Chapter Thirteen—Julie #2
“I left him.” I laugh because the alternative is screaming. “You destroyed my marriage.”
“No.”
“You made my husband afraid of me.”
“I made him question you. He chose what he did with that.”
The cruelty of it knocks the air out of me because there’s truth buried inside it. Dalen did choose to believe what she seeded.
Meg sees my face and steps closer. “I’m sorry.”
“Stay back.”
She stops. “I needed a little time. That’s all.
If you found the accounts, you’d call the police or Dalen would.
I thought if you were having problems, if people weren’t sure you remembered things correctly, I could tell you the accounts were yours.
You’d question yourself long enough for me to figure something out. ”
“You thought I’d believe I forgot borrowing thirty-two thousand dollars?” I blink in astonishment.
“You forgot the call.”
“I never made the call! You faked it.”
Meg wipes her face. “Yes.”
“The pictures?”
“Yes.”
“The necklace?” I don’t know why I keep asking when I already know.
She nods.
I think of Dalen sliding the knife away from me. My sister did that.
She didn’t move the knife or make him afraid. She just kept giving him reasons until fear did the rest. “Get out.”
“Julie...”
“Get out.”
She shakes her head. “I can’t leave it like this.”
“You don’t get a vote.”
Sirens sound somewhere in the distance, and her gaze moves toward the front windows.
“Those are for you,” I say.
Panic wipes the grief from her face. “Julie, please.”
“You need to leave me alone.”
She stretches her hand like she’s reaching for an anchor, not me. “They’re going to arrest me.”
“Yes.”
Her expression crumples. “You’d let them?”
I almost answer automatically. She’s my little sister. I’m supposed to help. I’m supposed to call somebody, explain, smooth the edges, and make sure she has what she needs. I’ve been doing it since I was a child.
Meg takes a step toward me. “Please don’t do this.”
I back through the pantry doorway. “I’m not doing anything to you.”
“You can tell them this was a misunderstanding.”
I shake my head. “It wasn’t.”
“I’ll pay you back.”
I scoff. “With what?”
A tear streaks down her cheek. “I’ll figure it out.”
“You already tried.”
She looks toward the windows again. The sirens are louder, and Meg reaches into her purse.
Officer Bennett’s voice snaps through the phone. “Mrs. Dorsey, move away from her now.”
I do.
Meg pulls out an amber prescription bottle.
“What is that?”
She shakes several tablets into her palm. At first, I think she’s going to swallow them to escape consequences.
I back through the pantry. “Meg, don’t.”
“I need you to calm down.”
My skin goes cold as I revise my first assumption. “Put those away.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then put them away.”
She comes toward me, and I slam the pantry door.
Meg hits it almost immediately. “Julie!”
I grab the knob with both hands. “Stay away from me!”
“I only need you to sleep for a few hours.”
I brace one foot against the baseboard. “Are you insane?”
The knob twists hard enough to burn my palms.
“If they find you like this, they’ll believe me.”
Everything inside me freezes. “What?”
Meg pulls on the door. “You left Dalen. You’re living alone. You’ve been telling people someone’s after you. If you took too much of something because you were upset, nobody would think I did it.”
She says it like she’s explaining something reasonable. My sister planned what my body would look like when somebody found me.
Fear finally burns through every other emotion.
I release the knob without planning to. The door flies open behind me as I run through the narrow passage.
I know where I’m going from the move-in tour. The back hall is barely wide enough for my shoulders. I hit the wall on the turn, catch myself, and reach the little service stair before Meg gets through the pantry.
“Julie!”
I climb.
She follows.
The stairs are steep and narrow, built for servants carrying linens through a house designed to keep them invisible. I noticed the turn during the walk-through because the tread depth changes near the landing. I put my hand on the rail and take the inside edge where the steps are wider.
Meg doesn’t.
Her foot slips behind me, but she catches the rail with a curse.
I reach the second floor and shove through the hall door. The front staircase is twenty feet away.
If I can get down it, I can reach the front door, so I run. Meg catches the back of my sweater before I reach the stairs.
The collar jerks against my throat. I spin and shove her away.
She slams into the wall. The pill bottle flies from her hand and hits the floor. White tablets scatter across the hardwood. Meg stares at them and curses again.
I run for the stairs, but she tackles me from behind. My knees hit the floor first. Pain shoots up both legs, and my phone skids away. I twist beneath her and get one forearm between us. “Get off me!”
“Stop fighting!” She sounds hysterical.
Meg grabs for my face. I turn away, and her fingers catch my jaw.
