FEBRUARY 2003
JOEL INGRAM WAS DEAD, OF COURSE.
I hadn’t really doubted it. It crossed my mind—as I pulled Harper into my room and shut the door firmly behind her, that maybe this was all some plot for revenge, to humiliate me after my win.
She was shaken, and clearly scared, and let me haul her across the threshold with such ease that I didn’t care.
If this was a ruse, fine. I’d have rather been wrong than to have left her like that.
I would have rather choked on my own humiliation than close the door in her face.
(What did my humiliation matter anyway, when she’d pried it from me so often?
It was nothing to her tears. To the potential of her need.)
“What happened?” I asked—because if I did not truly consider it false, I also did not consider that the blood might be hers.
She just stared ahead.
“What room are you in?” I demanded.
She still didn’t answer.
“Harper,” I barked, and she jolted so suddenly she stumbled back, cowering at the sound. I reached a hand out to steady her, guilt twisting in my gut. I couldn’t handle her vulnerability, it upturned everything, to the point that I softened my voice and asked again: “What room are you in?”
“Three … Three eleven.”
“Okay, good.”
I held my hand out for the key, but she didn’t move, so I had to prise it from her fingers myself. There was a moment, as our palms brushed, where she clutched at me, nails digging tight.
(She needed me. She’d built a world without me, but she’d come running. Stripped back to raw fear, to incessant panic, and here she was, clinging to me. I didn’t know what to do with that—with her—other than, of course, anything she needed of me.)
She let go, stumbling back, dazed.
I looked down at the blood coating my hand, her fingerprints swept across me.
My mouth was dry. This was evident incrimination.
But it was Harper, and where her name was said, mine echoed beneath.
We resounded within each other, were already stained—and perhaps there were moments to turn around, to stop this, but I was in this from the moment I pulled her across the threshold, and there was no thought there.
Just instinct. Harper and everything about her—us—was impulse.
So I ripped the plug from the still-filling bath and let it drain before guiding Harper to the bathroom. She moved without hesitation, wherever I guided her, and I curled my fingers between hers as she climbed, still in that elegant green dress, into the bath.
When the water hit her, she didn’t even flinch. But I noticed it wasn’t just the shower trailing water down her face—tears beaded at the corner of her eyes and whatever shock she was in was evidently beginning to fade.
“I’ll be back,” I promised. “Just stay here and get clean.”
(“I didn’t know where else to go,” that was the thought ringing in my head. Harper who had everything, when it came down to it, only had me.)
I grabbed a towel and stopped to pull my own clothes on as hurriedly as I could—tossing the robe onto the bed and switching into a set of gym wear.
As expected, a smear of blood streaked the door where Harper had knocked, and I quickly wiped it off before starting along the hall and down the stairs to the third floor.
And then I stood outside 311, took a breath, and reached for the handle.
Conveniently, Joel had fallen across the bed.
I wasn’t in shock, not like Harper. But I think her need for help had thrust me into some sort of agentic state, where everything I felt and thought was pushed aside until later, and there was only the cold path of what needed to be done. Of what she needed to be done.
It wasn’t quite a hero complex, if that’s what you imagine. I did not think I was saving her, even if just from the consequences of her own actions. A man was dead, his corpse before me, the iron tang of his blood searing the air.
A man was dead, but a girl was crying in my shower, and that seemed the bigger tragedy.
All this to say, I’m not defending myself. I won’t pretend it wasn’t the fucked-up decision of a notoriously fucked-up girl. But there I was.
The corpse registered like a prop, like an extra in good makeup.
It didn’t feel like what it really was—even with the mark of death unmistakable.
Trellis was a cozy crime film, one that glossed over the more repulsive parts of death, but I’d been so overzealous I’d done my research.
And here it all was: the loosened bowels and bladder, the spray of the blood that would point to exactly what had happened, even the knife curled in his own hand, and I just knew he’d yanked it out of whatever wound it was plugging himself.
A tray of room service lay discarded on the side, a half-eaten steak and the dregs of a salad. I looked back at the body—yes, that looked like a steak knife.
And that’s what finally broke me—the sight of that steak and the knife in his hand. I knew how meat felt underhand, the sawing blade tearing through it.
Had Joel’s flesh felt the same?
