Chapter Twenty-Two
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The address Blair gives me is several miles from Morgan’s house—not exactly close enough for Piper to keep tabs on him. As I climb the porch steps, the front door opens, and a woman steps out in leggings and a T-shirt. She startles when she sees me but quickly recovers.
“Are you Rosie? Blair mentioned you were stopping by. I’m Vanessa. Nice to meet you.”
I return the greeting and shake the hand she offers, wondering just how much Blair mentioned, if her fiancée knows we’re about to confront a possible killer.
I’m guessing not by how unbothered she seems as she flits by me toward her car. “Sorry, I’m late meeting a friend at the gym! Blair’s inside, though. You can go on in.”
I face the door she’s left open and it’s impossible not to flash back to the door I found ajar at Morgan’s house, on a night just like this, the sunset bouncing off the windows, keeping me from seeing what’s inside. I hesitate on the threshold, legs locked by that moment before the horrors began, until Blair calls out to me: “Come in before you let the damn cat out!”
I rush into the house and find Blair scooping up Sickle, who struggles in her arms. When I close the door behind me, she lets him jump to the floor and dash down the hall.
“He hates me,” she says. “Do you mind taking your shoes off? We had our floors redone last month and we’re still obsessive about them.”
“Sure, but—aren’t we going to Piper’s?”
“Not until you tell me why you’re suspicious of her in the first place. I’m not going in there, guns blazing, until I have all the information.”
I hesitate. “Are you actually planning on bringing a gun?”
“It’s a figure of speech, Rosie.”
“Oh. Right.” I slip off my sneakers, placing them on a tray that’s cramped with flats and heels and boots.
“Sorry, I’m kind of a shoe whore,” Blair says. “And terrible about putting them awa— Whoa, what happened?” She points to the bandage on my arm.
“What happened,” I say, “is the reason I’m suspicious of Piper. One of them, at least.”
At Blair’s raised brow, I explain what she needs to know: Piper’s hatred of Morgan, her conviction he killed Daphne, her connection to me and Edith—who, I add, was Morgan’s Rosie, “and even though Edith lied to him, I don’t think she killed him, because…” The intruder. The attack. The setup for Edith’s arrest. It’s on my last few sentences that my voice begins to rasp. I struggle to clear my throat and touch my neck at the grating pain.
“Jesus,” Blair says. “That Edith-slash-Rosie thing is fucking weird. And nothing you’ve said is really evidence against Piper, but I guess… she does connect a lot of the pieces. I had no idea she was friends with Daphne.” Her face bunches in anger. “If she really is the one who killed Morgan—I waved to that bitch just yesterday!”
I only cough in response, and Blair leans back, as if I could be contagious.
“Do you want some tea or something? I have this honey chamomile kind that’s good for throats. And I guess we should probably… figure out a strategy for double-teaming Piper.”
My words come out smoother, but still a bit strained. “That would be great, thanks.”
“Sure. I’ll be back. Sit if you want.”
As she heads to the rear of the house, I move deeper into the living room, where there appears to be a project underway. Empty picture frames and matting are laid out on the love seat, photos spread along the coffee table. Blair’s creating some kind of memorial for Morgan, selecting pictures to display, and it’s like her Instagram has come to life. I even recognize the photo I looked at earlier, the one of the two of them on their college green. But this version is larger, not cropped like it was online, and it allows me to see a new detail at the bottom of the frame: Blair and Morgan are holding hands.
I squint at their fingers—tightly knotted—then study an adjacent photo, which appears to have been taken on the same day. In this one, their hands are still clasped, but now Blair’s head is tipped onto Morgan’s shoulder, her face almost dreamy as she gazes up at him.
It’s an expression I’ve never seen her wear in other pictures or in real life. It’s so much softer. Sweeter. Completely unguarded. And as close as Blair and Morgan have always seemed in photos, there’s something else that’s different about her expression here.
It’s not the way you look at a friend.
A memory prods at me. Last night. Edith and me on my kitchen floor. What was it she said about Morgan? He told me he’s still friends with one of his college girlfriends.
I pick up the picture, look at their grip on each other, and it’s obvious: Morgan was talking about Blair. They were a couple once.
I circle the table, scouring the other photos for evidence of romance. I lean closer to inspect body language, hand placement, as questions spring up. How long did their relationship last? When did it go from love to friendship? Who was the one to officially end it?
The pictures offer no answers. All I see are the ways Blair has changed over the years, even more than Morgan, whose hair is simply shaggier in some photos. But Blair transforms. In their college days, she sports a platinum pixie, which she then grew out into something more wheat-colored and shapeless. Then there’s a sleek blond bob. Then, in sharp contrast to her lighter hair and barely there makeup, there’s her current look: bold eyeliner; heavy mascara; long, dark hair. A look that’s less like the woman Morgan dated in college—and more like the woman he married.
