Chapter Forty-Seven
My words came out calm and detached. Inside, everything had gone quiet. "You framed Mia for murder. I thought it was Alexis, then Peyton, and then Chloe, when she came over and used the bathroom, but it was you."
I imagined Rowan in my house, in Mia's room, placing the rock, tucking it among the smooth stones and colored glass like a viper coiled in a garden. Knowing the arrest warrant was coming, what the police would find.
I recalled how Apollo had behaved strangely, sniffing several spots inside the house, acting agitated and anxious. I thought he was responding to Mia's distress, but it was more than that. Rowan had been inside the house. Visitors always riled him up.
"You had the spare key when Brooke gave it to you before Thanksgiving. You made her think she hadn't remembered correctly when she brought it up that day, but she had. You must have made a copy before you gave it back. That was months ago. Do you make copies of all your friends' keys?"
Rowan stared at me blankly for a tense moment. Then her expression shifted. Not in panic, not yet. Something softer, wounded. She took a small step back, one hand pressed to her chest. "Dahlia. Sweetheart. Listen to yourself. How can you say such hurtful things? Why would I do any of that?"
But I knew now, without a doubt.
"Mia didn't go back down the bluff to murder a child. And neither did Chloe." I held her gaze. "But you did."
"That's absurd. Why would I possibly want to hurt Leah?"
"To protect Chloe. And yourself."
The air between us felt sharpened, honed to a dangerous edge.
"I care about you," Rowan said. "We all do. That's why I'm trying to help. But you're not thinking clearly right now. You need rest. I hate to say it, but perhaps a clinic, a therapeutic retreat—"
"You would do anything for your daughter, wouldn't you? Even kill a teenage girl who was still alive, who could tell everyone the truth. Leah found out about Chloe. Leah uncovered who your daughter really is."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You couldn't have that. You couldn't allow your perfect life to blow up. Everyone would know. You'd be the one ostracized. Whispered about. Laughed at. You'd be canceled. You couldn't allow it."
Rowan blinked rapidly. A blue vein pulsed at her temple. "I think you should leave."
"What happened?" I asked. "After Leah fell and Mia went inside crying, thinking she'd killed her best friend, did Chloe climb down the bluff and realize Leah was still alive? She went to you for help, didn't she?"
"You're projecting. Imagining things. You're clearly unwell, Dahlia."
"Peyton was awake. She saw you and took pictures. She hid the camera. I found it."
Rowan went rigid. "How dare you come here and make vile accusations against my daughter and me? How dare you!"
My throat was dry, but my voice held. "They aren't accusations. They're the truth. Each is photo is time-stamped. At 3:32 a.m., someone went down the bluff. At 3:36 a.m., the same person came back up with a rock in her hand. It was you."
"A few blurry shots at night?" she asked, shaking her head as if disappointed in me. "That could be anyone."
"The photos are clear. So is the video."
"Grief does strange things to the mind. First Marcus, now Mia's situation. Of course, you're creating stories to shift your own blame."
"Admit it," I said. "Give up the lies. You've been found out."
Something rippled across her face: a calculation, a pivot, a new mask. She leaned toward me, her voice was softer now, like velvet over sharp teeth. "It doesn't have to be this way."
I stiffened. "What way?"
"We can figure this out, you and me. Mother to mother.
" She smiled the dazzling gala smile, the one that used to make me want to be her.
"Give me the camera. I'll destroy it. I'll have Chloe alter her statement.
Leah slipped, Mia didn't push her. Chloe's testimony is the key to the prosecution's case.
Memory can be faulty. It can change, clarify. "
She moved a step closer. The fog wrapped around us in a thick blanket.
Her voice turned intimate, conspiratorial.
"We can make this go away. I'll retain Radcliffe & Simon, the best criminal defense attorneys in Michigan.
Mia never sees a cell. Not for murder, not for manslaughter, not for anything. "
The world narrowed to her voice. "I'll put two million in a trust for you and Mia. You will never worry about bills again. I'll have my accountant clear your debt by Friday, with a substantial college fund for Mia. You will be comfortable. Safe. One of us."
