Chapter 29 #2
"He killed her," Ethan said. The words were wet and thick, pushed through a throat that had been screaming and crying and holding back eleven years of rage. "You heard what he said. He killed her."
"I heard," Ben replied. "And so did Kelly. We all heard it. He confessed. He can't take it back."
Something shifted in Ethan's posture. A fraction of uncertainty entering the rigid line of his arm. Kelly saw it. She held her breath.
"It won't matter," Ethan said. "He'll get a lawyer. He'll get out of it. People like him always get out of it."
"Not this time." Ben's voice didn't waver. "The law will deal with him. That's what should happen. He should have to face it. Every day, in a cell, for what he did to Lori."
Ethan made a sound. Not quite a laugh. Not quite a sob. Something between the two that was worse than either.
"It will make me feel better," Ethan said, and the gun steadied. The tremor stopped. His arm locked.
Kelly's heart seized.
"For a moment," Ben said. Quiet. Certain. "For one moment, maybe. And then you'll have to live with it. Every day after that, you'll carry it. Is that what Lori would want? For you to carry that?"
The name landed differently than anything else that had been said. Lori. Not "her." Not "the girl." Lori. The name of the person Ethan had loved. The person he was doing this for.
Ethan's face crumbled. The locked arm began to shake again. Worse this time. Visible tremors that ran from his shoulder to his wrist, the kind of shaking that happened when the body and the mind were pulling in opposite directions.
Rob let out a whimper. An actual whimper. The sound a cornered animal makes. Kelly looked at her brother, kneeling on the asphalt in his expensive suit with his tie askew and his face a ruin of tears and snot, and she felt something she'd never expected to feel in this moment.
Nothing.
Not rage. Not pity. Not satisfaction. Just a vast, empty nothing where her brother used to be. As if the person she'd known her entire life had been replaced by a stranger the moment those words came out of his mouth.
My hands were around her neck, and then she was quiet.
She'd grieve for the brother she thought she had. Wait, no. The brother she’d hoped and wanted to have. But later. Not now.
Ben took another step. He was within arm's reach of Ethan now, and Kelly's breath caught because the gun was right there, close enough that one wrong move could end everything.
The sirens were louder. Much louder. Coming fast. Kelly could see the faint pulse of red and blue light reflecting off the trees at the edge of the property.
But Ben wasn't waiting for help.
"You're not a killer, Ethan," he said. His voice had dropped to something barely above a murmur.
Kelly had to strain to hear it from her position behind the car.
"Don't stoop to his level. You loved Lori. Honor that. Honor her. She wouldn't want this for you. She wouldn’t want you in prison for the rest of your life. She’d want you to live it. For both of you.”
Ethan's face contorted. Fresh tears spilled down his cheeks, catching the floodlight and turning silver.
"You're better than he is," Ben said. "You always were."
Ben's hand reached out. Slowly. So slowly that Kelly could track each inch of progress.
His fingers reached outward, open and steady, and made contact with the barrel of the gun.
Not grabbing. Not wrenching. Just touching.
A gentle, firm pressure that said, Let me take this. You don't need it anymore.
A sound tore out of Ethan Walters. It started somewhere deep in his chest and clawed its way up through his throat, and it was the sound of a man letting go of something he'd been holding for a long time.
Grief and rage and love and loss, all compressed into a single, broken cry that echoed off the parked cars and disappeared into the warm night air.
His fingers opened. The gun shifted from his hand to Ben's. A transfer so quiet it was almost anticlimactic. No struggle. No dramatic moment. Just a weapon changing possession with the gentleness of a handshake.
Ethan's knees buckled. He went down on the asphalt the same way Rob had, but differently.
Rob had collapsed from fear. Ethan collapsed from emptiness.
He folded forward, his hands on the ground, his forehead nearly touching the pavement, and he wept with the kind of abandon that most adults never allow themselves.
So much pain.
Ben stepped back with the gun held carefully, pointing it at the ground, his finger nowhere near the trigger.
He was breathing hard. Kelly could see his chest rising and falling from twenty feet away.
The calm hadn't cracked, but it was costing him.
