Laura thought about her parents, and what they might have looked like after that car accident. How they would have been husks of who they were a few moments before that truck hit them.
That’s what she felt like. A husk that was once human.
Addy took steady breaths below her. At least she’d helped protect her friend from the explosion.
Something snapped inside Laura’s abdomen and a fresh flood of blood soaked her pants. Surveying the wreckage around her, Laura didn’t know what to feel. She needed to get to a hospital.
A numbness began to creep from her core to her limbs. Someone walked up to her, a woman she didn’t recognize, and in an instant, the numbness went away. And then there was nothing.
Sweet nothing.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO SIMON
“Clara.” He said her name like a curse and a prayer.
She pointed her gun at him, the metal glinting in the light of the flames. “Mr. Morgan, you shouldn’t be standing so close to the fire.” She flicked the gun with her wrist to propel him backwards. Simon noticed white edges peeking out from the hem of her coat. She still had her apron on.
“We need to get out of here,” he reminded her.
He’d called the house when he left the police station, after the questioning left him unsure of what his next steps were. He didn’t know why he’d called. Part of him hoped Joyce would answer, that she would come and find him and tell him what to do. The other part must have hoped Clara was there, because when she answered his whole sordid story spilled out of him like a dose of bad milk coming back up.
She listened quietly on the other end of the line, and Simon waited for her to exclaim surprise or disappointment or something else on her part. He’d just told her he was having an affair with a young man who’d been murdered, that Joyce was also sleeping with him, and that he’d told the police Joyce was dangerous.
Now, watching Clara hold the gun in her hand, he realized none of it was a surprise to her. The explosion hadn’t rattled her in the slightest, her body like steel against the flames as the fire grew to consume the trailer.
“I need to find Joyce,” he told her.
“I have her,” Clara replied. She bent down and, in the smoky fog of the fire he saw that what he thought was just debris over the ground mixed with the now-melting snow was in fact his wife and two other bodies.
No, not bodies. They were both breathing. Laura and Addy. They were dirty and bloody. Laura had a pool of blood spreading from the crotch of her pants. But they were both moving, ever so gently.
Susan was dead. He felt the weight of that fact deep inside. She’d looked so different from the photo he saw once at Dermot’s apartment. Susan’s face was round and joy-filled, blowing out candles on a birthday cake in the picture. Life had given her a rawness by the time he met her in person.
It was the only personal photo Dermot had up in his apartment when Simon visited him there. He’d commented on it to Dermot, remarking about how lovely the young woman was in the photo, just a small sliver of jealousy sitting in the back of his compliment.
The next time Simon visited Dermot, the photo was gone.
Clara held Joyce by the shoulders, and although Joyce’s face was covered in dirt and red scratches from when she was pushed by the explosion to the ground, she was alert and able to stand up with Clara’s help. Simon surveyed her and didn’t register any major wounds. She wasn’t bleeding anywhere.
His wife was indestructible.
Simon helped Clara move the three other women further away from the fire. He’d parked his car far enough away there was no danger of it catching fire from the trailer. Clara was parked even further back.
“Be careful with her,” Clara told Simon as he bent to pick Laura up. “I injected a sedative to help with the pain.” When Simon met his housekeeper’s gaze with a questioning look, she shrugged. “Sometimes Mrs. Morgan has trouble sleeping. I prefer to be prepared.”
Simon considered Clara might have brought the sedative with other purposes in mind as well.
Finally, when they were between the two cars and clear of the fire, Clara set Joyce down where the snow wasn’t as thick. Joyce hadn’t said a word as they moved, but now she cleared her throat and doubled over in a string of raspy coughs.
“Are you all right?” Clara asked Joyce as she bent down to bring them face to face.
Joyce coughed again. Simon heard the rattling of phlegm in her lungs.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” Repeating only convinced Simon that Joyce wasn’t. Her skin was growing pale and her hands trembled as she raked them through her hair.
She tried to take a deep breath, but it ended in another fit of coughs.
He sat down next to Joyce. Rocking back and forth helped his head settle into firmer thoughts. “What took you so long?” Simon asked.
“I was nearly killed,” Joyce snapped, and then doubled over to catch her breath.
“Not you. Clara. I called you just as I left the police station. What took you so long to get here?”
Clara was silent, staring out into the darkness.
“Clara?” Joyce asked, and in those two syllables Simon realized how full his mistake was.
How long had it been since he’d watched Clara and Joyce together? He’d been avoiding home, working from the office, drinking from the office.
He thought about the soup Joyce made. Had she made it? He pictured Clara standing at the stove, wishing him dead while she stirred in the poison, all so she and Joyce could be together, undisturbed, in the big, beautiful house they’d shared. The three of them.
Clara turned from where she’d been staring. She locked her eyes onto Simon.
“I had to see my cousin.”
And then she pointed the gun, took a breath, and let Simon give a little prayer of thanks that this nightmare was over.
“Stop!” Joyce shouted.
“Do it!” Simon called out at the same time.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE JOYCE
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Morgan. I misunderstood.” Clara lowered the gun.
Joyce couldn’t catch her breath. “Why would you think I wanted you to kill Simon?”
Clara looked away. Flames danced in the dark pupils of her eyes. “Like I say, I misunderstand.”
Joyce realized her mistake instantly. Her attempts to keep Simon under her control, the help she’d requested from Clara. Clara would have thought it was because Joyce hated her husband. But Joyce had done it from a place of desperate love. A love she couldn’t live without.
Another roar sounded in the night. Not low and thunderous, but a high-pitched wail. Blue and red lights bounced against the trunks of trees.
The police were here. And fire trucks and an ambulance. Someone must have spotted the smoke from the fire and called it in.
Clara offered to drive away right now with Joyce, along the back trails. She had another cousin, one who was a doctor back in Croatia. They could get Joyce drugs, new lungs, a new life.
“I don’t want any of that.” She looked at Simon. He nodded back at her.
