Page 109 of Five Survive

“Catherine Lavoy?” she whispered, the word escaping from her at the end, hitching up, turning the name into a question. No, it couldn’t be. But something was stirring in her gut, hot, sharp, goring through her as it climbed her spine to whisper in her ear:Catherine betrayed you, Catherine gave up your name months ago.No, Catherine couldn’t be the one who gave up her name just days after coming to her, asking her to be the witness. Catherine would know what giving up Red’s name meant; that they would kill her. It was the inevitable outcome. And Catherine wouldn’t do that to her, whether she was the contact working with organized crime or not. She was her best friend’s mom, her mom’s best friend. There was no way.

Then what was that feeling in her gut? Solid somehow, inevitable, sinking deeper and deeper the harder she grappled to understandit.

Oliver snorted, stretching out his arms, his eyes a battleground, flicking between Red and Arthur.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, playing with his chin. “First,Red, you’reclaimingthat my mom came to you, offered to pay you twenty thousand dollars to say you witnessed Frank Gotti committing a murder. All so she could get the guilty conviction and become DA,” he said, nodding at Simon, mocking his theory. “And now, Arthur, you’re claiming that my mom is the same person who has been leaking information to your family for ten years, on the take. And that she must be the one who gave up Red’s name, but tried to make it look like Mo Frazer leaked it. How does that make sense?” he barked, striding forward, eyes widening as he passed each of them. “Those two things entirely contradict each other. Why would she ask Red to be the witness for the trial, but then immediately give up her name, knowing Red would likely be killed and the trial would never go ahead? That makes no sense. Come on, think. You have to think before you throw around baseless accusations about my family.” He screwed one finger into the side of his head, too hard, his eyes wild again, the uncanny calm before the explosion. “This is such bullshit, all of it. My mom is not your contact, she prosecutes criminals like you.” He jabbed that same finger in Arthur’s direction, pointed it like a knife. “Your stories don’t even make sense. My mom couldn’t have done both: ask Red to be involved to win the trial, and then give up her name so the case would never make it to trial. How does that work?”

But Red’s mind was circling something, around and around, digging back through the hours of this terrible, terrible night. Maybe there was a way it did make sense, maybe there was a way this all came back to Catherine Lavoy, pulling the strings behind the scenes. Red couldn’t believe it, she’d known Catherine for as long as she could remember and even before that, but she also couldn’t believe the real Oliver she’d met tonight, that danger flickering just below the surface of his eyes. If he’d done everything that he had tonight, then it waspossible Catherine had used Red, betrayed her. Oliver was his mother’s son, after all. And what was it, what was the phrase she was looking for? Red looked between Maddy and Oliver, trying to extract it from their eyes, that well-known Lavoy expression that always made Red know she’d never truly be one of them. She dug through the flashes of this never-ending night, Maddy’s blood in a handprint on her face, the puzzle of Don’s blasted-open head, the fuzz of static, headlights flashing, the red dot on her chest, the check mark on Arthur’s hand matching the one on hers, the screaming, the smell of gasoline, shedding each awful part until she found what she was looking for. There waiting for her at the back of her mind, in Oliver’s clipped voice.

Red cleared her throat. “A plan must have two parts,” she said, repeating Oliver’s words, who was in turn repeating his mom. “You have to make sure either way plays out in your favor.”

Arthur looked at her, a shift of understanding in his eyes. “That’s win-win,” he said, parroting Maddy from before. And that feeling in Red’s gut twisted, sucking in everything around it. She didn’t want to believe it, but it was there, it was all right there and Red had to face it. It was never a plan that belonged to Red, they weren’t in it together, the two of them; it was one of Catherine’s win-win plans, and Red had just been a pawn, thrown away like she was expendable, disposable. Why? Why her? Did Catherine really not care about her at all? Didn’t she see her best friend when she looked at Red; didn’t she see the ghost of Grace Kenny there too? How could she do this?

“What are you two talking about?” Oliver spat.

“It does make sense,” Red told him, her voice finding its strength from that awful, twisted feeling, deep in her gut. “Perfect sense. Her plan had two parts. In the first scenario, I testify at trial and Frank Gotti is found guilty. Because of the successful trial, your mom is elected DA. And the second part: she gives up my name when askedand Frank Gotti’s family kills me, so the trial never goes ahead. But when they investigate where the leak came from, they’ll find that email Mo Frazer sent. It will look like he leaked my name. He’d be removed from office, charged with whatever crime that is. You said it yourself earlier, Oliver. Mo Frazer is your mom’s biggest competition to becoming DA, heronlycompetition. If they killed me, it would take Mo out of the running. In either scenario, your mom wins, she becomes DA.” She caught her breath. “Win-win,” she said darkly, because in one of those wins she was dead, and somehow Catherine was okay with that. Oliver Lavoy had thrown her out of the RV to die, and Catherine Lavoy had thrown out her name, half expecting her to die, playing that to her favor.

