Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(116)

Vero knows that. If I could stop right now, sit and have a cup of tea, Vero would be wearing her finest dress. She’d hug me, and I would hug her back, and we’d hold each other tight.

Because what is love, if not forgiveness?

More crashing. From behind me. Coming closer.

I’m running blind. Maybe even in circles. There’s no place to go. Just trees growing steadily larger, bushes filling out thicker and thicker. I come to a small clearing, and that’s that. I spin around and around. But I’m trapped.

This is it. What I’ve spent twenty-two years waiting for.

Deep breath. I stop, turn, prepare for the worst.

Shouts in the distance. The police, I realize. Here and in pursuit. Meaning if I can just find a way to buy time. Two minutes? Three, four, five?

I should climb a tree. But just as I try to figure something out, I hear a fresh snap right behind me. I whirl around, and Marlene Bilek is standing there.

The woods haven’t been any kinder to her than to me. Her face is scratched and bleeding, her short Brillo hair now a rat’s nest of leaves. Her chest is heaving from her exertions and it’s clear the chase has only increased her rage. She fumbles slightly with the gun; then she’s got it up.

“Don’t move,” I hear myself say.

She frowns at me. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s here. Can’t you feel her? She’s here. Right here. With us.”

“Girl, you’ve taken one too many hits to the head.”

“She would’ve gone anywhere with you, you know. A homeless shelter, a women’s home. She loved you so much. You were her world. The one person who kept her safe.”

“Stop it!”

“She remembered that night. Ronnie beating her so savagely. Felt like it would never end. But then he was gone and there you were, holding her in your arms. You whispered to her all night long. You begged her to live. She heard every word. For you, she came back again.”

Marlene’s arm is trembling. She thins her lips; I can see her willing her finger to move on the trigger. I wonder if she knows she has tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Five thousand dollars. That kind of love, and you sold it for a measly five grand?”

“Stop!”

But I don’t. I can’t. “Tell her you love her. Now. Say the words. She’s been waiting thirty years! Thirty years for you to return to her. Thirty years for you to remember how much you love her.”

“No—”

“You have to!”

“I can’t! Don’t you understand? I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I really did tell myself it was for the best. Then, when she was gone, when I realized what I had done . . . There was no going back. Don’t you understand? I ripped my own heart out of my chest, and there was no putting it back again!”

“Did you miss her?”

“Yes! Every day!”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes. Yes, yes, yes!”

“She loves you, too. She loves you and she hates you, and there is nothing I can do to save you from what’s going to happen next.”

Marlene frowns at me.

“Girl, you’re crazy!” She takes a determined step forward, as if to end this once and for all . . .

She doesn’t see what I already know. The jumble of objects all these years later, still sticking out of the earth. Because the night had been dark then, too, and time compressed and my vision blurred by the thickness of my tears. As I’d dragged her body through the woods, away from the flames. As I found the half-filled grave dug just hours before. As I sat back on my heels and used my bare hands to further excavate the heavy, wet earth.

Of course, I’d been exhausted and shell-shocked and traumatized. I hadn’t dug very deep, before depositing my most precious possession in the earth. Her limbs flopping awkwardly. Her sightless gray eyes staring back at me. Not enough time for perfect. Just good enough.

As I closed her eyes.

As I kissed her cheek.

As I whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Before dumping a few handfuls of mud, then running off into the night.

Now Marlene comes for me.

She steps forward.

She trips over the first protruding object. Stumbles into a second, then a third. Throws out her left hand as if to catch herself, but it’s no use. The objects have won.

She falls back.

Simple really. Stumble, fall, get up again.

But this time there’s a crack. Loud enough to echo through the silence as Marlene’s head smashes against a particularly round and smooth rock.

Such as the kind a girl might find in the woods and use as a marker for her best friend’s grave.

The wind, whispering again. I swear I hear her voice. I feel her tears. The lost princess of the secret realm, finally reunited with the magical queen after all these years . . .

I open my arms. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I love you, Vero.”

Marlene doesn’t get up again.

Minutes later Wyatt comes crashing into the clearing, drawing up short as his flashlight finds me. He illuminates me, then the body, then the objects sticking out of the earth.

“Thomas?” I ask quickly.

“Tessa is tending to him. Ambulance is on its way.” He takes a step closer to Marlene’s body, his flashlight dancing over her cracked skull, sightless eyes. There’s no need to check for a pulse. It’s as obvious to him as it is to me; what’s done is done.