Page 89 of The Family Plot
I glance over his shoulder, into the living room at Charlie. He’s staring blankly at the wall opposite the couch, arms limp. If I hadn’t just seen him nod—that ghastly, gut-wrenching nod—I would think he was catatonic.
“Dahlia?” Mom says. She and Tate stand near the back hallway, looking from me in the foyer to Charlie on the couch.
Elijah waits—and I consider it: keeping him here to witness the confession I’m about to pry from Charlie. Afterward, he could haul him away in handcuffs, throw him in jail, get him out of my sight forever. But Elijah’s pen perched above his pad feels too much like the fishy eyes of all those islanders.
“Leave,” I tell him.
He looks through the living room doorway at the statue of Charlie on the couch, then slings his gaze back toward me. “I think I should—”
“Get out! The fucking spectacle is over!”
He winces at my shout, but after a moment, he nods. “I’ll come back soon,” he says—and it’s meant, I think, as a warning.
“You do that,” I mumble.
As soon as he crosses the threshold, I close the door behind him.
“What’s this all about?” Tate asks, and when I turn around, she’salready drifting toward Charlie in the living room, the magnet of her body pulled toward the magnet of his. She hesitates, watching his vacant expression, before sitting down beside him. “Charlie?”
I make my way to the living room, too, stopping when I’m across from him. The coffee table squats between us, covered in old newspapers. Mom steps into the room so quietly she might as well be floating.
“Dahlia, you’re scaring me,” she says. But I ignore her.
“You wrote Andy’s note,” I say to Charlie.
Tate scoffs, but I acknowledge her for only an instant before glaring at Charlie again. “You did,” I say.
Finally, he shifts his gaze from the wall to me. Chin tilted up, he opens his mouth, looks for a moment like he might deny it, but then his shoulders drop, and more than anything else, he seems exhausted.
“Yes,” he says.
My heart rages as Tate gasps beside him. “Why?” she asks—and I can see from the shock on her face that this is news to her; this is something Charlie never shared.
“Yes, Charlie.” My voice is remarkably hard. “Why?”
A vein bulges at his temple when he clenches his jaw. “You know why,” he says quietly.
“I need to hear you say it.”
He exhales slowly. “I did it to cover it up.”
Now my heart bangs so violently, it feels like it might break my ribs.
“Cover what up?” Tate asks, and it’s almost laughable, how she still doesn’t get it.
Charlie’s eyes go blank. “That I killed him.”
“No.” Mom falls into a chair at the same second Tate gasps. “No,” Mom repeats. “No, no, no”—and just like that, it’s last night again, our mother uttering her syllable of denial.
Something splits open inside me, darker than the chasm I’ve carried since we learned of Andy’s death. It’s a black hole yawning wide, sucking up my last, lingering traces of light.
“What do youmean, Charlie?” Tate cries. “Why would you— What happened?”
I lock my knees as he begins to speak. I tighten every muscle.
“That night,” he says, voice already hoarse, as if he’s at the end of the story instead of the start, “part of me was relieved to have finally told someone. To have told Tate. But another part felt claustrophobic, like the past was breathing down my neck. So I went outside for air. And I heard this thunking sound. It was—”
He doesn’t need to say it; I know that sound so well.
