“Ah, there it is,” Joyce murmured.
“What about the letter? It only arrived a week before he died,” Laura said. “The letter where Dermot got back in touch with you, and confessed that he’d killed Tom?”
Susan was only half listening…
Mom, give me a drink! Mom, why are we out of milk? I don’t like this casserole, honey. Maybe you overbaked it? Stop bothering me, I’m busy working. I have better things to do than listen to you prattle on about your boring day going to the grocery store. Mom, I wet the bed again. Mom, Mom, Mom, pay attention to me!
All of these are things that had been said to Susan in recent months. All of them.
There was something about living a life for others that makes murder seem a reasonable alternative.
“I love my family,” Susan replied. “I just also hate them.”
And why did she have this family? Because of fucking Trina Dell.
And because of her brother. Because of Dermot.
“Okay…” Laura held onto the last syllable. “But the letter?”
Simon was still fussing with Addy. “Get away from her!” Susan barked. “Go stand by Joyce.”
Simon obeyed. Now Susan could see everyone. Addy on the floor. Laura near the edge of the couch. Joyce and Simon around the other side, by Addy’s bandaged shoulder.
“Dermot sent a letter to me, but it was almost a year ago that I received it. He felt himself spiraling out of control, he said. He’d done something terrible. A hit and run. He couldn’t stop—he’d been drinking and driving way too fast. It was after a party with some friends where he shouldn’t have been driving home, but did anyway. Reckless. He couldn’t go to the police. He had his entire life ahead of him. He needed to trust someone, so he came to me. He knew I’d had difficulties in the past. He thought I could help him.
“And all of this I could handle. I was reading the letter, thinking to myself that I could be there for my little brother. I’d help him through this awful thing that he did and help get his life back on track.
“But then, in the second to last paragraph of his letter, he said the man’s name who he’d hit. Tom. And I knew. From the bottom of my soul I knew what he’d done. I’d kept track of Trina and Tom for years. Social media made it so easy to stalk people behind the curtain of Facebook posts and Instagram selfies. Dermot was too young, and then too separated from our family, to remember what happened between me, Tom, and Trina. When I was hospitalized after Tom left me, Dermot was just starting high school. My parents told him I had really bad depression, but didn’t say anything about why I was so depressed. I knew Dermot was living in the same town as Tom, but I had no reason to think they’d ever run into each other.”
A sharp bleat of laughter escaped her mouth. “Run. Hah!”
Susan paused, feeling the four sets of eyes in the room tunneling into her. Something like a siren shrieked in her brain and she shook her head side to side to release it.
She continued. “Plus, Dermot was using my mom’s maiden name as his last name at that point—he was so messed up from my parents that he didn’t even want the same name as them anymore—so Tom wouldn’t link the two of us. That’s why Trina never connected Dermot back to me and who I was in high school. That, or she didn’t even remember me.”
Susan gulped down a sob. “I checked the news as soon as I finished reading his letter. I’d been busy with family stuff that week, and hadn’t gone onto Trina or Tom’s accounts for a while.” She laughed, mixed with her sob. “I actually thought I was getting better. Getting over it.”
“You weren’t,” Joyce interjected, stating the obvious.
Susan shook her head. “No, I wasn’t.” She continued. “But I didn’t blame Dermot. Not really. I blamed Trina.” She paused. “And I blamed you.” She turned her gaze on Simon.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR SIMON
If this wasn’t hell, then Simon didn’t know what was. Blood on his hands that wouldn’t come off in the sink. Blood seeping through Addy’s bandages. So much blood. Susan stared at him from above, telling him this was really all his fault.
He couldn’t wait any longer for Susan to just shut up. “She needs to go to the hospital.” He was begging, and he didn’t care.
“Be quiet.” Joyce’s voice was firm.
Her hands gripped his wrist. Joyce’s hands were icy. “Stop touching me,” he cried out.
Joyce froze next to him. He looked at his wife, and there she was, looking back at him like a dog that had just been beaten, only to realize its teeth were sharper than the stick.
“Don’t you talk to me like that, ever again.” She shifted away from him.
Joyce bent over and picked Addy up from underneath her arms. Addy groaned, and Simon choked back a caution that moving her would cause more damage and rip the stitches.
“Stop it,” Susan commanded. “Stop moving. Stay where you are.” Simon glimpsed the gun moving in the cheap overhead lighting of the trailer.
And his eye caught on something else. The lighter, nestled underneath a pile of bloody paper towels by Addy’s leg. He had to accept that nothing he’d done in his entire life had mattered, including trying to save this broken woman.
Not Addy.
He meant Joyce. He meant his wife.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE ADDY
She was only twenty-six years old. She couldn’t die this way, like an animal on the floor of this awful trailer. All because she was lonely and stupid and decided to sleep with a guy who she knew was bad for her anyway.
Addy thought about meeting Laura, just two days ago at Dermot’s apartment. How she’d looked so fragile and young. Like a child, almost. She’d been worried about her, about what all of this would do to such an innocent person.
But Laura hurt people. She hurt Dermot.
Kill, Addy corrected herself. Not hurt. Kill.
Laura killed Dermot.
She’d overheard them talking through the haze of pain shooting from her shoulder through the rest of her body.
