Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Bradley. The rock. Grace falling to her death.
I wake late and find my phone and Bradley’s laptop on his side of the bed. My phone is dead, but there’s a sticky note inside the laptop with a password.
I quickly log into my email and social media. There’s an onslaught of messages. I send perfunctory responses to some friends from college and ignore the group chats. I’m surprised there’s nothing from Neil in my texts, but then I remember that I blocked him.
I have over two hundred emails, but most are newsletters and spam. I manage to delete nearly all without a response. At the top of my inbox are three remaining messages—one update from LinkedIn, one newsletter from a nonprofit about penguins, and one update on my student loan.
I’m about to delete all three when I have an idea. I log in to LinkedIn, then type ‘Caroline Marcus’ into the search bar. There are a few dozen results, so I filter to Canada—and suddenly, there she is.
Caroline Churchwell, now Caroline Marcus. Alive and well. I click on her profile and open a DM.
My name is Brie MacKenzie, and I’ve been living with Grace and Bradley at Pine Ridge. Can we talk?
I enter my phone number, press send, and close the tab. I stare at the remaining two messages, then reluctantly log in to my student loan account. It’s time I faced reality. I have trouble finding the balance, so I click on the list of transactions. I refresh the page twice to confirm.
“Shit,” I whisper. “No.”
My balance is now zero.
Zero.
I no longer have a student loan. Someone’s paid it off in full, and there’s only one potential culprit. I can hear him brushing his teeth in the ensuite.
“What did you do?”
“Morning, sunshine.” He comes into the room wearing only a towel. A toothbrush hangs from the side of his mouth like a cigarette. “How did you sleep?”
“I got an interesting email this morning. About my student loan.”
“You’re not looking at a screen, are you?” he says in mock-disgust. “Don’t you know those things spew radiation? They’re literally poison.”
“Shut up.” I’m irritated by his chirpiness. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since he killed his wife. Shouldn’t it torture him? He must have hated her more than I thought. “Was it you?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“That’s an insane thing to do. How could you afford it?”
“I moved some money around. I can absolutely afford it, or at least I will be able to once the estate is settled.”
He drops his towel and gets changed in front of me. I look at the scar Grace gave him. It’s long and vertical, like she was trying to gut him like a fish. Only a few inches to the side, and she would have killed him.
“And?”
“And you shouldn’t have done it.”
“That’s a strange thank you.”
“I’m not sure it is one.”
“I know it’s a shock to get something you want and for life to go your way, for once.” He finishes getting dressed, then jumps onto the bed. I squeal in surprise. “But you should get used to it. From now on, you’ll have whatever you want. Every single day.”
“I don’t need this. It’s your money, not mine.”
“It’s ours. I really want you to believe that. I know this is a lot, but I meant what I said. I’ve fallen in love with you.” He kisses my cheek, then holds out his hand. “Come down for breakfast.”
“Give me a second.
As he leaves, I try to convince myself that it’s sweet. He couldn’t wait to make a grand gesture. But for the payment to be confirmed in my account now, he must have made it last night, the same day he killed his wife. Or even the day before. And it feels wrong to take Grace’s money like that.
My mother’s voice rings out, so clear that I half-expect her to be standing in the room behind me.
That’s your conscience talking.
Still, I’m relieved. I’d had nightmares about that loan. At least once a day, I’d feel my chest tighten at the prospect of paying it back.
But more than relief, I feel that sense of excitement. Because, despite my conscience, I want this life.
I want her life. I wanted it since my first day at Pine Ridge.
It’s terrible to admit. Does it make me a bad person? She was going to kill me. In a way, this is justice being served. It’s like a fairy tale. The evil witch has been killed, and now the servant girl is free to marry the prince.
But if that’s true, why won’t the voice of my mother shut the hell up?
I go downstairs in my pajamas, and I find a full lunch waiting for me, including scrambled eggs, fruit, fresh coffee, and a bottle of champagne. Bradley pulls out my seat for me, then places a rose beside my plate.
“What’s all this for?” I say, unable to stop myself from smiling. “You didn’t need to do this.”
“Of course I did.”
“Eggs? I thought those were verboten,” I say, remembering Grace’s pescatarian diet. “Still no carbs, though.”
“Out with the old,” he says absent-mindedly, leaning back with his coffee. “I was thinking of you this morning and how I came over to the cottage at night. It reminds me of this poem by Robert Browning. ‘A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch, and blue spurt of a lighted match.’”
I resist the urge to say he didn’t actually do that—not when I was expecting him, at least. I waited a week for him at night, and he never came.
“‘Two hearts beating each to each!’” He grins. “Isn’t that really what life’s all about? The excitement of sneaking into the room of a lover. The scratch on the window. The risk, the anticipation!”
I smile at his boyish enthusiasm. Grace’s words come to mind once more. He is a boy, in many ways. Boyish enthusiasm. Boyish charm. Boyish appetites.
“What happens when you no longer need to scratch? It won’t be like this forever.”
“We can cross that bridge when we’re old and decrepit.”
“Aren’t you afraid we’re crossing it now?”
“Not at all! Never!” He takes another sip of coffee, then a bite of eggs, before standing. He has the restless energy of a hummingbird. “I’d show you right now if I had time. I’d sweep everything off this table. But I need to make a phone call.”
“Who?” I ask, without thinking.
It’s a silly question—I barely know anything about Bradley or who he might talk to. I don’t know the names of his parents or friends. I don’t even know where he grew up.
He pulls his cellphone from his pocket and starts to dial.
“It's time I called the police.”