Page 90 of Two Couples

“This can’t happen,” Emily whispered. She grabbed my shoulders. “Make him go away. I don’t care how, but go out there and get rid of him.” She put her hands on my back and began pushing me toward the doorway. “Hurry.”

“Stop pushing me.”

“What’s going on?” I heard one of Patrick’s hiking boots fall to the floor with a thud. In about ten seconds he would have the other boot unlaced, off his foot, and would be walking through the entrance to the kitchen.

“Don’t come into the kitchen,” Emily shouted. “We’re fixing a…”

She seemed unable to come up with a lie quickly enough.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said. “I can’t keep him away. And I don’t want to. We need to stop all of this now. If you get a good attorney, you should be able to⁠—”

“Are you a legal expert?” Emily asked. “Do you know all the ins and outs of criminal law?”

I moved away from her. “I have blood on me.” I looked at my hands, smeared red from wiping blood off my face. I tried not to look at the floor where most of the blood had formed a puddle that kept getting bigger. I started to cry.

“Stop crying,” Emily hissed. “Wash your hands and face. Now!” She grabbed her hoodie off the back of a chair. “Put this on, to cover the drops on your clothes.”

She pushed me toward the sink. I turned on the water and scrubbed my hands and face. Emily grabbed a towel, drying my skin and removing the last of the blood. I put on the hoodie. Emily zipped it up to my collarbone and I walked toward the entryway, keeping my head turned away from Jordan’s body.

It still hadn’t fully sunk in that she was dead. She hadn’t done anything to deserve this. She shouldn’t have attacked me, but I understood why she had. I understood the anger that fueled her assault on me. Her phone was destroyed and she’d just discovered her boyfriend’s grave. Wanting to call the sheriff was a natural reaction. We were the ones with unnatural responses—me, Emily, and Keith. Even Patrick. Once the storm ended and he’d had access to a phone, he could have called. Instead, he decided to wait to make sure he protected himself legally. I wondered if he’d heard back from his lawyer. He hadn’t said. He seemed to view me as the enemy—someone who could no longer be trusted with the details of his life.

I stepped into the entryway. Patrick stood near the bench that was tucked into an alcove. His hiking boots lay on the floor. He was sweaty and his face was red from the heat and exertion. He pulled off his T-shirt and wiped his forehead.

Shutting out the horrific scene in the kitchen behind me, I held his gaze as I moved closer. “Don’t hug me,” he said. “It won’t be pleasant.”

“Something happened,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Samantha!” Emily’s voice was sharp and commanding. “Are you dumping me as your best friend? If you’re not, please do what I asked.”

I wasn’t going to get rid of Patrick, whatever that meant. I did need to prepare him for what he was about to walk into. “It’s really bad,” I said, my voice low, hoping Emily couldn’t hear me.

“Why are you whispering?”

I couldn’t dance around it anymore. There was no possible way to prepare him for this. “Jordan’s dead.”

“You’re… what? Dead? She… how? When?”

I put my hand on his forearm, gripping his muscle, wanting something to hang on to, needing to feel his strength. “Emily killed her.”

He let out a nervous laugh. “She… Emily?”

“She’s on the kitchen floor, Jordan is.” As quickly as I could, I told him what had happened, leaving out everything about how Emily had made Todd’s death look like murder. That part could wait. As I talked, he began drifting away from me, closer to the entrance to kitchen, three steps from seeing the blood and Jordan’s body, and eventually, the knife Emily had shoved into the dishwasher like it had been used to chop onions and simply ended up in a normal wash.

Patrick pulled out his phone as he took two long strides, stopping just inside the kitchen doorway. “What the hell, Emily? What’s wrong with you?”

“She was attacking Samantha! Jordan was sitting on her, crushing her, trying to smother her! If I hadn’t done something, your wife would be dead. You should be thanking me.”

He turned to me, waiting.

“She was hurting me,” I said softly. “I didn’t think I could get free. But I don’t think she wanted to kill me. I don’t think she would have.” I knew this in my heart. All she was doing was trying to get my phone. Because of her grief, she didn’t care how she did it. I still don’t think she wanted to, or ever could have killed me. “No. She wasn’t going to kill me.”

“You’re rewriting history,” Emily said. “That woman had you pinned to the floor. You were groaning from the pressure on your stomach. She stuffed that hat so far into your mouth, you sounded like you were choking to death. Don’t lie.”

“I’m not.” I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and before Patrick could do anything, I called 911. I kept it simple. “Someone’s been killed in my house.”

When the deputies arrived, I went outside. Alone. I walked down the slope of our driveway and met them at the edge of our property. I told them everything. Even the parts that made Patrick and me look guilty. I told them why I hadn’t wanted to call, and that my husband had. I told them my life had never been in danger from Jordan.