A Faint Cold Fear

16

Lena shuffled into the kitchen, every joint in her body grating like rusted metal. Nan was sitting at the table reading the newspaper while she ate a bowl of cereal.

“Sleep okay?” Nan asked.

Lena nodded, looking around for the coffeemaker. The kettle on the stove was steaming. A cup was on the counter with a tea bag beside it.

“Do you have coffee?” Lena asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“I’ve got instant,” Nan said, “but it’s decaffeinated. I could run up to the store before I go to work.”

“That’s okay,” Lena said, wondering how long it would be before she started to get a caffeine-withdrawal headache.

“You sound better this morning,” Nan said, trying to smile. “Your voice. It’s more like a whisper instead of a croak.”

Lena slumped into a chair, exhaustion pulling at her bones. Nan had taken the couch, leaving the bed to Lena, but Lena had not been able to get comfortable. Nan’s bed was underneath a bank of windows that looked out into the backyard. All of them were at ground level, and none of them had blinds or even curtains. Lena had not been able to close her eyes, afraid that someone would crawl in through the windows and grab her. She had gotten up several times, checking the locks, trying to see if anyone was outside. The backyard was too dark for her to see more than a few feet, and Lena had finally ended up with her back to the door and the gun in her lap.

Lena cleared her throat. “I need to borrow some money.”

“Of course,” Nan told her. “I’ve been trying to give you—”

“Borrow it,” Lena insisted. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Okay,” Nan agreed, standing up to wash her bowl at the sink. “Are you going to take a little time off? You’re welcome to stay here.”

“I need to hire a lawyer for Ethan.”

Nan dropped her bowl in the sink. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“I can’t leave him in jail,” Lena said, knowing that the black gangs would kill Ethan as soon as they saw his tattoos.

Nan sat back down at the table. “I don’t know if I can give you the money for that.”

“I’ll get it from somewhere,” Lena said, though she did not know where.

Nan stared at her, lips slightly parted. She finally nodded. “All right. We’ll go to the bank when I get home from work.”

“Thank you.”

Nan had more to say. “I didn’t call Hank.”

“I don’t want you to,” Lena insisted. “I don’t want him to see me like this.”

“He’s seen you like this before.”

Lena gave her a warning look, letting Nan know that was not open for discussion.

“All right,” Nan repeated, and Lena wondered if she was saying it more to herself. “So I’ve got to get to work. There’s an extra key by the front door if you go out.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s probably best,” Nan said, glancing at Lena’s neck. Lena had not looked in the mirror this morning, but she could imagine how bad she looked. The cut on her cheek felt warm, like it might be infected.

Nan said, “I’ll be back at lunchtime, around one. We’re going to start inventory next week, and I need to get some things done.”

“That’s okay.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come to school with me? You could stay in the office. No one would see you.”

Lena shook her head. She did not ever want to return to campus again.

Nan scooped up her book bag and a set of keys. “Oh, I almost forgot.”

Lena waited.

“Richard Carter might drop by.”

Lena muttered a curse that Nan had obviously never heard from a woman.

Nan said, “Oh, my.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

“No, I didn’t know you were going to be here. I gave him the key last night at dinner.”

“You gave him the key to your house?” Lena asked, incredulous.

“He worked with Sibyl for years,” Nan defended. “She trusted him with everything.”

“What does he want?”

“To go through some of her notes.”

“He can read Braille?”

Nan fidgeted with her keys. “There’s a translator at the library he can run it through. It’s going to take him forever.”

“What’s he looking for?”

“God knows.” Nan rolled her eyes. “You know how secretive he can be.”

Lena agreed, but she thought this was odd behavior even for Richard. She would find out what the hell he was up to before he even got near Sibyl’s notes.

“I’d better scoot,” Nan said. She pointed to the cast on Lena’s wrist. “You’re supposed to keep that elevated.”

Lena raised her arm.

“You’ve got my number at school.” Nan indicated the keypad. “Just press the ‘stay’ button if you like.”

