Page 105 of What Lies in the Woods

“And you did. Because you wanted to take care of her,” I said. “You wanted to make sure she got home safe.” Because Cody was a good guy, and that’s what good guys did.

His hands dropped down my arms, and he took both of my hands in his, looking down at them. “I picked her up. She was still screaming at him when I got her in the car. She was out of her mind, Naomi. She bought every line he fed her, and he just kept stringing her along.”

“She never got home,” I said. He shook his head. “What happened, Cody?” I kept my voice gentle. I understood the need for confession. Once you began, it was hard to stop.

“She said she was going to throw up. She told me to pull over,” Cody said. “So I did. I held her hair while she puked up all that cheap vodka and then she slapped my hands away. She was screaming like it was my fault. She kept saying I thought she was trash. That she was an idiot. I said something stupid, like I didn’t think she was trash but she was definitely acting like it. She tried to hit me. I grabbed her wrist, just to stop her, and maybe I pushed her back a bit, and she was in these strappy heels, and she fell. She hit her head on a rock and she just lay there. She didn’t move.”

“She was dead?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I thought she was. There was blood—there was a lot of blood. But she opened her eyes. I tried to help her up but she kept hitting me. Calling me names. Saying that she was going to get Miller to arrest me.”

“Anyone would lose their temper.”

He lifted one finger, as if in warning. “No. Not like that. I didn’t hurt her. I was so angry. I wanted to hit her. So I left her there, before I did something I would regret. I walked back to the car and I drove away. That’s all. I drove away.”

“She had a head injury,” I said. “And you left her alone. At night. In the woods.”

His expression was contorted with misery. He kept touching me—holding my hands, resting his palms against my arms. Like if he couldkeep hold of me, I could save him from this. “Only for a few minutes. I needed to calm down. I thought she would, too. But when I went back I couldn’t find her. I searched for her, I did. But she was gone. I told myself that she’d hitched a ride. When she didn’t come back, I tried to convince myself that she was living her life. Somewhere far away. Somewhere she could be happy.”

“But she didn’t hitch a ride,” I whispered. “She stumbled around in the woods, bleeding into her brain. Pressure building up. She tried to find a place to rest. To get out of the rain. She was so tired, and she just wanted to sleep. So she did. But she never woke up.”

He sank down into a crouch, his hands laced behind his head. “I didn’t even know she was dead, Naomi. Not for sure. I thought she’d show up the next day. Call me a dumbass like she always did. And then when I realized, it was too late to say anything. It would have looked like I did something. It was easier to keep quiet.”

“I understand,” I said, because I did. I understood the weight of a secret, and the urge to bury yourself beneath it.

I knelt down in front of him. I touched his face lightly, fingertips brushing over his stubble, and his eyes closed briefly, a sigh slipping out of him.

“I’ve been over that night a million times. I know that if I’d done something different, she might still be here. But none of it was done with intent. I was defending myself, and things just got out of control. She basically did it to herself. You can understand, though, how bad it would be if this came out. I can’t prove that I didn’t mean to hurt her. I could lose everything. Gabriella, the kids—they can’t know about this.” He looked at me desperately.

I nodded. “Jessi’s death was an accident.”

“Yes,” he said, as if relieved I understood.

“But Liv’s wasn’t,” I said, ragged as a scream but so soft I could barely hear my own voice over the hiss of the rain. He pulled his hands from mine. He stepped back, his face settling into a hard kind of sorrow. Hishand went to his back, lifting up the edge of his jacket. The jacket he’d never offered to me, as I shivered in the rain.

He took the gun from his waistband.

It looked like the one Mitch bought me. Nine-millimeter, I thought. Close enough to the Barneses’ gun that you couldn’t tell the difference just from the wounds they left. And they’d never recovered the bullet.

My fear was cold and still, the surface of a lake in winter. I could sink forever under it, all sound and sense distant. Shudders racked my body, and I couldn’t look anywhere but the perfectly round, perfectly black barrel of the gun. I tried to take a breath. All that came was a short, shallow gasp.

“It wasn’t me,” Cody said. “Stahl’s son—he must have found out that you lied.”

“It wasn’t Ethan. He wanted his father in prison,” I said. “And how exactly do you know he found out we lied? Who told you that? It was Liv. Wasn’t it?”

Cody looked down at the gun like he wasn’t sure what it was. “You think you know what happened, but you don’t,” he said.

“You didn’t mean for it to happen.” Echoing again and again and again. Because nothing was our faults; the universe conspired against us, weaving tight the threads of fate. I’d known the names of the Fates once: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. How could I remember that, when I’d forgotten so much?

“I only wanted to talk to her,” he said hoarsely. “But she wouldn’t listen to me. She wouldn’t—she attacked me. I was only defending myself.”

“Unarmed? Half your size?”

“She would have destroyed my whole life,” he said, voice strangled. “I was just trying to find a way out. That’s all I’ve been doing, all along.”

“Was it you in the woods?” I asked him.

“I thought you might lead me to Jessi. I wasn’t going to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, but he sounded like he was trying to convince himself of it as much as me.

---