“That’s right.” Joyce stood up, and Laura held her breath. “You didn’t think. That was your problem.”
“So much has happened. I didn’t mean for any of this to be real. I can’t believe it’s real.”
Joyce edged closer to Susan, her hands raising slightly as though she were about to comfort her.
Something shifted in Susan’s face. “She was always a bitch, you know?” she said.
“Who was?” Joyce asked, her hands almost to Susan’s shoulders, playing at an embrace for comforting her. The gun was limp in Susan’s hands and very close to Joyce.
Laura kept pressing down on Addy’s shoulder, all while trying to make sense of what was happening between Joyce and Susan. A second flashed where Joyce tried to snatch the gun, but Susan was quicker than that and she sidestepped from Joyce’s reach. Joyce’s cheeks flushed, with fury or embarrassment or both, Laura wasn’t sure.
Susan cleared her throat. “Trina. Trina was always a bitch.”
Joyce was quiet for a moment. “You knew her?”
“We went to school together. I knew her and her fiancé.”
“You didn’t say anything about that before.”
Susan didn’t respond.
“You grew up together?” Joyce prompted, still standing so close to Susan.
“Trina was four years younger than me, but she was in the popular crowd at school, and for some reason she decided to single me out. She made my life a living hell. My parents were very religious, and she convinced the entire school we were in a cult. She said terrible things. Things that ruined my life.”
Susan took a deep breath. Joyce looked bored already.
“In college, I thought I had left all of that behind. I was seeing a wonderful guy, and I brought him home to meet my parents. I made the mistake of accepting an invitation to a house party a high-school classmate was having—they’d sent the invite through Facebook—and Trina was there. Once she walked into the room, all fresh and wild, there was no stopping her. Tom was a goner.”
“Tom?” Joyce was paying attention again.
Susan stared out into space, but Laura noticed a twitch in her jaw. “Tom Hovisky. You have to realize, I wasn’t the way I am now.” Susan held up an arm to gesture to her rich clothes, her expensive haircut. “I was still so much under my parents’ influence. I thought dressing nicely and flirting were sinful. I was lucky to have Tom even be interested in me in the first place. I couldn’t believe my luck when he sat next to me in the library and introduced himself.”
Tears formed in Susan’s eyes. “He congratulated me on earning the highest grade on our calculus exam. One thing led to another, and I offered to help him with his homework in the class.”
Joyce made a small noise in the back of her throat.
Susan cut a discerning look at both Joyce and Laura. “I knew it might have started off as him using me. But then we fell in love. We enjoyed spending time together. Tom was the first man I slept with. He was going to propose soon, I was certain.”
Susan shook her head. “Until that bitch showed up back in my life.” She paused. “I didn’t become this Susan until well after he left me for Trina. It took years to transform myself.”
Joyce glared at Susan. “Did you kill her?”
Addy moaned, and Laura snapped her attention back to her patient. The bleeding seemed to be slowing down.
Nobody spoke.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN SIMON
Simon sat in the parking lot, his expensive car resting beneath him like a beast waiting to be summoned. Where was he going?
For the second time that day, he left the police station.
The detectives took his information, said they’d follow up, and now he was alone again. He checked his phone to see where Joyce was. They set location tracking up a long time ago, and he rarely used it because he’d prefer to not know where his wife was. He mainly checked it on his way home from the office, to see which type of emptiness he was coming home to.
Kirkpatrick and Bechdel assured him they were working the case for Dermot. And for Trina. There were moments where Simon felt normal, and his mind forgot the terrible things he’d seen, and there were others where it suffocated him. Like a wave crashing into him, uncontrollable as it molded itself out of his grasp.
Joyce was somewhere out in the trailer park that skirted the edge of town. Her green dot beckoned from the screen of his phone.
Why was she there? What was she doing?
Simon decided to find out. The engine purred seductively as he turned the key. Money bought little that could bring happiness, he’d discovered, but it did buy good engineering.
Simon had always been a good driver, enjoying the process of directing a massive machine with his hands. It’s why he became a surgeon in the first place, because what are our bodies if not self-aware machines?
And there it was, pushing down on him again. The memories of what he’d done.
So much of what he touched now turned to death.
He’d been sure Tom had a rupture in his spleen. The bleeding, the hardening of his abdomen from where the blood pooled from the impact. He needed help, and Simon had offered it. He’d used a penknife, one that he kept in his pocket as though he were some old-fashioned twee gentleman. Simon’s father always liked being the best-dressed man in the room, with a sliver of malice underneath.
At the hearing in front of the hospital board, Trina said Simon slit Tom open like he was a stray dog. That had stung more than the other accusations. From his colleagues. From the police, who knew the law of being a Good Samaritan applied, even if the bystander was drunk. From Joyce, although hers were silent. Quick actions behind his back.
One time she left her gun on the kitchen counter, next to a loaf of bread and a grocery receipt, just for him to see it when he came home from the office. Neither of them mentioned it, and the gun was gone by the time she called him from his study for dinner.
The gun didn’t need to stay. It had served its purpose, which was to show Simon that she had it. That she’d use it.
Simon thought about the whiskey flask he kept in the middle console, but pushed it out of his mind. He could stand this pain. He just needed to bite back, let it ride him empty and then nothing would be there to hurt.
He was so close to that already.
The streets were nearly empty, all the lights turning green for him as though they were welcoming Simon on his journey. Keep going, find your wife and let her consume you.
An image of that man’s body shattering as he looked at Simon from across the convenience store came next, unbidden and fragrant like a corpse flower.
Simon turned off the main highway onto the gravel road leading to the trailer park. He imagined Joyce watching his dot move towards her, delighted by the fact he was seeking her out this one last time.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT JOYCE
This Susan was a real piece of work.
Joyce let go of Susan and took a step back, putting space between herself and the other woman. She asked the question she already knew the answer to. “Where’s Tom now? Did he and Trina break up, after all that?”
Susan grimaced. “Tom was killed on the side of the road last year by some drunk.”
A sharp edge sliced through Joyce’s chest. Nobody talked about her husband that way.
“You just shot a young woman for no reason,” Joyce said, stating the obvious. She wanted to get Susan angry, angrier than she already was.