“Right,” Lena said, though she had no intention of setting the alarm. A spoon clanging against a frying pan would be more effective.

“It gives you twenty seconds to close the door,” Nan said. Then, when Lena didn’t respond, she pressed the “stay” key herself. “The code’s your birthday.”

The pad started beeping, counting down the seconds Nan had to leave through the front door.

Lena said, “Great.”

“Call me if you need me,” Nan told her. “Bye!”

Lena closed the front door and locked the bottom latch. With one hand she dragged a chair over and propped it under the knob so Richard couldn’t surprise her. She pulled aside the curtain and looked out the little round window in the door, watching Nan back out of the driveway. Lena felt stupid for breaking down in front of Nan last night, but part of her was glad that the woman had been there. She was finally understanding after all these years what Sibyl had seen in the mousy librarian. Nan Thomas wasn’t that bad after all.

Lena grabbed the cordless phone off the coffee table on her way to the kitchen. She found the Yellow Pages in the drawer by the sink and sat at the table. The ads for lawyers took up five pages, each one of them colorful and tacky. Their headlines beseeched those suffering from car accidents or sucking off disability to call RIGHT NOW for help.

Buddy Conford’s ad was the biggest one. A picture of the slick bastard had a cartoon balloon coming out of his mouth with the words “Call me before you talk to the police!” written in fat red letters.

He answered on the first ring. “Buddy Conford.”

Lena chewed at her lip, reopening the cut. Buddy was a one-legged bastard who thought all cops were crooked, and on more than one occasion he’d accused Lena of using illegal methods. He had busted a few of her cases wide open on stupid technicalities.

“Hello?” Buddy said. “All righty, counting to three. One . . . two . . .”

Lena forced herself to say, “Buddy.”

“Yep, you got ‘im.” When she did not say anything, he prompted, “Speak.”

“It’s Lena.”

“Come again?” he said. “Darlin’, I can barely hear you.”

She cleared her throat, trying to raise her voice. “It’s Lena Adams.”

The lawyer let out a low whistle. “Well, I’ll be,” he said. “I heard you were in the pokey. Thought it was a rumor.”

Lena kept enough pressure on her lip to cause pain.

“How’s it feel to be on the other side of the law now, partner?”

“Fuck you.”

“We’ll discuss my fee later,” Buddy said, chuckling. He was enjoying this even more than she had imagined he would. “What are you charged with?”

“Nothing,” she told him, thinking that that could change at any minute, depending on what kind of day Jeffrey had. “This is for somebody else.”

“Who’s that?”

“Ethan Green.” She corrected herself. “White, I mean. Ethan White.”

“Where’s he at?”

“I’m not sure.” Lena closed the phone book, sick of looking at the cheap ads. “He’s charged with some sort of parole violation. The original charge was bad checks.”

“How long’ve they had him locked up?”

“I’m not sure,” Lena said.

“Unless they have something solid to charge him with, they mighta already cut him loose.”

“Jeffrey won’t cut him loose,” Lena told him, certain of that one thing. He only knew Ethan White from his rap sheet. He had never seen the good side of Ethan, the side that wanted to change.

“There’s something you’re not telling me here,” Buddy said. “How’d he end up on the chief’s radar?”

Lena ran her fingers along the pages of the book. She wondered how much she could tell Buddy Conford. She wondered if she should tell him anything at all.

Buddy was good enough to know what was coming. “If you lie to me, it only makes it harder to do my job.”

“He didn’t kill Chuck Gaines,” she said. “He wasn’t involved in any of that. He’s innocent.”

Buddy gave a heavy sigh. “Honey, let me tell you something. All my clients are innocent. Even the one that ended up on death row.” He made a disgusted sound. “Especially the one that ended up on death row.”

“This one’s really innocent, Buddy.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe we should do this in person. You wanna swing by my office?”

Lena closed her eyes, trying to visualize herself out of the house. She couldn’t do it.

Buddy asked, “Something I said?”

“No,” Lena told him. “Can you come here instead?”

