I push her again and she lets me and I’m mad and I want her to fight back and again I come at her and I push—

Oh God, wake up wake up wake up

I remember. I remember how many times she tried to tell me. How often she tried to warn me without telling me what he’d done to her.

“There’s something wrong with him,” she’d say, and I’d shake my head.

“He’s just a lonely man.”

“A lonely man who befriended young girls? Haven’t you ever wondered why? Wondered why Julia really left him?”

“I was lost. He found me in his garden one day. He didn’t call the police. He talked to me. And he listened.”

“He was grooming you.”

I laughed. “Grooming me? Is that what you think?”

“It’s what I believe. All those stories about Nic and the other murdered girl. All the speculation about the person they believed responsible. The profiles…they all fit.”

“There are probably hundreds—thousands—of men living alone, living reclusively in the area. Why him?”

“Because none of those other men have stolen my sister.”

I close my eyes and the door opens again, like it did back then. He steps into view, out of the shadows, and my mind turns handsome, charismatic Greg Lewis into a monster, stretching him taller, painting malevolence onto his face. He’s right there, his hands around Nicole Wallace’s neck, raping and killing her. Nicole’s face turns into mine, into Bella’s…

That’s the moment I’m trying to push away, that awful, awful truth.

I try to catch her. The moment I see her slip, arms thrown out to try to keep her balance, I reach out and try to catch her. I almost catch her hand, I feel my fingertips touch hers, but she’s gone, tumbling down in a landslide of mud and rock. I see her fall; I see her head smash on the rock. I see it and I know she’s dead. Her eyes are open and there’s all this blood. Mud and blood and Bella. Lying there with her eyes open and…

I stumble down after her, slipping and sliding, grabbing roots and jutting rocks to try to slow my descent, but the mud under my feet is a river and I’m going faster and faster. Falling, no longer climbing. I’m getting closer and I can see she’s dead and as my foot hits a rock and I go somersaulting, I’m thinking no, no, no, not real. Wake up, Tess. Wake up.

I open my eyes and I’m alone.

I remember.

We killed him.