Adrienne was breathing hard, and so was I. I could hear Dwayne babbling in the background, but I ignored him. I focused. Because something important was happening: I was doing what Adrienne wanted.
I was looking at her. I was looking at her very carefully.
Her hair was a mess, her makeup smeared. She was wearing her favorite outfit, the red bikini and the striped slub tee, clothes I’d bought for myself but given to her before I ever got to wear them, because there was so much dirt and tar at the lake and she was worried about staining her dry-clean-only wardrobe. Her skin was splotchy. Her lips were cracked. She even had a bruise on one knee.
We looked more alike than ever.
Adrienne smiled triumphantly.
I reached for the gun.
When I was a little girl, and Pop was first teaching me how to shoot a rifle, he told me that the most important thing about hunting was waiting for the right moment. After the buck wandered into your sights, but before he caught your scent and bolted. He taught me that being a good shot wasn’t worth shit unless you could also be patient. He told me that pulling the trigger was mostly about not pulling the trigger. You had to wait. You had to know. You had to see when the time was right—but then, you couldn’t hesitate. When the moment came, you got one breath to do what had to be done.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Squeeze.
And you had to be ready. Not just for the crack of the bullet and the jolt of the kickback, but for what came after. The dying gasp. The final twitch. The creature that had been moving a moment ago, gone forever and irretrievably still.
He told me that taking a life, even an animal’s life, is something you can never take back. But if you have the patience, if you have the strength, if you choose your moment: you can do what has to be done. And you can know, in your heart, that you made the right choice.
I was making the right choice. Even Adrienne was always telling me I deserved a better life. I don’t think she really meant it. I don’t think she thought about me much at all. But I guess, somewhere along the way, I must have started to believe her.
Adrienne was standing very still, staring at the shotgun.
“Dwayne,” I said. “Step back.”
“What are you doing?” he said, sounding bewildered. But for once, he did what I asked. He stepped back.
I racked a bullet.
Adrienne lifted one hand, her index finger extended. I’ll never know what she meant to do, accuse me or ask for time.
“You crazy bitch,” she said, and then swiveled her head to look at my husband. “Dwayne,” she said, through gritted teeth. “Dwayne! Tell her to stop! Do something!”
I took a breath. The light in the room shifted from golden to pink, as the sun dipped behind the treeline. Inhale. Exhale.
“I don’t know why you’re looking at him,” I said. Already, my voice didn’t sound like my own.
Squeeze.
The shotgun kicked against my shoulder.
Outside, a loon screamed on the empty lake.
Next to me, my husband whispered another woman’s name.
There was so much blood.
Chapter 21
Lizzie
The Lake
I tried to think of what was in front of me as meat. Nothing more. Like the squirrels we snared and skinned for stew. Like the bucks I dressed to make extra cash. How many times had I pulled a bandana over my mouth and nose and gone to work cutting a body apart? Coring the anus, removing the entrails, stringing it up to let the blood drain out. Filleting out the tenderloin, slicing the flanks. Packaging it neatly in plastic wrap, all sanitary, all squeaky clean. Like something you’d find in a grocery store.
Meat.
After I pulled the trigger, after Dwayne said Adrienne’s name and then didn’t say anything else, we stood in silence for what felt like ages. I should have been panicking, but I wasn’t. The sound of the gun had been monstrously loud, but there was nobody around to hear it. Only the loons, and all they did was laugh and laugh, their cries echoing across the water as the sky turned from pink to purple. We were alone. What was done was done. And inside my head, a cool, reasonable voice spoke up: You know what you have to do.
Dwayne shifted his weight beside me. He’d been closer to Adrienne than I was when the gun went off, and there were little flecks of blood scattered like freckles across his forehead.
“Don’t touch her,” I started to say, but he wasn’t moving toward Adrienne. He was backing away, staring at me with huge, frightened eyes.
“You shot her,” he said. “Holy shit. Why did you shoot her?”
I looked at the bed, where Adrienne, or what was left of her, had pitched back with the force of the bullet and landed in a sideways sprawl. There was a spray of blood on the wall behind her, and a spreading stain underneath, soaking into the linens. I felt my gorge rise, and swallowed hard.