“You’ll do what I tell you,” Lily said. “I’m done being half a person. I’m done being the girl who doesn’t exist. This house is mine. And if you want to stay out of trouble, then you’re mine, too.”
Beth pictured spending the rest of her life here, doing whatever Lily wanted her to do. There would be blood on her hands sooner or later. Lily wouldn’t want to keep doing her killings alone. “I know what you did,” she said, trying not to panic. “Those two men. And before that—Lawrence Gage, was that his name? He was your father, and you killed him, too.”
There was a quick second in which Lily was surprised, that unpleasant surprise that Beth had seen on her face only once before. Then she figured it out. “The lawyer,” she said.
“He knows who your father was. Lawrence Gage’s murder was in the papers, and Ransom showed me.” She took a step closer to her sister, the words pouring out. “You broke in and shot him, just like you did to my father. To Julian.” It was hard to say her father’s name, and she shuddered, thinking of what she’d just seen in the kitchen. She made herself say it again. “You killed Julian.”
Lily was utterly calm, watching her. “You wanted me to,” she said. “He was going to make you marry that boy. He didn’t love you like you wanted. When it was over, Beth, you never said a word. Not to Mariana, not even to your precious cop. You didn’t tell anyone. Just like you did nothing that night when you watched Mariana get into her car.”
Those words sliced her, the injury that went deepest and wouldn’t heal. Lily had already stormed off that night. Yet she knew that Beth had stood there, watching their mother leave. Maybe they really were two halves of the same person, like Lily had said.
If Lily was a killer, then so was Beth. If they stayed here together, it was a matter of time before Lily made Beth do the next murder herself. And if Beth tried to go to the police, the first man on Lily’s list would be Detective Black. The second one might be Ransom.
“Why?” Beth asked her sister. “Why do you do these things? Can you at least tell me why?”
Lily looked at her curiously. “Do you want a reason? I can pretend there is one, if you like. I can tell you it’s because of my childhood, or the fact that my father raped my mother. I can tell you it’s because of the foster homes. Or I can tell you I’m simply bad. Take your pick, Beth. I can tell you whatever you want.”
“That’s all?” Beth cried. “After everything, that’s all you can say? Did you do it all just because you wanted to?”
“I don’t know,” Lily said. “I did want to. It was easy, you know. I thought it might be hard.” She shook her head, frowning. “It’s a high, killing someone. But sometimes . . . sometimes there’s a moment where you have the power of life and death, and then you realize it doesn’t make you any different than you were before.” She rubbed her temple. “I’m going to take a bath. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
She turned her back, and just like that, everything died in Beth. Love, loyalty, even fear. She saw Mariana’s face that last day they went shopping, the scarf in her blond hair. She saw Julian’s face in the rearview mirror as they drove to the Christmas party when Beth was sixteen, the crinkles at the edges of his unhappy eyes. She saw Paul Veerhoever crumpled at the side of the road, his face a bloody pulp in the darkness.
I loved you more than anything, she heard her mother say.
She felt nothing. Nothing.
No one is coming to save us.
We’re two halves of the same person.
No one is coming.
She had known she would have to do this, no matter how hard it was. It was time.
She did it quickly. As the water ran in the bathtub, as Lily turned away, Beth grabbed her father’s ashtray from the nightstand. The housekeepers had emptied the ashtray some long-ago day, but it still smelled like ashes, the smell that was Julian and Mariana. It was big and extremely heavy, made of solid thick glass. She swung it with every ounce of her strength at the back of Lily’s head.