There Should Have Been Eight, page 30
“Yes, why?”
Grace’s quiet question raised the hairs on the back of my neck, had me throwing Darcie a measuring glance before I returned my attention to the road. “He has been a bit edgy,” I said, thinking back to that conversation at the top of the stairs that hadn’t quite settled right in my gut. “You two have a fight?”
“I thought he was happy about the pregnancy, but . . .” Her voice faded off into a piteous whisper.
And suddenly, I felt like the most raging bitch on the planet. I’d forgotten that she was pregnant. Pregnant and wounded and in apparent shock over Bea, and now Grace was forcing her to confront relationship issues that didn’t need to be confronted. Not here. Not now.
“Enough, Grace,” I said when she inhaled as if in preparation for further verbal blows. “Both of you stay as still as you can, don’t do anything that might increase your blood flow. I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get past the slip and return to you with help.”
Silence from the back seat, but Darcie said, “Do you think Ash hates me, too, Luna? Do you think he’s still in love with Bea?”
I couldn’t do this to her, couldn’t hurt a friend who’d been in my life for over a decade and a half. “He actually asked me to keep an extra-special eye on you because you were pregnant,” I said, avoiding the question without seeming to avoid it. “He said for me not to spill the beans, but he wanted someone else to know.”
“Oh.” A smile in the word itself. “Thank you for telling me that.”
The rain thundered hard against the windscreen in a sudden surge, as if we’d passed right under a huge thundercloud. A lightning flash followed, illuminating a large section of the road ahead of me. No blockages up ahead. Just a winding curve I knew had to lead to the slip. Even with my speed, we’d gone too far for it to be otherwise.
With that knowledge in mind, I took extreme care as I rounded the corner, ready to stop at any moment . . . but the road carried on uninterrupted, only a few scraggly broken branches scattered across the tarmac.
49
Itried to straighten my back from its hunched-over position. I’d miscalculated badly. And though I just wanted to stop, have someone else take control, make things better, I carried on through the increasingly slushy and slippery snow.
“I think I’m bleeding again. It pulses.” Grace’s voice was ragged. “Seriously, please undo my hands so I can press them to the towel. You can even tape them up in front rather than at the back.”
My fingers clenching on the steering wheel, I hesitated.
And Darcie whispered, “Don’t fall for it, Luna.” Her voice kind of . . . bubbled, as if she had blood in her throat. I hoped to hell that wasn’t the case.
“If she has her hands in front of her,” Darcie managed to breathe out, “she can throw her arms over the headrest and strangle me from the back.”
“Do you see now? How she thinks?” Grace demanded in that voice devoid of its punch. “She’s lost it. All I want to do is put pressure on my wound. And meanwhile, she still hasn’t explained what her dead sister is doing in the back seat with me.”
Swallowing, I stopped the car and angled my body to look at her. From what little I could see, Grace did appear pale and sweaty, her face set in a wince. “You should be able to put pressure on it if you lean over hard against the door. It won’t be as comfortable, but it’s doable.”
Even as I shifted my gaze forward again, my attention on the wet landscape partially aglow in the Land Cruiser’s lights as we began to move again, my mind raced. It hadn’t escaped my notice that it was Grace attempting to escape her bonds, while Darcie had accepted my decision to incapacitate them both.
On the flip side, Darcie was in worse shape than Grace—even with Grace getting weaker—and might just be worried Grace would retaliate against her if given the chance. And Grace was also right on the point of Bea. But Darcie’s expression when she’d seen Bea, it had been the terrorized fear of a woman seeing a corpse risen. Surely Darcie wasn’t that good an actress? Especially when bleeding and in pain?
The lights gleamed against the melting snow up ahead, the engine revving as it started up an incline.
“Where are we?” I muttered. “I don’t remember a hill except right after the settlement.”
Neither woman said anything, all attention on the road as the Land Cruiser crept up and up and then we were at the top of the ridge, and I thought I saw a bright dot in the distance.
