Chapter Twenty-Five
Annalise
The room smelled like funeral flowers, waxy and sickly sweet. Light flickered, golden and soft.
Wrong.
Something was wrong.
My eyelids weighed a thousand pounds. I fought against their easing shut, fought against the lethargy in my muscles, the fog in my brain.
Feet shuffled on the carpet. A flick and hiss. Sulfur. I stared through the tangle of my eyelashes, fighting to open my eyes, struggling to put the pieces together. The smell. The light. Candles. Someone was lighting candles.
I blinked and tried to focus. White cotton with pink and green embroidery filled my vision. Climbing roses embroidered on my bedspread.
My stomach rolled as I realized where I was. My parent’s house. My bedroom. And I wasn't alone.
I flexed my fingers. Wiggled my toes. I didn't think I'd been out that long, but I didn't really know. I wasn't wearing a watch, and the windup clock on my bedside table hadn't been set in years. Candlelight flickered in the room, but a beam of sunshine fell from the window across the bed.
If the sun was still up, I didn't think too much time had passed. A few hours, but no more. Maybe a lot less.
Staying still, I listened to the sounds of feet shuffling on the carpet.
Another flick and hiss. Why all the candles?
The smell was nauseating, the floral fragrance heavy and cloying.
Maybe it wasn't the candles. Maybe it was fear.
Or the drugs. I remembered the hallway—the arm around my neck, the stinging pain of the needle and everything going fuzzy.
I was in serious trouble. I shifted on the bed enough to reassure myself that I wasn't restrained. I was trying to decide if I should pretend I was still unconscious, or try to move, when a familiar voice said, "I know you're awake, Annalise."
I knew that voice, but I couldn’t make myself believe. The puzzle pieces wouldn't fit. Gathering my strength, I rolled to my back, bracing my palms at my sides, sitting up in halting jerks. I dipped to the side and had to catch myself before I fell over, my body still weak, sluggish from the drugs.
"Careful, sweet girl. You don't want to fall off the bed and hurt yourself."
I couldn't look at him. It was horrible enough to know he’d brought me here. I couldn't look yet. My eyes on my knees, I braced my palms and pushed myself backward until I could lean against the headboard. When I was pretty sure I wasn't going to fall over again, I looked up.
Uncle William stood at the end of my bed, a box of matches in one hand, the charred stump of a used match in the other. His eyes should have been filled with the kindly affection I'd known my entire life, and they were, but behind that familiar expression burned something else.
Something mad.
Something dark. Hungry.
I flinched from him, though he hadn't made a move. As if everything were normal, he said, “Just give yourself a few minutes. The drugs will wear off. They weren't very strong, only enough to calm you down. I didn't want a fuss while we were still in the main house."
"Why are we here?" I asked, my voice shaking.
William set the box of matches on my vanity, laying the burnt stub beside a pile of others neatly arranged, side-by-side.
White pillar candles glowed from every flat surface in the room—my vanity, my dresser, my bedside tables, even my camp trunk beside the closet.
Beneath some, brass candlesticks gleamed in the flickering light.
Some he’d placed without a holder, letting the wax drip to pool on the wood.
The room was stuffy with them, the heat and scent dizzying.
He’d placed bundles of flowers between the candles. The purple-pink blooms of heliotrope. Eternal love. Blood red roses. The classic flower of true love. Roses should have been romantic, not terrifying.
William pulled out the white chair at my vanity and turned it to face the bed. He sat, his posture upright, one leg crossed over the other, as composed and proper as if he'd been in the formal living room of Winters House.
"I thought it was time we talked," he said.
"Talked about what?" I asked. My eyes slid to the door of my bedroom, half open, the hallway outside teasing me. So close, but William had positioned the chair so that he was almost exactly between me and the door.
"Don't play stupid, Annalise. I have you here in your bedroom, carried you through the woods while you were unconscious. I think you know where we stand."
"I don't think I do," I said, slowly.
I wasn't playing stupid.
Was he fucking kidding me? Okay, yes, the fact that he’d drugged me and carried me to my childhood home, laid me on my bed, brought me flowers, and lit a bunch of candles, pointed strongly to him being my psycho stalker.
I got that part.
I wasn't even close to being able to understand where we stood with each other.
The only thing I knew was that William stood between me and the door. Anything else he was going to have to explain, slowly and clearly, because I had no fucking clue what was going on.
"Annalise, you've been playing games with me,” he said, patiently. “I understand women like to play games. I do. But I'm tired of it. It's been too many years. I'm getting old. You're getting older. I'm done dancing around each other. I'm ready for the next step."
"And what's the next step?" I asked, absolutely certain I did not want to know the answer.
William shook his head gently, as if in amusement, and said, “For us to be together, of course."
"What the hell does that mean?" I asked. The moment the angry words left my mouth, I knew they were a mistake. The darkness in William’s eyes flared to life, freezing my heart in my chest.
Be smart, I told myself. You're alone in a room with a seriously crazy man. Think. This is not the time to lose your temper. Stall him.
Softly, I said, "I'm sorry, I just don't understand. You want us to be together?"
"I thought it was supposed to be your mother, you know. All those years ago. So much pain. I was so in love with her."
"With my mother?" I asked, prompting him for more. I'd seen enough movies. I knew I was supposed to keep him talking. Let him get out all the crazy and buy myself some time. Time for Charlie and Sophie to come home and realize I wasn’t there. Time for Riley to find me.
