Imogen
The alarm still screams from the house behind me, even through the rain, as I run down the stairs toward the dock. I barrel down them, taking two at a time in the dark, hands clutching the rails as wind whips my hair.
I could’ve gone back around to the front of the house, back toward the Holloways’. But Parker would have followed me there. If he saw Madison or Amelia…
I couldn’t risk it.
So I chose the only path that veers away from everything I love.
Somewhere, police cruisers are already spinning into gear, but I need to isolate Parker until they get here. Assuming he’s following me…
The motion lights ignite when my feet slam onto the dock, flooding me in an aggressive white light. It’s like standing in a spotlight, exposing me to the outside. The lake below is black and swirling against the shoreline in clobbering bursts.
When I get to the dock, I see our fleet. The pontoon boat sits locked, useless without the keys. The pedal boat is half submerged, full of brown rainwater. That leaves the kayak: overturned at the edge, light enough to drag, unstable enough to drown me in seconds as the waves crash against us.
I think of Mom. Of her hair lashing across her face that night, fumbling for this same battered kayak in a storm similar to the one I’m up against.
The thought solidifies something. She was running that night, hurried. Was she running from Parker? Was he the young man at the tavern with her? Was she trying to drive him away again? Threatening to spill his secret?
My chest shakes out a sob, feeling helpless and disoriented.
I look at the boats again, weighing my options. Jumping in the kayak wouldn’t just be dangerous, sucking me out into the knotted waters. It would draw Parker back upstairs—either to hurt the girls or flee.
I’m trapped here, on Mom’s dock. There’s nowhere to go.
“Imogen!”
The voice rips through the air, and I spin around toward the hillside.
Parker is at the bottom of the staircase now, a lanky silhouette limping toward me. Rain runs off him in rivulets, his soaked sweater pasted to his stretched frame, eyes mad.
I grab the kayak paddle from the ground, gripping it like a weapon.
“What did you do?” I scream across the wind. Lightning slashes open the sky in a streak of violet-white, and thunder bellows after it like a drum. “Did you kill my mother?”
The word mother cracks in my throat, tears mingling with the rain on my cheeks.
Parker’s lip twitches as he steps onto the dock. “She was trying to keep me away from you,” he shouts back. “She found me, back in August. Said if I didn’t stay away, she’d call the cops. She wanted to destroy everything for us. You should be thanking me.”
The words hit like a blade in my chest. Mom died… trying to protect me. And I never even knew she was in danger. She was out here alone, terrified. And I wasn’t there to fight for her.
Wrath fills my blood so suddenly it nearly knocks me off my feet.
My teeth chatter as I walk backward like I’m on a plank, the lake’s mist spraying against my ankles as I near the edge. “Why did you come back here?” I yell.
“I needed to get out of Seattle. I think you know why,” he spits, and I guess he’s talking about Madison. “What better place to start over than here? Where it all began.”
“Where what all began?” I roar. “I didn’t even live here anymore. There is no us,” I scoff.
He steps closer. “You have—well, had—ties here. I knew I could get you to come back.” He smiles. “That’s where Alice came in.”
I flinch at her name.
“Don’t you hear me?” he yells. “She was trying to keep us apart. As was my own mother, it turns out. They both had to go.”
I’m speechless. Devastated. Sickened. There’s no response anywhere in me for something like this.
But I have to keep him talking. Until I see the police.
“So you were watching her?” I ask. “You were in the house with her, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” he says, low, hardly audible. “At first… it was harmless. But I started to wonder if she sensed me in the house. When I knew she wasn’t going to accept me, I went in to do…
what I needed to do. But she was still awake.
” He looks behind me at the lake. “I had to chase her down here. I didn’t have a choice! ”
Parker continues to cross the dock slowly, one long step at a time—
hand clutching his stomach. I adjust my grip on the paddle, tightening my fingers around the shaft.
“So… what do you say?” he asks. “Don’t let this all be for nothing. Don’t let your mother die in vain.”
I see right through his calculative nonsense. His sick way of trying to twist madness into romance.
