pulling down the duffel from the top shelf. It’s already half packed, so I throw it on the bed and go to my dresser, yanking open drawers and hurling things on to the bed in a blind flurry. Underwear, shirts, jeans. I have the money I put aside to leave with Oliver, some of Mom’s credit cards if I need. They won’t get me far, to the West Coast, maybe. A big city, somewhere to lose myself in the crowds. A place nobody knows my name, the way I always wanted.
And then what? And then what?
I sink on to the bed, still clutching a sweater. I look around the room, at my books and trinkets, the framed photos on the dresser and the old stuffed toys on the shelf: a life that feels already like it belongs to someone else.