Chapter Forty-Three
Paul holds the gun to Freya’s temple as they teeter near the edge of the cliff, and his words echo in my mind: Reid did what I told him to, right until the end.
Reid killed Isaac Haviland. It’s what I feared, and what I hoped might not be true. When I speak, my voice sounds distant, free of emotion, as though it belongs to someone else. “Why would Reid kill Isaac?” I ask.
I don’t dare ask the other question, the one I’ve wanted the answer to since I left my brother on the dock earlier tonight: Did Reid kill my mother, too?
“You barely knew your brother or what he was capable of,” Paul says.
“Reid saw the way Jane acted around Isaac before anyone else noticed. He told me the way Jane touched Isaac’s arm and laughed at anything he said.
And Reid wanted to be a hero. He needed someone to nudge him in the right direction. ”
“Someone like you,” Freya says.
Paul yanks her head back, his finger twitching on the trigger.
“Don’t,” I say, moving closer.
“Stay back,” Paul says, turning the gun on me.
I raise my hands as I try to imagine what happened all those years ago, how Paul manipulated Reid—a twelve-year-old boy—into doing what he needed done.
Who was at fault? The adult or the child?
My mother told Hadley she feared Reid would own his choices; now I question when they became his to own, and how else Paul used those choices to control my brother into adulthood.
“You said Reid helped you to the end,” I say. “Did he know about you and Freya?”
Paul laughs. “Who do you think took photos of Freya and me when we were out together? Especially during those years Reid attended NYU.”
“He gave you plausible deniability,” Freya said. “And I fell for it.”
“You told him to steal that nail polish from Freya’s apartment,” I say. “And what to write on her truck.”
“He made that decision on his own,” Paul says. “Reid was an idiot. He thought he could escape me.”
The stolen nail polish. The chase through the woods.
The tiny dot of blue. I picture Reid standing in that stark, white bathroom watching the single drop of liquid splatter to the floor.
“Reid brought the stalker to New Hampshire,” I say, testing out a theory.
“He hoped an incident up here would narrow the list of suspects enough for you to be caught. Then he’d finally be free. ”
“Not bad, Charlie,” Paul says. “You underestimate yourself too much, unlike your brother. He thought he was smarter than he was. He was easy to manipulate, though. Back then, when I needed Isaac taken care of, I told Reid your mother was destroying your family, and someone brave had to cut out the evil before it took root.”
Those are the same words Paul said to me by the firepit that night before my mother died, the same words I repeated to her later as I headed to bed. I remember how she looked at me as if she’d seen a ghost.
In a way, she had.
Off in the distance, a light appears over the lake, followed by the steady thumping of a rotor blade. The silhouette of a helicopter crosses the full moon. Maybe Seton will ride to the rescue, after all.
“They’re coming, Paul,” Freya says. “It’s over.”
I inch forward as Paul drags Freya to the very edge of the cliff. “You don’t want the story to end like this,” I say.
“There’s no other choice,” Paul says.
“You’re smart,” I say. “You’ve stayed two steps ahead of the cops for years.”
“Not this time,” Paul says, wrapping his arms around Freya from behind and pulling her to his chest. He glances over his shoulder, steeling himself, I imagine, for one final, magnificent act of misguided love.
“My mother,” I say, quickly. “Did Reid kill her? Tell me what he did.”
I’ll take the answer, whatever it is, if it will delay Paul long enough for the cops to arrive.
Paul inhales the scent of Freya’s hair. “You’ll never know, Charlie.”
The helicopter rises over the ledge, then swoops above us, a flood lamp shining across the summit.
The turbulence knocks Paul off balance. Freya digs a heel into his foot and smashes a fist into his nose.
She falls to the ground, rolling away from the ledge.
I charge. My shoulder slams into Paul’s side as the gun goes off.
Freya scrambles across the granite, toward the cabin.
Seton’s voice sounds over a loudspeaker. “Drop the gun, Paul. There’s nowhere to hide.”
The helicopter swoops low. I fall to the ground. When I look up, Paul looms over me, gun in hand.
I stand, arms raised.
“You tried to take Freya from me,” he says.
“I wasn’t yours for the taking, Paul,” Freya shouts. “Let Charlie go. You and I can talk to the police together. They’ll understand.”
“One more word,” Paul says, “and I’ll kill your boyfriend while you watch. This time, I’ll make sure to finish the job.”
Above us, the helicopter circles. Down the mountain, by the shooting range, Ginger barks into the night, a rifle by her side.
“Are you sure Ginger likes me?” I ask Freya.
“She loves you,” Freya says.
I back away, hands raised, drawing Paul toward me. I can make him feel alone all over again. I can make him lose control and direct his rage at me. And before this night is through, he’ll answer my questions.
“Freya and I had an amazing night,” I say.
“A night I’ll remember forever. The sex blew my mind, but afterward is what mattered.
Lying beside each other, waking together the next morning.
I’m so sorry things never worked out the way you wanted with her.
It could have been mind-blowing for you, too.
I’m sorry you’ve spent your life alone.”
The helicopter sweeps forward. “Down!” Seton shouts over the loudspeaker.
I drop as the helicopter swoops in low. I scramble into the trees, Paul in pursuit, like I hoped he would be.
A bullet ricochets off a tree. I veer from the path, sliding over the uneven terrain, not stopping until the trees open on the pasture below.
I dash onto the field, through the posts topped with aluminum cans, toward the stone wall, where Ginger snarls, and the single-shot rifle waits beside her with an open box of ammunition.
I stop short when I reach the dog.
“Sit,” I say, my voice shaking.
Ginger gnashes her teeth.
Behind me, Paul crashes from the trees and onto the field. “Where will you run now, Charlie?” he shouts.
I turn to face him.
