Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
She saw it. There’s no doubt in my mind.
How could I be so stupid? I cleaned the whole house, but I left the condom wrapper there, like a trophy, waiting to be discovered.
I walk to the door, then pause. I saw her shine the lamp at the bed. But would she automatically think I’d used it with Bradley? I told her about Neil, after all. The simplest explanation for the condom is that Neil came over and we fooled around.
The more I think about it, the calmer I get. It was dark, even with the lamp. And though it kills me to think about it, if Bradley sleeps with her tonight, she’ll have no real reason to believe it was him.
Still, it’s a mistake. How many more am I going to make before the summer ends?
I think about leaving, but I know that my situation hasn’t changed.
I still don’t have any money or anywhere to live, and I still have an obsessive ex-boyfriend who wants me back.
I don’t want to go back to my old life. Something about Pine Ridge, and the way these people live, their unbelievable freedom—I want that for myself.
I go back inside and lie in bed with my Kindle. I browse through my library. Without an internet connection, I can’t buy any new books, which leaves me with a bunch of old thrillers and nonfiction books about animals, or Grace’s book.
The Last Date.
I finish the novel in the early hours. It’s about an undergraduate, Carli Cross, who spends her summer working on a farm in the Midwest. The farm is owned by a beautiful couple. After a few false starts, Carli has an affair with the husband, Chad.
It doesn’t take long for the wife, Anna, to find out. She scares Carli a few times, including locking her in the basement, before leading her husband into the forest during a storm and pushing him over the edge of a cliff.
She sets up Carli for the murder. After a lengthy trial, Carli gets off and starts a new life with her new boyfriend. They move to Canada to escape their past, and Carli changes her name.
She thinks she’s safe, but one day, Anna turns up and kills her.
The novel ends with Anna living with a new man, advertising for a new student to help with the farm over the summer holidays.
The ad reads:
Help needed. Rural homestead.
When I get to the ad, I instinctively throw the Kindle onto the ground, as if it were cursed.
It is the exact wording from the ad I responded to on campus.
I grasp frantically for my torch, then swing it around the room like an insane person, as if Grace were waiting in the corner, knife in hand.
It’s just her idea of a joke, I tell myself. She thinks life is art. I’m like a character in one of her novels.
And what happens to those characters? a voice inside asks.
I close my eyes, leaving the torch on, and tell that voice inside to shut the hell up.