Page 110 of Five Survive

Red didn’t know, she didn’t know yet, but there was an awful sinking feeling, trying to drag her down. She pushed up against it, feet lifting from the floor as she darted for the kitchen counter, for the saucepan of phones waiting there. Red lifted off the lid and peered inside, looking for her own phone. She pulled it out, the home screen telling her she was down to 12% battery, no service still. That was because the engineers were only just starting work on the broken cell tower. Had they heard her on the walkie-talkie before Arthur smashed it? She had no way of knowing if they had. If one of them had been pressing the button at the same time, then Red’s voice would have been lost in the dying night, never found, never heard.

Focus, focus on the doorbell. Something inside was telling her this was important. Maddy might be dying, the police might or might not be on their way, but the doorbell was important.

Red unlocked her phone and tapped into the settings app. Her thumb moved down to theSounds & Hapticsmenu option and she opened it. She scrolled down to the section labeledSounds and Vibration Patternsand clicked to bring up all the options for ringtones.

Her eyes skipped down the list, pastCosmicandNight OwlandSencha,thumb spooling the words up the page in a blur. No, it wasn’there. Right at the bottom was another click-through menu, calledClassic.Red pressed it and a new list appeared on screen.Alarm, Ascending, Bark, Bell Tower.Red’s eyes kept going, through the rest of theBs, pastCrickets,and there it was.Doorbell,sitting just aboveDuckin the list. Red turned the volume on the device all the way up to the top and then pressed her thumb against the doorbell ringtone, heart in her mouth like it already knew the answer.

Her phone dinged, a high double-chime pattern, up then down. Red pressed it again. And again.

That was it.

The doorbell.Thedoorbell.

The exact sound she’d heard during that last phone call with Mom, the phone call that changed everything, ripped the world apart. This wasit.

It wasn’t a doorbell, because the police were right; it couldn’t be. It was a ringtone. Catherine Lavoy’s ringtone.

“What are you doing?” Oliver asked her, his shoulders shifting, staring down at the phone in Red’s hands.

“Your mom,” Red said, her voice breaking, splitting in half. “I think your mom was there.”

“Where?” Oliver’s eyes narrowed.

Red tried to speak, tripping over her own breath, too fast, throat closing in around it.

“With my mom. When she was killed.”

Red wished for the sound of static, to cover the awful silence in the RV, and that high-pitched ringing in her ears, two-tone, like the doorbell. Could anyone else hear it? Was anyone else struggling to breathe?

“What are you talking about?” Oliver asked her, brows drawing together, a shadow across his eyes, hiding the fire in them.

“She was th-there,” Red stammered. “I heard her. Maybe you don’t know this, but my mom called me, only ten minutes before she was killed, that’s what the police told me.” Her breath was too loud, like a windstorm trapped in her head, pushing at the backs of her eyes. She hadn’t said any of this out loud for years, she’d lived alone in the guilt and the shame ever since. “My mom tried to tell me something on that phone call, she asked me to tell my dad something. But we were in a fight, I was mad at her, I was so mad at her, and I can’t even really remember why now. But I hung up on her. I told her I hated her and I hung up on her. That’s the last thing I ever said to her, to Mom, and then she died. It was my fault, because maybe the thing she needed to tell me, maybe that would have been the thing that saved her. She’d still be alive if I hadn’t…”

And it wasn’t the part of the story Red was supposed to be telling, but she couldn’t not, it had sat inside her for so long, festering, a new organ that she needed to keep on living, to remind her every day what she did. Hers and hers alone, her responsibility. But now the rest of them knew too, all eyes on her, and the world couldn’t break any more than it already had. No more secrets, not even this, the worst thing she’d ever done.

Red blinked and one tear escaped before she could catch it. “And on that last phone call, I heard a doorbell sound in the background. Twice, before it stopped.” She sniffed. “The police told me it was impossible, because my mom was found in that abandoned power station on the waterfront, nowhere near any houses. But I always knew I heard it. It was this.” She gestured with her phone, raising it up. “It was a ringtone, your mom’s ringtone for Maddy. She was there, behind my mom. My mom said ‘Hello’ to her, and then I hung up before she could tell me what she needed to.” Red’s eyes fell to Maddy, her face rearranging. “Your mom was there. You must have called her when she was there. Why did she never say she was there? Mom was dead within ten minutes, so your mom, I don’t…”

Simon’s head dropped into his hands, sucking at the air between his fingers.

Arthur looked across at Red, eyes wide behind his glasses, arm shifting at his side like he might reach out to wrap it around her, hide her away.

“What?” Oliver snorted, shattering the teeming silence, the wicked smile back on his face. Did Catherine ever smile like that, Red tried to think. “Now you’re trying to tell me that my mom is the one who killed your mom? They were best friends, Red. Don’t be so stupid. And on what evidence? A sound you think you heard when you werethirteen, a child? You’re wrong. The police told you you were wrong. My mom wasn’t there.”

“Mom was investigating the organized crime group when she died,” Red said, the words coming out as she thought them. “Your family, Arthur. Maybe she realized there was a leak from the DA’s office, maybe she figured out that it was Cather—”

“Do you hear yourself?” Oliver roared, and yes she did, and she wasn’t going to tiptoe around that look in his eyes anymore. Because if she was right, if she was right…“My mom wasn’t there!” he shouted.

Red was about to speak, to push back, the words right there in her throat, wrestling past her out-of-place heart. But a new sound stopped her before she could. A howl, wretched and raw, from Maddy, her face cracking in two as tears slipped from her eyes, fast and free.

“What is it?” Reyna asked, keeping the pressure on the wound. “Does it hurt?”

But Maddy wasn’t looking at her, she was looking at Red. She shrieked again, shoulders buckling with it, teeth bared, tears trickling into her open mouth.

Oliver stared blankly at his sister.

“Maddy?” Red said, stepping toward her.

“It was her,” Maddy cried, her head nodding in minute movements against the refrigerator. “I—I, she…she wasn’t home that evening. That’s why I called her. I called her but she didn’t pick up, went to voicemail after two rings.” Her hand shuddered as she raised it to wipe one side of her face, leaving a new smear of blood there, mixing with the tears. “Dad and Oliver were out of town, away for one of Oliver’s chess tournaments. I got home after my violin lessonand Mom wasn’t there. She wasn’t. She didn’t get home until past eight-thirty, said she’d been working late. I’d already eaten, leftovers from the weekend.” Maddy cried even harder, the words thick and misshapen in her mouth.

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