You’ve robbed me again and again.
My body tenses, Daphne’s words booming through my head.
Siphoned my love. My likeness.
I hold myself still as the line reverberates. My likeness. My likeness. Earlier today, there’d been something there, reminding me of Other Rosie. Of a person who’d appropriated my identity. I thought I’d been applying the poem to my personal experience. But maybe—
You won’t stop until there’s nothing left.
My hand is frozen around the photo of Morgan and Blair, my gaze stuck to the ones on the table. And now it’s Piper’s words that return to me, from the library the day we met. She said Daphne was “freaked out,” and she was sure it was because of Morgan. In a way, Blair corroborated that, suggesting Daphne’s behavior was about the sequel Morgan was writing. But as I stare at the photos of one woman who looks like another, a new theory emerges, souring my stomach: What if Daphne’s agitation wasn’t about Morgan at all?
What if Daphne was afraid of Blair?
“Okay, I’d let this steep a few minutes, but here you go.”
I whirl around as Blair reenters the room, holding out a mug to me, a tea bag draped over its lip. Her eyes flick from my face to the picture clenched between my fingertips.
“These photos,” I say. “You— Did you—” My words stumble as my mind keeps churning, working toward something it hasn’t articulated yet. I start over, back at the beginning. “You dated Morgan?”
“Uh, yeah,” Blair says, arm still extended to offer the tea. “Why, is that a problem for you?”
“And then you changed yourself, years later, to look like Morgan’s wife.”
Blair’s face is blank. But when she sets the mug onto an end table, she’s ungentle enough that liquid sloshes over the rim. “Daphne Thorne did not have a monopoly on dark hair.”
“You were still in love with Morgan, weren’t you?”
“What?” She shakes her head like it’s a non sequitur.
“You tried to be more of what he wanted. More of who he wanted.”
The disgust in my voice is as audible as the strain. I clear my throat—because that tone is hypocritical.
“I get it,” I add. “I’ve done it, too.”
I may not have dyed my hair or changed my makeup to appeal to a man, but I’ve altered myself in dozens of other ways. Filling my playlists with indie bands for Brad, memorizing lyrics to songs I didn’t even like. Watching hours of monotonous gameplay online, just so I could convince Gabe I was a cool gamer girl. Distressing a Patriots jersey so Tyler would think I wore it every Sunday, saying nothing when he threw an end table after a Super Bowl loss, even though he’d recently told me that girls “act insane” over Taylor Swift.
“You loved him,” I say, “so you tried to be like the woman he loved. Except—you terrified Daphne with that. She wrote a poem about you. One of her last.”
Blair’s gaze darkens. “What are you talking about?”
I recite what I remember, paraphrase the rest.
“She sounds like she thought you were going to hurt her,” I conclude.
“That’s bullshit, I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
I almost miss it. Her tone is so disgusted, so dismissive, that the meaning beneath it almost whizzes right by. But then her eyes jolt wide, as if she’s slipped up, blurted a secret, and the confession implicit in her statement bounces like an echo between us.
“But you did hurt her,” I say, speaking the confirmation aloud.
Blair opens her mouth, her throat creaking without words, her breath sputtering across her lips.
“Look,” she finally says, “ she came after me . I was defending myself!”
“She… attacked you? When?”
“She wasn’t even supposed to be home! I’d made sure she wasn’t. I was just going to slip in and out so I could— God, you’re going to twist this into something it’s not, but: Morgan had mentioned how Daphne had this new… scent. A body wash or perfume that made him want her like crazy. Had him pulling her into bed every chance he got.”
Blair’s lips twist like she’s tasted something bad. “He was always doing that to me. Talking about their sex life. Just to torture me, I think. Because—yes, I loved him, and he knew that. And that night I just wanted to see what this”—she rolls her eyes—“magical new scent was. But Daphne found me in her bathroom and freaked the fuck out. She said I’d been stalking her—which is ridiculous! We lived in the same town; I couldn’t help if we ended up in the same places sometimes! She accused me of trying to steal Morgan from her, but she stole him from me .”
Blair’s breathing intensifies, each exhale heavier than the last.
“Right before they met, he and I had started hooking up again. It had been like ten years since we dated—but that’s how strong the pull was between us; it was never really over. Morgan acted like it was no big deal, we were just having fun, but we both knew that was bullshit: it’s never casual when you sleep with your best friend. So I thought we’d finally be together—forever this time. Until suddenly he wanted to stop. Because of Daphne.”
