It only made sense that I was there at the end. That it was me, not Dwayne, holding the gun. Pulling the strings. Making the choice, like I had so many times, to clean up the mess that my man had made. I’d already lied for him, stolen for him. Maybe it was inevitable that eventually I’d kill for him, too.
I don’t remember pulling the shotgun down from the wall before I left. I don’t remember loading it. But as I pulled up to the lake house, I looked over, and there it was. Sitting on the passenger seat. Just along for the ride. Dwayne was waiting for me outside, pacing, his eyes wild. I felt a flare of anger, then fear: the Richardses’ big, black SUV was parked neatly in the carport. Our guests had arrived. And if Dwayne wasn’t sick or injured, that meant the frantic phone call must have been about something—someone—else.
The gun was in my hands as I stepped out of the car. I don’t remember what I said to him; I do remember that he pointed toward the house and said, “She’s in the bedroom,” and I went running through the open door not knowing what waited for me inside. Knowing only that it must be bad, beyond bad, for my husband to admit that he needed me.
Adrienne was curled up on the edge of the bed with both feet still on the floor, so slow and sleepy that I knew right away she was stoned. An overdose, I thought. Had she found Dwayne’s drugs? Had he given them to her? Why else would he be so panicked—and how could he be so stupid? I put the gun aside and screamed for him, demanding to know how much she’d taken, how much he’d given her, whether he’d called an ambulance. If they got here in time, they could hit her with Narcan. I knelt down, grabbed her by the shoulder, and shook her, hard. She gazed back at me with slack lips, her pupils huge and dark. There was a smudge of dried blood in the pit of her elbow, deep red and perfectly round, and a length of rubber tubing lying on the floor at her feet. Her eyes were glassy.
“Hey!” I yelled in her face. “Stay with me! Stay awake!”
She flinched at that. Her big blue eyes opened wide as she looked over my shoulder, focusing on Dwayne.
“I,” she said, and took a deep breath before letting out the rest of the sentence as a long, slow sigh, “am soooooo fuuuuuuuucked.”
Her eyes flicked in the direction of the deck outside. I stood and turned to look at Dwayne, who was bent at the waist with his hands braced against his knees, breathing hard.
“Dwayne?” I said. “I don’t understand, is she—did you—what the fuck is happening?”
Adrienne took another deep breath, exhaled again with a soft whisper.
“He’s outside,” she said. Her breath smelled sour; I wondered if she was going to vomit, or already had.
“Dwayne’s right here,” I said, and both she and Dwayne shook their heads in unison. He stood and gestured at me to follow.
“Not me,” he said. “Him. The husband.”
Adrienne pressed her hands against the bed—already made up with the high thread-count sheets I’d ordered just for her, after she complained that the linens at the lake house were too scratchy—and sat up with a grunt. Her lips peeled back from her teeth as she turned her head to look out the window, grimacing with the effort.
“Ethan,” she said. She blinked, so slowly that it took several seconds for the movement to complete: heavy lashes descending downward, then opening only to half-mast. She pursed her lips, and her tone turned hopeful. “Maybe he’s not dead anymore.”
Ethan Richards was halfway down the long stairs that started at the deck, descending steeply down the wooded coastline to the lake. He’d fallen headfirst, and while there was no blood, the utter stillness of his body against the busy landscape, the movement of the water and the trees gently creaking in the breeze, left no room for doubt. One of his legs was bent unnaturally beneath him, and there was a dark splotch on the front of his pants where his bladder had let go. His head was the worst part: it was hanging over the edge of one step at a hideous angle, dangling, as though his neck bones had shattered so completely that only his skin was still keeping it attached. His eyes were open, unseeing, facing the lake. The last thing he would have seen, if he was still alive when he landed, was the fiery blush of the changing trees on the opposite bank and the bright ripples of sunlight on the cold, dark water.
Even with a dead body sprawled awkwardly in the foreground, it was beautiful. Breathtaking. It was true, what I’d told Adrienne: this was my favorite time of year.
I had a creeping feeling that this was the last time I would ever enjoy it.