There’s something inside me, he told her once. And when it breaks loose, I’m not the same person. She thought he was just making excuses for his bad behavior. But now she saw it. She tasted blood in her mouth.
“The boys,” she said.
She flashed on Stephen clinging. Oliver sulking at the table with her mother. Oh, god. Was she ever going to see them again? Who would care for them when she was gone? She started screaming, more like a roar of anger and sadness, rage at her own powerlessness.
“Shut the fuck up, Selena,” the stranger who used to be her husband hissed. “Don’t make me hit you again.”
He shifted his weight. And in one swift, direct movement, she brought her knee up hard into his groin. She watched his face freeze, go white. A kind of strangled cry escaped him, then he fell off of her, curling himself up into the fetal position, moaning.
“You fucker,” she managed. “I hate you.”
All he could do was groan.
She struggled to her feet, grabbed her phone and her charger and was about to run for the door. But then his hand was strong around her ankle, fingers digging into her flesh, tripping her. She fell hard, the phone cracking against the hard wood, then skittering away out of reach.
The wind knocked out of her, she struggled for breath, crawling toward the door. Then he was on top of her. He flipped her again, her head knocking against the wood, and then put strong hands on her neck and started to squeeze.
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t scream. She clawed at his hands, kicked her legs.
Her husband. She tried to say his name but couldn’t. No air, no sound.
“I gave you everything,” he said through gritted teeth. “You spoiled, ungrateful bitch.”
Her husband, eyes black with rage, was trying to kill her.
He was killing her.
FORTY
Selena
Around her things started to go gray, her vision a fish-eye lens. Her mind raced, gaze scanning the room for a weapon, a way out, a solution.
Finally, energy waning fast, her glance landed on the family portrait hanging on the wall over the console table. It’s all worth it, the photographer had said. I promise. Her babies. A kaleidoscope of memories played out in her mind—their laughing faces, the day Stephen dumped a bowl of mashed peas on his head, Oliver’s first steps, Stephen watching her as she fell asleep, his eyes slowly closing, the feel of their bodies against hers. They were slipping away from her. As hard as she’d tried, she’d failed them completely. Who would they be now without her, after this?
Selena felt herself go slack, the darkness encroaching, her limbs heavy and useless. She kept her eyes on the picture of the boys. She wanted their faces to be the last thing she saw.
Then, in a rush of air, Graham’s grip loosened, and blessed oxygen flowed back into her lungs.
Selena rasped, drawing it in, hands flying to her brutalized throat. She coughed, great retching bursts, bile rising. Graham still sat on top of her, frozen, stunned, his expression gone slack. His hands loose at his sides.
“Let me go.” Her voice was just a whisper.
He looked at her, eyes red and watering—from effort, from sadness, she didn’t know. There was a moment when she glimpsed him, the man she thought he was. Then he fell off to the side, landing heavily on the ground, head knocking hard.
She skittered away from him, moving again for the door, coughing. That’s when she saw the blood trailing down the side of his face from a wound on his head.
Standing behind him was a woman she knew.
She held their gun in her slender, manicured hand—the weapon she’d obviously just used to hit Graham in the head. She must have hit him hard, a spray of blood across her blouse. She, too, wore a stunned expression, her breath ragged, hair wild.
Martha. Pearl. Her half sister. The stranger on the train.
FORTY-ONE
Selena
Pearl was saying something that Selena couldn’t make out over the roaring in her head. The unreality of the moment spun and pulled. Was she dreaming? She struggled to hold on to consciousness, the lack of oxygen making her loopy and heavy with a strange fatigue.
Pearl moved in close to her, pushed back a strand of Selena’s hair. Her face—the pale of her skin, the abyss of her eyes. It was so familiar, like they’d always known each other. Selena almost reached for her, and Pearl helped her climb to her feet, the other woman far stronger than she looked. Together, they staggered to the couch. Selena sat heavily, sinking into the softness of the cushion. She could still feel Graham’s hands on her throat, a terrible burning pain, sharp, acidic.
Pearl put the throw blanket on Selena’s lap, staying close.
“Is he dead?” Selena whispered, glancing over at Graham, who lay still on the floor of the hallway.
“No,” said Pearl, but she didn’t seem sure.
Selena kept her eyes on Graham. Pearl still held the gun.
“Why did you do this to me?” she asked Pearl. Her voice sounded faint, breathless. “To us?”
Pearl stayed quiet.
“We would have welcomed you in,” said Selena. She didn’t know if it was true, that she and Marisol would have brought Pearl into their family. If Cora might have accepted her. But she wanted to believe that about herself. That she could have found room in her heart, in her family, for someone who had been so badly wounded.
“No,” said Pearl. She was level. There was no emotion. No heat. A coolness that Selena had sensed in their last two encounters. “You wouldn’t have.”
“How can you say that? You don’t know us.”
“Because I know people,” she said easily. “I would just be a reminder of your father’s flaws, his mistakes, his betrayals. Our father.”
Selena regarded the other woman, still aware of Graham, of the pain that was starting to radiate in her body.
“So then you decided to hurt us,” said Selena. “You didn’t believe you could be a part of this family, so you sought to destroy it. Or what? Is there something else? Do you want more money?”
She took the money from her pocket—a meager couple of thousand—and held it out. Pearl looked at it, a small smile on her face.
“I know it’s not enough,” said Selena. “But I have more. What’s your price? What do I need to do to make all my problems just go away?”
She let the cash drop to the floor and it fell like leaves. It was too late for Selena’s problems to just go away. They were, of course, just beginning. Graham issued a groan from the floor. She fought the urge to go over and kick him hard in the gut. She didn’t have the strength anyway.
Distantly, Selena heard sirens. She wondered if Pearl heard them, too.
“Maybe it was about money, at first,” said Pearl. She sat on the chair across from Selena. “Maybe it was about revenge. Or both. I looked for a way into your life. And I found it.”
Selena pushed herself up, pain rocketing up her neck, down her arms, her back.
“I thought your life was perfect,” Pearl went on. “But it’s not.”
“Far from it,” Selena said.
“Your husband is a bad man, Selena. I didn’t know how bad he was until I started following him. He’s a monster.”
Selena’s head started to clear, the situation coming back into focus. She had so many questions. How had she found her way in? When? Was it Pearl who had been texting Graham? What did Pearl know about Graham that even Selena didn’t know? It all came out in a tumble.