Lies That Bind Us(75)

Marcus had reacted to the word Manos. The name. Did he know about the dead boy? If so, why had he pretended not to? Why had he lied to me?

I shifted in my seat. I was missing something important, and though I had no good reason to think so, I couldn’t shake the sense that it was something bad. Something terrible.

The thought took hold, and for all Simon’s chipper observations on the weather and the view, I found myself getting more and more apprehensive with each mile we traveled, as if the villa was a kind of prison where terrible things might still happen. I could have escaped, I thought, I could have left the airport bathroom and tried to book myself on the next flight to anywhere or checked into a local hotel and sat out the trip there. I hadn’t because that would have been crazy, a ridiculous and defeatist overreaction to a little strangeness and tension, but I couldn’t shake the idea completely.

You could have gotten away, I said to myself. But you missed your chance. And now? Well, we’ll see soon enough, won’t we?

We rounded a bend in the road and a pair of large pink-faced vultures looked up at us from the carcass they were picking over. A dog, I thought. They had white furry collars, but their heads were bare. Simon pointed without taking his hands off the wheel.

“Cool,” he said.

I just nodded.





Chapter Thirty-One

I freeze in the stairwell, though I know he may be on his way back up, may only be seconds behind me, laboring along the tunnel in his scuba mask, blade at the ready. My legs just won’t move.

You killed your sister. All those years ago. You killed her and your mom, and you’ve been lying about it and everything else ever since.

No.

Yes. It’s true. You know it now. You remember.

I do. I see it. I have always remembered waking up in the darkness of the flipped car, Gabby still and silent in the seat next to me, my mother crumpled in the driver’s seat. A silence that sucked in the whole world, the darkness of a black hole from which nothing can escape. I remember the hell that was the wait for someone to see, strapped into my seat on my side, my face pressed to the window against the road. The Toyota’s frame had crumpled in the roll and my seat belt was jammed, though that was nothing compared with the damage on the left side, which had taken the full force of the impact. I remember the disorientation, not understanding which way was up, and then the slow, dragging horror as I made sense of it all but could do nothing but weep and wait.

Eventually there were lights and sirens and men with tools who cut the car apart and told me I was a very lucky girl. They gave me candy and hot chocolate and sympathy. Lots of that, though it would never be enough. They gave me what they could, and they asked me what I remembered.

And I lied.

That was when it started. I told them my mother was tuning the radio, got distracted, lost control.

Mommy.

I didn’t say I poked Gabby one too many times, a hard stick in her ribs with the forefinger of my left hand. I didn’t say that she screamed. That my mother turned round to tell us that if we couldn’t behave till we got home . . .

And that was all it took. A momentary glance away from the road, and then a curve she hadn’t seen properly, misjudged in the darkness, over compensated, and then off the road and down the steep embankment, rolling into trees.

That was the truth, and it began with me.

I stand barefoot on the stairs in the gloom, blinking back tears and then, somewhere in the bowels of whatever structure I am in, I hear the slam of another door, and I’m back in the present and moving, refocusing, trying to find what I need to do and hold it in front of me where I can see it.

Get out. Get out. Get out.

I’m up the stairs and faced with another door.

Don’t be locked.

I try it, and it opens, though I have to push through what feels like a heavy swag of carpet to get out. For a moment, I’m disoriented, but I know where I am. I’m in the foyer of the villa. There is a table lamp by the ancient rotary phone, though it’s on my left instead of my right, and I reach for it, snatching the receiver from the cradle.

Silence. No dial tone.

I slam it back down, but by the light of the lamp I see the door to the stairwell I have just climbed, and with a surge of triumphal resolution, I pull the carpet hanging aside and shut it quickly, dragging the heavy bolts into place afterward.

My hand is trembling as I do it, but I do it, and it’s done, and I’m safe.

I sag to the ground, suddenly light-headed, conscious now that I can feel the slight tremor of the generator running when my hands touch the floor. Everything is as it was. It seems impossible, but the generator means everyone is here, doesn’t it? Maybe they don’t even know I was gone.

I get woozily to my feet and walk round to the living room. There are lights on here too, but it is deserted. There is no body on the rug.

You imagined it. Or made it up.

No. I walk over to the spot where I remember standing, looking down, then get on my hands and knees and feel the rug. It’s wet, but with water, not blood.

Cleaned. Hurriedly and probably ineffectively, but cleaned.

I stand up again, conscious that I’m weaving drunkenly in place now and that my head is starting to throb. This doesn’t make sense. The room is beginning to swim. There was something I had to do, but I’m not sure what it was.

I turn back to the foyer.