The junkyard was silent, the heaps rising like jagged peaks against the midnight sky. The truck’s headlights illuminated my path, although I could have driven it blind. After all these years, I still knew this place, its twists and turns permanently etched in my memory. The trailer sat dark and shuttered at the end nearest the road, empty, as I knew it would be. Pop would be at Strangler’s by now, drinking until two o’clock in the morning and sleeping it off in his pickup until dawn. By the time he came back, the whole place would be up in flames.
I had started telling a story back at the lake house, and this was the last chapter. It went like this: Once upon a time, after ten unhappy years together, Dwayne Cleaves killed his wife and then himself, coming full circle to end his life back in the junkyard where they first met. Throwing a flare before he pulled the trigger. Burning it all down to ash. It was the kind of story people would believe, I thought. Not because Dwayne and I had been especially miserable, but because we hadn’t—and don’t those couples always seem happy enough, right up until the first body hits the floor?
I would set the stage, light the fire, and say goodbye forever to Lizzie Ouellette. To the town where she never belonged. To the junkyard she used to call home. As I did, I’d blow a kiss to the man who made me, raised me, gave me the best life he could. Who once told me he would have killed for me, and meant it.
I held the flare in my hand. Lit it. Inhaled, exhaled.
I liked to think that Pop, of all people, would understand the choices I’d made tonight. Not condone them, but understand them. This would be my last gift to him. I knew, at least, that he would be taken care of. Even after I married and moved into town, I’d still helped out here and there with the upkeep of the yard—including making sure the insurance policy stayed up to date. Pop always said we should get a cheaper one; I always insisted on full coverage. How many times had my father joked about it, how he’d make twice as much if the place caught fire as he ever would selling it? I hoped that was true. I hoped he took the payout, packed his bags, and never looked back.
Maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe destroying everything that tied us to this town was my dream, not his.
But the fire was already lit.
The flames flickered in Ethan Richards’s open eyes, then rose to engulf him. I backed away, watching as the fire filled the cab, waiting until the nearest pile of scrap began to burn, too, before I turned my back and ran. I darted back down the corridor for the last time, wind in my ears, eyes streaming, looking above the heaps to a sky filled with millions of glittering stars. Running so fast it felt like I was flying. Not knowing what came next, and in that moment, not caring at all. Behind me, the flames began to lick higher. In front of me, nothing but the wide-open night.
Chapter 22
Lizzie
The City
Dwayne flinched as the gun went off, then staggered forward, swaying, his feet braced like a boxer’s. His mouth dropped open, and for a single horrifying moment I thought he might speak, that I’d somehow missed the mark and might have to pull the trigger again. I wasn’t sure I could do it. Worse, I suddenly wasn’t sure I wanted to. My husband stood in front of me, a tiny hole in the front of his shirt where I’d shot him. The edges of the hole were starting to turn red, and all I could think of was what he’d said to me all those years ago, the day he’d killed Rags.
I wish I hadn’t done it. I wished it right away.
But it wasn’t like that for me. Whatever I felt about what I’d done, it wasn’t anything as pure or straightforward as regret. I didn’t wish I hadn’t done it. I didn’t want to unmake my choice. I just didn’t want to make it twice.
And then I didn’t have to. Dwayne’s legs buckled and he went down in a graceless heap, pitching forward, crashing face-first into the corner of Ethan Richards’s fancy mahogany desk. There was a wet crunch as his nose broke on impact, and a second, sickening thud as he crumpled the rest of the way onto the carpet. His arms, dangling useless at his sides, never lifted to break the fall. I think he was dead before he hit the floor.
I hope that’s how it was. I hope it was quick. As angry as I was at Dwayne, who’d fucked up my life so thoroughly that he almost managed to fuck up my death in the bargain, I never wanted him to suffer. It wasn’t about desire at all. It was about survival, the realization that I couldn’t save us both, because I couldn’t save my husband from himself. The drugs, the lies, the goddamn grainy cell-phone photo of Adrienne that he couldn’t stop himself from flashing around but also couldn’t bring himself to tell me about: he would have kept on like that, until he made a mistake I couldn’t fix, one that would destroy us both. Dwayne would have fucked up and gotten caught, eventually. And if I hadn’t found the courage now to take a different path, I would have been dragged along with him, still clutching his hand as we both went down.