“Where’s here?”

“I’m at Nan Thomas’s house.” She gave him the address, and he repeated the numbers back to her.

“It’ll be a couple of hours,” he said. “You gonna be around?”

“Yeah.”

Buddy said, “I’ll see you in a couple.”

She hung up the phone, then dialed the number at the police station. She knew that Jeffrey would do everything he could to hold Ethan in lockup, but she also knew that Ethan was well aware of how the law worked.

“Grant Police,” Frank said.

Lena had to force herself not to hang up the phone. She cleared her throat, trying to make her voice sound normal.

She said, “Frank? It’s Lena.”

He was silent.

“I’m looking for Ethan.”

“Yeah?” he grumbled. “Well, he ain’t here.”

“Do you know where—”

He slammed the phone down so hard the sound echoed in Lena’s ear.

“Shit,” she said, then started coughing so violently she thought her lungs were going to pop out of her mouth. Lena went to the sink and drank a glass of water. Several minutes passed before the coughing fit passed. She started opening drawers, looking for some cough drops to soothe her throat, but found nothing. She found a bottle of Advil in the cabinet over the stove and shook three capsules into her mouth. Several more came out, and she tried to catch them before they fell on the floor, smacking her hurt wrist against the refrigerator in the process. The pain made her see stars, but she breathed through it.

Back at the table, Lena tried to think where Ethan would go if he was let out of jail. She did not know his number at the dorm and knew better than to call the campus office to try to get it. Considering that Lena had been in jail last night, she doubted that anyone would want to help her.

Two nights ago she had plugged in her answering machine in case Jill Rosen called back. Lena picked up the phone and dialed her home phone number, hoping she had hooked up the machine right. The phone rang three times before her own voice greeted her, sounding foreign and loud. She punched in the code to play back her messages. The first one was from her uncle Hank, saying he was just checking in and was glad she had finally decided to get an answering machine. The next was from Nan, sounding very worried and asking Lena to call her as soon as she could. The last message was from Ethan.

“Lena,” he said. “Don’t go anywhere. I’m looking for you.”

She pressed the three button, rewinding the message to play it again. There was no time or day stamp on the machine because she had been too cheap to spend the extra ten bucks, and the three rewound all the messages, not just the last one, so she had to listen to Hank and Nan again.

“Don’t go anywhere. I’m looking for you.”

She hit the three again, suffering through the first two messages before she heard Ethan’s voice. Lena pressed the phone closer to her ear, trying to decipher his tone. He sounded angry, but that was nothing new.

She was listening to the message a fourth time when a knock came at the door.

“Richard,” she mumbled under her breath. She looked down at her clothes, realizing she was still wearing the blue pajamas. “Fuck.”

The portable phone beeped twice in quick succession, the LED screen flashing that the battery was low. Lena pressed the five key, hoping that would save Ethan’s message.

She walked into the living room, dropping the phone in the charger. A dark figure was standing at the front door, the outline of his body showing through the curtains. She called, “Just a minute,” her throat straining from the effort.

In Nan’s bedroom she looked for something to cover herself. The only thing on offer was a pink terry-cloth robe, which was just as ludicrous as the blue pajamas. Lena walked to the hall closet and took out a jacket. She put it on as she walked to the front door.

“Hold on,” she said, removing the chair. She unlocked the dead bolts and opened the door, but no one was there.

“Hello?” Lena said, walking onto the front porch. No one was there either. The driveway was empty.

She could hear the alarm keypad beeping inside and remembered that Nan had set it before she left. The alarm was on a twenty-second delay, and Lena ran back into the house, entering the code into the keypad just in time.

She was walking toward the kitchen when the sound of breaking glass stopped her. The curtain on the kitchen door moved, but not from a breeze. A hand reached in, feeling for the latch. Lena stood, paralyzed for a few seconds, until panic took hold and she darted into the hallway.