When his stomach is inches from the tip of my paddle, I thrust it into him, ramming the rounded tip into his belly. He folds, spitting bile onto the dock.
While he’s huddled, I bring the paddle down again in vicious swings, my words spitting out in rhythm with each blow to his head.
“This! Ends! With! Her!”
The world goes fuzzy and my lungs can’t seem to catch air. I crash to my knees next to Parker, a panic attack taking over.
But before I can pull myself together, Parker lunges at me.
I stumble backward off the dock and plunge into the lake, my entire body sinking beneath the surface—and I can’t believe how cold it is.
The water is glacial, feels like knives on my skin as I desperately try to find up from down.
I lose myself in the waves, my limbs freezing up, accidentally breathing in, choking.
When I finally break the surface, I only manage to get one gasp of air in before I vomit lake water.
My hands flail until they find the wooden edge of the dock.
But the instant my fingertips clutch it, Parker stomps down on my nailbeds.
Pain screams in my knuckles as I squeal and slip under again, bubbles gurgling out of my mouth.
I thrash against the waves, descending deeper into the lake.
Looking around me, I’m desperate for outside forces to step in.
I don’t know how much longer I can fight this.
My eyes meet the sprawling windows of Harrison’s house across the lake, and I remember what Rachel said about her view of Mom’s dock.
Maybe she, or someone on her side of the lake, can see what’s happening over here.
But Harrison’s living room is dim, and he’s nowhere in sight. He’s not standing at his telescope, watching me like he probably did throughout my childhood to feel some type of connection to our family. He’s not down on the dock coming to my rescue. My father is not coming to save me. He never was.
And I don’t need him to.
I swim back toward my dock.
My body is going numb. I need to get out of this water. Parker is standing at the edge, staring at me, saliva spilling off his lips.
“Stop this!” I beg.
For one moment, impossibly, he listens.
Parker reaches his trembling hand down toward me, his dark eyes pleading.
I see the little boy he once was—lonely, lost, and for half a second, I falter—truly realizing the difference between him and me.
I have empathy, compassion, care. But even deep down, those aren’t qualities he hosts. He’s a monster, through and through.
I snatch his hand and use my remaining strength to pull him into Lake Blair with me. The surface erupts between us, foam and rain colliding as he plunges under. I kick away from his sinking shape, chest burning, legs fighting to keep me afloat as the waves splash against my face.
Instead of swimming away, I dive on top of him. My hands slam into his shoulders, forcing him down. His weakened body bats against me, and he almost breaks free. But I push harder, screaming into the storm.
“This is for my mom!” I bawl, shoving him under the water with a newfound force.
My arms quake, but something holds me steady. I see a delicate pair of hands lying atop mine, and I know I must be hallucinating. But I hold on to the visual for as long as I can, feeling a warmth radiate through my body. When I look above the waterline, following the hands… I see her.
My beautiful mother.
She’s smiling with a look of determination.
You got this, baby girl, she whispers, and I don’t care that it’s only inside my head. It feels real.
I see her. I feel her. Among the chaos.
“I love you, Mom,” I sob, the words tasting like salt. I hold on to the visual as long as I can, knowing I will never see her again.
And that is all the motivation I need to end the man who took her from me. Because with one final surge, Parker stops resisting. His body loosens, and my hands release.
Mom is gone.
Parker’s body bobs on the surface, face down, half sunken, and he floats toward Sawyer Dam.
Guilt cuts through solace.
Why me? Why was I able to outrun him, to shove him under, when Mom couldn’t?
I tread toward the dock, thrust my body out of the water, and collapse on the wooden platform, the alarm still wailing from the house.
I can’t help but worry he’ll crawl out of the water and follow me. Like he was playing dead.
Still, I hike up to the driveway and break into a sprint for the Holloways’ house.
The street remains sleepy, and I worry something went wrong.
That the police aren’t on their way. But when I spot Madison and Amelia, huddled out of the rain on the Holloways’ porch, I hear a blooping police cruiser.
I jog back out to the street, flagging them down.
“Here!” I scream, waving my arms above my head. Amelia limps over, Madison hanging on to her.
