At first, I thought it was over. I thought I had lost her. But then she coughed, and it propelled her mouth just beyond the surface, just enough so she could get out one word.

LILY

ONCE SHE GOT THE rifle down from the hook in the tree, Lily walked quickly but quietly through the woods toward the flashlight beam, until she could see the firepit. Ruth was huddled near the water, wrapped in a towel, and Silas stood near her, largely in shadow. She couldn’t see Sean or Mickey, and while she hoped that meant they were still at the Watersons’, she knew they weren’t.

Gavin stood in the middle of the clearing, so illuminated by the moon it was as if he himself were a source of light, of gravitational pull. Looking at him, Lily recognized all his parts but not his whole. It was like someone else had put on his skin. But it must’ve been the other way around. The person she knew was the impostor, and now he was gone. She had fallen in love not with a man but with a sheath. A holster without its gun.

It went against every instinct she had not to storm the clearing. But she didn’t know where her kids were, and if she wanted to be in control, she would have to wait. Luckily, Lily thought as she trained the rifle sights on Gavin, she was no stranger to the patient side of terror.

In all of the horror, she had forgotten about the letter. She had forgotten about Sarah, and Philip, and everything that wasn’t immediately in front of her. Not really, of course. Not entirely. But enough that she wasn’t thinking at all about Silas’s reaction, or what he would learn about his brother. About himself. Until she heard him speak.

“I thought she had fallen asleep,” Silas said. “We had been talking, fighting, for what felt like forever, and she fell asleep. So I left. I swam back. I just wanted her to stop yelling. When I covered her mouth, I didn’t push her hard enough to—”

“Yes, you did,” Gavin said.

“So you’re saying—Philip didn’t kill her.”

“No,” Gavin agreed. “You did.”

Lily was so used to Silas’s grief about Philip, she barely gave it any recognition anymore, like a particularly unpleasant stain on a basement wall. But in that moment, even with the adrenaline of rage and terror igniting every cell in her body like a match, Silas’s pain was extraordinary.

“So, you know what I did?” Gavin asked, pulling the loosened stone back with the ball of his foot and toying with the idea of kicking it. “I’ll run you through the whole thing. You might even be impressed.”

“Gavin, I swear I didn’t—”

“First, I fucked your wife.”