Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Istand in the backyard with one of Whitney’s journals pressed tightly against my chest, the worn leather warm beneath my palm as the late afternoon sun stretches long shadows across the grass.
The air is thick with humidity, heavy in a way that makes it harder to breathe, and the cicadas hum relentlessly in the trees, a steady, grating chorus that seems to echo the tension coiling tighter inside me.
Bennett tried to calm me down after the delivery this morning, tried to talk me through it with logic and reason, but none of it stuck.
The only thing that has taken the edge off, even slightly, has been too many mimosas and page after page of Whitney’s handwriting, each word pulling me deeper into something I am no longer sure I want to fully understand.
Phillip stands a few feet in front of me, his arms crossed loosely over his chest, his expression arranged into something that might pass for concern to anyone who doesn’t know better.
But I do know better. I see it in the small details he can’t quite control, the tension in his jaw, the sharpness behind his eyes, the careful way he measures every reaction before letting it show.
“Where is she?” I ask, my voice unsteady despite the force behind it, the words catching on the dryness in my throat.
My head aches from too much champagne and too little sleep, my nerves stretched thin enough that everything feels just slightly out of control.
Bennett is gone on his run, leaving me here alone with him, confronting something I can no longer pretend isn’t real.
Phillip tilts his head, slow and deliberate, as if he is trying to understand the question rather than avoid it. “I told you before,” he says evenly, “I don’t know where she is. Why are you coming at me like this?”
The calmness in his voice makes something inside me snap.
My hand curls into a fist at my side, nails biting into my palm as a surge of anger moves through me so quickly it feels almost physical. If I had something in my hand, anything at all, I’m not sure I would stop myself. That thought should scare me, but it doesn’t. Not as much as it should.
I thought I left that part of myself behind.
But it’s still there.
Waiting.
“Don’t you dare pretend,” I say, the words sharp, cutting through the space between us. “I know about the fights. I know about the screaming. I know what you said to her.”
For just a second, something shifts in his expression, something darker flickering beneath the surface before he smooths it away, replacing it with that same infuriating composure.
“If you have evidence,” he replies, his tone cool, almost bored, “then why aren’t you going to the police? Why are you standing out here accusing me in my own backyard?”
The question lands harder than I expect.
My throat tightens as I try to form a response, but the truth rises too quickly, too clearly. I can’t go to the police. Not without everything unraveling. Not without dragging the past into the light where it cannot be contained again.
Whitney wrote everything down.
Everything.
Including that night.
The memory presses in, sharp and immediate, and for a moment I can almost feel it again, the panic, the violence, the way everything changed in the span of a few seconds that never truly ended. She saved me. She ended it. And together, we buried it.
If I go to the police now, it all comes back.
Every last piece of it.
Phillip takes a step closer, closing the distance just enough to feel intentional, his voice lowering into something quieter, more insidious.
“You’re grasping at straws,” he says, almost gently.
“You’re upset, and I understand that. Whitney is missing, and you’re scared.
But this?” He gestures vaguely between us, a faint curl of disdain touching his mouth.
“This is irrational. You sound unhinged. Maybe that’s why Whitney was so worried about you. ”
The words hit with a precision that feels practiced.
“What are you talking about?” I demand, though my voice comes out thinner than I intend. “She wasn’t worried about me. She was terrified of you.”
He lets out a quiet laugh, low and humorless, and something in it makes my stomach turn. “Is that what you think?” he says. “You didn’t know her as well as you believe you did. She confided in me too. More than you’d like to admit.”
My pulse stutters.
“She was worried about you,” he continues, watching me carefully now, gauging every flicker of reaction. “About your state of mind. She told me how you cut ties with your family, how you walked away from them and never looked back. She thought you believed you were better than them.”
“That’s not true,” I say quickly, but the words land unevenly, weaker than I want them to be.
Because there is a version of that story that could sound like truth, depending on who is telling it.
And he knows that.
Phillip sees it the second the doubt crosses my face, and he leans into it, his voice smoothing out, almost reassuring in a way that makes it worse.
“She loved you,” he says, “but she was concerned. She thought you were slipping, that you were starting to see things that weren’t there.
Reading too much into things, making connections that didn’t exist.”
The anger in me flares again, but it is no longer clean. It is tangled now with something else, something colder, something that settles deeper and refuses to move.
Confusion.
Doubt.
Was she worried about me?
Did she say those things?
No.
This is him.
This is what he does.
But even knowing that, the words don’t let go. They linger, slipping into the spaces I can’t quite guard, making everything feel just slightly less certain than it did a moment ago.
“She was scared of you,” I say again, forcing the words out, but I can hear it now, the shift in my own voice, the hesitation I can’t quite hide. “Maybe she was going to leave you. Maybe you couldn’t handle that. Maybe you lost control.”
“So I what?” he interrupts smoothly, his tone edged with quiet amusement. “I killed her? Is that what you’re suggesting? That I got rid of my wife and somehow thought no one would question it?”
I open my mouth, ready to push back, to say something that will force him to react, but nothing comes. The certainty I had just moments ago feels less solid now, less sharp, as if he has reached inside my head and rearranged something I can’t quite put back.
I know what I read.
I know what Whitney wrote.
I know what I felt in those pages, the fear woven between the lines, the things she didn’t say outright but left just visible enough to be understood.
So why does it feel like it’s slipping?
Phillip steps closer again, his voice dropping just enough that I have to focus to hear him.
“If you want to ruin both of our lives,” he says quietly, “go ahead. Take those journals to the police. Tell them everything. But understand this. Once you do, there is no undoing it. No controlling what comes out. No stopping what follows.”
The implication lands before the words fully settle.
He knows.
Or at least, he suspects enough to gamble on it.
My breath catches, the weight of it pressing in all at once, and I hate that he can see it, hate that he can read me well enough to know exactly where to apply pressure.
Because he’s right.
If I go to the police, everything comes with it.
Not just him.
Not just Whitney.
All of it.
The past we buried doesn’t stay buried.
Phillip smiles then, slow and deliberate, something dark and satisfied settling into his expression as he watches the realization take hold.
“You’re sick,” I say quietly, the words scraping against the tightness in my chest. “You’re a monster.”
“And you’re not thinking clearly,” he replies, his voice flat now, stripped of any pretense. “You’re letting grief and guilt distort reality. I would suggest you take a step back and think very carefully about what you do next.”
The calmness in it is worse than anger.
I don’t trust myself to respond, not without giving him something he can use, so I turn away instead, forcing my legs to move even as everything in me feels unsteady. I cross the yard quickly, the distance between us stretching with each step, but his presence lingers, heavy and inescapable.
I won’t let him see me break.
Not here.
Not in front of him.
But as I reach the back door, my hand hesitates on the handle, and I feel it then, the fracture running beneath everything, the doubt he planted taking root whether I want it to or not.
Am I certain?
Am I remembering this clearly?
Or is he right?
No.
I close my eyes briefly, forcing the thought down before it can grow any stronger.
I know what I read.
I know what I saw.
I know what Whitney was trying to tell me.
I will not let him take that from me.
I push the door open and step inside, but before I close it, I glance back over my shoulder.
He’s still there.
Watching.
That same faint, knowing smile still in place.
I hate him.
Not in the way people say it lightly, not in passing, but in a way that feels rooted, permanent, something that settles deep and refuses to move.
But I won’t let him break me.
Not now.
Not ever.