"You never knew," he said. "I couldn't let her go.
I couldn't let her out of my life, so I had to pretend.
Pretend to be her friend, their friend. Pretend I didn't remember how it was.
But I remembered everything. She was my light.
She was my love. Everything was perfect and then she left me.
For him." Rage simmered in his voice, darkened his eyes.
"When?" I asked, desperate to know despite my fear.
"Freshman year of college," he said, with a sigh.
"I saw her on the first day, standing in line to register for classes.
I bumped into her, and she turned around and looked at me with those blue eyes—" he let out a long breath, his gaze hazy with memory.
"I asked her out right there, and for the first semester, we were inseparable.
Then she went home over Christmas break, and when she came back, she broke it off. "
"I'm sorry," I said, helplessly. I wanted to ask what had happened, if that was when she started dating my father, but I didn't want to push him the wrong way. I didn't know what would set him off.
"So was I. She came back only until spring break, and then she went home. She told everyone her mother was ill. I believed her, the bitch. But the whole time she was writing letters to James. Writing letters to my best friend and having my fucking baby."
I heard a shocked sound of surprise and realized it came from me.
I slapped my hand over my mouth. I'd known my mother had had a child before she married my father, known she'd given him up. Charlie had found the adoption papers in the attic. But we’d never known how it happened or who the father had been.
"I'm sorry," I said again. I didn't want to say I was sorry; I wanted to ask him how he'd known, and what he’d done about it, and why he hadn't tried to take the child.
"She should have told me," he said, sending me a look so full of yearning and pain, sadness flashed through me before fear drove it out.
"We would've gotten married. We would've had the perfect life.
But she said we'd never be happy together, and the baby would be better off with a mother and a father who were ready for children.
She said there were so many people who desperately wanted a child, and she wasn't ready to get married or be a mother.
She wanted to be a doctor, and she didn't want me.
" His face collapsed on itself, twisting into a scowl. He barked out, “She had no right."
"How could you stay friends with her after that?" I couldn't help asking.
William looked at me, and his eyes softened.
"If you can ask me that, you don't really understand love, Annalise.
I hated her for leaving me. I hated her for taking my child.
For destroying my dream of a happy family.
And I hated James for stealing her heart from me.
But it was easier to live with the hate than to live without my Anna. "
"You killed them, didn't you?" I asked, my throat tightening on the words. It seemed so obvious now. Love twisted into hate, turned to rage and death.
But William’s eyes widened in shock. "No.
No, Annalise, no. Never. I was so angry.
So angry with both of them. But I never would've hurt Anna.
I thought about James. Considered it. A car accident, or a fire.
Thought about how I could do it without getting caught.
But I couldn't quite bring myself to cross that line. "
"Then who?" It seemed impossible to believe that with all this crazy obsession they'd been murdered by a random intruder.
William’s shoulders slumped, and he looked down at his hands. "I didn't kill them, my sweet girl. But it was my fault they died. I've lived with the guilt for so long. So long."
"How was it your fault? Who killed them?" I tried to restrain my shout, but the words spilled from my lips.
"That stupid bitch. Always in the way." William's head bobbed from side to side in a loose nod.
"Who?" I said again, control over my temper slipping. I needed to know who it was, what had happened, and I was forced to sit and wait while this crazy man tripped his way down memory lane.
"Marissa," he said on a long exhalation.
"Marissa Archer?" The socialite acquaintance of my parents who'd been caught leaving us pictures of the murder scene?
“Marissa,” he confirmed. “That crazy bitch, she’s lucky the police got to her before I could.”
“Why would Marissa kill my parents?” I asked, lost in confusion. None of this made sense.
“We dated in high school. Knew each other our whole lives. I broke it off right before college. She was going to Vanderbilt, and I wanted to stretch my wings, live a little before I settled down. We expected we’d end up together, get married, but we didn’t make any promises.
” He raised one shoulder in a half shrug and glared at me. “I didn’t make her any promises.”
“But she assumed?” I couldn’t help pushing. Now that I had a hint of the truth, I needed more. I needed it all.
“That crazy, obsessive bitch,” he said with a dismissive sneer.
“She couldn’t let go, even when I told her I was in love with Anna.
Then when Anna started dating James, Marissa thought she could have me back.
But after Anna, no woman was good enough.
I fucked Marissa when I got lonely. She used to look a little like your mother—blond, blue eyes—but it wasn’t the same. ”
“She killed my parents because she was jealous?” I asked, hating the uselessness of it all. So much anger and heartbreak. So much selfishness.
“In a way,” he said, appearing lost in thought.
I glanced out the window, trying to gauge the time by the light. Not close to dusk, but that didn’t tell me much. It could be just after lunch or hours later. I was betting on it being earlier. Charlie was expecting me. I’d be missed. I just had to hang on until someone looked here. Just hang on.
Keeping William talking was creepy, but not a hardship. I’d waited half my life for answers. I was going to wring every sick, twisted detail from William before this was over.
I had no doubt I’d get away from him. No matter what he had planned, I wasn’t going to die. I refused.
“What does that mean, ‘In a way’?” I asked, drawing him from his reverie. He looked at me in mild surprise.
“Anna, you know what it means.”