He fires the gun. A bullet whizzes past me.
“Come on, Ginger,” I say, reaching a hand toward her.
She barks again but doesn’t bite.
“Freya says you love me,” I say.
I meet the dog’s eyes. She snarls. I take a step forward, then another. I haven’t lost any fingers yet. “Release,” I say, my voice firm.
The dog transforms, ears soft, tail wagging. I unhitch the line from her collar and dive past her, over the stone wall. “Come,” I shout, as Paul shoots again.
Ginger leaps after me. I grab the rifle and a fistful of ammunition.
“Down,” I say.
She goes into an active down.
My hands shake as I crack open the chamber and shove in a bullet. I rest the barrel on the wall, take aim, shoot one of the aluminum cans from its post, then fall behind the wall to reload.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” I shout.
I find Paul in the scope. He levels his gun in my direction. I shoot another aluminum can. “Next time,” I say, “I won’t be aiming at a target.”
Paul pulls the trigger, firing one round after another. I duck, pressing into the stone wall and hugging Ginger to my chest as she struggles to escape the noise. Then the shooting stops. I raise my head. Across the field, Paul pulls at the trigger. The gun clicks uselessly, the clip spent.
I shoot down the final aluminum can. “There’s only one target left,” I shout. “You.”
Paul’s face blanches under the moon as the final vestige of the man who served as my surrogate father fades. He lowers his gun to the ground and raises both hands.
“Get down,” I say.
He sinks to his knees.
“Tell me what you did. Say it out loud. What happened after my mother figured out what you’d done?”
“I shouldn’t have come back to Idlewood to talk to you by the fire that night,” Paul says.
“But I wanted to stay close, to see what you’d learned, what you’d pieced together.
Jane called me when I got home. I assumed she was upset about your podcast, about telling her story to the world.
She told me we needed to talk, and that it couldn’t wait until morning. ”
“You met her at Burkehaven,” I say.
“In the middle of the night,” Paul says.
“And what about Reid? Was he there?”
Paul takes a moment to answer, weighing what to tell me and what to hold back as a negotiating tool later, I imagine. So I load the rifle, shoot the post beside him, and reload again.
“I was alone,” Paul says, shielding his face.
“Reid wouldn’t have hurt Jane. He loved her too much.
But Jane told me she was going to the police.
I was the one who found Reid, she said to me.
He was hunched over Isaac’s body, knife in hand.
My son, transformed into someone I didn’t recognize.
Cut out the evil, he kept saying. Cut out the evil before it takes root. ”
I envision my mother facing off with Paul under the cover of darkness.
“Reid’s words have haunted me for decades,” I imagine her saying.
“Tell me, Paul, why would Charlie, my son who was an infant, my son who only knows what’s been told to him about that awful night, why would he utter the exact same phrase twenty-five years later?
The only two people on earth who should know what Reid said when he killed Isaac are Reid and me. We were the only ones there.”
I wonder if Paul tried to deny what he’d done, or to rationalize, or if he simply admitted his crimes.
“Jane tried to run,” Paul says, “but I smashed her head in with a two-by-four. I moved her car from Idlewood and left it in the trees a mile away. By the time I made it back to Burkehaven, the sun was up. Reid had filled the tanks for the backhoe, so there was plenty of gasoline to start the fire. Once the flames got going, I saw Andrea approaching in her boat. She’s lucky you showed up when you did.
Five minutes later and she’d have been dead, too. ”
“You attacked me,” I say.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Paul says.
Footsteps sound in the woods behind me. Seconds later, Seton emerges from the trees, her firearm raised.
“You landed that thing,” I say.
She inches closer. “Drop the rifle, Charlie.”
I peer through the scope.
“He destroyed my family,” I say.
He destroyed them—us—in every way, by manipulating Reid, by forcing my mother’s hand, by making us live with the cruelty of the unspoken. I spent my life feeling as if I didn’t know anyone in my family, and now I never will.
“Everything . . .” Paul begins. “Everything got out of hand. I’m sorry, Charlie. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Tell Seton what you did,” I say.
“I killed Jane and burned down the house,” Paul says. “I drowned Reid, too. He knew I’d killed your mother and threatened to come clean about what he’d done, about what I’d been doing to Freya. I killed them both.”
I doubt a coerced confession will matter much, let alone hold up in court, but it’s what I needed to hear. There are other pieces to the story, though, and once we’re off this mountain, Paul will remember how lawyers evade answers. “The detective?” I ask. “Wendy Burrows?”
“What does it matter?” Paul asks.
I pull back the hammer to release the safety.
“Don’t, Charlie,” Seton says, edging toward me.
“Wendy got close to solving the case,” Paul says, quickly.
“But she was a drunk. I found her passed out behind the wheel over on Foss Hill with an empty fifth of vodka on the seat next to her. She went there after most of her shifts. I put the car in neutral and let it roll off the ledge and into the lake.”
“And my father?” I say. “You knew he was alive all this time?”
“Not until tonight,” Paul says. “Your father found me at the farmhouse, after Reid died. I hadn’t had a chance to change out of my wet clothes. As soon as Mark saw me, he knew what I’d done.”
I feel the cold steel of the trigger against my finger and picture my father in that photo I have hidden in the thesaurus, at the beginning of a long line of choices and an unimaginable future.
Shooting Paul would be so easy. I could call it self-defense, and maybe Seton would back up my story.
But then that imaginary wall between us would turn to solid brick, and we’d never manage to get through it.
And I’d spend the rest of my life knowing what I’d done, living with another secret, this one of my own making.
“Put the rifle down, Charlie,” Seton says.
I can’t give Paul any more power. I let the rifle clatter to the ground and hold my hands in the air. “For you, Seton,” I say, “anything.”