Numbers gleamed like lures. I saw tuition bills vanish, a new sea wall, the crumbling bluff shored up. I saw Mia in a sunny dorm room, laughing with girls who didn't look past her to what we lacked. I saw us not drowning. I saw us living, free and happy.
For one terrible heartbeat, I felt myself tipping toward yes. How easy it would be to capitulate. How simple.
Rowan knew exactly what she was offering. Not just money but belonging. The shining thing I'd chased my whole life.
I imagined what it might be like if I handed over the camera and the rock. If I let the fog swallow Leah's last hours as she bled and suffered, her desperate hope that someone would come to save her.
If I let Rowan make it disappear, let Mia walk free while Leah stayed buried in lies.
Vivienne's face surfaced in my mind. Her hollowed, flayed grief. And me, years from now, looking at Mia across the dinner table, knowing what I'd done, what I'd taught her about truth and consequence and the cost of loving someone.
The weight in my chest turned hard as the rock in my hand. I straightened my spine and met her eyes as I felt something settle inside me. Not peace, but certainty. Resolution. "No."
Her lip curled in disdain. In a blink, her whole face turned ugly. The speed of the transformation chilled me to the bone. "She'll go to prison. You'd do that to her? What kind of mother are you?"
The kind who tried to do the right thing. Who didn't always succeed, but who kept trying anyway. "Mia did push Leah. She did cause harm, though she didn't mean to. She'll accept the consequences, and I'll be there beside her, every step of the way. We won't hide. We won't lie."
Her mouth flattened. "How much do you want? Name your price. I'll write a check now."
"I don't want your blood money."
"You're throwing away your daughter's future. And your own."
"Chloe is going to watch you go to jail for thirty years," I said. "She's going to see you for exactly what you are. A killer."
"You think you have the high ground, Dahlia? Please. Spare me." She took a step, then another, closing the space between us. "You walk around with your nose in the air like you're better than us. You think you wouldn't do anything to protect your daughter?"
"No," I said. "I wouldn't." Almost anything, but not that.
Her smile sharpened. "You're nothing. You know that, right? I made these women accept you. I took you in, told everyone to tolerate your frumpy thrift-store clothes, your disgusting neediness, your ugly shack sliding off a cliff, as pathetic as you are."
Once, those words would have flayed me, destroyed me. Not anymore.
Rowan loomed over me, a vicious glint in her eyes. This was who she truly was.
I tried to take a step back. I realized abruptly that I couldn't. Vertigo slithered through me. Somehow, through our discussion, Rowan had shifted me nearer to the bluff. I was less than a foot from the edge.
Below, invisible in the fog, the steep drop-off lurked. The treacherous fallen logs, the lethal rocks, the spiky branches. The same perilous bluff that had broken Leah's body.
"Enough of your games." Rowan sneered. All pretext had vanished. The tendons stood out on her neck, her eyes bulging with fury. "Where's the camera, Dahlia?"
"In a safe place. You'll never touch it. It's over."
Rowan bared her teeth. "Tell me where it is or so help me—"
"What? You'll smash my skull, too?"
The fog slithered around us, between us. The houses around us might as well have been a hundred miles away. Damp tendrils of hair clung to my cheeks. "You murdered a child, Rowan."
"She was dying anyway! She would've been brain-dead. I ended her suffering." She said it like she was describing putting down a sick dog. "I did Vivienne and Daniel a favor."
There it was. Deliberate, calculated. Rowan had climbed down that bluff, found Leah broken and suffering, and decided her life wasn't worth saving. Decided it was easier, cleaner, to murder a child.
Mercy, she called it. As if she had the right.
I stared at her, sickened. "By crushing a child's skull with a rock."
"I protected my family!" Her chest heaved. "I did what any mother would do."
"Stop. Just stop with the lies. You were protecting yourself."
Her beautiful features twisted into something grotesque. The blue vein pulsed in her forehead. "Give me the camera, Dahlia."
I was done here. I'd gotten what I needed. The naked truth exposed between us, finally.
I attempted to step around her, back toward the house, toward solid ground. Away from her. "It's over, Rowan."
