Open House(65)
“But even so,” Rappaport fired back, “Dean would certainly have time to do both: meet Josie, possibly hurt her, and still pick up groceries so he’d have an alibi. Dean was the one who initiated the meeting. He asked Josie if they could see each other and talk, alone, and she suggested meeting early at the open house, where they could speak privately. Dean maintains that he didn’t actually end up going there early or alone, that Josie called him and called it off. But we don’t see any evidence on his cell of her calling. There’s a received call from an untraceable number from that morning, but that’s it. Dean claims that must have been the one Josie used to call him, but you can imagine that none of this sits very well with any of us. Dean and Josie were seeing each other privately, without telling their respective fiancée and spouse, and he was trying to get her alone the very morning she was attacked.”
Angry tears burned Haley’s eyes, and she tried to swipe them away, not wanting to be this way, to be this vulnerable. “Dean didn’t do it,” she said. “I don’t know how to prove it to you, but I will.”
FIFTY-TWO
Priya
Priya stood in the attic of her home for the first time in years. She stared at the canvases tilted against the walls, some of her finished paintings, some half-finished, and some entirely blank.
It had been Josie who killed Emma. Not Brad. Josie.
Priya wasn’t supposed to know, no one was. The plan was to arrest Josie as soon as she’d been cleared from the hospital, but Haley had come by to tell Priya and swear her to secrecy, as though she somehow understood the switch it would flip inside Priya to know the truth.
A morning glow hovered on the horizon. Elliot would wake soon, and Priya would hold him close and whisper into his ear the things she loved about him. But for now she had other ideas. She stepped carefully across the attic and lifted one of the blank canvases upright. She found a bundled, dusty tarp and set it free around the canvas. Burlap covered her paints, and she lifted the sheet and studied the cans. She removed the tops, and the familiar pine and oil smell swarmed her nostrils and took over the attic. Brushes were scattered everywhere, and she found the one that looked the most pliable and plunged it into the paint. She coated it in inky navy, and her lips curved into a smile at the familiar feel of the smooth wooden brush, the weight of it so completely perfect in her grasp. She turned it over, marveling at the way daylight caught the inconsistencies and imperfections in the paint, little lumps and tiny bubbles that came to the surface and released almost imperceptible exhalations. And then with one quick gasp she streaked it across the canvas, her hands shaking, her heart quickening. The paintbrush moved back and forth as the tiny muscles in her hand remembered what to do, intuitively knowing how to create something that wasn’t there before. She painted for minutes that could have been hours, feeling herself unspool and unwind, making space as the parts of her that had been lost for so many years began to come together again. Bolts of color filled her canvas, her touch tentative at first but gaining confidence as she went. She began to cry, but she kept going, brush against canvas, until she felt something inside her finally release as the guilt and pain that had been bottled up ever since Emma came to the doorstep all those years ago slowly released its hold on her.
FIFTY-THREE
Haley
In anatomy class that morning Haley looked down at Susie, her hands trembling as she followed the dissection instructions given by a substitute teacher named Dr. Cotler. It was hard not to think of Brad being held at the police station, wilting beneath the weight of everything that had happened, everything he’d been accused of. The anatomy lab, just like Waverly, was abuzz with the news of Josie’s attack, and Haley could tell by the way the students stared at her that details about who was at the open house had filtered through the community.
Haley swallowed. Maybe she wasn’t ready to move here after all. Maybe, after they’d put all of this behind them, she and Dean could move back to the city, somewhere more anonymous, and somewhere they’d never have to see Josie again.
Or maybe Josie would be behind bars before then.
I’m sorry, Susie, Haley thought as she worked on her cadaver, her hands numb as she dissected, following Dr. Cotler’s instructions and the slides she put up on the screen. I’m sorry I’m so distracted, and I’m sorry for whatever terrible thing might have happened to you. Haley made the next cut into Susie’s heart, trying to focus only on Susie as she’d promised, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Emma. She felt as if she was out of her own body as she stared down at Susie, her vision going fuzzy, making Susie’s heart double in front of her, the valves and ventricles, muscle and arteries all becoming one pulpy blur. Haley wasn’t sure what was wrong, and she thought she was going to be sick, or that maybe the stress of everything that happened had finally become too much. She felt out of her body as she reached down and traced the spot on Susie where Josie had been stabbed just above her right clavicle.
A shiver passed over Haley. She put down her scalpel and grabbed the steel table, trying to stay upright. Sweat gathered on her skin, and she tried to breathe, to be okay, but she wasn’t. Her hands didn’t feel like her own when she picked up her scalpel again and clutched it in her hand, when she raised it above Susie’s body. She felt herself release a fast, hard breath, and then she wrapped her other hand around the scalpel and plunged it into the trapezius muscle above Susie’s clavicle. The other students at nearby cadaver stations turned to stare, one of them barely muffling a gasp. Haley stared at her scalpel sticking straight out of Susie, barely believing what she’d just done. Look closer, said Emma somewhere in the back of Haley’s mind, and an idea began to form, something so wrong, so strange and disjointed it could hardly be possible . . .