Footsteps crunched across the kitchen floor. She ducked into the spare bedroom and hid between the open door and the wall, watching the hallway through the crack. The intruder made his way across the house in purposeful strides, his heavy shoes thunking across the hardwood floor. In the hallway he stopped, looking left, then right. Lena could not see his face, but could tell he was wearing a black shirt and jeans.

She squeezed her eyes shut, holding her breath as he walked toward the spare room. She pressed her back into the wall as hard as she could, trying to make herself invisible behind the door.

When she dared to open her eyes, he was turned away from her. Lena could only stare. She had been sure the man was Ethan, but the shoulders were too broad, the hair too long.

The closet was packed floor to ceiling with boxes. The intruder started pulling them out one by one, reading their labels before stacking them neatly onto the floor. After what seemed like hours, he found what he wanted. Sitting on his knees in front of the box, he offered his profile to Lena. She recognized Richard Carter instantly.

Lena thought of the Glock in Nan’s room. Richard had his back to her, and if she walked carefully, she might be able to clear the door and lock herself in Nan’s room.

She held her breath, stepping out from behind the door. She was retreating slowly from the room when Richard sensed her presence. His head snapped around, and he stood quickly. White-hot anger flashed in his eyes, quickly replaced by relief. He said, “Lena.”

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, trying to sound strong. Her throat scratched with every word, and she was certain he could hear the fear in her voice.

He furrowed his brow, clearly confused by her anger. “What happened to you?”

Lena put her hand to her face, remembering. “I fell.”

“Again?” Richard gave a sad smile. “I used to fall that way myself. I told you I know what it’s like. I went through the same thing.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sibyl never told you the stories?” he asked, then smiled. “No, of course she wouldn’t tell secrets. She wasn’t that way.”

“What secrets?” Lena asked, reaching behind her, trying to find the doorway.

“Family secrets.”

He took a step toward her and Lena stepped back.

“It’s a funny thing about some women,” he said. “They get rid of one wife beater and run right to the next one with open arms. It’s like deep down that’s what they really want. It’s not love unless they’re getting the shit beaten out of them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Not you, of course.” He waited long enough to let her know that was exactly what he meant. “My mother,” he provided. “Or, more specifically, my stepfathers. I had several of them.”

Lena took a small step away from him, her shoulder brushing the doorjamb. She bent her left arm, keeping her cast clear of the leaded glass knob. “They hit you?”

“All of them did,” Richard said. “They would start off with her, but then they always came to me. They knew something was wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you.”

“Of course there is,” Richard told her. “People sense it. They know when you need them, and what they do is they punish you for it.”

“Richard—”

“You know what’s funny? My mom always protected them. She always made it clear that they were more important to her than I was.” He gave a sad laugh. “And then she turned around and did it to them. None of them were ever as good as the one who got away.”

“Who?” Lena asked. “Who got away?”

He inched closer to her. “Brian Keller.” He laughed at her surprise. “We’re not supposed to tell anybody.”

“Why?”

“His faggot son from his first marriage?” Richard said. “He said if I told anybody, he would stop talking to me. He would cut me completely out of his life.”

“I’m sorry,” Lena said, taking another step back. She was a few feet into the hallway now and she had to fight her instinct to run. The look in Richard’s eyes made it clear that he would chase her. “I’m expecting the lawyer here soon. I need to get dressed.”

“Don’t move, Lena.”

“Richard—”

“I mean it,” he said, standing less than a foot away from her. His shoulders were squared, and she sensed that Richard could really hurt her if he put his mind to it. “Don’t move an inch.”

She stood still, holding her left arm to her chest, trying to think of anything she could do. He was at least twice her size. She had never noticed what a large man he was, perhaps because she had never seen him as a threat.

She repeated, “The lawyer will be here soon.”

Richard reached past her shoulder and turned on the hall light. He looked her up and down, taking in her cuts and bruises. “Look at you,” he said. “You know what it’s like to have someone preying on you.” He gave her a sly smile. “Like Chuck.”

“What do you know about Chuck?”

