But I gotta try.
I wiggle my toes. Then I turn my ankles. Good start.
Thunk, thunk, thunk. He’s coming down the ladder.
It’s time to get up.
Time to make her proud.
— 60 —
Raymond: How I Did It （In Four Acts）
Act 4: Run
It’s still dark inside when I get back to the house. I don’t flip on the lights. I’ve already done the hard part, so I just go upstairs to his safe and get what I need to earn my freedom.
I put them on ice when I’m done with them. I don’t know why in the moment. But I’ll spend hours thinking about it later. I wish I could say it was a fuck you to him, because of his favorite drinking story. But the truth is, it’s plain shock and horror and gore running through me and all over me.
It’s because I’m scared of what he might do to me if he comes back and they’re gone for good.
Even after all of it, I operate like he’s going to step through the back door and grab my arm with his good hand.
So I put them on ice because I’m scared, still, and then I go into his office, because I can’t be scared still. I have to keep moving. She’s on the ground. Right where he left her.
“Mom, come on, get up.”
She bats my hands away. Her skinned knees have made little full moons of blood on the carpet.
She’s in my way. I only have so much time.
“Where is he?” And she’s not asking because she’s scared, but because she wants him. She wants to be comforted by him after he does this to her. I will never understand it. I will always hate it.
But I guess I’m done with it now.
“Come on.” I pull her up, gentle as I can, and I get her upstairs to bed. She asks again where he is.
I don’t answer.
Leaving her should be hard.
But it’s not.
I walk downstairs, and it’s like a dream. I have only so much time. His office is dark, and I leave it that way as I set the hard drives I took from his bedroom safe on his desk. I pull out the burner phone and dial her number as I plug in the first drive to his computer and turn it on.
It rings twice. Her voice crackles in my ear. “Hello?”
Say it. Do it. You have to.
“Olive.”
My sister’s breath hitches. “I’m on my way.”
I don’t say goodbye. I hang up like she told me to.
There’s only so much time.
I check each drive—the four big ones are password-encrypted. But when I plug in the thumb drive I almost missed, tucked in the back of the safe, lines of code appear across the screen. When the code finally stops scrolling, a red cursor blinks. I’m supposed to enter something.
I stare at the thumb drive and then press Escape, pulling it out and tucking it into my pocket. I put the big drives in the lunch box.
The burner phone buzzes. My sister’s outside. This is it.
I don’t know how I get to the door. I don’t realize how bad I must look until I open the door and see her face.
“You’ve got blood all over,” she says, reaching toward me.
I back away. I can’t be touched. Not now. Not ever? I don’t know anymore. “It’s not mine.” Not most of it.
Her face changes again, so fast it’d have me reeling, but I’m numb, I’m so numb. I did the job. I got the drives. And now I’m fading. I’m not me. I’m not Ashley.
Who am I now?
What am I?
Ashley. I’m Ashley. I’m supposed to be Ashley.
A perfect daughter wouldn’t have shot her stepfather. A perfect daughter wouldn’t have reached for that knife, wouldn’t have known how. A perfect daughter would’ve given him what he needed; she would’ve just let him kill her.
“What happened? Where is she? Where is he?”
“She’s upstairs. He’s . . . he’s . . .” The world’s spinning. Lock your knees.
“Look at me.” My chin’s between her fingers, my gaze forced to meet hers. The spinning stops. I breathe. Little puffs right into her face. I wonder if my breath smells. “What did you do?”
I can answer that. I know what I did. “I shot him. I had to. He pulled a gun on her. So I got him away and I shot him.”
“Focus.” She snaps her fingers in front of my face. I’m swaying again. “Where is he?”
Good. Another question I know the answer to. I like those. “I dragged him under the dock.”
“Is he dead?”
I shake my head. “I got him in the leg.”
Her entire body changes, the angles of her shoulders sharpen, alert and on edge. “Where’s the gun?”