“As I said,” Geller was saying, “I’m not worried about your case, per se. And if the DA tries to pursue this, I can try to discourage her in half a dozen different ways. But I would like the truth, Adrienne.”
Finally, I managed to close my mouth. I swallowed, hard.
“Well, you’re not getting it,” I said, and Geller’s eyebrows shot up. I could hear the rage in my voice, rage that was all mine and didn’t sound like Adrienne at all. But I couldn’t dial it back. I wouldn’t. I had to see, to know what would happen if I didn’t play my role just right. People were always ready to let Adrienne know what was expected of her. What if she defied expectation?
“Even if I wanted to tell you everything, I couldn’t,” I said. “I know Ethan is dead in a burned-out junkyard in the middle of nowhere. I know Dwayne killed him. But I don’t know the truth. I don’t know why, and now nobody ever will, because I didn’t wait around for Dwayne to explain his motivations or make excuses before I pulled that trigger. You want the whole story? The only person who could’ve told it to you is dead. I’m fine with that. If you can’t stand the uncertainty, then maybe I should find another lawyer.”
He blinked. I held my breath.
Then he smiled, the surprise wiping itself off his face, and said, “Oh, that won’t be necessary. And yes, I’ll take that check now.”
After it was all over, with the money in Geller’s hands and with nothing to do but wait and hide and hope, I would think again and again about that reckless moment in the lawyer’s office. That span of a minute where I’d cracked open the door on my old life and allowed Lizzie to peer out, to speak, to be seen. A completely unnecessary and dangerous risk, but one I had to take—if only to prove the truth to myself. Because I think I knew, even before I tried, that nobody would see her hiding there. I think I knew way back, before I ever pulled the trigger, maybe even before Adrienne came into my life at all. I was good at pretending, at imagining. When I looked at myself, I could see possibilities. But I think I knew nobody else would.
People see what they expect to see, once they think they know who you are. Their ideas are a ghost that floats ahead of you into every room, waiting until you arrive and then clinging all over you, grimy, opaque. It builds up around you over the course of a lifetime, layer by layer, until the ghost-you made of other people’s judgments is all anyone sees. The redneck cunt. The junkyard jezebel. The privileged bitch. And you’re stuck at the center, invisible. Trapped. Screaming, I’m in here, but the sound of your own reputation is so loud that nobody will ever hear you. By the time Lizzie Ouellette had that gun in her hands, she was like a costume I couldn’t take off, and nobody will ever miss the girl who lived inside it. Nobody even knew her.
Maybe my new costume will fit better.
Maybe I can be a better Adrienne Richards than Adrienne Richards ever was.
I held her phone in my hands and tapped the screen once, twice. Hesitated. Below my hovering finger, a dialog box asked, Are you sure? This action cannot be undone. It made me think again of that hairstylist, frowning as I explained what I wanted. Was I sure?
I wasn’t. I wasn’t sure at all. This was uncharted territory. Until this moment, I’d been guided by the question of what Adrienne would have done, because doing what Adrienne would have done, no matter what it was, was important. I knew this. I had known it from the moment I pulled the trigger, that getting away with this meant staying the course. Staying in character. If I was going to be Adrienne, I had to make Adrienne’s choices, not mine. And this choice, this undoable action, was not what Adrienne would have done. Not at all. Not ever.
But then again, Adrienne wasn’t exactly herself these days. Adrienne was in shock. Adrienne had been through a traumatic experience, and if she was acting strangely all of a sudden, didn’t she have the right? Could you blame her? Would you even wonder why?
“Fuck it,” I said aloud, and jabbed my finger at the screen. The dialog disappeared, replaced by a new message.
Your account has been deleted.
Part 3
Six Months Later
Chapter 27
Bird
The knife was in a plastic bag, stamped with a case number and capped by a red security strip that indicated it hadn’t been opened since the previous year. Bagged, tagged, and forgotten. It looked like any hunter’s knife, utterly unremarkable—unless you knew, as Bird did, that it had been used not too long ago to cut off a woman’s nose.
The officer behind the desk was neatly dressed in uniform but looked more like a librarian than a cop, her hair pulled back into a small, nubby bun at the nape of her neck and her eyes large behind a pair of small, round glasses. She pushed a clipboard at Bird.