“Only that he’s dead,” Richard said. “And that the world’s a better place without him.”

Lena tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“Cooperation,” he said. “We can help each other. We can help each other a lot.”

“I don’t see how.”

“You know what it’s like to be second best,” he told her. “Sibyl never talked about it, but I know that your uncle favored her.”

Lena did not respond, but in her heart his words rang true.

“Andy was always Brian’s favorite. He was the reason they left town in the first place. He was the reason they abandoned me with my mom and Kyle and Buddy and Jack and Troy and every other asshole who thought it was fun to get drunk and beat the shit out of Esther Carter’s little faggot son.”

“Did you kill him?” Lena asked. “Did you kill Andy?”

“Andy was blackmailing him. He knew that Brian didn’t come up with the idea on his own, let alone implement the research.”

“What idea?”

“Sibyl’s idea. She was about to submit her research to the committee before she was killed.”

Lena glanced at the boxes. “Are those her notes?”

“Her research,” he clarified. “The only proof left that it was hers.” A look of sadness crossed his face. “She was so brilliant, Lena. I wish you could understand how truly gifted she was.”

Lena could not hide her anger. “You stole her idea.”

“I worked with her on it every step of the way,” he defended. “And when she was gone, I was the only one who knew about it. I was the only one who could make sure her work was continued.”

“How could you do that to her?” Lena asked, because she knew that Richard had cared for Sibyl. “How could you take credit for her work?”

“I was tired, Lena. You of all people should understand that I was tired of being the second choice. I was tired of watching Brian waste everything on Andy when I was right there, ready to do anything for him at any cost.” He pounded his hand into his fist. “I was the good son. I was the one who translated Sibyl’s notes for him. I was the one who brought it to him so we could work together and create something that—” He stopped, his lips a thin line as he tried to hold back his emotions. “Andy didn’t give a fuck about him. All he cared about was what car he could get or CD player or video game. That’s all Brian was to him, a cash machine.” He tried to reason with her. “He was blackmailing us. Both of us. Yes, I killed him. I killed him for my father.”

Lena could only ask, “How?”

“He knew Brian couldn’t do this,” Richard said, indicating the boxes. “Brian’s not exactly a visionary.”

“Anyone would know that,” Lena said, getting to the heart of the matter. “What was his proof?”

Richard seemed impressed that she had worked it out. “The first rule of scientific research,” he said. “Write it down.”

“He kept notes?”

“Journals,” Richard said. “He wrote down every meeting, every phone call, every stupid idea that never panned out.”

“Andy found the journals?”

“Not just the journals—all the notes, all the preliminary data. Transcripts from Sibyl’s earlier research.” Richard paused, visibly angry. “Brian wrote down every goddamn thing in those journals, and he just left them lying around for Andy to find, and of course Andy’s first reaction isn’t, ‘Oh, Dad, let me return these.’ It’s, ‘Hm, how can I get more money for this?’ ”

“Is that how you got him to meet you on the bridge?”

“Smart,” he said. “Yes. I told him I was going to give him the money. I knew he would never stop. He would just keep demanding more and more money, and who knows who he’d talk to?” Richard gave an exasperated snort. “All Andy ever cared about was himself and how he was going to get his next high. He couldn’t be trusted. It was always going to be take, take, take for him, and everything I worked for, all the sacrifices I made to help my father, to give him something to work on that he could be proud of—that we could be proud of—would be smoked away by that little ungrateful piece of shit.”

The hatred in his voice took Lena’s breath away. She could only imagine what it must have felt like for Andy to be trapped on the bridge with Richard.

“I could have made him suffer.” Richard moderated his tone, obviously trying to sound reasonable. “I could have punished him for what he was doing to me—to the relationship I worked to build with my father—but I chose to be humane.”

“He must have been terrified.”

“He was so huffed up on Tidy Bowl he could barely see,” Richard said, disgusted. “I just steadied him with my hand here”—he put his hand a few inches in front of Lena’s chest—“gently leaned him against the railing, and injected him with succynilcholine. Do you know what that is?”