Something hard presses against my lips.
It’s a pill, so she didn’t drop the handful during the pursuit. She’s clearly panicking, or she’d realize there’s no time for her plan to work even if she gets them in me.
I bite her. With a scream, she jerks her hand away, and I shove her with everything I have.
She rolls off me. I scramble up and kick her clenched fist. She relaxes and groans. The pills fly out of her hold and bounce down the hall before she can reach them.
I try to back away, but Meg grabs my ankle with her uninjured hand.
I go down again. My chin hits the floor. Pain bursts through my jaw, and for a second, I see nothing except white.
Meg climbs over my legs as I kick backward. My heel catches her shoulder, and she releases me with a cry.
I crawl, getting one foot beneath me, then the other. The front stairs are close enough that I can see the first tread.
Meg grabs my hair before I can reach it. I scream and reach backward, catching her wrist.
She pulls harder, so I turn into her instead of away. We hit the wall together. A framed print falls and shatters beside us.
Meg flinches from the sound, but I don’t. I shove her through the open doorway beside us.
The room is the little office Mara showed me.
I know the window sticks, the closet is shallow, and the door opens inward.
Meg comes at me again.
I step behind the door and slam it toward her.
The edge catches her shoulder. She cries out and stumbles backward.
I shove the door again, driving her into the hall, then throw my weight against it and turn the old lock.
Meg hits the other side. “Julie!” She sounds crazier than Mom ever did, even in her darkest moments, but I don’t make the excuse of chalking up her actions to mental illness. She coldly calculated this plan.
I back away, breathing so hard my ribs hurt as the sirens stop outside. Car doors slam.
Meg hears them too and whimpers. She throws herself against the door. The frame shudders. She’ll be through before the cops reach us.
I look toward the window. I’m on the second floor, but there’s a sloped porch roof beneath it.
I cross the room and wrench at the sash. It doesn’t move. Mara warned me it sticks.
Meg hits the door again, and wood cracks near the lock.
I shove the window with both hands. It jerks upward three inches. Cold air pours through the gap.
“Julie, open the door!” She sounds frantic.
I shove again and get the opening to six inches.
The doorframe cracks louder.
I get my fingers beneath the sash and pull until my shoulders scream. The window rises enough for me to fit.
The office door bursts open, and Meg comes through it just as I climb onto the desk beneath the window. I’m prepared to scramble onto the porch roof.
“Stop!”
I look back.
Blood runs from Meg’s hand where I bit her. Her hair hangs around her face, and one sleeve of her sweater is torn. She’s crying.
For one second, she looks eight years old again. Then she grabs my ankle.
I kick, and my foot lands solidly in the center of her chest. Meg stumbles backward and hits the corner of the desk.
Her head snaps sideways, and she drops.
I freeze.
Meg doesn’t get up.
“Meg?”
Nothing.
Every instinct I’ve spent twenty years building tells me to go to her.
I almost do.
Then someone pounds on the front door downstairs. “Police!”
I scramble off the desk and stay against the wall. “Upstairs!” I scream. “We’re upstairs!”
Footsteps thunder through the house, and Meg finally moves.
Relief punches through me before I can stop it. She’s still my sister, and the reaction is instinctive, but I don’t get closer.
She pushes herself onto one elbow. Blood runs from her temple now.
“Don’t move.”
She looks down and clenches the hand that held the pills. A small mewl escapes. Then she looks at me.
I know what she’s going to do. “No.”
Meg lunges through the doorway, and I go after her. She reaches the pills first and scoops a handful from the floor.
“Meg, stop!”
She stuffs them into her mouth.
I grab her wrist, but she fights me hard.
“Spit them out!”
She clamps her lips shut and audibly swallows.
I hook my arm around her from behind and squeeze her wrist until the remaining pills spill from her hand. There’s no telling how many she ingested though.
Meg drives her elbow into my ribs, and I lose my grip.
She turns, shoves me, and runs for the stairs, scooping up another handful. I hear her choking on them as she keeps running.
A police officer appears at the bottom. “Stop!”
Meg jerks backward. Her heel slips off the top tread.
I reach for her without thinking, and she catches my hand. For half a second, I have her.
Then her weight pulls me forward. My hip hits the railing. Pain explodes through my side, and my grip loosens.
Meg falls, but she clings to me. I don’t know if it’s panic or malice that makes her hold on to me so tightly, but I can’t escape.
We hit the landing together and keep going. Several impacts jar me with each collision, but I instantly lose all awareness when my temple smacks solidly against one of the steps.