Kasey remembered the ballcap in his back pocket and pulled it out.
“Trey,” Rosemarie whispered, “we’re your sirens, here to sing you a song about how you can’t get away with raping and beating women. Those women will make sure you can never do those things again.” She got close and, after taking the ballcap from Kasey, tucked it onto his head. Trey mumbled something but he was deep in the depths of bourbon LSD magic mushroom land.
They pulled and pushed him so he was sitting up. He slumped again and his ballcap fell off. Kasey turned and watched it floating there in the dark water, then it was gone.
“Okay, help me—” Kasey said to the girls, but she stopped when Trey sat up again and grabbed her leg.
“Don’t!” Ada said.
“Trey, relax. Let’s swim,” Kasey said to him. He got on his feet and put his arm around her.
“Sit down, Trey,” Rosemarie said coolly.
He turned to look at her. He didn’t ask what she was doing there. He didn’t react at all; he just obeyed.
“Sometimes the sirens get bossy,” Kasey said, relieved he’d let her go. She motioned to Rosemarie and Ada to stay back, and she sat next to him.
He looked right through her before he grabbed her hair and yanked. Kasey suppressed the scream.
It was happening again. Everything was going wrong. He’d kill her. He didn’t even know what he was doing and he was too strong. He pulled her hair again and held her arms.
The knife.
If he let go even for a split second, she could get the knife out of her pocket.
But he didn’t let go.
He wouldn’t.
She felt the girls move toward them. Trey shook Kasey so hard she bit her tongue, and he was mumbling something she couldn’t make out. She said his name with blood in her mouth and prepared herself to fall in the water.
She thought of ways to keep from drowning during a struggle, of ways to fight him off. She thought of her mom’s last moments. They were like this too, hopeless and scorching in the red-hot anger of a violent man.
She’d scream.
She had to! Someone could come and help them. Kasey opened her mouth to do it and turned her head. Suddenly, Trey let her go and Kasey moved behind him.
She watched Rosemarie put her foot on the small of Trey’s back and Ada lift a big rock with both hands. Ada brought the rock down on his head like an egg cracking on the rim of a bowl.
That quick, Trey fell forward and the lake swallowed him up with a gushy gulp.
“Ada!” Rosemarie said.
“Shit, Ada!” Kasey said.
“Kase, are you okay?” Rosemarie and Ada asked her at the same time.
“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she said, wiping blood from her mouth.
“I’m sorry…I was scared he’d grab you again…that he’d hurt you…I wanted to make sure…to make sure…he’d be dead,” Ada said too loudly, wiping her hands on her jeans. She had wild eyes and Rosemarie went and hugged her, pulled her head close, and shushed her so she wouldn’t make any more noise.
Kasey threw the knife in the grass and jumped in after him. Rosemarie and Ada jumped in too, but he was gone already and so was the rock. Trey had slipped under the black to the sound of Cat Stevens singing moonshadow as she thought of Roy throwing her mama’s precious body in that lake like a bag of trash.
What he’d wronged—moonshadow—they’d made right.
If there were an atomic flashlight in her heart beaming the dark, it wouldn’t find a drop of remorse for helping Trey get to where she knew he was going. They knew the world would be better without Trey Foxberry, and now the world was better! Simple as that.
Maybe no one would ever find him. Maybe it wouldn’t matter that Ada didn’t stick to the plan. It was done.
Wouldn’t be much longer now.
It was finished.
“Where’s the knife? I had the knife in my pocket and I threw it out here and fuck if it fell in the water—” Kasey said quietly when she was out of the lake, but her head was roaring.
“What knife?” Rosemarie asked.
“Rosemarie, the knife! The folding knife you made sure I remembered to have on me! I can’t see. I can’t find it,” Kasey said, scanning the ground beneath her. She told them she’d put the knife in her pocket, didn’t she? Of course she did. And she threw it before she jumped in, didn’t she? Of course she did. She remembered. She squatted and felt for it.
“Right, right. I can’t believe I forgot about that. I’m sorry. There’s kind of a lot going on! Um, I’m sure it’s down here,” Rosemarie said, squatting too. Feeling.
“Where’d you get the folding knife?” Ada asked.
“Ada, does that really matter right now?!” Rosemarie said.
“It’s been in the kitchen drawer my whole life. I put it in my pocket and I need to find it,” Kasey said.
“Okay. Well, we can’t use a light,” Ada said, squatting with them, patting the grass.
“Kasey, how big is it?” Rosemarie asked.
“It’s…the size of a folding knife, Rosemarie, I don’t know! Not too big, not too little. Knife-sized,” Kasey said. They were all trying to keep their voices as low as possible, all trying to steady the shaking sounds that came out when they opened their mouths.
The three of them moved slowly, feeling around in the grass and rocks for how long? A minute? Two? Once, Ada and Kasey accidentally touched fingers in the dark and Ada almost screamed, but Rosemarie put her wet, muddy hand over her mouth and stopped her.
When Kasey felt the cold plastic and metal, she gripped it as hard as she could and snatched it up, pulling some weeds along with it.
“Found it! I have it,” Kasey said, clutching it like a crucifix, swallowing blood.
Before going inside to clean up, the girls stood wet and shaking, holding hands. Kasey’s dress dripped and stuck to her like a petal. The water near the farmhouse was rougher since it was closer to the falls, the rocks. It was why they’d wanted to put Trey in there as opposed to anywhere else.
The moonlight cut the lake like a deck of cards, and they watched it chop and run.
Trey’s car door was unlocked, and quickly, quietly—after she was in a new, dry change of clothes—Kasey put the smiley-face LSD stickers Rosemarie gave her in the glove compartment, careful to wipe her fingerprints away. They put what was left of the lasagna and pie down the garbage disposal bit by bit and shared two bottles of wine afterward, crying. High on their dark and temporary mania, going over the lies they needed to tell again, talking about what’d happened like they’d done it years and years ago. Like it was already a Goldie legend.
“I can’t believe we actually did it,” Ada said, wrapped in a blanket, dazed and drunk on the couch.
“I can,” Rosemarie said. She let herself fall across Kasey’s lap and closed her eyes.
“I can too,” Kasey said, so wired she thought she’d never be able to sleep again. So tired she could barely stay awake.
Trey returned to her immediately in a dream, the first part of the night replaying on a loop, but this time Trey wouldn’t die, no matter what they did. Once, he turned into Roy. That was when Kasey woke up crying, with her heart pounding so hard she could feel it in her teeth. She stayed awake in the dark until the first hint of light.