“Rory,” I repeat with great effort. “How did you lose him?”
Daisy frowns. “I never talk about that. No one ever asks. Leah has known me for six years, and she’s never asked. Some friend, huh? I listen to her drone on and on about Dustin and Ava, and she doesn’t even know Rory’s name.”
“I want to know.” The words come out slurred, barely intelligible, but it elicits a smile from her.
“All right. I’ll tell you.” She sits on the edge of the large tub, laying the gun beside her. It’s only a few feet away. Almost within reach.
“I knew something was wrong the whole day. I had cramping that grew into sharp pains. We had just moved into our new place and were still unpacking. We were starting over, trying to put the whole Overton nightmare behind us. Paul had a new job at a boarding school in Massachusetts. It was all going to work out.”
She leans forward and dips her hand in the water. “Bit too hot. Don’t want to scald you, do we?” Daisy twists one of the knobs and straightens up. “Where was I? Oh yes. I began bleeding. We went to the hospital. We wanted Rory so much. We needed him. Whenever I thought about what you had done to Paul, to us, I made myself focus on Rory and on how wonderful our life was going to be.”
She clucks her tongue and shuts off the tap. The only sound in the room now is the rain beating against the skylight. I’m supposed to be at Artie Zucker’s by now. I wonder if he will send someone to look for me.
“Placenta accreta,” Daisy says. “Have you ever heard that term? I was in so much pain. Little Rory was stillborn via emergency C-section. When I woke up, they told me I had undergone an emergency hysterectomy.”
She sniffs and wipes at her eyes.
“That’s right. I didn’t just lose this tiny human who had been living inside me. I lost my womb. I had joined this website for expectant mothers that sent an email every month about how your baby was developing. Even after Rory died, the emails kept coming. Oh, now your baby is two months old and might be able to coo. That sort of thing.”
“So sorry,” I manage to say. I’m losing steam, my energy seeping out of me. I flex my right fingers. If Daisy becomes distracted enough in her reminiscing, then I can make a grab for the gun. It’s all I can come up with.
“You can imagine how painful that was. You’re probably thinking: Daisy, why didn’t you unsubscribe? Why did you put yourself through this every month?”
I look up into her large blue eyes. They are glassy and unfocused.
“But I couldn’t cancel those emails. That would have been like denying Rory had ever existed. Paul suffered, too. He felt so guilty. He blamed himself for Rory dying, but it wasn’t his fault. You know that better than anyone.”
I want to keep her talking. I know she wants to. “My sister,” I say. “Reverse mortgage.”
“Her? She deserved what she got, too. Back then, she wanted more money. The house wasn’t enough for that greedy little bitch. She wanted fifty grand, too. Cash. She came to our new place and said she wouldn’t leave until we gave it to her.”
I try to speak, to tell her I had no idea, but all I can do at this point is part my lips. No sound comes out.
“We didn’t have that kind of money, but she didn’t believe me. We didn’t know what to do. Go to the police in our new town? Tell them what? About Overton? We were trying to start over.”
Daisy glares at me.
“Your sister went to the dean of students at Paul’s new school. She showed them the pictures. Paul was fired, of course. We had to move in with his mother outside Boston. He couldn’t get a teaching job. And we lived with the fear that you or your sister or your mother might come calling. He began drinking. You know the rest, don’t you? He died in a car crash. Some people said it was suicide. I was left alone. Widowed at twenty-nine. In debt. No child, no parents, no husband, no womb.” She closes her eyes for a moment.
It’s my chance.
I can’t die.
I can’t leave Cole alone to fend for himself. I lunge at the gun, my hand closing in on the cool metal. Before I can raise the gun, she is on top of me, pinning my body to the hard tile floor. Her fingers claw at mine, trying to pry the gun free. I breathe in her familiar, sickly sweet perfume as she falls on top of me, our bodies tangling like sea kelp. The gun falls from my hand and clatters across the bathroom floor. I cannot see it. I hear gasping, unsure if it is coming from me or her. I don’t let go. I hold on to her for dear life.
Her hands tighten around my throat and begin to squeeze. The room dims. Gasping for breath, I bring my knee up and connect with something soft. It’s enough to loosen her grip on my throat. Choking, I roll to my side. A moment opens, maybe the last one. A low-level rage fuels the fibers of my muscles. I feel around until I’ve grabbed a fistful of her hair. With one last burst of strength, I wrench Daisy’s head back and smash her skull against the side of the porcelain tub as hard as I can.
The world goes black.
56
A nurse is fussing with an IV bag that snakes cool liquid into my arm. The room is dark, save for the bright lights of the monitor beside me.
“You’re awake.”
I turn to see Mark sitting in a chair by my bedside. He leans over me and plants a kiss on my forehead. “Thank god you’re okay.”
When I try to speak, my tongue
