First Thrills - Lee Child [118]
They must suspect.
Then again, even if they do . . .
Even if they were to find the broken-off hatchet head I so carefully wiped clean of any trace of blood, or the stained dress hidden deep in my pillow . . .
Even knowing what they know about our family, and my open contempt for my miserly father and for Abby, whom I haven’t called “mother” in years . . .
They will never grasp the truth.
I am, after all, a woman.
A temperamental, sharp-tongued, spoiled woman trapped in a miserable, miserly house hold . . .
But a woman nonetheless.
No matter how damning the circumstantial evidence, should any of it come to light, they’ll be sure to look beyond it. They’ll be certain that things cannot possibly be as they seem. They believe, as my father did, that nothing ever is.
Fools.
I wander into the parlor and stop short, seeing a figure silhouetted before the sofa. In this faint light, I can’t see the splotched upholstery and spattered wallpaper, but I know they’re there.
“Maggie,” I say, and she jumps, startled, whirling to look at me.
The room is too dim to betray the knowing flash in her eyes, yet it’s palpable as bloodstain.
Will she hurtle an accusation?
If so, I’ll deny it—just as I did yesterday, when the house was crawling with police wanting to know where I was when my stepmother and father were hacked to death so viciously that one of his eyeballs was flung from its socket.
Never again will I see that terrible glint in his brown gaze, betraying his hideous plans for the wee hours.
Never, never again.
The nightmare is over; at last, I am in control.
For a long time, Maggie just looks at me.
Perhaps she, too, suffered sleepless nights. Perhaps she, too, lay awake, listening in dread for the creak of a heavy masculine step on the stairs. Perhaps she, too, fantasized about making it stop.
“My name,” she tells me in her soft brogue, “is not Maggie.”
No, it isn’t. But it’s the only thing my sister Emma and I have ever called her. It was easier that way; the maid before her had been Maggie.
I look her in the eye. “I’m sorry . . . Bridget.”
She nods, clearly satisfied.
No fool, Bridget Sullivan. She grasps what so many do not: that things are often exactly as they seem.
“I accept your apology, Miss Borden. Old habits die hard, I know.”
At long last, I smile.
“Please,” I tell her, “call me Lizzie.”
*
The bestselling author of more than seventy novels, WENDY CORSI STAUB has penned multiple New York Times bestselling adult thrillers under her own name and more than two dozen young adult titles, including the current paranormal suspense series Lily Dale, which has been optioned for television. Her latest thriller, Live to Tell, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and launches a suspense trilogy that will include sequels Scared to Death and Hell to Pay. Under the pseudonym Wendy Markham, she’s a USA Today bestselling author of chick lit and romance.
Industry awards include a Romance Writers of America Rita, three Westchester Library Association Washington Irving Awards for Fiction, the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple for Lifetime Achievement and the 2008 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Suspense. Readers can join her online at www.WendyCorsiStaubcommunity.com.
CYNTHIA ROBINSON
The worst part about dying alone in front of your TV is that you can’t get to the remote control. Victor Secco learned this soon after he died in his Barcalounger. His TV was on. In fact, it was blaring. That’s what the headlines said: Mummified corpse found in front of blaring TV.
It’s hard to say when, exactly, Vic’s pharmacological catatonia crossed over into the big sleep. He was up to six or seven Ativans a day, and a couple of Ambiens at night, and then Marina would give him a Ritalin when she wanted him to transfer funds or sign checks. It was all kind of like being dead already. Only you watch a lot of TV.
The first couple of girls who came over—the girls from the service—they would say things like, “Let’s get you outside, Mr. Secco.” Or, “How about some fresh air, Victor?” He’d tell them, “Fuck