“You’re not going to shoot me,” Laura cautioned Joyce.
“Oh really? Why’s that?”
“Because then you’d be a killer. You’d be just like me.”
“I’ll never be like you,” the older woman replied.
Laura lunged at Joyce. Her fingers clasped the cool metal of the gun.
In that motion, Laura remembered all of it. Every moment that ticked by after she found Dermot in his hotel room, alone. Trina had left for the evening, her hair tumbled and her face and neck red from Dermot’s five o’clock shadow. Laura watched her go, hidden in the edge of a doorway by the front stairwell.
She hadn’t gone there with the intention of hurting Dermot, although she was trembling with a certain rage when she knocked on the door and he gave her a look like she was the last person he’d wanted to see.
He was drunk, stumbling around the room in hastily drawn-up boxer shorts and his skin slick with sweat or drained bourbon. Someone had smashed the champagne bottle she’d ordered for him. The carpet was soaked underneath the silver stand.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, turning his back to her and rifling around the bedstand for something. There were some pills scattered along the surface, but no prescription bottle.
“I came to see you,” she said.
“I can see that.” He raised an eyebrow and smiled at her, and for a second Laura thought that everything was going to be okay. The words rushed out of her mouth before she could stop them.
“I’m pregnant,” she said. Saying it out loud made it feel real, and she wanted it so much to be real. They’d take a test together tomorrow, take a photo of it for the scrapbook they’d make for the baby.
The emotion that flashed across Dermot’s face was a mixture of horror and disgust Laura had never seen on anyone before. “Really?” He sounded incredulous.
That was the moment Laura finally realized how much of a fool she’d been. For years. For far too long.
“Yes, really,” she told him.
“How?”
“From you, Dermot.” She punched the emphasis on his name. “I’m in love with you.”
“But we never had sex.” He said it like he was schooling her in some basic logic.
“But we were together.” Of course they were. But then she thought about Simon’s visit to Dermot’s apartment, and that word. Friend.
“Not like that. We stopped, remember. I can’t sleep with you. I’d get into trouble. If work found out, they could think I’d been sleeping with you back when you were a client of mine. I could get fired. I could lose my license.” Dermot was getting agitated, waving his arms around. “I need my job, Laura. Those kids need me.”
“Your kid is going to need you,” Laura told him. She reached out to put his hands on her stomach. Maybe, just maybe, it could still be all right.
“How do I know it’s even true?” he asked, pulling away from her. He stumbled over his shoes, which were tossed in the middle of the floor between the bed and the television.
“Do you think I’d lie to you about something like this?” she asked.
“Of course I do! You’re magically pregnant, even though we never had sex? Even though we were never a couple? None of it makes sense.”
“I did it myself. When I went to the bathroom, after that time we were almost together.”
“You did what? Fucked yourself?” And Laura couldn’t believe it, but she swore she saw him sneer at her, like she was some neighborhood slut. Like she was some stupid girl he’d made the mistake of taking home.
“Yes!” she shouted into his face. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She put her hands on his chest and shoved him.
Dermot stumbled back. His feet caught the broken glass on the floor from the champagne bottle. “Ow, fuck!” He steadied himself by putting a hand on the cheap dresser. “I always knew you were crazy.”
Laura pushed him again. His head cracked open on the jagged edge of the broken champagne bottle tipped up like a toothy grin on the ground. She heard the soft slip of Dermot’s skin when the shards cut through the base of his skull. His face went blank almost immediately.
That was how she’d killed him. The man she loved. The man she was crazy for.
The fire ripped through the roof of Laura’s trailer. Her home. Laura’s lips felt warmer from the heat the blaze gave off.
Joyce was stronger than she looked, and Laura had to push as hard as she could to get her to fall over onto the ground. A streak of mud snaked over the white of Joyce’s blouse, mixing with blood from when she carried Addy out of the trailer.
Joyce started to stand up. Both women still held onto the gun. Laura would let go soon. Just a few more seconds.
She couldn’t see Simon.
The fire roared on. Simon might be a doctor, and Joyce might be rich, but one thing Laura was betting on was that neither of them knew how a trailer like Laura’s was heated in the winter.
In fact, she was counting on it.
Headlights flashed from the driveway of the trailer, catching everyone in their glow.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE SIMON
Simon couldn’t be around Joyce any longer. He should have helped Laura get the gun off his wife, but he was just so tired. The headlights snaking down the driveway drew him further away from the violence happening beside him, like a moth seeking solace from the dreadful dark of night.
“It’s you,” Simon said as she climbed out of the car. His heart did an odd flip-flop in his chest that he forgot the medical term for. He just wanted this day, this life, to be over.