She shook her head, praying he would move his hand away from her.

“We use it at the lab to put down animals. It paralyzes you—paralyzes everything. He just fell into my arms like a rag doll and stopped breathing.” Richard inhaled sharply, his eyes wide in surprise, illustrating Andy’s reaction. “I could have made him suffer. I could have made it horrible, but I didn’t.”

“They’ll figure it out, Richard.”

He finally dropped his hand. “It’s not traceable.”

“They’ll still figure it out.”

“Who?”

“The police,” she told him. “They know it’s murder.”

“I heard,” he said, but he did not seem threatened by the information.

“They’ll trace it back to you.”

“How?” he asked. “There’s no reason for them even to suspect me. Brian won’t even admit I’m his son, and even if Jill didn’t have her head in the sand, she’s too afraid to say anything.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Afraid of Brian,” Richard said, as if that were obvious. “Afraid of his fists.”

“He beats his wife?” Lena asked. She couldn’t accept that Richard was telling the truth. Jill Rosen was strong. She wasn’t the type to take shit from anyone.

Richard said, “Of course he beats her.”

“Jill Rosen?” she said, still incredulous. “He beats Jill?”

“He’s beaten her for years,” he said. “And she’s stayed with him because no one’s helped her like I can help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

“Yes you do,” he said. “Do you think he’s just going to let you go?”

“Who?”

“You know who.”

Lena stopped him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know how hard it is to get away,” he told her, putting his hand to his chest. “I know you can’t do that kind of thing on your own.”

She shook her head.

“Let me take care of him for you.”

“No,” she said, taking a step back.

“I can make it look like an accident,” he told her, closing the space between them.

“Yeah, you’ve done such a great job so far.”

“You could give me some advice,” he said, holding up his hand so she wouldn’t interrupt. “Just a little advice is all. We can help each other get out of this.”

“How can you help me?”

“By getting rid of him,” Richard said, and he must have seen something in her eyes, because he gave a sad smile. “You know it, don’t you? You know that’s the only way you’re ever going to get him out of your life.”

Lena stared at him. “Why did you kill Ellen Schaffer?”

“Lena.”

“Tell me why,” she insisted. “I need to know why.”

Richard waited a beat before saying, “She looked right at me when I was in the woods. She stared at me while she was calling the cops. I knew it was just a matter of time before she told them.”

“What about Scooter?”

“Why are you doing this?” Richard asked. “You think I’m going to offer this long confession and then you’re going to arrest me?”

“We both know I can’t arrest you.”

“Can’t you?”

“Look at me,” she said, holding her arms out to the side, drawing attention to her battered body. “You know better than anybody else what I’m mixed up in. Do you think they’re going to listen to me?” She put her hand to her bruised neck. “They can barely even hear me.”

He gave a half smile, shaking his head as if to say he could not be suckered in.

“I need to know, Richard. I need to know I can trust you.”

He gave her a careful look, trying to decide whether to continue. Finally he said, “Scooter wasn’t me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” Richard rolled his eyes, for just a moment the girly Richard she knew from before. “I heard he was scarfing. Who’s stupid enough to do that anymore?”

Lena resisted his cattiness as an invitation to let down her guard. “And Tessa Linton?”

“She had this bag,” he said, suddenly agitated. “She was picking up stuff on the hill. I couldn’t find the necklace. I wanted that necklace. It was a symbol.”

“The Star of David?” she said, remembering how Jill had clung to it in the library. That day seemed like a lifetime ago.

“They both had one. Jill bought them last year, one for Brian and one for Andy. Father and son.” He exhaled sharply. “Brian wore it every day. Do you think he would do something like that for me?”

“You stabbed Tess Linton because you thought she had the necklace?”

