Chapter 53
“I tried to help her.” Anna is crying, her eyes wide open. “I tried, but it was too late. It was an accident. But I knew no one would believe me. I didn’t mean to do it, but no one ever believes me. No one ever listens.”
“I can listen.” I’m grasping for something to hold on to, something to hold me upright.
Anna turns back to Martina.
“Do you know how long I stayed in that apartment with her?” she asks her.
“With her body? Six months. That’s how much I loved her.
I laid her in the bathtub and covered her with charcoal powder so that she wouldn’t smell.
I sat there, and I talked to her. Every day. That is love.” Her voice is thick.
“You might not have believed me, your little doctor friend might not have believed me, but I loved her.” She wipes her upper lip, a ragged sob making her shake.
“I would have stayed there and died with her,” she continues, “but I knew I had to put an end to you. To all of this. I knew I couldn’t let you hurt any more people, the way you hurt me. The way you hurt Linn. I tried to report you, but those fuckers didn’t even do anything.”
For a moment, she’s silent, and then she grabs one of the awards from Martina’s desk and throws it at the wall. I let out a scream, and I duck, the world still spinning around me; when I straighten, on unsure feet, Anna is panting, her cheeks blossoming with color.
She stills, and strokes her hair behind both ears. When she speaks again, her voice is calmer. Surer.
“I tried to tell everyone. The ethics board. Journalists. Your loyal fans. But no one would listen. Because that’s how it is with manipulative people. You trick everyone, just like you tricked me. I knew no one would believe me without proof.”
She smiles, and there’s a terrifying pride in her smile, the way her skin is stretching, the way her cheeks are dimpling.
“So I came here to get proof.”
Anna turns to me.
“Just like you did, Isobel.” True warmth, permeating her words. “And we’re going to get it now, together. We’re going to tell the whole world what happened here. What she did.”
I know I shouldn’t. I’m too weak still. I should just go along with it and not provoke her.
But I can’t. I have to know. If nothing else, I have to know.
“But what about Sandra?” Her name should be a ravaged wound in my mouth, but instead, even after everything, it is a comfort. As if just by saying it, I can conjure her in here.
Sandra, who would have known what to do.
Anna’s face falls for a moment, as though her mask has slipped. Under it is something naked and gaping.
“I didn’t…” She shakes her head, and her lower lip trembles. She puts a hand up to her sternum.
“It wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t supposed to happen.” She chews on her lip, looking down, and then asks, in a small voice:
“Did you see her?”
“Yes.” And, oh, how it hurts.
“I’m sorry.” She sounds almost … tetchy. Like a child caught doing something bad. It leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
“She shouldn’t have been here. It wasn’t … No one else recognized me. No one was supposed to recognize me. But she did. She saw me, and she asked me what I was doing here, and she got upset. She said I wasn’t supposed to be here.”
For a moment, it’s like Sandra is standing here, next to me. Clicking her tongue in that annoying way she always used to.
Bullshit, she’d say.
“I wasn’t trying to hurt her.” Anna’s eyes are so round, and so innocent, that I can almost believe her. “She was coming to see you. I just … I had to keep her quiet. Until I was done. I tried to tell you, in the woods. I called your name. Didn’t you hear me?”
Her voice, out there, in the darkness. Isobel.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Anna pleads. “You have to believe me. I never would have hurt you on purpose. I’m not like that. You know me. You get me. We want the same thing. Sandra wasn’t my fault. It was…”
She looks down at Martina.
“It was your fault.” Her face hardens. “None of this would have happened if not for you. You did all this. You did this to us. And you’re going to admit to it, finally. You’re going to admit to all of it.”
Anna tugs at the drawer, and she pulls out a phone. Martina’s phone.
She waves it in Martina’s face, and then she smiles.
“We’re going to take a little video. You’re going to tell everyone what you did.
I’ll upload it to your social media. You’re always going on about how honest you are, right?
So it’s time to live up to that. It’s what you promised everyone, ever since the start.
You always said honesty is the most important thing. So let’s be honest.”
Anna puts the phone down on the desk, and comes around to the front of it, a glint of silver in her hand.
It’s one of the steak knives from the kitchen. Small, and lean, and sharp.
Martina starts begging: “No, no, no…”
“Calm down, for fuck’s sake.” Anna sounds almost bored now. “I’m going to cut you loose. It can’t look like we’re making you do something you don’t want to do.”
She gets down next to Martina, and when she’s sitting there, looking up at Martina, there’s something akin to tenderness on her face.
She pauses, and she reaches up with the hand holding the knife, Martina still as a statue, and my breath catches in my chest.
With her thumb, she wipes the tears away from under Martina’s eyes.
“There.” There is a loving smile in the corners of her lips. “All better.”
The thin rope around Martina’s right arm snaps, then around the left; she gasps in pain as the blood starts flowing back in, her fingers red and swollen, deep gouges in her arms on both sides.
“Perfect.” Anna stands up and smooths back Martina’s hair. There is greed in her eyes, in the way her fingers linger among the strands.
Like she wants to own her. Or be her.
Still.
Martina makes a slight movement, as though to get up from the chair, and Anna, quick as a snake, yanks ahold of her hair and snaps her head back.
She lingers there, her hold pulling Martina’s head at an unnatural angle, gazing down into her eyes.
“I thought you were so much better than the rest of them,” Anna mutters, her eyes glazed over. “I thought you understood me. I thought you would see me.”
“I’m sorry,” Martina says, her voice tight with the strain, her throat bulging. “I’m sorry, Anna. We can talk about it. We can fix this, I promise.”
“I know.” Anna looks over at the phone, but I can see her arms tensing, her grip on the braid tightening.
“I know you’re hurting.” Martina’s voice is cracking. “I let you down, and I’m so sorry. I let everyone down. It’s all my fault, I see that now.”
I see Anna’s grip loosening, just a little bit.
“You don’t have to do this, Anna,” Martina says. “You must be so tired. This is such a heavy burden. You’ve worked so hard. Aren’t you tired?”
Despite it all, despite the pain and the drugs and the terror, I hear it there, a trace of that old power.
Anna’s hand is still grasping the knife, but her grip is slackening, the knife dangling from her fingers.
“It’s never too late, Anna,” Martina says. “Not for me. Not for you. You deserve to be happy. Is this going to make you happy?”
Anna opens her mouth, just slightly; no words come over her lips.
“Let me help you,” Martina says. “I can help you, Anna. Whatever you want, I’m here for you now. I failed you. I see that. I take responsibility for that. But I’m willing to work with you on that. I’m willing to put the work in and heal our relationship. If you are.”
Anna takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her whole focus is on Martina.
I could run, now. While she’s distracted. She wouldn’t leave Martina to chase after me, I’m almost sure of it. I’m clumsy, but I’m better now than I was a few minutes ago. I might be able to make it out, across the parking lot, climb the fence.
It’s what my father would have done.
“You can have everything you want,” Martina says. “You can be anyone you want. If you just let us go.”
I feel the shift in the room, like an electric charge.
Anna’s eyes flash with anger, and she raises the knife, and I don’t think. I don’t let myself think.
I scream, as loud as I can, and I grab the heavy brass award, and I throw it at the window. It explodes into a million pieces, the crash deafening, and the flying glass and roaring wind shocks Anna into ducking, only for a second.
I don’t think. There’s no time.
I reach out for Martina, and I find that she’s already sprung from her chair, and I grab her hand.
And we run.