"No!" Rowan lunged for me. Her right hand closed around my throat. Her face inches from mine, cheeks flushed pink, eyes bright with a feverish light. "You don't decide what happens. You don't know what I've sacrificed. What I've had to do to build this life!"
Fear sliced through me. I was inches from the edge. The unstable ground shifted beneath my feet. I felt it soften and start to give.
I clawed at Rowan's wrist with my free hand. My vision tunneled. White spots danced in front of my eyes. My lungs screamed, I couldn't get air. I couldn't speak, couldn't say the words that would save me.
Panic surged in my chest. I was about to fall.
"You're nothing," Rowan snarled, her breath hot on my face. "Just like that stupid girl. She was a parasite. A waste. A nobody. She didn't get to destroy everything I've worked so hard for. Neither do you."
Her hand clenched tight around my throat. With her other hand, she snatched the rock in its plastic bag from my fingers. Then she shoved me.
The world tilted. My heels skidded in wet grass, my feet scrabbling in desperation. The edge crumbled under my shoes. Chunks of earth tumbled into nothing, the sound swallowed by fog and distance.
The same edge Leah had gone over. The same drop. The same fall.
Rowan raised the rock above my head.
I scratched at her face. My fingernails raked her cheeks. Rowan screamed. Her grip loosened. I wrenched free, twisted sideways, and fell to my knees. “Help!” I croaked.
"Stop!" A voice shouted through the fog. "Police! Hands where I can see them!"
Rowan's head snapped toward the sound. I scrambled backward to safer ground. The world wavered. My breath tore from my bruised throat, my body shaking and dizzy, like I needed to lie down or I might dissolve into a puddle of nothingness.
Fifty feet to the south, Detective King appeared from behind the line of pines that separated Rowan's property from Mrs. Atkins's. He sprinted toward us, holding a gun in both hands. "Rowan Westinghouse, don't move!"
Several more officers appeared as they sprinted toward us, all armed. Detective Callahan brought up the rear, speaking urgently into a walkie-talkie.
Alarmed, Rowan stepped back. The rock hung loose in her hand. Her eyes widened with shock, fear, and calculation: how long he'd been there, what he'd heard.
Relief hit me so hard I nearly collapsed.
Safe. I was safe. The plan had worked.
Her cold gaze fell on me. "What did you do?"
My voice rasped, my throat burning, but I could speak. "I called Detective King last night. I showed him the camera. The rock. Everything."
I confessed all of it, the things I’d done and the things I’d learned about Whitney and Peyton, Alexis and Brooke, Chloe and Rowan. And my own failures. Every single dark and dangerous thing.
Only now did I allow myself to think of the wire Callahan had placed on me early this morning, hidden so discreetly at my underwear line that only a professional would have caught it, maybe. And Rowan, despite her considerable ego, wasn't as smart as she thought she was.
"You didn't find the wire I'm wearing. The police heard everything."
Before Rowan could react, King advanced toward us. The gun was trained on Rowan. "Move back. Step away from Ms. Kincaid. On your knees, hands behind your head. Now!"
Rowan dropped the rock as if it had branded her palm. She frantically searched for an exit, an escape, a chance. There was none. Reluctantly, she lifted her hands, palms out. "You can't be on my property! I didn't permit it!"
Callahan grinned. Those sharp eyes were focused on Rowan now. "Mrs. Atkins was more than happy to host us."
I scrambled to my feet, rubbing my raw throat as I glanced over at Mrs. Atkins's house. The fog had lifted enough to reveal a figure standing in the second-story window. Mrs. Atkins waved at me. I managed a small wave back. "Turns out not everyone adores you like you think, Rowan."
"Detectives." Rowan's signature smile came back, smooth and gracious. "You know who I am. This is all an unfortunate misunderstanding. This poor woman is hysterical. Unstable. She's been stalking me, desperate to blame anyone but her psychotic daughter for Leah's death—"
"Turn around," King repeated, ignoring her. He lowered the gun and removed a pair of handcuffs. "On your knees. I won't warn you again."
She did, carefully. "You're making a huge mistake."
King cuffed her wrists. She flinched as if he'd struck her. "Rowan Westinghouse, you're under arrest for the murder of Leah Cho."