Chapter 21
Then
Standing in that meadow, covered in blood, was the first time I truly understood power.
Euphoric power.
In those precious seconds, propped up by a cocktail of adrenaline and long-simmering rage, I knew with perfect clarity why people would do the unspeakable to achieve this feeling and even worse things to keep it. No one could hurt me. I felt strong.
I felt whole.
Then I opened my eyes to a spinning world and retched on my sneakers.
“Milly? Milly!” Frances grabbed my shoulders, pulling me upright, inches from my face. “Come on, Milly!”
She slapped my cheek, and I blinked rapidly, reality coming into view.
We were still in the woods. In the clearing. I knew that.
The lavender light was fading, darkening the paint that smeared my sister’s face.
No. Not paint.
But I knew that too.
Frances slapped my cheek once more, this time hard.
The night rushed back. Riding in the back of the truck, sneaking through the forest, Mr. Fortenberry’s hands tenderly on my sister’s cheek, then wrapped around her throat. The camera.
The vibration of shovel against skull.
Behind my sister was the bleeding heap that was my English teacher. Had been my English teacher.
“Oh God.” I covered my mouth with my palm, the smell of my vomit mingling with the copper scent of blood as reality drained the euphoria away like pus from a blister. What had I done?
My sister and I stumbled to the ground. I ran my tongue over my sticky lips.
For a long time, we lay in the grass, feet from the man I’d killed, tangled together like when we were little girls and Daddy’s voice tore through our Lundinville home.
“I’m so sorry,” I murmured. “Frances, I’m so sorry.”
“Shh. Hush.” She pushed a sticky strand of hair from my face.
“He’s dead?” I whispered.
“Yeah.” Frances’s voice was now crisp. “Hopefully.”
I whimpered. “Oh God. I…I hit him with the shovel and…” This wasn’t power, not really. I’d stopped Mr. Fortenberry, but now my life was in his cold, dead hands.
People adored Mr. Fortenberry. He was voted favorite teacher two years in a row. Students crushed on him. He had a beautiful wife, and we’d all seen how he doted on his stepson at school events. He’d even befriended old Mrs. Green, our crabby world history teacher, and she hated everybody.
Who would believe a man like that attacked my sister? That he’d sought her out?
Everyone knew about Mama. They heard (and spread) rumors about my aunts.
I thought of Daddy. Of Mr. Baker. Of all the Robbins women who came before me, of the death left in their wake.
I was just like them. I’d thought I could outrun our family’s legacy, but I’d been wrong.
It was carved on the door inside my chest. Why should I be any different from any other woman in my line? One way or another, this was my fate.
I’m going to prison. Like mama, like daughter. An ugly sob contorted my face and tears cut paths through the blood and grime on my cheeks.
“Shh. Milly, it’s okay.”
“No. It’s not.” Shallow, panting breaths set my lungs on fire.
“Milly. Breathe. Slowly.”
“We’re going to jail,” I rasped. Sniffed. “I’m going to jail like Mama.”
“No, you’re not,” Frances said. “He was going to kill me. You saved my life. You had to do it. I’m so sorry. I should’ve listened to you, I…I just wanted to believe him so bad. I thought he was my person.”
I sat up. Mr. Fortenberry’s swollen lips were parted, and his tongue peeked out.
The shovel lay a few feet away. And the blood.
So much blood. The spray fanning out all around.
“What are we going to do?”
Frances held my hands in her own as she chewed her bottom lip. “We get rid of him.”
“What?”
“No one knew about us.”
“How can you be sure? I found out, and I wasn’t exactly snooping.” It came out sharper than I intended.
“What do you want me to say?” She drew back. “I said I’m sorry. Milly, I—”
“You’re right,” I interrupted. “It’s okay. It’s his fault, not yours. I just… I don’t want to go to prison.”
“You won’t. I keep telling you that no one knew about us.” She stood and walked to the body. “If we get rid of…” She gestured to the corpse. “We dump him somewhere far away, then no one will ever suspect you and me.”
She made it sound so simple. Too simple.
And she was so damn calm. I’d killed the person she’d thought she loved. And she seemed unbothered, as if this were another equation to solve in mathletes.
Meanwhile, I might rip apart at any moment, right down the middle. I shook my head. “Where would we take him?”
Frances leaned forward and grabbed his blood-slick arms. “You get his feet. We get him to the truck, and go from there.”
“What about his car?”
She shrugged. “We’ll figure it out.”
Mr. Fortenberry was at least six three and had the body of a former college athlete gone soft. “I don’t think we can move him.”
“We have to try.” Her eyes widened. “I won’t let you get in trouble for this. I won’t get in trouble for this. Come on.”
My mind couldn’t cobble together a better plan, so I grabbed my dead teacher’s legs and heaved. We managed to get him a few inches from the ground and walked two steps before Frances lost her grip.
“Shit.” She bent forward, examining her sneakers. “Okay, good.”
“What?”
“My shoes. They’re new. I had to save up my own money to buy them, and I’ve only worn them a week.” She dusted herself off, as if this were the most normal reasoning on earth. Can’t get this dead man’s blood on my new yellow Converse!
My heart thudded.
Everything about this was wrong. I knew what we had to do.
“We have to tell the aunts,” I said, dropping Mr. Fortenberry’s legs.
“What?” Frances shook her head. “No. They’ll be so angry, so ashamed of me. I don’t want them to know that I…that he…” She gestured to the corpse.
“We have to, Frances.”
“What if they want to call the police? What then?”
I thought of Mrs. Earline sitting in our kitchen with a purple handprint on her cheek. Of her husband’s obituary a week later. Of Hattie-May helping women with their pest problems.
“They won’t.” Nervous tears sprung to my eyes because I wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth or not.
Frances blinked. “They’re going to be so upset with me.”
“No, they’re not.” Somewhere an owl screeched. The evening had grown darker, and all this blood reminded of the bedtime stories we used to whisper to each other in the dark. The ones about the Hattie-May’s tree, the rotting willow. I wanted out of the forest. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Without a word, I looped an arm around Frances’s waist and we clung together as we walked across the clearing, toward the overgrown path, back to the truck.
As we drove home, I stole a glance at my sister, who stared straight ahead, through the windshield. There was faint bruising around her neck.
If I hadn’t been in the back of the truck. If I hadn’t followed my sister into the clearing…
“I was so wrong,” Frances said quietly as I drove us down the back roads. “I thought Shane cared about me. I thought he was my person. He wasn’t.” She shook her head. “Milly,promise me you’ll never leave me.”
“Of course I’ll never leave you,” I said.
I reached for Frances’s hand as the Rust Bucket bounced past the bones and down the driveway. It wasn’t until I pulled to a stop in the yard and shifted to park that I thought of the leaves.
They’d been right.
Death had come.