“She recognized me somehow. I saw her putting it together. She knew why I was there. She knew I had killed Andy.” Richard paused, as if to gather his thoughts. “She started yelling at me. Screaming. I had to shut her up.” He wiped his face with his hands, his composure slipping. “Oh, Jesus, that was hard. That was so hard to do.” He looked down at the floor, and she could feel his remorse. “I can’t believe I had to do that. It was so horrible. I stayed around to see what happened and . . .” His voice trailed off, and he was silent, as if he wanted Lena to say it was okay, that he had not been given a choice.

He said, “How do you want to do this?”

Lena did not answer.

“How do you want me to get rid of him?” Richard asked. “I can make him suffer, Lena. I can hurt him just like he hurt you.”

Lena still could not answer. She looked at her hands, thinking about Ethan in the coffee shop and how angry she had been when he hurt her. She had wanted to pay him back, to make him suffer for the pain he caused.

Richard lightly tapped his finger on the cast. “I had more than my share of these growing up.”

She rubbed the cast. The scar on her hand was still red, dried blood around the edges. She picked at it as Richard laid out his plan.

“You won’t have to do anything,” he said. “I’ll make sure everything is taken care of. I’ve helped women like you before, Lena. Just say the word and I can make him go away.”

She could feel the scar give under her fingernails, peeling back like the sticker on an orange. “How?” she whispered, playing with the edge of skin. “How would you do it?”

Richard was watching her hands, too. “Will it do any good?” he asked. “Will it make you stop hurting yourself?”

She clutched her right hand around the cast and held it low on her waist, shaking her head, saying, “I just need to get him out of my life. I just need to get away.”

“Oh, Lena.” He put his fingers under her chin, trying to get her to look up. When she did not move, he leaned down, putting his hands on her shoulders, his face close to hers. “We’ll get through this,” he said. “I promise you. We can do it together.”

With both hands Lena rammed the cast up into his throat as hard as she could. The cast cracked underneath his jaw, clamping his teeth down on his tongue, throwing his head back whiplash fast. Richard stumbled backward, his arms flailing as he fell hard against the doorjamb. She bolted down the hallway toward Nan’s room, slamming the door behind her, working the ancient thumb latch just before Richard turned the knob from the other side.

Nan’s gun was under the bed. Lena dropped to her knees, pulling out the box. The cast had split open at the top, and she managed to use both hands to jam the magazine into the gun and release the safety before Richard broke down the door. He came in so fast that he tripped over her, knocking the gun from Lena’s hand. She scrambled to reach the weapon, but he was faster than she was. She stood slowly, hands in the air, as he pointed the gun at her chest.

“Get on the bed,” he told her, blood and saliva spraying from his mouth. His words were thick from where he had bitten his tongue, and his breathing was labored, like he was not getting enough air. He kept the gun on her and put his free hand to his throat, coughing once. “I could have helped you, you stupid bitch.”

Lena stayed where she was.

Despite his injury, his voice filled the room. “Get on the fucking bed!”

When she still did not move, Richard raised his hand to hit her.

She did as she was told, lying on her back with her head on the pillow. “You don’t have to do this.”

Richard moved deliberately onto the bed, straddling her legs, keeping her in place. Blood dripped from his mouth and he wiped it on his sleeve. “Give me your hand.”

“Don’t do this.”

“I can’t knock you out,” he said, and she knew that Richard’s only remorse came from the fact that her being awake made things more difficult for him. “Put your hand on the gun.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Put your fucking hand on the gun!”

When she did not obey, Richard grabbed her hand and forced it around the gun. She tried to push the glock away, but he had the advantage of height. He pressed the muzzle to her head.

She said, “Don’t.”

Richard hesitated for half a second, then pulled the trigger.

Shards of glass rained down, and Lena put her hands over her head, trying to protect herself as the window exploded above her.

Richard was blown back onto the floor. That was how it happened: The window shattered, and he was on the floor. Empty space was above her, nothing but the ceiling fan in Lena’s line of vision. She sat up so she could see Richard. There was a large hole in his chest, blood pooling around him.

Lena turned, looking behind her. Outside the broken window, Frank stood with his gun still drawn on Richard. The threat was unnecessary. Richard was dead.