The effort of that performance, because it was a performance no matter how real it had been, was written in every line of his body.
Two police cruisers tore into the parking lot, tires screeching on asphalt, light bars painting everything in alternating red and blue.
Officers emerged with weapons drawn, shouting commands that overlapped into a wall of authoritative noise.
The floodlight's white glare suddenly competed with the strobing colors, and the parking lot that had been so quiet and private became loud and public, full of people who needed answers.
Did they even know what questions to ask? This town had been closing its eyes for a hell of a long time.
Maybe it was time to wake up.
It was chaos in that parking lot, cops yelling along with Celia, Trevor, her parents, and his parents, as well.
Ben had taken one of the officers aside and talked to him for a few minutes, but Kelly couldn’t hear what he’d said from her vantage point.
She only knew that the cop had nodded as if he understood, and then Rob was being hauled unceremoniously to his feet and being cuffed while Ethan was speaking with another cop a few feet away.
It was then that Ben’s attention swung her way, his intense gaze going straight to her. His long legs ate up the distance between them, and she moved toward him, too, not wanting to wait any longer to make sure that he was okay.
She couldn’t just see it with her eyes. She had to make sure, feel that he was real and alive.
He opened his arms, and Kelly crashed into him with enough force to make him take a step backward. He was alive and real and okay, and she said a silent prayer of thanks. This night could have turned out very differently.
They held on to each other as the mayhem swirled around them. Both of them shaking, which she found oddly comforting because it meant she wasn't the only one falling apart. Ben's arms were tight around her, one hand on the back of her head, pressing her against his shoulder.
She could feel his heart slamming against his ribs. The controlled calm from a few minutes ago was gone. Whatever reservoir of composure he'd been drawing from had run dry, and what remained was a man who was trembling and holding her like the ground might open up and swallow one of them.
"I love you," she said. It came out muffled against his shirt, graceless and unrehearsed and completely without preamble.
No buildup. No romantic lighting. No swell of music. Just three words spoken into wrinkled cotton in a parking lot that smelled like car exhaust and asphalt.
She felt his arms tighten around her.
"I love you, too,” he said, and his voice was rough in a way she'd never heard before.
Raw. Like the words had been scraped out of him.
"Of course I do. I couldn't stand the thought of something happening to you.
When I walked toward that gun, the only thing I kept thinking was that you were behind that car and you were safe. "
Kelly pulled back far enough to look at his face. His eyes were red. His hair was a disaster. He looked like he'd aged five years in the last thirty minutes.
He was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
"You walked toward a gun," she said.
"I know."
"That was incredibly stupid."
"I know that too."
She kissed him. Quick and fierce, with the taste of salt from both their tears.
Not a romantic kiss. A necessary one. The kind of kiss that existed not to express love but to confirm that both people were still alive and still here and still choosing each other in the middle of absolute catastrophe.
They pulled apart at the sound of voices. An officer had a few more questions and asked if they needed any medical attention.
They gave their brief story once again, and the head officer asked whether they would be willing to come to the station to give a recorded version. They quickly agreed, ready to leave the venue and the wedding far behind. It had been an emotional night, and it was still far from over.
There were more voices and footsteps, and Kelly turned toward the gate and watched the wedding pour into the parking lot, a confused stream of people in formal wear blinking at the police lights and the commotion.
Aunt Carol had her phone out, already filming. Uncle Gary was somehow still holding a drink. Trevor's grandmother, who may or may not have been asleep during the ceremony, was very much awake now and being guided by a groomsman who looked overwhelmed.
Celia and Trevor were trying to figure out what was going on, along with the Batemans, who appeared perplexed at the circus around them.
Celia's face crumpled, her attention focusing on Kelly. The happy bride from the ceremony was gone. In her place was the Celia that Kelly knew better. The sister who had spent her whole life scanning for disaster and assigning blame before the dust settled.
"What did you do this time?" Celia's voice was shrill enough to cut through the sirens and the crowd, and the shouted orders of police officers.
She grabbed Kelly's arm and pulled sharply, her tone one of pure fury.
"You ruined everything. This was my day. My wedding. And you ruined it. You ruin everything.”