Frowning, I tightened my abdomen and switched off the headlights. The decision threw us into pure darkness but for those pinprick flashes behind my eyes, and at first I thought that was what I was seeing through the rain. Nothing but misfires from my brain.
But the flashes didn’t fade or flicker out. They resolved into tiny golden squares.
“That’s the settlement.”
Realization crept over me in a cold swell.
“Oops.” A single soft word from the murky black of the back seat. “At least I can call you Nae-nae now. Bea gave me permission, said to tell you she said it was all right.”
Even as my brain struggled to comprehend the impossibility of her words, she said, “Sorry about what’s going to happen next.” Words coated in sorrow. “But she has to pay.”
She jolted forward out of her seat, her arms somehow free.
Reaching around the headrest, she hooked one forearm against Darcie’s throat while gripping the wrist of that with her free hand so she could tighten the suffocating embrace to a brutal vise. This close, I could see her expression. Her teeth were bared, her eyes intent, no evidence in her features of the frailty she’d put into her voice only minutes ago.
All of it so fast that I was still belted into my seat.
It locked into place as I attempted to rush her. “Grace!” I struggled to undo the belt. “Stop!”
Darcie’s eyes were bulging, her face red and hot by the time I got free. And Grace, she was so strong. I couldn’t break her grip, my hands having no effect on the ropy lines of her tendons.
Climber, she was a climber, like Aaron.
That was where they’d met. In a club for climbers.
Grace was strong.
I’d forgotten that, gotten used to seeing her as petite and cute.
Think, Luna!
A flash to the past, to a self-defense course Vansi and I had done in high school. Not much had stuck, but I did remember one thing that had grossed me out so much I’d had a nightmare about it.
Shifting so that I was kneeling on my seat, I thrust both my thumbs into Grace’s eyes with all my weight behind it, as if I wanted to dig into the slippery orbs.
My stomach lurched, liquid pooling in my mouth.
Grace’s scream was a shrill thread in the darkness. Falling desperately back into the murk of the back seat, she pressed her hands to her abused eyes.
I tried not to think about the wetness on the pads of my thumbs, or if I had caused permanent damage to her eyes. Those most precious organs.
While she was still whimpering, I crawled into the back by going in between the two seats. Too late, I realized I should’ve switched on the interior light. All I could see was the vague shape of her. It would have to be enough—and since there was a fucking high chance that she was the one who’d murdered Nix, stabbed Ash, and poisoned Kaea, I forced myself to hit her hard in her wounded side.
I needed time to think without fear of attack.
Blood bloomed in a clogging viscosity of scent and she screamed again.
About to vomit from my own actions, I used the opportunity to pull her arms tightly behind her back. When I used my belt to lock her arms together, I did so with a tightness that meant she had no movement at all. It probably wasn’t safe for the long term and the belt wasn’t fully secure, but with the settlement in the distance, it only had to last a short time.
That was when I felt the scrap of tape that clung to one of her ragged nails, and remembered her habit of tearing at her nails. Apparently the resulting edges had been sharp enough to slowly, stealthily cut through tape.
Hauling her upright, I slammed her back against the seat. Only then did I realize that she was still belted in. Figured. My belt locked me in, while hers had allowed her to stretch out enough to get to Darcie.
“Nae-nae,” she began.
“Shut up.” My jawbones crunched. “Just shut up.”
Summer sunshine and peach blossoms.
Bea was so close, my knee pushing into her thigh. It would be so easy to turn, bury my face in her hair, pretend none of this was happening. Like I’d been pretending for a year that I wasn’t going blind. I was an expert at pretending. But I did that tonight and more people would die.
Crawling back into the driver’s seat before I surrendered to my need to cradle Bea, just hold her and listen to her breathe, feel her heart beat, I finally threw on the interior light, then looked at Darcie. She was breathing like an asthmatic, a fine whistle sounding as she attempted to suck in air, her eyes bloodshot. “It won’t be long until we get to the settlement,” I told her. “Conserve your strength.”
