Chapter Thirty-Five #2
Rig’s eyes snapped to mine, like he was finally hearing me.
“Oh, no, ladybug. No, you—now hold on. Yes, your mother spoke to Winona that night. She told her she was leaving, and Annie couldn’t have that.
So she went to Frankie and told him what was going on—she told him everything.
She told him about me and Winona. That we were in love, and that Winona wanted to leave. ”
I could hardly speak. “She sold out her best friend? Why would she do that?”
Rig choked out a sigh. “She was scared of losing her. They were close as sisters, just like you and Chels. She went to Frankie, told him everything that Winona had told her about the two of us. And Frankie, well, he didn’t have a great time controlling his temper.
He was a good man—he was, deep down—but he had some hard edges to him.
He came and found me that night, to confront me.
Anita was trailing behind him, hollering at him to stop and think for a second—just as Winona had come to tell me her plans.
She wanted me to leave with her. She’d even snuck into town, bought us bus tickets.
She had it all figured out. We were arguing—I told her I had commitments, a whole life here, I couldn’t disappear in the dead of night.
But she was tired of this place, she said, and she felt suffocated by how isolated we were out here in the woods.
It had been a good thing for her, at first, but she needed more.
Especially with her baby girl. Frankie had been feeling paranoid for months and months, worrying that Winona had been stepping out on him, and he was angry.
And that’s when he and your mom burst through the door and found the two of us talking.
We were only talking, we really were but—it looked like we were conspiring.
Lord, he was angry. Angrier than I’d ever seen him.
It was like he changed shape completely. ”
His voice dropped so low, I could hardly hear him. “And then—you have to understand, I can’t even— When I think of it now—it still doesn’t feel real.”
I was digging my nails so hard into the palms of my hands I thought they might bleed. “Tell me what happened.”
He tilted his head back, eyes to the sky.
As if he were finally resigning himself to the truth.
“Frankie tried to punch me, and I blocked him, but then Winnie got in the middle, put her hands up between the two of us. It was total chaos for a minute, Frankie throwing his hands, her trying to stop him, your mom screaming from somewhere, me trying to get Winnie out of the way, and then—and then—she was on the ground. Not moving.”
He was crying now, big, wet tears that I’d never seen from him before. He put his hands on his thighs, leaning over, like he was hyperventilating. I was sure this was the first time Rig had ever told this story. That in almost thirty years, he hadn’t been able to admit it to anyone. Even himself.
“She’d hit her head, slammed it on the side of the coffee table. She was bleeding, and it was too much, too fast, and your mom and I knew. We knew what it meant. Frankie was yelling, hollering, and there was blood everywhere, all over the floor, and God help me, the blood…”
He trailed off, looking helplessly at the ground. I brought a shaky hand to my chest as I let the shock of it all wash over me.
“I grabbed Frankie, held his arms down, and then…your mom checked Winona, she was so still—and she, she wasn’t breathing, you have to…”
He fell to his knees now, and I scrambled backward, my hands in the cool dirt. “And then? And then what, Rig?”
Rig shook his head, long hair falling in front of his face, then finally met my eye.
His were glistening, haunted with decades of repressed regret.
“We didn’t have a lot of time. Frankie was beside himself, no help at all.
Couldn’t string a sentence together. So we brought her all the way out here. Your mother and me. And we buried her.”
“Why?” I whispered. “If it was Frankie, then why—”
“We didn’t know—in the heat of it, none of us could be sure what happened. She was alive and then”—he lurched into another sob—“and then she wasn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t you turn yourselves in?”
“We should have. Of course we should have. I still think about it, even now. But I had Chelsea. Your mom had you; she had your daddy. And Frankie had his own daughter to think about.”
For the second time since he started his confession, he met my eye.
“But we never forgot her, Greer. We made sure to put her somewhere where she’d be safe.
Remember what Annie used to say? Nowhere safer than the woods.
” He gestured weakly toward the flowers.
“Your mother thought about and mourned Winnie every single day of her life. So have I.”
Rig was growing inconsolable now, face covered by his hands. “Believe me, please. I loved her, and I would have—”
My head was spinning. “Rig—”
“And then it was over, she was buried out here, and there was nothing we could do, was there? We all had—so, so much to lose. You have to understand.”
His pitch had risen into something scary, unhinged, with the years of keeping this story locked away. It was like the dam was finally breaking.
“Rig,” I said, louder this time. “Winona—Winnie—was Stephanie Bennett’s mother. That’s why she came here that summer. She wanted to figure out what happened to her.”
Rig didn’t move. He stayed frozen, and I couldn’t understand the expression on his face. If it was surprise, or guilt, or regret.
