Chapters (51)
- Cover
- Dedication
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Acknowledgments
- P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
- About the Author
- About the Book
- Also by Alison Gaylin
- About the Publisher
Gabriel figured Ed would remember those things he’d done to him and feel guilty enough to give us a bunch of money and some names of people in Hollywood. But when Gabriel saw Ed’s face—the blankness and confusion—that small, weird hope of his turned to something else. Something he couldn’t control.
Gabriel didn’t tell me any of that until we were sitting at a diner off the 10, forty miles away. He bought me a slice of lemon meringue pie and a strawberry milkshake with money from Ed’s wallet, and he explained it all to me in a voice so quiet, I had to strain to hear him.
Listening, I understood why he’d wanted to burn Ed’s body, to bury it in the ground, to mash it to a pulp. It wasn’t enough to kill him. He wanted to make Ed Hart into something that had never happened.
It scares me, how well I understand Gabriel. How perfectly I can read his thoughts. It makes me think he may be right when he says that we were meant to be together, and that we always have been, from the dawn of the world and through many lifetimes up until now. There’s no controlling that, is there? Is there a way to stop something that’s meant to be, even if it’s something you don’t want?
There’s something else I need to tell you, Aurora Grace. I am the one who tied up Ed Hart. I got the socks out of the drawer in his bedroom. They were thin, stretchy knee socks, long enough that I was able to do the knots Papa Pete taught me from his days in the navy during the Korean War. I made the knots tight and perfect, leaving him no chance of escape. Yes, Gabriel told me to do it. Yes, he had a gun aimed at Ed and me both, and yes, I do believe that Jenny’s life still depends on my obeying Gabriel at all costs. But I could have tied looser knots.
When we were in the diner, after Gabriel finished telling me why he killed Ed Hart, he pulled something out of the duffel bag he’d filled with all the things he’d taken from the house before we left. It was a coffee mug, with a picture of Starsky and Hutch on it. “For you,” he said.
A better girl might have thrown the mug in his face. A better girl might have said that she could never accept a gift that had belonged to a murdered man, even if that man had done horrible things to a child. Even if that man deserved to die. But I took the mug, Aurora Grace. I took it, and I thanked him and told him I will keep it with me, always.