I had to start the engine again—the Land Cruiser had jolted to a halt when I jumped into the back seat without putting it into neutral. Pure luck I’d already pulled the parking brake or we’d have rolled backward and down into the ravine.
Above the renewed roar of the engine came a voice from the back seat that had a new roughness to it, as if Grace had damaged her throat when she screamed. “No, don’t conserve your strength, Darceline.” A sinuous kindness to her tone. “I think Luna wants to know what you did to her Bee-bee. Will you tell her? Or shall I?”
50
Itwisted, putting myself in a position where I could see both their faces.
One an effective stranger, the other one of my oldest friends.
Grace, her eyes bloody and teary, was staring at the back of Darcie’s head with a rage that should’ve been impossible given that they, too, were strangers. Darcie, meanwhile, had started to breathe in a different way. Faster, shallower.
“She’s insane,” she finally managed to rasp out. “Don’t listen to her.”
But I shook my head with slow deliberation. “No.” Putting the vehicle in neutral, I pulled the parking brake I’d only just released. “We’ll stay here as long as it takes to uncover the truth. Because that’s Bea next to Grace, Darcie.”
“No, it can’t be,” Darcie insisted on another hard-won breath. “I’m hurt bad, Luna.”
I looked at the growing stain on the white of the towel, nodded. “You’re bleeding again.” Probably from having struggled against Grace. “You need help.”
But I didn’t move the vehicle, didn’t head to the settlement and the assistance there. “So you better talk fast.” I almost didn’t recognize my own voice, it was so flat and callous. “Why does Grace want to kill you?”
“I told you!” A small coughing fit that I waited out, and that Grace didn’t interrupt. “She’s psychotic.”
I locked eyes with Grace. “Are you psychotic, Grace?”
Grace turned to look at Bea with the tenderest expression I’d ever seen on her face. When she glanced back at me, her eyes were wet and her voice a whisper. “ ‘Nae-nae, my fierce Nae-nae, she always loved me best. She never hurt me, never wanted anything from me except that I be me. I wish I’d told her about my wonky brain. I wanted to, was getting ready to, and now it’s too late.’ ”
Grace’s smile was sad, a portrait of aged grief. “That’s what your Bea said to me. She told me other things, too, like about the black-and-white photo shoot in the studio with the piano. You can ask her yourself when she wakes up.”
A million tears built up in my head until the pressure pulsed and pounded and threatened to crush me. “How—” I swallowed hard. “How do you know about the photo shoot?”
“Aaron!” Darcie cried out. “Obviously Aaron told her that. Bea must’ve told him and he told Grace! That woman is not Bea! She’s dead! I can show you the death certificate!”
I didn’t look at Darcie, my eyes only on Grace.
Her bruised, bloodied eyes swam with tears. “Bea never forgot that time at school when you swapped skirts with her.”
A hammer slammed into my chest, cracking open my rib cage to expose my insides. No one else knew that. Not a single person. Bea had been too embarrassed then, and later, it had become a memory shared only between the two of us. Of how we’d been two awkward teenage girls who thought the incident the end of the world.
She’d been thirteen, her period had come early, and she’d stained her skirt. Though I was older than her, I was shorter. Short enough that I could roll up her skirt at the waist and still not get in trouble for a uniform violation. Add in the oversize blazer I wore as part of the uniform, and we’d successfully masked the stain.
Our secret memory. Not to be spoken to anyone else.
I wasn’t angry Bea had revealed it to Grace. I recognized the act for what it was: a message that I could trust Grace, that Bea trusted Grace.
“How do you know Bea?” I asked this stranger who wasn’t a stranger after all.
Then I looked at Darcie at last . . . and had to accept the rest of it.
“What did you do to Bea, Darcie?” I asked before Grace could answer my question. “Don’t lie. You could bleed out in the time you waste lying.”