“Did you kill her, too? Because she found out what you did?”
The voice wasn’t mine, though. It took me a long, almost paralyzing moment to realize; it had been the very same question, dancing on my lips. The same terrible thought.
But it wasn’t me. We both turned sharply, to the figure at the base of the trees, Rig’s gun held high and aimed at his heart. Margo.
“Wait, stop,” I said, nowhere near loud enough.
Rig didn’t look at me; he only raised his hands above his head, like he was surrendering.
The wind howled through the woods, the beginnings of a summer storm bleeding into the night.
It was too similar, an echo of the last time things had spiraled out of control.
“It was you.” Margo took another, awful step, gun still high. Her eyes were blazing with a hard fury that took me back to the morning after the fire. Then, she’d left. But now—I didn’t think she was going anywhere.
“Say it, for God’s sake. Say that you killed them both.”
She’d dropped into an octave that reverberated throughout my body, made my heart threaten to burst forth from my chest.
“Put the gun down, sweetheart.” He spoke with a gentleness that was unexpected, inconceivable. His face was wet, either from tears or the misting rain. “Just put it down, and we’ll talk all about it.” Then his jaw ticked once, betraying his fear.
“I will kill you. Why shouldn’t I? It was you. You killed Winona, you buried her, and Steph found out. She figured it all out, didn’t she? So you set that fire. Your last-ditch effort to protect your dirty little secret. You killed them both. You’re fucking sick.”
Rig shook his head, hands shaking with undiluted fear. “No, no, I didn’t, I wouldn’t, I loved Winnie—I didn’t know, please, I didn’t know—”
He looked at me with an unbidden, devastating sadness, and I knew—I could see it immediately—that he was telling the truth.
He hadn’t known who Steph was. Hadn’t known he’d spent a whole summer with Winona’s daughter. That in the very moments before she’d died, she’d been trying to find this sacred, terrible place.
“Stop lying. Just stop lying, my God,” Margo said, spitting with anger.
Rig took a single step toward Margo, and acid burned my throat. “Give me the gun, Margo.”
She kept it high, but I could see it shaking. Her hands looked so small; she was holding it awkwardly, as if she had no idea what to do with it. “No,” she tried to snarl, but her voice cracked.
Rig took another step. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
Could only stare. She stayed stock-still, save for the gun trembling in her outstretched hands.
When he got close enough that he could reach out and touch her, he made for the gun.
Slowly, carefully, as if she were a feral animal he was trying to rescue.
But when his fingers grazed it, she lurched out of his grasp, huffing and puffing like she couldn’t breathe. He lunged for her, one broad arm wrapped around her tiny form, the other fumbling for the gun.
Margo turned away, clawing at him. Finally, I found my voice and screamed, the sound ripping through the air. Reflexively, Rig turned back to look at me, and everything happened in slow motion as I watched the gun in Margo’s hands come down hard on the back of his head.
And then he dropped to the forest floor.
I tried to scream again, raw with panic. Nothing came out.
Margo was staring open-mouthed at the weapon in her hand, like she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. I crawled toward Rig, brought my hand to his chest, looking for a sign that he was all right. He had a heartbeat, but he wasn’t moving. At the back of his head, I felt sticky, wet blood.
Beside me, I heard the sound of Margo’s ragged breaths. I couldn’t stop my brain from replaying those words she’d said this morning, now laced with something far darker: I don’t play games. I win them.
I threw my own hands up in surrender, blood streaking them from the gash on Rig’s head, tears and rain staining my cheeks as the wind whipped around me. “Margo, let me call someone, please…”
Her lipstick was smeared, her silk dress ripped, like she’d run and stumbled through the brush. As if, just like me, the truth had hit her square in the face, and she’d had to drop everything.
She had to know for sure, what was out here. What Steph had needed her to see, in the moments before everything went up in smoke.
“He deserves to die.” Her voice was corrosive. And I understood. She wanted him to suffer. To die out here. “It should hurt. Like he hurt them. Weren’t you listening? He killed Winona—and then he started the fire, to kill Steph and destroy the evidence of what he’d done.”
Her eyes were wild now, the monster inside her unleashed, after years and years of waiting. I knew what Margo was like when she got angry—I knew she was dangerous.
And there was nothing more dangerous than someone with nothing left to lose.
“Move out of the way, Greer. Let me finish this. Don’t you want justice, finally? He’s the one who did all of this. He burned this place to the ground.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing myself. Finally, it was time.
“No, please. Hold on.” Whatever I said next would be like the final step over a cliff. No coming back.
“It wasn’t him,” I said, raising my gaze to meet hers.