Two patrol cars skid to a stop. The first door flies open and Officer Wright barrels toward me, radio at his mouth.
“Dispatch, this is twelve. Arrived on scene. I need medics rolling, stat.” He approaches me. “Miss Bly? What’s going on?”
I can barely form the words, my lungs still ragged from the lake. “He… Parker Lane. He had us. I think he’s dead. Down at the lake.”
My words get bungled, fragmented pieces of the story flying out of me.
The officer behind him whips his flashlight behind me, blaring against Amelia’s and Madison’s faces.
“Wait,” he says. “Holy… Is that Madison Tory?”
After enduring a check of our vitals and stumbling through our statements, Amelia and I are finally allowed to leave the paramedics’ side. The air is still damp, but the rain has thinned to a drizzle.
Down the cul-de-sac, red and blue lights strobe across the street as officers move in and out of Mom’s house. Here at the Holloways’, Madison is propped on their front steps under a blanket, an oxygen mask loose at her chin. The sight of her out here, free, alive, is difficult to process.
Amelia pulls me into a hug, and I go limp against her.
I almost tell her about Harrison, but when I glance at her pale face, her cheeks stained with mascara after I told her our mother was murdered, I decide that she doesn’t need another blow right now. I’ll tell her about it later, when we can breathe again. For now, all we need is each other.
We always have.
“I want to see if one of these officers will let me use their phone so I can call Wes,” Amelia says softly, swiping her cheek. “Are you gonna be okay for a sec?”
I nod, and she squeezes my hand, heading toward Officer Wright. Only getting a few feet away, she turns back to me.
“I’m so proud of you.”
The words make me inexplicably emotional.
Pride isn’t made for people like me. Not after what I’ve done tonight, not after what happened to Mom. I’m trying not to blame myself but finding it impossible.
What I did to Parker didn’t feel heroic. It felt feral. Like something broke in me that I’ll never be able to put back together.
But all I can do is nod faintly, because if I open my mouth, I might break completely.
I hear wheels skitter down the driveway behind me and turn to see two paramedics carting a body bag out of the Lanes’ house.
Meredith.
When I turn, I catch sight of Rory. He and his parents are talking to a uniformed officer, Harrison nowhere in sight. Figures.
The second Rory’s eyes find mine, he breaks away, coming straight to me.
He wraps me in a hug so tight it almost buckles my knees. It’s exactly what I needed.
“Are you okay?” he murmurs into my hair.
I fall into his warmth, breathing in his familiar smell, grateful to be alive, grateful to be in his arms again.
“I think I will be,” I whisper.
I don’t know how long it will take, how many new nightmares I’ll endure. But I’m determined to find the light. For me. For Mom.
He leans back, eyes sweeping over my tattered appearance. “Madison Tory is outside my house… I thought I was seeing a ghost. They told me everything… and that you saved her?”
“It’s all such a blur right now,” I manage. “I couldn’t have saved her without Amelia, though.”
He brings me close again, planting a peck on my forehead.
Thinking of how wrong I’d been about Rory yesterday, how much I took his kindness for granted, I pull him into a long kiss.
“Can we start over?” I ask.
He laughs lightly, shaking his head at me like I’m ridiculous. And I know I am.
Rory shrugs. “I heard you live in Seattle,” he says. “Maybe I can take you on a date there.”
“I’d love that,” I say softly, burying my face in his chest again.
A voice slices through the air farther up the road toward Mom’s house, an officer yelling, “We got a body! Confirmed DOA.”
Dead on arrival.
I release a heavy sigh, emotions mixing—relief, fury, exhaustion. They’ve found Parker.
Rory wraps his arm around me, anchoring me to the earth.
And somehow, as I peer around at the little street I grew up on, the place that raised me and nearly ruined me, now bathed in red and blue strobes, littered with death, I feel something shift inside me.
I sense a pulse of something I thought I’d lost: the idea that tomorrow won’t be worse than today.
This season of sinking—its hardship, its haunting—will live in my story.
But I am determined to stay afloat above the wreckage.