When she had sliced my skin so willingly.
The shed had been as dark and damp as we were. My back to the corner as she stood there, more lovely than I had ever seen her. Waves of hair stuck across her forehead, her lips silken from the lake.
I had held out my arm, staring down at her hand flexing with the fishing knife. Intent on each finger wrapped around the ivory handle, so tight and fixed.
Branding.
My eyes had met hers and, for a second, I thought she wouldn’t do it. But I nodded, bracing myself for the pain of blade to flesh. A flash of pleasure went off in those eyes of hers. The last time I ever wanted to see those eyes. But nothing seared through me. Nothing hurt as the blood trickled down onto the floor.
I felt nothing. I felt no pain.
Her voice breaks through now as she answers.
“Isla.” She speaks with certainty. A clarity I want to take away.
I stay silent.
“It’s over . . . you can rest easy now,” she says.
I nod as if she can see me.
“Where are you? Are you—”
“Tell me what happened, Marlow,” I cut through, willing each word to embed deep into her like a parasite. “Tell me how my husband died.”
She says nothing. I am willing to wait. I am willing to wait forever.
“I told you. I told you what happened. I can’t remember,” she finally speaks, flat and emotionless.
“No,” I growl, low and tumbling, a warning of disruption—of what I have kept so long inside me. “The truth.”
She is shaky. “Okay, Isla.”
I suck in all the air around me, holding my breath.
“Is this what you want from me?”
Her voice sounds wet, but I don’t believe the tears. I don’t believe anything anymore.
“Then I will give it to you,” she sputters. “The truth? The truth is I remember. I remember everything. I remember every detail of the moment Sawyer died.”
“Marlow,” I start to say, but nothing comes out. Nothing is left inside me to expel. I am an empty vessel of misery.
“Yes,” she answers. “The answer to your question is yes . . .”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
A shrill tone pierces my ears, its high note deafening me until her voice breaks through.
“I pushed him,” she says.
I close my eyes and pain spreads out over my face, stinging every cell it touches. I see him. I see Sawyer, his beautiful body flying in front of the truck. I see her crouched low where she belongs, watching with a mixture of terror and allure at what her hands have just done. I feel a sickening relief . . . relief that she is the reason.
Relief that I can tear her apart.
“Do you believe me?” she finally asks, with such an unearthly innocence and purity to her voice that I nearly hurl the phone. “Do you believe that I could do something like that to you?”
But it doesn’t matter, Marlow. It doesn’t matter anymore.
“Oh, Isla . . .”
It’s my turn now.
“You never asked me what I did with it,” I say with precision. I am purposeful, sharp.
“What?”
“The knife.”
She goes quiet.
“I know,” she finally breathes out. In that breath I hear a resignation, one that sweeps in thoughts of us as children. Our laughter echoes as we splash in the lake, floating in and eating away at what I hold on to dearly. The bitterness of what I have become.
“You want to hurt me so badly . . . don’t you?” she asks, all too sane and sound.
No. I don’t want to hurt you, Marlow.
“What do you think I did with the knife, Marlow?”
