Page 83 of Only If You're Lucky
“I didn’t,” she says slowly, leaning forward like she’s wondering when I’ll finally fess up. “You did.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head, even though I can barely remember the end of that night. Even though Sloane said I had been looking for him, stumbling off on my own and waking up in the morning with mud on my pants. Even though I had that horrible feeling the next day, that sinking nausea, it wasn’t the same as the way I felt waking up after that last night with Eliza: the horror of realizing it wasn’t a dream. I’ll never forget that feeling:the terrible knowing that you’re the reason someone else is gone. The blood on your hands that’s always there, ever-present, no matter how hard you try to scrub it away. I understand better than anyone that something inside you changes after you’ve taken another life. Something cellular and permanent; an alteration of your very being, your very DNA. There is nothing muddy about it; in fact, it’s crystal clear.
If I killed Levi that night, I would have known it in the morning.
“I didn’t kill him,” I say, even firmer now. “I had no reason to.”
“Come on, Margot. You hated him,” she says. “You told me yourself you wished it had been him instead of Eliza.”
“Of course I wish it had been him,” I say, remembering the way Lucy had ambled up to me that morning, her voice in my ear:“It feels good, doesn’t it? To finally get what you want.”“But that doesn’t mean I killed him. You were the one who followed him out there.”
“I was trying to calm him down,” she says. “But he wouldn’t listen to me. He was a lot drunker than I realized, yelling at me that he couldn’t pretend anymore.”
“Pretend what?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“So you just left him out there?”
“Yes,” she says. “There was no reasoning with him like that. I tried for a while, but eventually I just left him alone to cool off.”
We’re both quiet, staring at each other, all our deceits tangling together in our minds until they’re impossible to unravel.
“What about Parker?” I ask at last, my final card, shame at the accusation creeping into my cheeks mixed with a hint of pride that I know her secrets, too. “It’s just a coincidence that your last boyfriend also died right after a big argument?”
Lucy looks at me like she’s just been slapped, a mixture of shock and hurt as she processes the question. I think about us up on theroof, all those rumors Danny told me about her swirling around like a cloud of smoke. The gossip she absorbed from everyone back home and how she had tried to outrun it only to be met with the same thing here.
“I had nothing to do with that,” she says, her voice suddenly so cold. “It’s not my fault he got into a car after drinking too much.”
“What were you arguing about?”
“If you must know, we were arguing about my dad,” she says, those final two words sounding so strange in her mouth. Like she still doesn’t think they belong to her. Like she’s tried them on so many times only to find that they’ll never truly fit. “My mom had just told me where to find him. I guess their agreement was that she would stay quiet as long as the money came—and then, one month, it stopped and she spilled.”
I think about the envelope I found in Eliza’s dresser and how it was made out to Lucy’s address. All that cash inside, thousands of dollars. Eliza must have intercepted it, somehow, all those nights she snuck into her dad’s office, poking around, stealing liquor from his private stash.
I close my eyes, wondering if she had any idea what she had stumbled across. The enormity of that single domino she inadvertently tipped over, removing it from wherever she found it and keeping it as her own.
“Parker told me not to go,” Lucy says at last, the closest thing I’ve ever seen to tears in her eyes. “He said it was a bad idea, that my dad wouldn’t want me, and that I shouldn’t even be thinking of him as my dad, anyway. That real dads don’t hide from their daughters with hush money. And maybe I should have listened to him”—she shrugs, wiping her nose—“but I was angry, okay? He was telling me hard truths that I didn’t want to hear. After he died, there was nothing else keeping me in Fairfield. I had nothing left to lose.”
I find myself nodding along, all these pieces that have been floating around for the last nine months now pushed together to reveal something whole. It makes sense, all of it, and despite the fact that Lucy has lied about so much, despite the fact that she’s a master of manipulation, of misdirection and deceit, I find myself believing her now. I find myself wanting to somehow still make this work, wanting to simply give in to her web of secrets, so sticky and strong, because it’s easier that way. It’s easier not to fight them but to wrap myself up in them like a blanket, all silky and smooth as she crawls even closer, whispering her little lies in my ear. Because what the four of us had this year was good, real. I know it was, even if it wasn’t entirely honest. There is no way those moments were manufactured: socked feet sliding around Penny Lanes and fits of laughter so intense, so pure, I thought my sides might split like a busted seam. My conscience healing slowly like scar tissue, something thick and hard growing over the spot in my heart that was once so raw. Secrets whispered in the night, bashful truths and audacious dares that wound us all together, so maddeningly tight that sometimes it hurt.
And that’s the problem, I suppose, when so many lives become so intricately entwined: one snag, one single loose thread, and it all threatens to come undone.
“I didn’t kill Levi,” Lucy says now, drawing my attention back. “But that detective thinks I did.”
I look at her, eyebrows bunched.
“He brought me in for more questioning,” she continues. “People are saying they saw me follow him. That they saw us fighting. It’s the same thing all over again.”
“Maybe it really was an accident,” I say, mostly to myself, but Lucy is already shaking her head.
“His neck,” she says. “Those bruises.”
“Trevor?” I ask, the next logical option. “Maybe they kept fighting and it went too far?”
“I don’t know who it was, but I’m going to find out,” Lucy says. “And I’m going to turn them in. I’m not going down for this.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I say, but I see Lucy’s eyes widen, some new understanding dawning on her as she starts to back up. The rain outside has slowed to a steady trickle now, a handful of stars peeking out from behind a blanket of clouds, and it makes me think of that night on the roof again, Lucy’s hand in mine as she traced them for me. The constellations so close and clear it felt like I could reach out and grab them like a handful of sand.
