Page 90 of Stay Away from Him

***

Or maybe it was onlysomeoneshe wanted to kill, to know what it felt like. The way she’d once mutilated an animal. Some murderous curiosity inside her, desperate to be satiated.

And then, one day, it happened. We were on vacation at the time, escaping the doldrums of winter at a resort in Cancun. Kendall’s violent behavior had abated somewhat, giving fuel to Thomas’s claims: She was a kid. She was growing out of it.

How wrong he was. I knew—Kendall wasn’t better. She was merely learning how to hide her violent tendencies better. To suppress them. But they weren’t gone. Only waiting.

At the resort, Thomas swam in the pool, explored the beach, started drinking cocktails at noon, as soon as the bar opened. Rhiannon stared at her phone, curled in a beach chair with headphones in, and didn’t talk.

Kendall, meanwhile, found a friend. A boy her age who’d come with a different family.

And I watched her.

They began by playing in the pool together, Kendall and the boy. He splashed, did cannonballs, puffed up his chest and acted big, even though he was a couple inches shorter than her. Kendall watched him, put her chin down, giggled. At the beach, they made sandcastles, threw rocks in the water, stood looking out into the ocean while the waves washed around their knees. Once, I even saw them briefly holding hands.

Anyone looking at them might have thought it was a case of puppy love. Two kids playacting at flirting, copying the teenagers in the TV shows they liked to watch.

But I knew. This was trouble.

It happened toward the end of our vacation, when we went on an excursion to some oceanside cliffs, arranged by the resort. We piled on a shuttle bus, sunscreen slathered on our faces and water bottles at our sides. Then we sawthe other family get on—the parents of the boy Kendall had befriended.

Thomas talked to them the whole way to the cliffs. Asked where they were from, what they did, how they were enjoying their vacation so far. They beamed at him as he turned to their son, asked about how he liked school, called him “young man.” I kept quiet, angry and anxious for reasons I couldn’t quite name.

When we arrived at the cliffs, the vacationers scattered, finding the perfect spots for selfies, exploring the rocks, shielding their eyes with their hands held flat at their brows as they looked to the horizon. At a certain point, I realized I’d lost track of Kendall, then glanced off and found her walking with the boy, close to the edge of the cliff. His gaze was down, looking over the edge, and behind him my daughter was glancing around her, as though to see if anyone was watching.

Suddenly, my heart was at the back of my throat, and I began to walk toward them.

Then she gave the boy a shove.

***

I play the next moments back in my head all the time. They come to me in my nightmares, frames of a movie I can’t stop replaying.

Falling to my knees, my ears filled by an icy scream that might be mine.

Thomas running to Kendall, yanking her away from the cliff edge by the shoulders.

The boy’s parents at the edge, looking hundreds of feet down at their son’s broken body on the rocks. The mother onall fours, keening wildly. The father on his feet, pulling her back, choking back sobs.

When I reached Thomas, still holding Kendall by the shoulders, I said, low in his ear, “I saw what happened.”

“I did too,” he said. “He tripped.”

That’s not right.The words lodged in my throat like a pin bone, jagged and painful.That’s not what happened.

***

There was an investigation. An inquiry. The local authorities conducted one, and then the resort held their own, wanting to avoid liability and a PR nightmare.

Thomas hissed at me that night in our room, furious but keeping his voice down. A quiet roar, low but full of venom.

“I know what I saw,” I said.

“He tripped,” Thomas insisted. “He tripped on a loose rock and went over the edge. It was an accident, you hear? An accident.”

“That’s not right.”

“I can’t believe you would do this to your own daughter,” Thomas said. “There’s something wrong with you. You’re not right. You’re crazy.”

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