I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle the wail that threatened to escape, moaned into my own skin as I stared at the body of the man Harper had—apparently—so dearly loved. She’d done this. Had taken that knife and …
How? I couldn’t see it. Couldn’t picture that knife in her slender hand—despite a dozen weapons wielded in films or trick blades clutched on a CADS stage. All I could see instead was Harper at my door, stained in blood, her eyes scared, and desperate and pleading.
(Only I was allowed to bring her to tears. Only I could bring her such devastation. She was mine to hurt, not whatever this was. Not—)
(I’d dropped to my knees. I’d bound my throat with that lace.
I’d chosen the route that burned, repeatedly.
Claimed there were no other options, but there were.
There were—I just liked the way it ate through me.
The push and pull—so if she was lying, if this was all a prank, then once again here I was, walking into it for the thrill of her victory, knowing mine would be next.
But that was really truly a dead man so—)
(No one else’s love was as delicious as Harper’s hatred. Her attention, no matter the cost. And now her need, her debt, her helplessness—)
(No. None of them felt quite right.)
I didn’t know. I didn’t know why.
Harper was the center of my world and those pillars I’d crafted—ones of loathing and rage and vengeance were dissolving. It was all coming crumbling down and there was only her, at the middle still.
Harper needed me. It was the only thought that could cut through.
So I pulled the edge of the sheets over Joel as my thoughts calmed—promising myself I could process it all later, like this wasn’t a well-trod path: pushing my feelings down until they were so loud and angry and crying out for relief they broke free of their cage and tried to break me too.
The sort of thing only a pill could quiet.
Oh god, I wished I wasn’t sober. Numb I might manage this.
As it was, I clung to Harper’s need and felt quite the opposite: not numb but aflame. And I let that fire push me forward into a plan.
I couldn’t move Joel alone, but I didn’t know what state I’d find Harper in when I went back upstairs, so I made sure Joel was entirely covered by the sheet, in case looking directly at what she’d done sent her back into bright-eyed shock.
I didn’t need that Harper right now—I needed the calculating diabolical bitch who’d have a plan for getting away with this.
I skirted around the drying pools of blood, but there was no way to avoid it completely. It was even on the ceiling, on the lampshade above where the body lay.
I found Harper’s suitcase and gathered her some clothes: cargo trousers, a soft dark gray sweatshirt, a bra, mismatched socks, her beloved combat boots, and of course she only packed thongs. It was probably all she wore. She probably claimed they were more comfortable.
Frankly, if she had a G-string up her ass all these years it would explain a lot.
I grabbed her washbag too, took a final look around the room, and snagged Joel’s key from the side before shutting and locking it, like that simple turn of a bolt might solve everything.
———
I knocked on the bathroom door in case Harper had decided to undress, but she called, “Yes?” like this were a passing visit.
“I have clothes for you,” I said, opening the door a crack and sliding it all through.
“Oh. Thank you.”
Thank you! Like this were all so perfectly normal. I stretched, walking back and forth along the hotel room, as the panic swelled again. We needed to clean, we needed to move the body, we needed to not be two of the most recognizable faces in the world …
The door twitched open and Harper strode through, her wet hair was plastered back into a ponytail, but her lips were still that deep plummy red. She clutched a half-translucent bag with green gleaming beneath. Her gown, wrapped in the liner of the bathroom bin.
She looked at me with the same uncertainty I was feeling, and I went to speak, to ask her … anything. But then she took another step, and the light above hit her, illuminating a cut that ran right from her cheek to her collarbone.
I don’t recall closing the distance or deciding to reach out, just that suddenly my hand was on her, half-soothing and half to tilt her head back toward the light for a better look.
The scratch was especially deep along her face, drawing down and skipping part of her neck before it petered out, skin fraying at its edges.
“Did he do this to you?” I asked. I sounded strange, even to my own ears, a forced calm that betrayed everything beneath it—the hurt and fear and so much anger.
“Yes,” she said simply, then looked away. “But only … during.”
Ah. I couldn’t fault him that then, I suppose. But I looked at her, and I did, I very much did fault him. I was glad he was dead.
“Alright,” I said, forcing my hand down—I hadn’t realized I’d still been holding her. “Before we do anything else we need to clean your room.”