“Why didn’t you tell him?”
“I’m telling you, Mom. There’s someone outside the window. They have a ladder. That’s how they’ve been communicating with me. It’s the gardeners.”
She rushes to the window, but I remain on the bed. I already know what she’ll see. Niko is climbing the window. Her shriek can be heard throughout the whole house. She rushes the hallway, not even remembering to lock me back in.
Maybe it doesn’t matter because she’s calling for Daddy. We have minutes. Seconds.
That’s when I go to the window.
Niko reaches the top of the ladder, eyeing her through the doorway.
“Are you okay?” he asks, searching my face as if for bruises.
“I’ve actually never been better,” I say, which is maybe the first real lie I’ve ever told. “But you need to get the diamonds now. Daddy will be up here any minute. This is the only chance. After this he’ll lock them up tight and far away.”
“I’ll come back for you.”
Except by the time he’s back Daddy will have me locked up tight and far away. Or more likely, he’ll turn that gun on the person who took those diamonds away. Me.
“I know,” I say, even though I don’t quite believe him.
Isn’t that ironic? That no one has ever believed me. And here in this moment when my salvation rests with this boy, this man, this something else, I doubt him.
He must sense my doubt, because he presses a hard kiss to my lips. “I will, Em.”
The screeching gets louder. My father’s footsteps thundering up the steps. “Go!” I say, urgent.
Niko is halfway down the ladder when Daddy shoves me from the window. A gunshot rings through the air, and suddenly I’m nine years old again. Suddenly I’m watching a man fall backward. Somehow knowing that he’s never going to get back up again.
And so much blood. That night changed my life forever.
Did he hit Niko? There’s a knot in my throat, because I couldn’t forgive myself.
“Damn it,” my father says, and I breathe for the first time in what feels like hours. Or seconds. He missed. Then he whips the gun to face me. “You.”
It’s my mother who stops him. She grabs his arm, yanking him to the side, proving she’s stronger than she looks in that ballgown. “The diamonds,” she hisses. “You left them downstairs?”
And then he’s gone from the room, leaving me to deal with later.
In the stillness that follows, my mother looks at me with a grave expression. I want to imagine that I see regret there, but I know that she blames me for everything. “I didn’t want this for you,” she says softly. “I tried to save you.”
“I needed you to save me when I was nine years old. When I told the truth and you called me a liar. When you convinced everyone I was incapable of telling the truth.”
“And let your father go to jail?”
There’s an entire mountain of anger inside me. I’ve only ever tasted it in bits of dust, but now I feel the full power of it. “Yes, he should have gone to jail. That’s what happens to murderers. You picked him over me a long time ago.”
“Do you think that boy is going to pick you?” she asks. “He only wants the diamonds.”
“I know,” I say, and in the cracking of my voice is the cold, hard truth. Maybe Niko cared about me a little bit. Maybe he cared about my body. But he won’t risk his safety to save me.
He’s not going to come back.
I don’t regret what I’ve done or the night we shared. I hope he finds his patch of earth. Hope he finds his farm. His freedom. Even if I won’t find mine.
* * *
There’s a hole in the yard. I can’t help thinking of how horrified mother would be if she could see this. Her perfectly manicured lawn with its green, green grass, marred by something as ugly as a grave. My own patch of earth.
She’s not here, though.
She drove away as soon as Daddy discovered the diamonds were gone. Probably checking in at some kind of emergency spa retreat. I can just imagine her. The masseuse would say, Stressful day? And Mom would answer, Yes, my daughter has to be murdered. I’m going to get wrinkles over this.
It isn’t quite rectangular. Definitely not six feet deep, but I suppose it will do the job. There’s a pile of dirt beside the hole that must be more than my body mass.
What do you say to your father when he’s about to kill you?
Already killed you, really. That’s what it feels like. When I was nine years old, he knew that I would never really be able to live. This is just the punctuation at the end of a run-on sentence.
“Don’t look at me,” he says sharply, and that makes smile a little.
