“You killed her.”
“I wish it hadn’t gone down this way.”
“How could—? Oh, God.”
Sean looked out into the woods and then back to Michael. “You never understood how this was all going to play out. You thought you could make a clever little plan and that it’d be enough.”
“The fuck is wrong with you?”
“With me?” Sean said, leaning down and putting the strap of his rifle around his shoulder. He reached around his belt and slid his pistol out, setting his other hand on Michael’s heaving chest. “I just figured it out before you did, Michael. Before anyone did. When God has abandoned everything—there’s just survival. The only thing that matters is keeping what I care about alive.” Sean stood up and aimed the pistol at Michael’s chest, right above his heart. “And today, I’m making sure that happens.”
He squeezed the trigger, and it was done. Finally done. He wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat, looking between the two bodies. Thought of the months of food he had bought his family. It wasn’t for nothing.
He turned toward the garage to see his wife on her knees in the doorway, hand clasped over her mouth. He had thought she was still inside.
She would understand one day, he thought. Not right then, but one day. She would see he wasn’t a monster. In time, she would see. And even if she didn’t, she would come to understand. The human heart was like that.
So easily convinced.
Chapter 35
ELISE STUMBLED BACK into the living room, collapsing to her knees, reaching out for anything to stabilize herself. Her vision blurred as if her eyes were going cross.
He killed them. Both of them. She grabbed her chest. The image replayed: her brother flipping over his dead wife.
He killed them both.
He murdered them.
At any moment, he would bust through the door with his rifle, take aim at her, and cover the carpet with her brains. Now hyperventilating, she crawled forward on her hands and knees.
Her son stood in the center of the room, still in his pajamas. He was such a small kid—tiny for his age, really. He didn’t deserve to die. Not without the opportunity to grow up. Not at the hands of his own father.
Not like Molly.
She scurried to him, taking his small hands into hers, whispering, “Sweetie, I need you to listen to me.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s just some issues we need to work out. Grown-up things.”
“What happened with Uncle Mike?”
“Sweetheart, you need to listen to me very carefully, okay?”
He nodded.
She thrust a thick blanket into his arms. “We’re going to play a game. You go upstairs and hide anywhere you want. And hide really good. Do your best, okay? And don’t come out unless I come get you.”
“You’re scaring me.”
She cupped his face and kissed his forehead. “Don’t be scared. Just go. Go right now.”
Aidan nodded and went. He looked back at his mother, and she motioned for him to get going.
Her thoughts flashed back to what Michael had said—his warnings. The warnings she didn’t heed. She tried to control her breathing. Aidan’s feet disappeared above the plane of the ceiling when she heard the garage door, loud and clunky, shift open. She yelped, twisting around, sitting on the floor, resting her back against the broadside of the couch.
“Calm down,” her husband’s stern voice said.
Her hands shot into the air. Sean came out into the living room. He had shed his coat and most of his ashen clothes, but a few specks of blood dotted his face. “Put your hands down. I don’t have a gun,” he said.
She hadn’t even noticed. Her arms settled downward. “You killed them.”
“Michael was trying to kill me.”
She lowered her voice, thinking Aidan might hear. “You’re a liar. Kelly’s out there too.”
He took a step closer to her. She got up and stepped back in equal measure. He licked the inside of his cheek and put his hands up as if in surrender. “Elise, you need to listen to me.”
“Listen to you how? So you can tell me you didn’t mean it? That you were just defending your home?”
“I was defending my home. Your brother wanted me dead.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
“Did you kill Andrew?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Did you?”
“No,” Sean yelled, rubbing his face from brow to chin, calming himself. “I don’t know what happened to him, okay? I swear to you. I swear.”
His expression almost made her believe it. She wanted to believe him. They had so much history. Three wonderful kids, two taken way too soon. Almost twenty years of love and intimacy she couldn’t just disregard. And yet… “I saw what happened.”
“Come on, Elise.”
“No,” she said, taking another step back and pointing a finger at him. “My brother’s blood is all over your face and both of them are dead. My brother—” She stopped and blinked. Her brother. He was really gone. “Why’d you do it?”
“He was going to shoot me.”
She didn’t believe him. Michael talked a big game, but she had never believed for a moment that he would do it. He wasn’t the type. Yet, he had come downstairs after the gunshot, not saying anything to her. She asked herself why he had been silent. Michael had shot at someone—the noise had come from upstairs. But he didn’t shoot Sean. Her jaw dropped slack. “You dressed Kelly up like you.”
“Wait, now. Stop. That’s not what happened.”
“You made Michael kill her.”
“That’s not what happened,” he said, angrier.
“She was wearing your coat, Sean.”
“I know what it looks like.”
“What is it then? What is it?”
“I got up this morning,” he said, “and I was suiting up in the garage when she came out. I asked what was going on, and she said she wanted to talk privately. I needed to gather wood, so I said we could talk while I worked.”
“She was wearing your coat, Sean.”
“I’m getting to that. She was cold—shaking. So I gave her mine. I went inside to get my other one. I said I would be right back, and she put it on.”
“You’re a liar.”
“Elise, I grabbed my other coat and was about to walk outside from the garage not a minute later and I heard a gunshot. I looked outside. I still had the coat in my hand and then Michael shot her again. There was nothing I could do. I swear.”
A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Michael thought it was me. He thought he was taking care of me.”
She clenched her fists and then slowly released the tension. The pieces seemed to come together, but she didn’t want to believe it. It was too neat. Too reasonable. Yet, she looked into the eyes of the man she loved, saw the sincerity there, saw how he wasn’t deflecting. He could be—
He said, “So I grabbed my rifle and I hid in the woods. I thought he might come out to finish me off, so I hid.”
“Finish you off with the shotgun.”
He nodded. “Elise, I did what I thought I needed to do. He was going to kill me.”
“He’s my brother, Sean.”
Sean said nothing for a while. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Her cheeks were streaked with cold tears. As he placed his hands on her face, she stopped resisting and put her hands over his fingers. “I didn’t know what else to do,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“He was my brother,” she said, spittle flying from her mouth as she cried. “He’s gone.”