Willa rocks side to side, from one foot to another, looking as though she can’t stand to be still. “West and I got in a fight, and that’s when it all came out,” she quickly begins, as though she’s been waiting all along for someone to come and release the story. “About the affair, even about the girl,” she says, fury building with each word. “He said he was leaving me.” She suddenly stops moving and stares straight ahead, looking as though she’s been transported back to that very time. “I was mad, so I called Simon and told him everything that West had told me. That’s why he came rushing up here.” She pauses, the fury surprisingly replaced with a look of remorse. “Because I told him.”

“You don’t know what happened to Simon, though, do you? After he came here,” June pushes, intensifying the tension in the room.

Willa looks down at June. “I do know what happened to him. I do. He was killed that night. Murdered. I swear it.”

June pulls back as though she’s been slapped. “My father is dead? You know that for sure?”

Willa looks confused. She stares at June for a few seconds as though trying to figure out who she is. Then her gaze slips away, back to the past. “The daughter, she overheard everything,” she explains.

“I didn’t overhear anything,” June says, before it dawns on her that Willa is talking about me. “You mean May overheard everything?”

Willa nods and then points at the staircase. “West said she’d been hiding in the stairwell, listening to her parents fighting about the affair, the girl. Then she came rushing out at him. It all happened so fast.” Willa slams her palms together, causing June to jump. “Happened just like that.”

“What happened so fast?” June practically yells.

“She killed him. May. She heard it all and killed him.”

The color drains from June’s face at exactly the same moment that the rest of the memory dislodges. The ancient sea creature has woken, ready to drag me down to the depths of truth.

The things I heard while hiding in the stairwell that night had made me desperate with panic, blind with rage. I rushed into the living room wanting only to make my father stop saying the horrible things he was saying. I didn’t have a plan; nothing about it was premeditated.

I rushed at him, pushing against him with all my strength. He was caught off guard, stumbled backward. I smelled his cologne and the pungent scent of alcohol, my forceful shove releasing it from his clothing into the air. It would have been fine if it hadn’t been for his briefcase sitting on the floor behind him.