What was it he was saying now? Something about this time not being an accident?
Lana opened her eyes another millimeter and saw him swinging around a large canister. She heard splashing, and then she felt it, cold and wet, slapping at her thighs. The smell was strong, sweet, with a chemical underlayer. It made her think of Paul. Not his swamp-grass marijuana plants. Something else, something earlier, that time she’d slid into his car outside Beth’s house, that first ride that set this whole investigation into motion.
*
“Paul . . .” Lana groaned.
Beth looked down at her mother, dumbfounded. Was this really the first word Lana was going to say at this moment?
“Paul.” It came out in a strangled croak, almost like Lana was trying to shout.
“Paul’s not here, Ma,” Beth whispered. “We have to do this ourselves.”
Beth tried to shift her mother’s weight off her lap. Her careful movements were rewarded with another groan, which drew Martin’s attention, and the gun, in their direction.
“She’s going to be okay!” Beth said nervously.
“I don’t think so,” Martin said. He shook out the last drops of gasoline onto Lana’s shoes.
“Martin. Don’t do this.” Diana rose slowly to her feet, her hands up, her voice low and desperate.
“It’s a shame you came out here, Di. While I was washing up from dinner. That the gasoline spilled. And these old bird bombs”—he looked almost lovingly at the strange gun—“they can be so unreliable. It can all blow up so quickly. You shoulda seen the damage the one I set up behind the land trust did . . .” He looked down at Lana. “Oh, wait. She saw it.”
He let out a spasm of laughter that died as soon as it had started.
“Don’t laugh at her,” Jack said. She was still in the shadowed corner, clutching her knee.
Beth had to keep him from turning in Jack’s direction. “This isn’t who you are, Martin,” she called out. “Not really.”
“You think you know me? You don’t.” He practically spat the words at her. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. None of you do.” He rotated slowly toward his sister, holding the gun level. “Not even you.”
Beth watched, confused, as Martin and Di locked eyes again.
“Thirty years I’ve been hiding, Di,” he said. “Thirty years since Mom died.”
Diana’s voice came out slowly, cautious. “The fire chief said that was a freak accident. High winds and dry grass on a hot day.”
“Did you believe him?” Martin sounded sulky, like a petulant teenager. “Because you left, Di. You put six thousand miles between us.”
“I . . . I was grieving. That wasn’t about you.”
It was as if Martin hadn’t heard his sister. His voice was getting louder, wilder. “You left, and then it got worse. Dad turned his back on me. He replaced me. He gave everything he had to Ricardo.”
“That’s not what happened.” Diana took a careful step toward him.
“Stay back!” Martin pulled a plastic lighter from his pocket and held it out in front of him, like he was warding off vampires.
“Martin.” Diana’s voice softened, shifting from anger to sadness. “Daddy and I. We loved you. I still do.”
“You wouldn’t love me if you knew what really happened—”
“I knew.”
Martin stared at her.
“I knew right away, Martin. You were always messing with those model rockets behind the barn. I was up on the cow pasture when Daddy found you down by the creek after the fire, sobbing and scrubbing your arms in the freezing mud. I saw him comforting you there.”
The picture was starting to become clear to Beth. The barn fire. The deaths. The painful secrets families hang on to for decades. She imagined a teenage Martin, terrified and ashamed of what he’d done. The man in front of her retained some of that fear. But none of the shame. It had twisted into something else, something that had festered and seethed within him for thirty years. He looked swollen with it now, like there was a wasp’s nest behind his eyes, anxious to get out.
Diana was still trying to get through to him. “Daddy took care of you, Martin. He cleaned up the evidence. He convinced the detectives no one was involved. He protected you.”
“You don’t know what he told me.” Martin’s voice was heavy, dark. “You left—”
There were tears in Diana’s eyes now. “Daddy said I should give you space. That you’d tell me about it when you could. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe I should have told you right away that I knew. It doesn’t matter. Whether it was dry grass or model rockets, it was an accident, Martin. A horrible accident. And we loved you. Daddy loved you.”