Chapter 17 Guy #2
It’s the first time I’ve said the words, maybe even the first time I’ve really admitted it to myself, but it’s painfully true.
She hurt me. Used me and vanished without explanation, and whatever the reason was for leaving me behind, it doesn’t matter.
All I know is that it was more important than me.
Tears gleam in her eyes, but I won’t watch them fall. I won’t waste another damn minute on her.
“I’ll turn myself in.”
I shake my head and keep walking. “Go away, Monty.”
“Guy, I will. If that’s what it takes to prove to you that I’m sorry, I’ll do it! I’ll confess to everything.”
“You’ll incriminate me in the process!” I shout back at her.
The crunch of leaves tells me she’s running after me, and her small hands wrap around my wrist to tug me to a stop. “Please, Guy.”
“What do you fucking want from me?” I stop, pulling myself free from her grip. “I tried to make you leave, you insisted on staying. I asked you to stay, and you left! Why do you keep fucking with my head? Are you enjoying this?”
She wrings her hands together. “I’m not …
I’m not fucking with you. I didn’t lie to you.
I care about you; everything I told you I wanted was true!
I left that night because there was someone who had to die.
I had no choice but to do it. I was going to come back, try and explain, hope you’d forgive me but—”
“But what?” I challenge. “Tell me. Tell me why you fucking left!”
“Because you deserve better!”
The echoes of those words don’t die quick enough. They hang around, they taunt, and they make me pause when I shouldn’t. They make me foolish when I know better.
“You want to know me, Guy?” she asks, tears falling.
“You want to know the kind of woman I really am? Do you want to know Lina Fox?” She steps forward, her bottom lip trembling.
“My parents are dead because I killed them.” The heat of the summer evening becomes a cold snap against my skin, and I watch her.
“And not in a way that I feel responsible. I am responsible. I shot them both in their sleep. They didn’t abuse me.
Didn’t hurt me. They loved me, and I murdered them. ”
I shake my head. “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. I planned it all out. Made sure I was at a sleepover, and I drugged my friend so she wouldn’t wake up and find me gone.
I left her house in the middle of the night and ran back to my home.
I took my father’s pistol from the safe, and I shot them both.
My father in the forehead, my mother in the back of the head.
She didn’t even move. She was always a heavy sleeper.
” Her voice becomes monotone, and her tears stop falling.
“I stole some of their more valuable things, and as I ran back to my friend’s house, I dumped everything in a condemned well.
No one even knew it was on the property.
Not my parents, not the gardeners. I’d found it one day when I was playing hide and seek with my sister.
” She keeps her eyes on me. “They never suspected me. Never knew what I did. I had the perfect alibi, and I cried just enough, and I didn’t touch a dime of their money when I inherited it.
I donated everything. It was the perfect crime. ”
She’s so cold, so distant, so fragmented that I almost don’t know what to say.
“Why?” I ask, aghast. “Why did you do it?”
“Does it matter?” She moves closer, leaves and twigs crunching underneath her feet. “I killed Kate before she killed us, and you’re still horrified. Is there any reason I could give you that would excuse me killing my family? I’m no better than Richard Mason.”
She’s right. It doesn’t matter. If there was a good enough reason, her sentence would be lighter, but she’d still go to prison for this.
Lina wipes the sweat from her brow, wincing again, but this time I don’t ask what’s wrong.
And when she walks away, I don’t follow.
I don’t know how long I wait in the forest, attempting to process what Lina told me. I’ve always known she was capable of darkness, but killing her parents is far beyond anything I could have imagined.
As I begin my walk back to the cabin, I try my best not to think. I gave up trying to understand murderers a long time ago, so I don’t know why I’m trying to understand her.
Because I care.
I squeeze my eyes closed against the thought.
Yes, I care, but she’s far beyond a criminal now. That wasn’t murder for hire; it was just plain murder.
And why am I noticing the difference now?
Back in the cabin, I take a seat on the sofa and stare into the unlit fire. My conscience is biting at my heels, tearing at my insides, and I don’t know how to make it stop.
“Everything cleaned up?” Gable asks from the kitchen doorway. He’s in sweats and a T-shirt and is holding a glass of milk.
I nod, looking back at the fireplace. “Is Monty back?”
“Yeah, I think I heard the shower running.”
I expect him to leave, to deliver the milk to one of the twins, but he stays in place.
Running my hand across my beard, I sigh. “I don’t know how you did this for so long.”
To my surprise, he takes a seat on the armchair. “Killing?” I nod. “The alternative is much worse.”
I stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“Well, we’re not exactly what you’d call ‘normal’ if we do this for a living,” he admits. “There’s a reason we can kill and walk away. We have demons, and we have to feed them somehow. Why not do it with structure?”
Structural killing. That’s one way to put it.
“What are your demons?” I ask.
He places the glass of milk on the coffee table and leans back. “Only Ella needs to know that.”
“Because she lives with them?”
“Because she’s my reason for keeping them at bay.”
I clasp my hands together, a little unnerved that Gable has shared his darkness with my little girl. But I suppose that’s what a partnership is—sharing the angels and the demons.
“What if it isn’t about having demons?” I ask quietly. “What if it’s about being one?”
“You think that’s what Monty is?”
My exhale feels heavy. “I don’t know.”
“She isn’t,” he says, and I glance at him. “I’ve met darkness in my time, Guy, and so have you. She isn’t that. Twisted? Yes. Terrifying? Abso-fucking-lutely. But she fights her demons harder than I ever did. You can see it in her.” He stands. “Maybe you’ll be her reason for keeping them at bay.”
As he heads for the stairs, I take in his words, and I realize this is the longest conversation we’ve ever had without arguing. He’s my son-in-law, the man my daughter adores, the father to my grandkids, and I’ve never made this time for him.
“I’m sorry for giving you such a hard time,” I say. “And … for Ella. For not telling you Ella was alive.”
I’m still too much of a coward to look at him when I say it, but at least I finally did. Silence stretches, and I wait for the cocky remark, or maybe he’ll say nothing at all. I wouldn’t blame him.
“I forgave you for that a long time ago.”
Turning to look back at him, I examine his face to try to figure out if he’s being sarcastic. But he’s totally serious.
“You did?”
In the relative darkness of the room, Gable Flynn, my son-in-law, looks beyond me, as if he’s struggling to forgive me as much as I struggled to forgive him.
“Guy, the moment I held my kids in my arms, I tried to imagine someone doing to them what I’d done to Ella.
Putting them in danger, loving them when they deserved better, damning them to a life where they can never be truly free.
” He glances up the stairs, and his grip on the glass of milk tightens.
“And I think if I were you, I’d have let me rot in that cell. ”