The Villa(62)

“D’you know I talked to Frances’s mum last night? She says she’s keeping Teddy. She says … she says they’ll go to the courts if they have to, and that my father—my own bloody father—will pay for it. Says that his grandson deserves a better life, a more ‘stable’ life, than the one I’ll give him.”

Mari hadn’t known this. Pierce has been subdued today, but she’d had no idea it was because Frances’s family had decided to take his son away from him.

But as she stands there watching Pierce sob, trying to coax Lara into keeping her unborn child, she can’t blame them.

They should hold him tight and keep him safe, she thinks. Safer than we kept Billy.

If they hadn’t been so poor, if Pierce had let her take him to a doctor …

“I’m sorry,” Lara says, reaching out and stroking Pierce’s hair. “I am. But you can’t replace Teddy with my baby. You can’t replace Billy with my baby.”

Mari moves closer, feeling a need to intervene, and then Pierce says, “But it could be my baby, too, Lara. And that fucking well counts for something.”

Time slows, and Mari sees Lara finally notice her over Pierce’s shoulder. The wretched look on Lara’s face says that it’s true.

Or at least, it could be true—and isn’t that just as bad?

Pierce follows Lara’s gaze and jerks his head around to see Mari standing there.

His face crumples and he lifts a hand to her. “Baby, come here.”

She thinks of that night, weeks ago: another storm, another offered hand, and how she’d thought that maybe she could live in Pierce’s world, after all.

But now she wants no part of it, wants no part of any of it, and she just shakes her head, a trembling palm pressed against her mouth, holding in a scream.

“You promised,” she finally manages to say, but it’s directed at Lara, not Pierce. “You promised, never again.”

“Mari,” Lara says, and there are tears running down her face, lightning flashing in the hallway window, making Mari wince.

“This can be okay,” Pierce is saying. “I can make this okay.”

He steps forward, lurches really, and Mari sees it happen like it’s in slow motion, his bare foot landing on the neck of Lara’s guitar, his toes curling slightly as he stumbles, and then there’s a horrible crack, wood snapping, splinters shockingly white against the dark wood. The strings give a protesting twang, but it’s too late, the thing is mangled.

Mari looks at Lara in horror.

She’s seen so many expressions cross her stepsister’s face, but this one is new. It’s not hurt, exactly. It’s deeper than that. It’s something animal, something primal, and all Mari can think about is Lara sitting in the parlor, Lara sitting by the pond, Lara on the edge of the tub, and how in every moment, that guitar has been a constant. Mari knows she hasn’t always loved Lara, but goddammit, Lara loved that guitar, and she was doing something with it.

Making something with it, something of value. Something for herself.

And now, like so many other of Lara’s dreams—and Mari’s dreams, too—it’s shattered under Pierce’s foot.

But still, Mari thinks she might be able to forgive him. It’s a stupid accident, after all, nothing Pierce meant to do. He’s drunk and tired, and they’re all upset, and Mari could absolve him the same way she’s absolved him for everything else.

And then he laughs.

It’s a shrill sound, high and grating, and Mari is moving before she knows it.

“Stop!” she hears herself yell as she runs down the stairs, her palms hitting him hard in the chest.

Harder than she’d meant to, but also not hard enough, not nearly hard enough for the rage in her heart in this moment.

He stumbles again, and his eyes meet hers, wide and confused as he falls back, and Mari will never forget the sound of his head hitting the stone floor, not as long as she lives.

It’s bad, she sees that immediately. Pierce lies there, dazed, his hand going to the back of his head instinctively, but then that same hand jerks like some invisible force has caught it, and those beautiful blue eyes roll back, his body convulsing.

“Oh god, oh god,” she hears Lara screaming, and Mari just wants it to stop, wants him to stop making those sounds, stop moving like that.…

There’s a sculpture on a pedestal by the front door. It’s heavy, solid stone, a naked and muscular man holding a harp, and Mari takes it in her hands now, feeling the weight of it, how almost impossibly heavy it seems.

But it’s not impossible after all.

She brings it down.

On the floor, Lara moans, but Mari can’t make herself stop.

She brings the statue down again and again, and she sees Frances, walking into that pond with stones in her pockets, and she sees her and Lara, locked forever in this sick triangle, and she sees Billy, trying to catch his breath and Pierce is saying, He’ll be all right, stop worrying, but he wasn’t all right, he would never be all right again, and nothing Pierce ever said came true.

Nothing he’d ever promised her had ever been real.

The statue cracks, but by then, Pierce isn’t moving anymore, and Mari is breathing so hard it sounds like she’s sobbing.

She is sobbing, she realizes, tears and blood mixing on her face.