“Is Kezia here? Is she still alive?”
“Yes, and yes,” he says. “Come in. There’s nothing that will hurt you on the other side of the door.”
I take him at his word. In his own weird way, I think he’s trying to be completely honest with me. I can’t—won’t—do him the same favor.
The doorknob turns. I step into what I suppose would be a storage room—large, perfectly round, with fixed shelving on all sides that is stocked with cans and boxes. Not a soul in sight.
I look up. The tower’s staircase curls up in a dizzying, narrowing spiral. Off to the side is an elevator, and I head for it, but when I press the button, it’s locked down. No power to it at all.
I make for the stairs. And something occurs to me. Something important that just . . . doesn’t fit.
And then it does fit. The missing piece in a horrible, horrible puzzle.
“Would you rather die, or see someone you love die?” he asks me. I freeze with my foot on the first step. “It’s a simple question, Gina. I answered it when I was seventeen years old.”
“I’d rather die,” I say. And it’s true. Utterly true. “But you’re not going to make me kill myself. If someone I love dies, it’s because you killed them, Jonathan. Just like someone killed your sister.” I take a step up, then another. I don’t know when something will happen, but I know it’s coming. The air feels alive with it. It’s time to use what I just worked out. The little clue he gave me. “You know what I wonder, though?”
“What?” he says. I’ve been moving slowly, testing for traps, but there doesn’t seem to be anything except stairs to climb. No rooms, no traps, nothing. I move faster.
“How you know it took her four minutes to die?”
The silence is profound.
“You told me you never found your sister’s killer,” I say. I’m moving up, steadily, carefully, and as quickly as I dare. “Tragic Jonathan, with his kidnapped sister and his dead parents and his house half-burned. Poor little Jonathan, always the victim.” I hear footsteps above. I jerk my focus up to the top level. The staircase ends there. “Let’s play a new game. Truth or dare. Because I dare you to tell me the truth.”
Second curl of the spiral. I’m moving fast now. I need to, I know that. I can feel it. He isn’t answering me.
“You want someone else to know,” I say. My breathing’s fast, ragged, and my whole body aches. “To see you for who you are. Where’s Kezia? Is she up there with you?”
“Yes, she is. I had to put her gag back on, I’m afraid; she was being too noisy. But she’s alive and well. In fact, I think she’s starting to understand me. But do you? You think you’re smart. Tell me. Go ahead, Gina Royal. Tell me my story.”
“There was no van,” I say. “There was no man who grabbed your sister and took her away. No abductor who hit you in the head.”
“How could you possibly know that?” He sounds interested. Not offended. Not yet.
“Four minutes. You said it took four minutes, and you couldn’t have known that unless you were there. So here’s what I think: You killed your sister. You took her out to the salt marsh that day, and you killed her. Then you had an accident on the way back—maybe a bad fall, I don’t know. But when you came to, you knew you had to have some kind of story. You made up the abductor and the van. You just made it up, and they all believed it because you were so hurt.”
He doesn’t answer, and that’s how I know I’m right.
“But your mother knew, didn’t she? She lasted a year, knowing her son killed her daughter. The papers said it was accidental death, but is that what happened?”
“She died in the fire at our house,” Jonathan says.
“Did you kill her?”
“No.” He’s quiet for a second or two. “She started the fire. She tried to kill me.”
There’s still no emotion in it. Just an observation, a flat fact with no impact to him. Though I wonder. I wonder if locked inside that damaged brain there isn’t a howling, screaming monster made of guilt and pain and horror.
“And your father drowned in the bay,” I say. “Suicide. Because he knew, and couldn’t live with it either.”
“You knew about what Melvin was doing. You helped him do it. Admit it.”
“I didn’t know. I didn’t help. But you killed your sister, Jonathan. Admit that.”
He’s never said it, I think. Never had to. But after a moment of silence, he says, “She was being a brat. I just wanted to teach her a lesson. So I took her to the marsh.”
“There wasn’t a van. Or a man with a pipe.”
“She hit me with a rock,” he says. “While I was holding her head under the water. I just wanted her to stop talking. She almost got away. I didn’t think I was hurt that bad until later. When they found me, I was passed out on the side of the road. I couldn’t talk for a long time. I don’t know why I told them that story, but everybody believed it.”
I swallow hard. “Jonathan, you lied when you said you never killed anyone.”
“I didn’t,” he says. “I was only holding Clara under the water to make her stop talking. Then she hit me. But she slipped in the mud, and she was already . . . confused. She went deeper into the water. She couldn’t get out. It was her choice. It took four minutes for her to go under and not come up.”
There’s so much wrong with him. I can’t fix him. I can’t fix any of it.
“That part wasn’t your fault,” I tell him. “You were hurt. Your skull was crushed. You couldn’t have saved her.”
When
