“You see,” she said, shaking the gun at me, “Kate was always number one in our family. I was a distant second. Always. The only thing she ever did wrong was date you. I had to push her along, get a few more black marks on her record.”
I glanced around, letting her talk. There was nowhere to go.
“I figured when she hit the heroin, that was it,” she said. “Finally, she had done something that would make her look less than perfect. But, no. My parents…her parents…did everything possible to help her.”
“And you didn’t want to help her?” I asked her.
“I could’ve cared less,” she said. “So when Randall and I started sleeping together, I knew I could finally have something of hers.”
“But you couldn’t.”
“Oh, I would’ve,” she said, smiling. “If you hadn’t gotten into this. Let that Mexican guy take the rap. I could’ve gotten Randall to go my way. The heroin thing did a lot of damage to their marriage. It was over, and I think even Randall was finally ready to let it go.” She paused. “But you just wouldn’t let it go. My mother must’ve known you’d chew through steel for Kate.”
“Why give me the key then?” I asked.
“I needed you to find that,” she said. “When Randall started having guilt issues, I figured, fuck it. Let him go down. The key made Randall look like your man. I figured I’d kill him and make it look like a suicide.” She shrugged. “I found the money and the note in Kate’s car. Those were hers. I didn’t fake those. I’m assuming you finally found them and that’s why we’re here. Only mistake I made was leaving Charlotte’s name in the car. It was too much.” She paused, her eyes tearing up. “And I thought it would work out, you know? Because you and I were starting something. Picking up where we left off eleven years ago.”
All along, I knew that being with Emily never felt completely right. I’d thought it was because of the situation and because of the feelings I’d had for her sister. Instead, I realized that it was probably a gut reaction to the real Emily, the sick and screwed up Emily I was seeing now.
“But then you messed that up, too,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s when I knew this was where we’d end up.”
“Here?” I said, waving my hand in the air.
“Figuratively,” she said. “Randall called me in a drunken stupor, said he couldn’t take it anymore. Was going to tell you about our affair. I knew you’d put it together.”
“Did he know?” I asked. “That you were the one that killed Kate?”
She nodded, the gun still aimed in my direction. “I think he suspected me all along. He didn’t flinch when I told him he had to take care of Charlotte. But he never confronted me. Too scared, probably.” She laughed, but didn’t mean it. “God, all this time and you are still worried about Kate. You never got it. You wanna know something about the love of your life?”
“Sure,” I said, still looking for a way out.
“My parents never told her they wouldn’t pay for Princeton,” Emily said, her eyes flaring in the dark. “She made that up for you. She didn’t want to hurt your feelings. She just wanted to go to college without a boyfriend.”
I looked away, refusing to let her see that she had just hit me with an emotional machete.
“And she didn’t ask about you on her wedding day,” she said gleefully. “I came up with that one to soften you up.” She shook her head, as if I was some kid who didn’t get that Superman wasn’t real. “You’ve spent all this time thinking about her, trying to figure out what happened to her, and you know what? She was done with you the last time she saw you.”
I didn’t know whether to believe her. Maybe she was trying to stick it to me like she had everyone else. But hearing those things, I knew that there was probably more truth than lie to her words, and I couldn’t run and hide from them.
And now there was nowhere for me to go but into the ocean or into a bullet.
“So how does this end?” I asked, stalling again.
She lifted the gun, steadying it in her right hand. “I told you. You killed Randall. I’m going to kill you and then kick you over the edge.” She smiled, the moonlight reflecting on her silver earrings. She pulled her gun from her jeans and aimed it at me with her left hand, cocked her right arm, and threw my gun over my head and over the cliff. She moved her gun to her right hand. “You two fought to the death.”
“And you?” I asked. “What are you going to do?”
“Get the hell out of here,” she said. “I’ve seen enough of this city and my family. I’ll pretend to be distraught over all these deaths. It will make a nice excuse to look for a new beginning.”
I wished briefly that I had told Liz about sleeping with Emily. At least there would’ve been something for her to look at when they found me. Carter would have to help her put it together.
“So, it’s been nice, Noah,” she said, leveling the gun at me. “It really has. I thought there might be a chance with us. But I should’ve known. You’d never settle for less than Kate.”
I didn’t raise my arms. I didn’t duck. I just stood there, wondering what it would feel like to die.
62
The shot came from behind Emily. It ricocheted off one of the metal signs next to me, the clang nearly deafening me.
Emily flinched, then turned and fired into the darkness.
I heard Carter yell, “Goddammit!” and then an unmistakable thud onto the dirt path.
I leapt at her. She came back toward me, and I swung my open hand at the gun as it came around. It went flying back behind to my left.
My momentum carried me into her, my shoulder hitting her in the chest, and we tumbled to the ground.
I reached for her, but she rolled to her right, creating a small cushion of space between us, and spun around toward the ledge. I pushed myself up and pivoted on my knees. I saw the gun near the edge of the cliff where Randall had fallen.
Emily scrambled to her feet, glanced at me, and charged for the gun.
I got up, took two steps, and dove for her. We collided in front of the gun, shiny and bright in the moonlight. I reached for it, and she bit down on my biceps. I screamed and reached for her with my other arm, but she slapped it away, her teeth sinking deeper into my flesh. I reached again with my free arm, found a handful of hair, and yanked back.
She yelped but managed to move forward toward the gun. I reached for her and grabbed at the waist of her jeans. We wrestled for a moment, and I twisted as I tried to pull her away from the gun. She looked back, her face tight with anger, and jammed her foot into my crotch. The air left my body, and I lost my grip on her.
I rolled onto my back and watched her get to her knees, reaching for the gun now near my shoes. She brought herself to her feet, squatted, and started to turn to me as she stood up, the gun barrel flashing in the moonlight as it came around.
The air wouldn’t return to my body, a screaming pain burning its way from my groin to stomach. I knew I had one chance at not getting shot, and I knew either way the end result would be tragic.
As she turned, I watched her eyes, now completely unfamiliar to me. Fury raged in her face and body. I couldn’t believe I’d been fooled.
I brought my knee back to my chest, then shot my leg at her as hard as I could, a deep, ugly grunt emerging from my mouth.
I caught her flush on the hip. Her body bent in half, then whipped back the opposite direction as she left the ground. The gun flew up in the air, and Emily flew over the cliff, her eyes still angry as she disappeared over the side.
63
“We found them both on the rocks,” Liz said.
She and I were back in the hospital the following morning. Carter was back in the bed, and we were sitting next to it. Carter had broken his arm, falling down while avoiding Emily’s fire. He’d left the hospital after I’d called him, against doctors’ wishes of course, but they couldn’t stop him. If they had, I would’ve been dead.