A Lesson in Vengeance(83)

Ellis killed Clara. I tell myself those words, try them out on my tongue. “Ellis killed Clara.” Ellis tried to convince me that I was haunted, or crazy, or both. She used magic to get to me. She told me magic was destroying me and then manipulated me into using it anyway. Then she killed Clara and lured me here to make sure I knew.

I don’t want to believe it. But not wanting to believe the truth doesn’t make it not the truth.

My hands are still numb when I shut myself in the rental car, but I can’t afford to linger. I press my wrists against the steering wheel and manage to guide the car like that, down the steep hill and out onto the open road. I pull over a mile out, crank up the heat, and sit there with my fingers held up to the vents until they finally start to thaw. The lights from passing cars cut through the silver dawn light; I flinch every time one drives by.

The radio is on. The newscaster lectures us about some store closing in town: A pillar of the community. And why would they close that store? It’s been there for fifty years. It’s a family-owned business. Sign of the times, the newscaster says, and I agree. I’ve never in my life cared as much about village politics as I do right now, sitting in this car with dirt under my nails and sweat frozen at the nape of my neck, cheeks tear-streaked and hands shaking.

What will that family do next? Will they open another store? How can they show their faces in public once everyone knows their failure?

Maybe they’ll move. Far away. Somewhere no one who knew them will ever be able to find them again. They could change their names and cut their hair. Get a little cottage in the woods and become recluse. Eventually everyone will forget.

At last, once feeling and color has returned to my fingertips, I reach onto the passenger seat and grab my cell phone. I swipe up the screen and stare at the keypad.

I should…call someone. The police, perhaps. That’s what a normal girl would do. Call the police, the ambulance, the fire department, the goddamn National Guard—anyone and everyone.

Clara’s death is a heavy stone. I want to pass it to someone else.

My phone is still in my hand when it rings.

I startle, badly enough that I drop the phone into the footwell and have to retrieve it, my cold fingers scrabbling down between my legs. The number is one I don’t recognize, but my phone tells me it’s from a Georgia area code.

All at once I’m transported back to the Dalloway main library: Me and Ellis sitting on the floor in the stacks, leaning against opposite shelves with our knees bumping together. We were in the true crime section. We’d read about a murder case, solved because the culprit made a phone call at the scene of the crime. The cell signal pinged off the nearest tower, and that easily, the murderer’s alibi became worthless.

I turn off my phone. It feels like it takes years for the screen to go dark, that infernal unknown number mocking me the whole time.

Is that enough? I didn’t pick up; maybe I’m safe.

Only I already know that’s not true.

If the police find out about Clara’s body—if I become a suspect—they’ll know I was here.

They’ll think I killed her.





The return to school passes in a watercolor haze. I pull over at a gas station to vacuum out the rental car, suddenly terrified that a grain of grave dirt will be all it takes to identify me. I wash myself off in the grimy bathroom with paper towels and industrial soap as best I can, black water swirling down the drain. I vomit in the smelly public toilet. I drop off the rental car and ride Kajal’s bike to campus. I can barely keep balance. I almost run myself into a ditch at least twice.

But I make it.

It’s barely past nine when I trudge into the house, exhausted and sick. My heart feels like a bird fluttering in my chest, weak and breakable. I don’t think about the mud I’m tracking across the rug until I’m already in my bedroom, and by then I can’t care anymore. The prospect of getting down on my hands and knees and scrubbing dirt out of the carpet feels like an insurmountable challenge.

I didn’t even glance down the second-floor hall as I passed the landing. Maybe Ellis is in the room below me right now. Maybe she’s waiting for me to find her.

I don’t want to find her. I can’t even look at her.

Instead I turn on the shower and crouch down on the tile floor as hot water pounds against my scalp. It sluices off the evidence of crime—grave dirt disappearing down the drain. It rinses me clean, the same way it did a year ago.

That shower is just what I need to crack open the shell I’ve built around myself; finally, the world sinks back in.

Clara is dead. (Murdered. Ellis killed her.) It’s Tuesday; she’s supposed to return tonight from her camping trip. That means a few short hours before people start to wonder what happened to her. If I’m lucky—if I’m very lucky—the cemetery caretaker doesn’t come in on Tuesdays. Maybe it will snow again overnight, a layer of ice all I need to conceal any sign that Alex’s grave was desecrated.

And what is the evidence that ties me to the graveyard?

Alex’s connection to me, of course. That’s one.

The grave dirt in the rental car. I vacuumed it out, but I hadn’t exactly been in the best state of mind; it’s possible I missed some. But how easy is it, really, for a forensic team to link dirt to a specific location? Surely all the dirt in the Catskills is essentially the same.