“What did Danny see?” I asked softly. “Did he walk in on you two together? Is that why he had to die?”
I could see it all in their faces as they stared at me. I was right. They had ditched school; no one was supposed to be home for a while. But Danny had left baseball practice early. He went looking for Lex because he wanted her to make him something to eat, and he’d found her in bed with Patrick. Naked. Maybe the grief of their father’s death had brought them together or maybe it had been going on longer than that, but it was the one secret no one else could ever, ever know.
The scene played in my head like a movie, the same way my lies did, and I watched it superimposed over the present.
Danny ran, and Lex caught him at the top of the stairs.
“I’m telling Mom!” he screamed.
“You’re not telling anyone!” she said, shaking him.
“Let go of me! You’re disgusting!”
She slapped him. “Don’t you say that!”
“I’m telling everyone!”
Danny tried to run. Lex knew she couldn’t let him go. She shoved him hard in the back. A spontaneous response. He went tumbling down the stairs, his head hitting the marble floor at the bottom with a crack, and then he was still.
I stared at the floor at the base of the stairs, just feet away from me. I saw the blood like it was still there.
Patrick lunged at me and wrapped his hands around my throat.
I fell to the ground, into the pool of blood I still saw in my mind. Patrick had his full weight on top of me, his knees digging into me as he pinned me to the ground. Lex tried to pull him off, but he shoved her away again and again. My vision started to go dark, like the closet door was closing and shutting out the light. I was the only one who knew the secret, so I had to die. He had to protect Lex.
I flailed with my arms, trying to find some way to hurt Patrick enough to get him off me. My lungs were burning for air, and I was wild. I scratched him across the face and dug my fingernails in. With one last surge of dying adrenaline, I reached Patrick’s eye with one of my hands and gouged. He yelled and reeled back, clutching at his face. In my darkened peripheral vision, I saw Lex run from the room, up the stairs. I gulped in fresh air through my burning throat and threw myself on top of Patrick. He was heavier, but I really didn’t want to die. I got my hands around his throat. Not so nice, was it? He struggled, and I slammed his head against the marble. I’d never thought I had it in me to kill a person before, but if it was him or me, maybe I could do it.
As I slowly squeezed the life out of Patrick, I realized the drops appearing on his face came not from him, but from me. I was crying, my tears falling down onto him. I never wanted this.
All I wanted was a family. All I wanted was to be loved.
But I guess we don’t always get what we want.
There was a sudden bang, a noise so loud it felt more like a sensation than a sound. I didn’t feel anything, but suddenly I was falling forward. Patrick rolled me onto my back as he scrambled out from under me, and there was Lex standing over me, Robert’s pistol smoking in her shaking hand. I touched my chest and felt wetness there. I lifted my hand and saw that it was red. Blood. My blood.
I felt my body turning cold as the blood drained out of me, pooling on the white marble of the foyer, but there was no pain. Above me, Lex was crying and Patrick was taking the gun from her hand. I knew what would happen now. I would “disappear” too, only this time there would be no one to worry or mourn for me. I would rot in a shallow desert grave, turning to bones and then dust, while the world wondered what happened to Danny Tate and never again thought of me. Just what I’d wanted for so long.
Lex collapsed at my side, crying ugly tears that contorted her pretty face. She reached out to me, but if her fingers touched me, I couldn’t feel it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
I tried to speak but found I couldn’t. Blood gurgled in the back of my throat. I don’t know what I would have said to her anyway. Go to hell, maybe. Or I forgive you.
Somewhere there was a sound I recognized, but the world was slipping away and I couldn’t name it. But then I saw. Familiar beams of red and blue painting the white marble. I couldn’t remember what those meant anymore either, but I knew it was good. I smiled.
And then I died.
? ? ?
It was the FBI. Lynch had heard the gunshot and recognized it for what it was. He got Hidden Hills security to override the gate and call for backup. He’d arrived outside the front door, his siren blaring, just moments before I exhaled my last breath. After a brief standoff during which Patrick and Lex destroyed my laptop and Lynch waited for the cops to arrive, Patrick marched out of the house with his hands raised, the pistol clutched in one of them, protecting Lex one last time. They took him to jail, where he confessed to the murder of Daniel Tate. When they asked him why he’d done it, he wouldn’t say.
Nicholas went to see Agent Morales. He wanted to know why she was pretending the body they’d found on the floor of the foyer was his brother’s when he was sure she knew it wasn’t.
“What do you want me to say, kid?” Morales said. “His government issued passport identified him as Daniel Tate. His family—including you—told me he was Daniel Tate. Now you want to tell me he wasn’t?”
“He wasn’t,” Nicholas said. “You know he wasn’t.”
Morales shrugged. “Prove it.”
“Do a DNA test—”
“The body’s already been cremated,” Morales said, “at the request of your mother.”
Nicholas went still, his every muscle wound tight. “This isn’t right. You know it isn’t. You just want to be able to close your case.”
Morales leaned forward. “You want some advice, kid?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re going to get it,” she said. “Move on with your life. Your brother is dead, and the person who killed him will spend the rest of his life in jail. All that’s left for you to do is put up a nice headstone somewhere and let your parents and sister have some closure. What happened here . . . it could be a lot worse.”
Nicholas remembered something I’d said once, about how Mia would be left with no one if the truth about what had happened to Danny all those years ago was exposed.
“Thanks for your help,” he said, and left.
? ? ?
In her bedroom Lex stared at the baseball card. My picture, with my real name printed underneath, stared back up at her, smiling. Deliberately, moving slowly so that she wouldn’t burn her shaking hand, she held the baseball card over a candle until it caught, curled, and blackened.
? ? ?
A few weeks later that headstone Agent Morales had suggested was up, and Nicholas and Ren jumped the fence at the cemetery to meet there late one night.
Daniel Arthur Tate, the headstone read. Beloved Son, Brother, and Friend.
It was not exactly what I had imagined, but it was home.