Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six(54)

A wave of pain and nausea almost doubled her over. She knew. Of course, she did.

“What did he do to you, Trina?” asked Liza. That’s what this was, wasn’t it? “How can we make it right?”

Trina shook her head. “Why are you protecting him? Why do women always enable and apologize, cover for monsters. You, Cricket, Hannah. Why?”

Liza didn’t have time to answer. Finally, she found her strength and drew the gun. But Trina was on her, the gun knocked quickly from her hand, falling useless onto the floor. Joshua came up fast behind her. It all seemed floating, unreal—his strength, the coldness in the other woman’s eyes. What were they going to do with her?

When Joshua spoke, Liza heard fear in his voice.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t, Trina. You promised.”

Within the volume of her other pain, her terror, she almost didn’t feel the knife in her abdomen, until she was screaming with it, and Joshua was putting a big, calloused hand over her mouth. The world started fading, pain a siren drowning out everything else.

They’d have heard her, wouldn’t they? Someone would come to save her, the baby.

“No one’s coming for you,” Trina said, as if reading her mind. “I took your things. Left a note for Mako. He’ll think you left him. That you are finally sick of his shit.”

“No,” she gasped.

Liza leaned hard against Joshua, her own weight too much for her legs.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said, his lips next to her ear.

She tasted his skin. And she was falling and falling. “I don’t understand. What do you want from me?” Her own words sounded faint, distant.

There must be an answer. Trina had been stalking her, pretending to be Brandon. She knew about Liza’s affair, her pregnancy. She’d lured Liza away from the group. She’d obviously been lingering in the periphery of their lives, watching, for months, longer. She’d booked this trip. Was it her plan all along, to get them out here and destroy them one by one? Was it just revenge against Mako? No, she wanted to hurt Liza, too. Take her baby. Kill her. Why?

She was insane. A destroyer.

The room darkened, or seemed to. The sounds around her grew fuzzier.

I’m so sorry, she told her baby. I wasn’t strong enough to protect you even now. I wouldn’t have been a good mom if I couldn’t even get you this far.

Joshua lowered her gently to the ground.

Blood. There was so much blood. And the world around her was fading. She was sorry. For everything she’d done that led her to this moment. She wrapped her arms around her middle, curled up, let the darkness come for her.

“Why?” she whispered.

“I’m just trying to clean up the mess of this family,” said Trina.

The last thing Liza heard was the other woman’s derisive laughter.





23


Trina

“Turn off the light.”

Joshua stands rooted, staring at Liza’s still form on the ground. He’s gone pale, eyes glassy. “Y-y-you said it was only about him.”

“This is about him.” How is he not seeing that?

His face. It’s a mask of accusation, of fear. I’ve seen that look before. I should have known that he’d unstitch. “You—killed her.”

Like he’s surprised that it came to this.

I glance over at Liza’s lifeless body. “Maybe.” Blood seeps silently, pools black.

I walk away from her, turn off the light, as he sinks onto the couch and dumps his head into his hands. “What have I done?”

No one likes to be confronted with the truth about what they will do when motivated by fear. But it’s only human to act in our own self-interest. The slope is a slippery one, an abyss below. It gets away from you, that morality you cling to when things are going well. It’s when the bottom falls out of your life that you really see who you are.

“What happens now?” he says, although I’m not sure he’s talking to me.

“That depends.”

He lifts questioning eyes to me, shakes his head.

Uncertainty. We don’t care for it.

But I have come to understand—in my mindfulness and meditation practice—that there is nothing certain in life but death. We may labor under the delusion that we know what the day ahead of us holds, what the hour holds. But we don’t. We may think that our death—our very certain death—is something distant and remote, an island we might never visit.

But for some of us, it’s right here, waiting.

Just pay attention. You can feel its breath on your neck.

I am the agent of uncertainty.

He rises now, pulling himself to his full height. The sadness is gone, replaced by anger. Not good.

“Sit down,” I say, summoning the voice of the lion tamer. I have intimate knowledge of all of his little isms, habits, appetites. All his secrets. I am good at that, peeling back the layers people hide behind, to find the beating heart inside. I try to imbue my words with that knowledge.

The truth. That’s what ties him to me now, even though I can feel him edging away.

I take a breath and feel it fill my lungs. I can hear the distant rumble of thunder. There’s a big storm coming.

My phone pings and it breaks the standoff between us. I press back a swell of annoyance as I read.