Matthew approaches from the middle of the drive, arms wide as if he has any hope of blocking the way to the others.

“You wanted me dead all along, so do it! Do it, you bloody coward!”

His shadow stretches endlessly behind him.

“You’re cocky is what you are!” Hugh screams back. “Last of the Clares, so you think you can’t die?”

Last standing. The X. He’s the last of his family, so the island protects him.

A chill of relief shoots through me.

Hugh mutters, “Lute won’t kill you, but I sure as hell will.”

“Then fucking do it!”

“Matty, don’t!” The scream rips out of me.

Hugh turns to peer up at me, eyes like the sky above us, colors shifting by the second. He looks bewildered more than anything.

I turn back to Matthew. “Please. Let me talk to him. It has to be me; it’s why I’m still here.”

Matthew closes his eyes in agony—and runs away, into the darkness of the drive.

“This isn’t you,” I call to Hugh.

I take the steps three at a time, heedless of my safety. I could end this, after all. One slip and it’s done.

“Oh, it’s me.” He laughs, icy. “It was always me. From the moment Andy Blanchard died. From the first time Mum dragged me to my brother’s grave. This was me. I’m a fighter. Don’t you know me at all?”

“I thought I did.” There are sweeter, more persuasive words, but all I’m left with is the truth.

“I’ve spent my whole life watching people give in, accept this, lie down and take it, and I swear to you now, I never will. I didn’t ask to be born here. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

He’s walking backward, around the side of the house, weeping. He swipes at his face with his wrist, so much like Charlie in that moment that my heart aches.

“Jessica left. Why shouldn’t I?”

I follow him, carefully, past the fenced yard to the green. I don’t point out that he hasn’t left. He stayed happily for seven years, until it came time to pay the tithe.

“I was running when you met me,” he calls out.

“I know,” I answer. “I knew it then too. I saw it in you.”

“Did you?” He waves the gun. I stagger back. “And why do you think I was on that deck that night, Nina? Why do you think I went there?”

To be alone, I’d thought. And then he found me there and thought I was going to jump, but why was that his assumption? I’ve often wondered, and now I know. I see it in his stance, the way he’s daring himself to leap even now.