Page 76 of The Family Plot
“And I hated it,” Charlie continues. “I couldn’tstandknowing what Dad was doing to him. Why do you think I left, the second I got my inheritance? I couldn’t be in this house. And when Tate and I finally returned home, Andy was turning sixteen—two years older than I was when Dad said I wouldn’t work anymore. Jessie Stanton had just been killed, but I figured that would be the end of it. He would have told Andy, like he told me, that it was over for him now. And I wanted to see him. Andy. I wanted to know he was okay.
“But when we got here, I knew right away I was wrong. Nothing was over. I could feel it everywhere—the oppressive control Dad had over Andy. The control I’d barely escaped. And it just… it triggered all the—the terror, and rage, and self-hatred I’d always tried so hard to tamp down, until I was in my room, freaking out and… I couldn’t hide it anymore. I confessed it all to Tate.”
I blink at him, his last sentence slow to sink in. Then I turn toward Tate.
“You knew.”
Of course she did:You have to tell them, she said, when I confronted Charlie with the brand. And before that, she held his panicked gaze when the police were searching his room. They’re so intertwined, so fastened together within their cocoon, that there’s probably nothing they don’t know about each other.
But this— This is more than a secret shared between siblings; it’s a secret kept from everyone. From me.
“You’ve known,” I say, “for ten years, that Dad was the Blackburn Killer.” My voice quivers. “And you didn’t tell anyone? You never thought to call the police?”
Tate goes to Charlie now, sinking down beside him. As she wraps him in her arms, they lean toward each other, the sides of their foreheads touching. Tate studies the floor as she speaks.
“I wanted to tell someone.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“We didn’t think Dad would kill again. He’d lost all his bait.”
Bait.My fist clenches at the word. A sour taste pools onto my tongue.
“What if you were wrong?” I spit out. “What if he murdered another woman? That was a chance you were willing to take?”
“He didn’t, though!” Tate cries. “And we didn’t know how to tell anyone without Charlie getting in trouble. He was a teenager the last time Dad dragged him along. Just a few years away from being a legal adult. We couldn’t be sure he’d be safe.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Mom sag against the counter. I have no strength inside me to hold her up, keep her standing. Instead,I watch her slip down until she’s kneeling on the floor, head dropping into her hands, sobs muffled by her palms.
“You could have told the police about the shed,” I say. “You could have said you just found it. Left Charlie out of it altogether.”
Tate shakes her head. “What if Dad admitted that Charlie and Andy were part of it?”
The thing in my stomach goes still. Its claws retract, the blood it drew going dry. Now, in place of that pain, my body burns, as if struck by lightning, my bones scorched and sizzling.
“You’re wrong about Andy,” I say. “He would’ve told me.”
But even as I say it, I know it’s a tattered, worn-out belief, one that hardly fits anymore. In truth, there was so much he didn’t tell me: about Ruby; about why he hacked at trees, why anger brewed in him sometimes, severe as a storm; about why he felt our family wasunnatural—
I stop right there.
Dread gathers inside me. One by one, my memories of Andy slot into Charlie’s story.
“It’s true, Dahlia,” he says now. “Why else do you think he had a key to the trapdoor? Dad gave him one. Just like he gave one to me.”
I shake my head, still fighting it.
“And why else would the murders have stopped after Andy was gone? Dad couldn’t do it without us. Hesaidthat once: ‘I couldn’t do this without you, Charlie.’ Like it was something for me to be fucking proud of. Well, apparently he couldn’t do it without Andy, either.”
I try to stop the thoughts flying through my mind. But it’s too late. They’re swarming together—
Andy insisting we needed to leave
—buzzing around each other—
Andy swinging at trees like there was something inside him he couldn’t get out
—flapping their furious wings—
