No One Will Miss Her(53)

“He was,” Dwayne said, and looked at me helplessly. “I was splitting wood when they got here. I let them in like you asked, and he said to bring in the suitcases because he wanted to go out in the kayak right away, while it was still sunny. I saw him putting it in, but I guess . . . he changed his mind, maybe. He walked in right when—but she wanted to. It was her idea!”

Adrienne’s eyelids were drooping again.

“I need to lie down,” she said. “I don’t feel right. It feels different this time. My arms are so heavy.”

I stared at Dwayne. “This time?” I said through gritted teeth. “How many times has she done this?”

“I don’t know. A few.” He was whining now.

“Since when?”

“This summer,” he said. “She asked.”

“She asks for lots of things,” I hissed.

Adrienne made a croaking noise, somewhere between a retch and a belch. I turned just in time to see her cheeks bulge, then hollow out as she swallowed her own vomit. She grimaced and took a few tentative steps out, bracing two hands against the railing to gaze down at the body on the stairs below. The trees creaked. The lake glimmered. Ethan Richards stayed dead.

“You killed him,” she said, in the same slow, sleepy voice. And then, almost as an afterthought: “Wow.”

It was the “wow” that did it. I crammed my own fist into my mouth to stifle the shriek of hysterical laughter. My father had built those stairs with his bare hands. Now Ethan Richards was sprawled out on them with a broken neck, and his wife was too stoned to do anything but barf in her own mouth and say “wow.”

Adrienne stumbled back inside.

“We need to call the police,” I said.

Dwayne blanched. “But—”

“We have to. Right now. It already looks bad that you didn’t call them right away, and when she comes down, she’s going to figure that out. If she’s not calling them herself—”

“She was already nodding off when it happened,” he interrupted. “You saw her. She’s gonna be in and out like that for another hour at least. And anyway, I unplugged the phone after I called you. Just in case.”

I stared at him in disbelief. He sounded almost proud of himself, but the worse part was the expression on his face: haunted, scared, and guilty, yes, but also hopeful. My husband had called me and then unplugged the phone, knowing that I would come running, so sure that I’d fix what couldn’t be undone. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to scream. Why had he had to bring his addiction here—to Adrienne, to the lake, to the house that I’d actually thought could be a path to a better life? The house my father had deeded to me, to me alone, so that no matter what else happened, I would have at least one thing, one place, that was mine.

It wouldn’t be mine anymore. Not when this was all over. Dwayne had made sure of that. I had read the fine print on the rental agreements, the ones that outlined what you could and couldn’t be sued for if someone got hurt on your property. Accidents were covered. Your junkie husband pushing a billionaire down the stairs was not. He would probably go to prison, probably for a long time, but I’d be handed my own life sentence. Everything I’d worked for, the life and the future I’d finally started to build here in a place where both were so hard to come by, was about to go up in flames.

I sat down heavily in one of the deck chairs, and put my head in my hands. Dwayne squatted beside me.

“We just have to get our story straight,” he said. “So they understand it was an accident.”

“An accident?” I snapped. “You pushed him down the stairs and he broke his neck. How is that an accident?!”

Dwayne grabbed my hand and peered urgently into my face. “But it wasn’t like that! I didn’t push him down the stairs. I hit him, and he kind of reeled backward, and then he fell down the stairs. Doesn’t that mean it was an accident? Like, legally?”

“No,” I said. “Jesus Christ. Legally, you fucking killed someone. And what about the drugs? Are we going to tell the cops how that was just an accident, too? You were running through the house with a syringe full of dope and you tripped and fell on top of Adrienne and whoopsie, the needle went in?”

“That’s not funny, Lizzie.”

“I’m not laughing, Dwayne. What did you think would happen when I got here?”

“I don’t know! I thought you’d have an idea! You’re so fucking smart, right? You always act like it, like you’re so much smarter than me!” He was shouting now, flecks of spittle flying off his lips and landing in his beard. He stood, started pacing, and his voice grew hoarse. “I’m not a bad person. I’m not a bad person! I just made a mistake! They can’t put me in jail for one mistake!”

“Oh, DJ,” I said, and my voice broke. It had been years since I’d called him by the nickname. “Of course they can. And you know what’s great? You called me, and now I’m involved. That’s what it looks like now, like I was part of it. So probably, we both go to prison. You’ve fucked me over, too.”

Dwayne sucked his teeth, sighed, and eased into the deck chair beside me.

“I guess that’s how it is, huh?” he said matter-of-factly. He looked over at me, a funny little smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “I fuck you over. You fuck me over. And on and on. That’s just our whole fucking life, isn’t it? That’s just what we do.” He sighed. “So fine. You want to call the cops?”