I look down and see that the floorboard I’d hidden my ID under has been pushed aside. My driver’s license and the picture of Thomas Pitt, age three, are lying on the floor. It’s Laurel’s will that Peter’s brandishing in his free hand.
“Do you know how rich we would have been? Stan promised to invest all of Laurel’s millions in the fund. He showed me the will. He gave me this copy of the will to prove that he’d have control of Chloë’s money if she died. How was I to know Laurel had changed the damned thing?” He crumples the paper up and tosses it out the window. “The only way to hang on to the money was for everyone to think that Laurel was still alive. Chloe—my Chloe—would have been an heiress. Now what will she be? The daughter of a convicted criminal and a crazy mother? Imagine the life she’ll have. What the other kids will say. Bastard. Reject. Trash. Children can be so cruel.”
He aims the words over my head—at Sky—but I don’t turn to see her response. I can’t take my eyes off him and Chloe. I have to hold them on the edge of the windowsill with the power of my gaze.
“I never meant to take her from you,” I say.
He snorts. “As if I’d ever have let you. But the police will take me away. Once everyone knows you’re Daphne Marist and the woman who died is Laurel.”
I can hear the sirens getting closer. Billie must have gotten the gates unlocked. They’ll start putting out the fire in the main part of the house. Will they realize that we’re here in the tower? Is anyone coming to help? If they saw Peter at the window they could set up a net to break his fall, but will they do it soon enough? I have to talk him away from that ledge.
“It could have been a suicide,” I say.
Peter’s smile chills me. “That bitch was too selfish to kill herself. And too stupid not to take a drink from a man she was lecturing on spousal abuse. You should have heard the things she called me. Thought she could run off her mouth in my house and I’d just stand there and take it.”
“So you drugged her,” I say.
Behind me I hear Sky say, “I’ll get you the best lawyers. You’ll plead insanity—”
“So I can wind up like my father?” Peter scoffs.
“You’re nothing like your father,” she says. I think she means to reassure him that he’s not crazy like his father was, but it comes out bitterly.
“Then like you?” He points in Sky’s direction, but I’m afraid to turn around and see what he’s pointing at.
“What does he mean?” I ask.
“I believe he’s referring to my leg, an injury I incurred jumping from the very window he’s perched on now.”
“You were the one who jumped from the window? But I thought it was Edith. Wasn’t it Edith your father saw in the tower?”
“Yes, but one day she escaped from Crantham and came up here looking for the baby. She’d gotten it into her head we were keeping him from her. I saw her from my window and followed her up here. I tried to stop her and we both fell. I landed first and saved her from the worst damage. I broke my leg—so badly that it never really healed right—but something inside me had healed. I was better after that.”
So it was Sky Billie had been talking about. No wonder she hadn’t wanted me repeating the story in front of her.
“How nice for you,” Peter says bitterly. “Did you think of going to find your son then?”
“I thought you’d been adopted. That’s what my father told me.”
“That’s what you wanted to believe so you could go off to Europe and write your books. You abandoned me like you’d have me abandon Chloe. But I won’t let her grow up without a father the way I had to.”
“She won’t have to grow up without you,” I say. “I’ll pretend to be Laurel. I’ll go back to the hospital. I’ll never say a word. Neither will Sky.” I risk a second’s glance back at Sky. Her face is so drawn she looks like a skeleton of herself, but she nods stiffly. Then she steps a few inches to the right. Why? I wonder, where is she going? Then she silently mouths something to me. Take . . . I can’t make out the next word but I realize now that she’s moved so that I am blocking Peter’s view of her. She’s trying to tell me something. Take . . .
A sharp crack makes me pivot back to Peter. He’s half-turned on the ledge and is holding Chloe up to the open window with one arm while he points with the other. “Look at the pretty lights,” he says.
But Chloe isn’t having it. She’s in full-on tantrum mode, stiffening her arms and legs, making of herself an unholdable weight. I’ve nearly dropped her a half dozen times when she does this and she didn’t weigh as much then as she does now. The trick is not to fight her, but to sit on the floor with her and let her have it out. But Peter doesn’t know this—or he’s unable to give in. His face is taut with anger, the loving expression he had a few minutes ago wiped clean. The look he’s giving her now is how he looks at me when I’ve disappointed him. When I’ve crossed him. Love changed to anger as easy as flipping a switch.
“Stop it!” he yells at Chloe, shaking her. She goes still for a second and then suddenly flails her whole body, arms and legs out, head back. Peter loses his grip. She’s slithering out