Liar. Catherine Lavoy was a liar. Arthur was a liar too, and so was whoever that secondYesvote belonged to, but Catherine was a worse liar somehow. And Arthur had said he was trying to keep Red alive, that this was a last resort. Was that a lie too?

Red felt bile rising up her throat, swallowing it down as she avoided everyone’s eyes, wiping a line of sweat from her top lip. Six of them in this RV, and at least five of them were liars, including Red. But she wasn’t lying anymore, everything was out, everything was gone.

“This is ridiculous,” Oliver said, because clearly he had no other word for it. “None of this is true. My mom didn’t do any of that. You know her, Red, how could you accuse her of these things?”

“I’m not accusing,” Red replied, and that twisted feeling flipped over, unfolded into rage, and rage was red, just like shame. She felt the heat of it in her cheeks. “It happened. She’s the one that offered to pay me to be the witness, told me that Frank Gotti was probablythe man who murdered my mom. She manipulated me and then she gave up my name to them.”

“Shut up, you stupid little girl!” Oliver spat, switching his gaze to Arthur. “Do not listen to her, she’s clearly misunderstood something here. My mom is not the person you are looking for. It’s not her! Don’t listen!”

“Oliver, stop!” Maddy croaked, her head resting back against the refrigerator door like she was too weak to hold it up now.

“No!” Oliver looked at her, but Maddy didn’t shrink back from him; there was nowhere for her to go. “Red’s lying!” he shouted. “She’s going to get Mom killed and she’s lying!”

“What if she isn’t lying?” Maddy said, wincing as the words whistled through her throat. “Maybe it’s true.”

And as weak as Maddy was, bleeding out on the floor over there, skin as soft as ever but far too pale, she was still taking care of Red. Her job, her responsibility, though Red had never asked her to. Maddy wasn’t like Oliver, or their mom. Maddy was real and kind and good. If she could stand, she’d be standing on Red’s side of the RV, wouldn’t she? The two of them, against Oliver. And Red couldn’t think right now about where Arthur stood in all of that.

“Maybe it’s true?!” Oliver shouted at her, spit foaming out the sides of his mouth. “You think it’s true that Mom has been working with an organized crime group for the past decade? Being paid to dismiss cases and give them information? Do you think that sounds like our mom, Madeline? You think she’d fabricate a case against Frank Gotti, pay Red to be a witness, all to become DA? Does that sound like Mom to you?” he demanded. “Any of it?”

“I don’t know,” Maddy said, pressing her eyes shut.

“You don’t know?!” Oliver bent over her. “You think that sounds like Mom, do you? The mom who still cuts your sandwiches into triangles for you? The one who sayswhoopsie daisywhenever she drops anything? Does she sound like a criminal to you, Maddy?” Redcould see the red patches climbing the back of Oliver’s neck as he bore down on his sister, his head falling to that strange angle, and she knew now that it was a warning sign. An explosion was coming. “The mom who has personalized ringtones for the entire family, sweet family memories, you think she’s a criminal? You think the woman who has a doorbell ringtone for you because as a kid you thought you had to ring a doorbell before going in and out of the house, you think the woman who would do something that sweet is a criminal?”

Something caught Red’s attention, pulled at it.

“What?” she said, staring at the back of Oliver’s head. “Your mom’s ringtone for Maddy is the harp.”

Red had been with Catherine Lavoy many times over the past six months, meeting in secret, going over her testimony, working out where she could have been before and after the murder without being caught by cameras in case Frank Gotti’s defense team checked. Maddy had called her mom a couple of times and Red had heard it, the harp ringtone, plucking up and down. Probably a joke from that time when Maddy was fifteen and insisted she wanted to learn the harp to impress a boy in orchestra, giving up after the second lesson becauseno boy is worth that.Red was sure about it.

“Your mom’s ringtone for Maddy is a harp,” she insisted.

Oliver glanced back at her, the explosion delayed for now. “Right,” he said, breathing hard. “It is now, I think. But when Maddy first got a cell phone, it was the doorbell for a long time, because that’s Mom’s favorite story to tell about Maddy. I think she changed it a few yearsago.”

“Doorbell?” Red said, sounding the word out on her lips, like it wasn’t a word at all, just a scattering of sounds, nonsense.

Doorbell.

One of the sounds of her shame, that lived there with it, deepin her gut. The sound she’d heard in the background of that final phone call with her mom. Twice. Her mom’s strange “Hello,” after she’d heard it. Except it was impossible, the police told her, she must have imagined it, or maybe she was confused. Her mom was found in that abandoned power station, no residential roads nearby at all, no houses, no doorbells. It wasn’t possible. But Red had heard it, she’d heard that sound and she’d never forget it, never forget that last phone call, not a second of it. “Doorbell ringtone,” she said, sounding out the possibility, memories shifting, slotting into new places.

“What are you talking about?” Oliver spat, eyes flashing.

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