She crosses her arms, paces a tight line between the couch and table. I take advantage of her distraction, glancing toward the door to gauge the distance.
“And I kept waiting for him to get sick of her, which is what he does. He starts to pick apart the things he once praised. And he was getting sick of her. He was sick of her trauma dumping. Sick of her complaining about what he decided to do with that trauma. Which was memorialize it. Daphne should have been fucking honored. He never drew inspiration from me.”
She pushes out another huff of air. “And it doesn’t even make sense—why would she care if I ‘stole’ him? She was always so tense around him, always so miserable about one thing or another. So why did she even want him?”
It’s a rhetorical question, but my mind—eager to dissociate from Blair, from this horrible story that can only end one way—conjures the answer: for some of us, bad love feels safer than no love at all.
“And like I said, I didn’t need to steal Morgan from Daphne. I just needed to remind him: he’d wanted me before, he could want me again. I could be exactly what he wanted. But that night, Daphne went on and on about how I was trying to make her look crazy because she’d figured out—”
Blair stops, eyes locking with mine, and for a second, I think she’s reacting to my movements, the way I’ve been inching from her as she speaks. But then she clenches her jaw, like she’s caging her words.
“Figured out what?” I ask.
She hasn’t blinked since she cut herself off. Her face is as tight as a held breath.
“It was so stupid,” she finally says. “Nothing for her to get so worked up about, just—” She shrugs. “Morgan wasn’t actually writing a sequel to Someone at the Door . I only told Daphne that to fuck with her. I knew she’d get upset and yell at Morgan and act all crazy and—” Blair pauses. “Ha. Okay. I hear it. I guess she was right; I was trying to make her look crazy.”
As Blair laughs, I force myself not to react, but the confession—not stupid; ruthless—zaps me like a live wire, my nerves blazing inside me.
“Not like she needed much help! I saw it firsthand, that night in her bathroom. She admitted to snooping through Morgan’s computer earlier that day, looking for his latest contract. She’d seen it wasn’t for a sequel. So she went off about that, too. Said I’d been gaslighting her, along with all her other accusations: I was stalking her, trying to be her, trying to take her place.” Blair laughs again, dismissive. “At one point, she even lunged forward like she was going to push me or something. So I pushed her first. Textbook self-defense. But obviously I didn’t expect her to crack her fucking head on the edge of the vanity!”
I reel back, staring at Blair—but I can’t even focus on her. Instead, the scene solidifies in front of me: the fractured skull, the bathroom tile, the blood. I’ve imagined it so many times, but only now do I feel like I’m in that bathroom with her. It’s all I see—Daphne’s body splayed, the white floor slowly soaking red—until the image shifts and I see myself, just a few hours later, the nurses at the hospital prepping me for surgery.
I can’t help but go there. Daphne’s blood haloing around her head is the only reason mine keeps pumping. I already knew that. Knew I’d have to live with that cruel, convenient equation. But now I’m standing in front of the person who caused Daphne’s injury. And I feel it in my heart, which is finally pounding—the loss of a woman I didn’t know until she was a part of me. A woman who spun her pain into poetry. Who was never loved the way she deserved.
“You left her there to die?” I ask, barely above a whisper.
“Not to die . I figured Morgan would rush in any second and help her. It would have been easy to deny it if Daphne accused me of anything—Morgan trusted my mind way more than hers—but it never even came to that. Because everything else I told you is true. Morgan said he heard a crash in the bathroom but didn’t check to see what had happened. And it’s not like Daphne was being quiet before she fell; he had to have heard her voice, too. So it’s interesting, isn’t it, how he completely ignored her? I mean, would he really do that to someone he loved ?”
No. Absolutely not. But there’s no time to dwell on that. I need to get out of here. Away from the woman who pushed Daphne to her death and isn’t even sorry.
I’m closer to the door than Blair is, but if she sees me run for it, she could try to pull me back. My eyes sweep the floor, mapping each step I’ll need to take. There’s about ten feet between me and the way out. I’ll have to grab the shoes Blair insisted I remove, but maybe I could… go for the mug of tea? Splash the still-steaming liquid in her face and escape while she’s—
A grating sound scrapes through the thought. I turn toward it and find Sickle scratching the hardwood, like there’s something buried beneath it.
Blair shouts before she leaps at him—“Not my floors, you little shit!”—and that’s all the distraction I need. I slide toward the door in my socks, reach down for my sneakers with one hand, grab the doorknob with the other.
And I freeze.
There’s a pair of boots beside my shoes. Black leather with laces and thick soles. I’ve seen dozens of women—and men—in boots just like them, but these are different.
These are ones I’ve seen so recently. These are ones with a scuff on the toe—shaped like half a heart.