“You killed her,” I say again.
Ellis drops my wrists. Her arms fold over her chest, and she shifts onto her back foot, her attention suddenly gone clinical. “Yes. I shot her, in fact. Twice, in the gut. And then I slit her throat.”
If that admission is intended to make me feel sick, it works. I shake my head as if I can shake that knowledge out of my mind.
“I used Quinn’s hunting rifle,” Ellis goes on. “The same gun you used to shoot that coyote. It has your prints all over it.”
The air in the room goes still.
I don’t know how I’d imagined it happened. But now all I can see is Ellis with that gun, Ellis’s hands wrapped in gloves, Ellis pulling the trigger.
“Why?” I croak. “You…Why?”
“Because I had to be sure,” Ellis says evenly. “It’s the same reason I had you go to Kingston and dig up her grave: to place you at the scene of the crime. I can’t have you running off to the police and telling them what I did, can I? I’m sorry, Felicity. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. I don’t want to betray you. Please don’t make me.”
I pace toward the window and look out. Ellis says something behind me, but I don’t hear her. Static roars in my ears, my lungs gone breathless. I press a hand against the frigid glass. Not that it helps.
Never mind the dirt in the rental car. Never mind the dug-up grave, or my cell signal pinging off the tower in Kingston, or Clara’s body in Alex’s coffin. Ellis doesn’t play by half measures. Whatever she’s done, she will have left no weakness in her plan.
I sense her coming up behind me; it’s all I can do not to whip around to keep her in my line of sight. Ellis grasps my shoulder, squeezing very slightly.
“Don’t touch me.”
Her hand falls away. I hear the soft shifting sound of her breath. The hair on the back of my neck prickles.
“I want to make sure you have the full picture,” Ellis says, “so listen carefully.”
I don’t need the full picture. I don’t want to know how thoroughly Ellis has shackled me. But I can’t stop her from talking, either, so she goes on:
“Think how it comes across. Clara and Alex…they could be twins. Or sisters, perhaps. It’s not just the red hair—they have remarkably similar features. After that hospitalization, your mental instability is established. Everyone in this house has seen it—your obsession with those old dead girls, thinking you’re cursed. Of course, the police won’t need to make such inferential leaps. I wrote a letter to Clara in your handwriting. It’s a very…well. Let’s just say it wouldn’t look good for you if that letter were found in Clara’s room, among her things. It would be easy to slip the letter into a notebook or under her pillow.”
I turn around. Ellis has taken a step back, thumbs tucked into the pockets of her pin-striped trousers. Her words reverberate through my head, playing and replaying until they lose all meaning.
“A letter,” I echo.
“Yes. And the fingerprints on the gun, naturally—mine are on file from my arrest a few years ago, you know, so I’m accounted for. Clara’s body will be found in Alex’s grave—the grave of your own ex-girlfriend, the girl everyone thinks you killed. Not to mention your cell phone places you at the scene of the crime. My phone, on the other hand, was in my room the whole time.”
“You don’t have a cell phone,” I croak.
“Don’t I?”
She slips a hand into her pocket and draws out a slim device. Not the newest model, but it doesn’t need to be new. It just needs to work.
Ellis’s mouth quirks in half a smile. “I did warn you about the dangers of technology.”
And now that I think back, I realize Ellis never told me explicitly that she didn’t own a phone. I’d just assumed from the way all the Godwin girls eschewed computers and social media and texting; I’d figured they were taking a leaf from Ellis’s book. I had thought she started that trend.
Perhaps she did. Perhaps she’d planned this far earlier than I realize.
“But you don’t need to worry about any of this, as long as you do the right thing,” Ellis says. “Don’t go to the police, and I won’t plant that note. I won’t tell the cops where to find the gun. Or Clara’s body.”
Clara’s body. God. I’m going to be sick.
Only I can’t show Ellis that kind of vulnerability. She’ll tear open my underbelly the moment it’s exposed.