Darcie sucked in a breath, hung her head. Her shoulders shook, her sobs beautiful theater. “I did what needed to be done.” With her hands taped, she couldn’t use them to wipe away the tears and they dripped soft splashes onto her sweater. “I wanted to help her.”
“Liar!” Grace kicked the back of Darcie’s seat hard enough to rock it.
“Grace.” I shook my head in a curt negative.
Jaw shoving against her taut skin, she nonetheless sat back. “She did it because she wanted Ash, who only wanted Bea,” she bit out. “Darcie’s hated Bea from the instant she realized who her sister was going to become. She was meant to be the golden child, Bea the one in her shadow—only it didn’t work out that way.”
“It wasn’t like that.” Darcie’s eyes, so lovely and so blue, held a silent plea. “I told you she had mental problems. Serious mental problems. They began to intensify that year, but she wouldn’t get help.”
“I don’t believe you.” Because Darcie was implying a sustained decline at a level that would’ve begun to affect Bea’s everyday life. I didn’t care how good someone was at masking a condition, they couldn’t hide that kind of a change from a friend who saw them day in and day out.
I closed my hand around the necklace I hadn’t taken off since the day I put it on. “I dropped in on Bea without warning all the time. Not once did I surprise her in an unstable state.”
“My sister was clever at hiding her fragmentation,” Darcie sobbed, her gaze swinging to Bea, then back to me. “She was this dazzling butterfly around you and the others, and then when she was alone, she’d lie on her back and stare at the ceiling. She even cut herself. In places you’d never see. Been doing it for years. Had scars all down the inside of her thighs.”
Grace laughed, a genuine belly laugh.
Darcie’s expression flickered. “She’s mad. Listen to her.”
“No, Darcie. She’s laughing because you had to push your story too far and now I know you’re lying.” Because that shoot in the studio with the piano? It had been the nude one.
Beatrice’s skin had been flawless. “Bea had no scars on her thighs.” She still didn’t.
“She was very good at hiding it,” Darcie insisted. “Makeup, tanner, whatever it took. She was broken, Luna! I was just trying to help her!”
Grace jolted forward against her seat belt. “You tried so hard you had her drugged to the gills and locked up in a mental institution.”
The silence inside the car was a voracious, grasping thing that dug its claws into my brain and cut bloody furrows. “Darcie?” My nails sank into my palms. “What is Grace talking about?”
“She needed help!” Darcie screamed. “She was spiraling. I was afraid she was going to really hurt herself. Then she did! She tried to kill herself!”
“Only after you’d locked her in that horrible place and thrown away the key!” Grace shouted from the back seat. “You shut her away from the entire world, from everyone she loved, when you knew that she needed the energy of the world and of her people to thrive.”
It was at that moment that I accepted Grace truly knew my Bee-bee. Because that was what I had always understood about my friend. She was bright and lovely and beautiful—but she couldn’t be alone. She needed people, needed our attention to fuel her spirit.
That was why I’d held the power in our friendship: I needed no one. Not that way. I could spend hours alone in perfect contentment. Bea hadn’t understood that, had admired me for what she saw as a boundless internal well of strength.
“Grace, tell me all of it.” When Darcie tried to speak up, I said, “Shut up.” It came out quiet and calm. “I can’t listen to any more of your self-serving bullshit.”
The look on Darcie’s face was one I’d never before seen—a primal terror that stripped away all vestiges of sophistication and turned her into a hunted animal.
Then Grace began to speak. “Most of the mental health institutions in this country,” she began, “are linked to the public health service. Chronically underfunded and, yes, there might be the odd mistake in treatment, but those mistakes get caught by the strict oversight systems in place—there’s little room for corruption.”
I nodded; that was the impression I’d gained from media articles on the topic.
“But you see, Nae-nae, the rich don’t like to air out their dirty laundry—especially when that dirty laundry might include children with ‘defective’ minds.” Venom dripped from the last words and I knew she’d heard them directed at her.
