“I wish I could tell you it wasn’t,” he replied. He shut the door and sat beside me, leaving plenty of room between us.
“You can go,” I said.
“I don’t have to.”
“If you think I’m going to give you a quote, or, or—”
“I’m not trying to get a story out of you right now. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Because I’m a fundamentally decent person, maybe?” he suggested.
“No such thing,” I told him. I ran my thumb along the scar on my wrist, back and forth. The one scar on my body that wasn’t from the attack. “If I’d answered when she called, I could have talked her down.”
“It’s not your fault,” Ethan said. It was what you were supposed to say, I guess. “She wanted to talk to me. Do you know why?”
“What happened to not trying to get a story out of me?” I asked.
“I’m just trying to understand,” he replied, and only then did I notice the way his hands were shaking.
“Are you all right?” I asked him.
He gave a choked laugh. “I make a living writing about murders and suicides. I read about all the gory details. Look at crime scene photos.”
“It’s not the same,” I said.
He met my eyes. His breath trembled out of him. I knew that look. Wanting to run without knowing what it was you should be running from. “No. It’s not,” he agreed. He raised his hand in an odd, abortive gesture, almost like he’d meant to touch my arm. I probably would have bitten a finger off if he tried. “I’m sorry about Olivia. She seemed like a lovely person.”
“She was,” I said. And then, “She was complicated.”
“The best people always are,” he replied. He looked away, toward the window. The blinds were shut, casting slashes of shadow across his face. “Is there someone I can call?” he asked.
Cass, I remembered. I’d promised to call her, and I hadn’t. She had to know about Liv by now. But I couldn’t face her. Anger and guilt tangled inside me. She’d left me on that trail. She’d turned away from me and from Liv, and she hadn’t been there when I needed her. When Liv needed her.
It was absurd. She’d been hurt. Of course she turned back. But I felt like I had when we fought all those years ago, desperate to hurt each other, desperate for the pain of being hurt.
“No. There’s no one,” I said. “You can go. I’ll be all right.”
“I’m two doors down if you change your mind,” he said. “Room four.”
“Is that some kind of come-on?” I asked him.
“What? No,” he said. “Jesus, you really don’t have a high opinion of humanity, do you?”
“At least I’m up-front about it,” I said with a one-shouldered shrug.
He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he only shook his head. He let himself out and shut the door behind him.
I let gravity pull me down onto the bed, not bothering to take off my shoes, and lay on my side staring at the wall. I felt like I was drifting. It was the same sensation as when I lay against that rotting log, dizzy from the lack of blood, listening to the birds call uncaringly overhead.
It was the feeling of waiting for the world to end.
I must have fallen asleep at some point, because I woke up an hour later, the exhaustion gone and the grief hardened into a knife’s edge, sliding across my tender skin. I sat up gingerly.
I needed to do something—staying still was suddenly impossible, nervous energy crackling through me. I needed to talk to Cass. We had to figure out what to do about what Liv had found. And I wanted to be with her. For all the fights and stumbles along the way, she was still one of the two people in the world who knew me best.
The only one now.
When I drove up to Cass’s house, she wasn’t alone. There was a truck out front, a brand-new monstrosity that could have hauled an elephant trailer. I almost turned around when I saw it, but as I hovered outside the door opened and Cass’s mother stepped out, waving to me. I couldn’t very well leave now.
I walked up the drive, tumbling backward through time with every step. Meredith Green was a tiny woman, like a twist of wire. Age had distilled her down to her essence, hard and sharp, and what vanity she displayed with her dyed-blond hair and understated makeup had a utility of its own. She was the mayor’s wife, and she played the role with efficiency and unwavering dedication.
“Naomi. I’m glad you’re here,” she said. She took both my hands in hers. She’d always had warm hands, but now they had that papery feel of age. The first time she’d held my hands like this, a soft and inescapable touch, I’d still been in the hospital. The woman who’d sighed like a martyr every time Cass brought me over had called me sweetheart, and she had promised that she and her husband would look after me.
“You heard,” I said. Of course they had. Jim was the mayor. He’d have known as soon as the police did.
“It’s terrible. Marcus and Kimiko must be utterly destroyed. Poor things,” she said. She hadn’t let me go. I tugged my hands from hers, and she offered no resistance.
“I was hoping to talk to Cass,” I said.
“I’m afraid she’s not up for visitors,” Meredith said. “Maybe later.”
“I need to speak with her,” I said more firmly.
Her lips pressed into a thin line. “I will not let you drag my daughter into this horror again,” she said.
I blinked, taken aback. “I’ve never dragged Cass into anything,” I said.
“It took years for her to recover. Years. And God knows I love that little girl, but if it hadn’t been for you—”
“If I hadn’t almost been killed, you mean?” I asked.
“Let’s not pretend you were some innocent little girl. The things you all got up to in those woods were ungodly. They were perverse,” she said. “You invited darkness into your life and you brought Cassidy and Olivia into it, too. And now Olivia has paid the price.”
I could have told her that the Goddess Game—that most of the games—were Cass’s idea, but I knew better. Cassidy Green could do no wrong in the eyes of her parents, and if she did it was someone else’s fault.
“Mom? Who’s there?” Cass called. She appeared in the hall behind her mother, looking glassy-eyed and disheveled. Her foot was wrapped, and she was limping heavily. She spotted me. For a moment, the world hung on a point of perfect stillness—and then Cassidy gave a gulping cry and rushed forward at a stumbling run, past her mother, and flung her arms around me.
She buried her head against my shoulder and sobbed, and I held her, eyes shut, holding back my own tears.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” Cass said through racking sobs.
“I know,” I whispered. It didn’t feel real. Part of me still hoped it wasn’t.
“Come inside, both of you,” Meredith said, her desire to keep me out slightly less powerful than her desire not to have us make a scene where the whole neighborhood could see us.
Cass grabbed my hand and pulled me through the foyer to the stairs, shuffling along on her bad foot. I cast one last look behind me at Meredith’s sour face.