Sign Here(71)

She took a breath.

“Did you kill her?”

Silas tensed, but less so than she would’ve predicted. When she thought about asking that question in the past, she imagined him driving off the road or choking on his food. Something with wide eyes and white knuckles, or at least a variation in breath. But instead, the words just seemed to flicker through him, like sunlight on the lake.

“How could you even ask me that? You were there, Lily. You testified.”

“You weren’t in bed when I woke up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That night, when I woke up. You weren’t there. That’s why I went for that walk; that’s why I saw—”

Silas laughed. The sound cut through the darkest corners of the house, and it wasn’t funny at all.

“You had just told me you had made your decision; you were keeping the baby. For sure, you said. One second I was a seventeen-year-old with a football scholarship putting his drunk girlfriend to bed—not exactly Future-Mom-of-the-Year material, Lil—”

“I was seventeen, too, and fucking terrified—”

“And then, in an exhale of coconut-rum breath, I became a whole new person. Sleep wasn’t exactly on the table. So I cleaned up.”

“I went downstairs. I didn’t see you.”

“It’s a big house.” Silas gripped his jaw with one hand. “Where is this even coming from? What poison has he put into your head?”

Lily pressed her palms into her eyes. Was she crazy? Had the Forgetting Years been the truth and what came after the madness?

“This isn’t about him—”

“Like fuck it isn’t,” he said. “You’ve just been . . . what? Casually wondering if your husband of seventeen years is a murderer? The man who has stood by you from that night on? How long have you been wondering this, Lily? At the trial? As we made and raised our two kids? At Philip’s fucking funeral?”

Lily shook her head. “I can’t understand why you weren’t there when I woke up,” she said. “The house was completely dark, Silas. Were you cleaning in the dark? And your clothes—”

“What about my clothes?”

“They were on the floor the next morning, so I thought it would be helpful if I packed them. They were covered in dirt.”

Lily was just about to peer out from between her fingers when she felt his breath on her face.

“Honestly, sometimes I wish I had killed her,” he said. “Just so Philip didn’t have to go through that. If I had done it, maybe he would still be alive. But that’s not how it happened.” Silas banged his fist on the counter. “Fuck, Lily, you’re the one who testified that he was upset she turned him down. You’re the one who saw him with her body, punching her. Did you lie? Have you been lying this whole time?”

Lily shook her head again, but the question sizzled in her gut. Was she lying? It had been so long, so much forgotten.

“Fucking look at me!” he yelled, grabbing her wrists in one hand and yanking them down.

No, she thought when she looked at Silas then. She definitely saw Philip over Sarah’s body that night, his fists slamming into her chest.

She remembered how big he had looked on top of her. Like a grown man.

Like Silas did now.

“Are you bored? Did you think if you fucked the murder victim’s brother, you could be the center of attention again? To leech more attention off my brother, off Sarah?” He was yelling everything now. The house caught his words and tossed them from wall to wall, room to room. His own voice becoming his applause, fortifying him. “How dare you do this to my family?”

From a young age, Lily learned that the most important thing for her to be was agreeable. This message came daily from the world, but first from her mother. Even her rage was shellacked, buried under a thick coating of bashful eyelashes and punctual thank-you notes. Made so beautiful it was hard to recognize as toxic, until it was too late.

But Lily wasn’t her mother’s charm school Cinderella anymore. Neither was she seventeen, pregnant and terrified, nor deep in the lull of the Forgetting Years. For the first time in her life, she realized, she was standing steady, all on her own.

She had just as much claim to this life, this family, as he did. Maybe more.

She stepped up to Silas, even though there was barely any room left between them.

“You want to know the truth?” she spat. “Fine. Do you have any idea how it feels to watch your husband fall more and more in love with a dead girl? Even after you’ve given him two children, even after you’ve dug deep into the trenches with him, had his back through everything? Don’t act surprised; of course I knew about you and Sarah. But I don’t give a shit about who you loved back then. Not anymore. What I can’t stand is how now, year after year, you’ve pulled away from me in favor of a ghost. There is nothing more dehumanizing than being chosen by the man you adore for nothing but a beating heart and a positive pregnancy test.”

Silas went quiet. “Lil, you can’t really—”

“There is no competing with someone who died in high school, Silas. No one can live up to a good memory.”

Silas opened his mouth to speak, but Lily cut him off, the words she always dreaded flying freely now.

“So yes, I’m fucking Gavin Kelly. Not only that, but I’m in love with him. So in love, it’s clear I never knew what it meant before. Not because of his sister, or you, or anyone else. For the first time in my life, I’m thinking about my own wants. And every day I wake up and all I want is him.”