Sign Here(96)

In all of the horror, she had forgotten about the letter. She had forgotten about Sarah, and Philip, and everything that wasn’t immediately in front of her. Not really, of course. Not entirely. But enough that she wasn’t thinking at all about Silas’s reaction, or what he would learn about his brother. About himself. Until she heard him speak.

“I thought she had fallen asleep,” Silas said. “We had been talking, fighting, for what felt like forever, and she fell asleep. So I left. I swam back. I just wanted her to stop yelling. When I covered her mouth, I didn’t push her hard enough to—”

“Yes, you did,” Gavin said.

“So you’re saying—Philip didn’t kill her.”

“No,” Gavin agreed. “You did.”

Lily was so used to Silas’s grief about Philip, she barely gave it any recognition anymore, like a particularly unpleasant stain on a basement wall. But in that moment, even with the adrenaline of rage and terror igniting every cell in her body like a match, Silas’s pain was extraordinary.

“So, you know what I did?” Gavin asked, pulling the loosened stone back with the ball of his foot and toying with the idea of kicking it. “I’ll run you through the whole thing. You might even be impressed.”

“Gavin, I swear I didn’t—”

“First, I fucked your wife.”

Lily’s hand seized on the gun, but she didn’t pull the trigger. Instead, she exhaled, slowly, and once more searched the woods for any sign of Sean or Mickey. She didn’t want to hear whatever came next. Nor did she, like she originally fantasized, want Silas to hear it. But more than anything else, she didn’t want her children to hear it.

Silas nodded.

“I know.”

“Oh, but do you, really? Because I didn’t just fuck her, Silas. I fucked her a lot. In every hotel—and then motel—within a twenty-mile radius of your home. I even fucked her in your car once. The minivan with the TVs in the back. Did you know that?”

Silas shook his head.

“Did you know she fell in love with me? And the best part—oh, my favorite part: I got her to come to a grief group for Sarah’s anniversary. Your own wife, Silas. I got her to fall in love with me by talking about Sarah. If that isn’t poetic justice, I don’t know what is.”

Gavin took a step toward Silas, who still stood with Philip’s letter in his hands.

Lily noticed the cold of the air for the first time then, against her wet skin.

Silas looked up at Gavin, the note falling to his side in a clenched fist.

“Why are you talking in the past tense? What did you do to her?”

“Pssh.” Gavin exhaled through his nose, disgusted. Or, at least, disappointed. “There’s more to the plan! Isn’t that right, chickadee?”

“Dad,” Ruth said cautiously. Lily was surprised to hear her voice, the same voice she had heard all summer. A voice she had envied for its confidence, but that now only sounded so very young.

Gavin ignored her. “You took away my most precious person in the world, Silas Harrison. So now you will lose your most precious person. You will live what I lived.”

“What did you do to my wife?”

Gavin laughed. “Lily? Oh God, Silas. Come on. It doesn’t take a therapist to recognize she’s not the most precious person in your life. No, I had my fun with Lily, but she was just a means to the end. She provided access, so I could complete step two. Well, she and my lovely daughter, here. Ruthie, can you tell Silas what he should be asking?”

“Dad,” Ruth said again, and Lily barely registered Gavin’s cruelty as she looked Ruth’s way and, instead, saw Sean.

He had one arm around Ruth’s neck, his pocketknife against her throat. He was mostly in shadow, but she could see his arm was steady. Her breath caught.

“Put down the gun or, I swear, I’ll kill her.”

“Bold move!” Gavin said from his place in the clearing as he leaned his head one way until his neck cracked. Lily could feel the noise it made in her own bones. He did that whenever he was nervous. At least his skin suit used to. “But useless, if you want any answers. Go ahead, Ruthie. Tell them what you did.”

Lily was overcome by her desperation to touch Sean. To tell him to run. These men and their ghost meant nothing to her. All that mattered was her son, with a knife wedged beneath the tender meat of another’s jaw. Him and the only thing that stilled her hand: her daughter, out there somewhere else.

Ruth swallowed, holding very still in Sean’s grip. “I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she said, through a whimper. “I couldn’t.”

“What do you mean, you couldn’t?” Gavin asked, taking a step toward them.

“I gave her the pills, but I couldn’t—they’re not like you said, Dad. They’re good people.”

Gavin shook his head. “Fuck, Ruth,” he said, his jaw tight. “I thought I could count on you.”

“You can! I just—Dad—” Ruth wrenched forward, but Sean held her back. “They’re not bad people,” Ruth said, relenting. “He did a bad thing, but he’s not a bad man.”

Lily recognized the phrase. Silas used it a lot to describe Philip.

“I’m not fucking playing,” Sean said, and Lily could hear a little shake in his voice that almost ripped her in half. “Take one more step and I will kill your daughter.”