Page 43 of Lover
I took it.
Millie’s handwriting. It was a page from her journal.
Datura.
My eyes fell upon the white powder again.
Millie wasn’t having a mental break. She never had been. She was being poisoned, and she thought it was my doing.
Was this the reason Felicity had encouraged Millie to leave? Had insisted the problems with Willowfield wouldn’t be solved with renovations? Felicity had known. But why not tell me outright?
The pieces fell together with a nauseating snap.
“Helen, quickly,” I implored, pressing the paper back into Ms. Dillard’s soft palms, closing her fingers around it. “Go backinside. Millie isn’t mad, but she is in danger, and Hannigan must tell the police to be prepared. We’re dealing with a murderer.”
Without waiting for confirmation, trusting only that she would do as I asked, I sprinted from the garage, squelching through damp earth as I careened toward the groundskeeper’s cottage, throwing myself against the door when I arrived. It was unlocked and gave easily.
“Rodney!” I roared, finding the place empty. Where could they have gone on foot? Then salvation, another cry, farther away, deep in the gardens, in the direction of the abandoned Italianate.
The ravine.
If Millie was still chasing her memories, drugged and delirious, perhaps she was following the same footsteps taken the night she’d plummeted into the gorge. I left the cottage behind, entering the gardens that had once been my haven, now a torment of bare branches and grasping roots, tearing at my face and hands, tripping me, slowing me.
She’s ours, the wilderness said.She’s always been ours.
Before I knew I’d left the garden paths,the woods had swallowed me up, a hellish slog of slippery leaves, the misty rain hiding treacherous drops and rocky copses, begging for someone to take a wrong step. I listened intently for any sound at all above the rising noise of the river, which rushed like mad during storms like these, white water ripping trees from the embankment, carrying them away as though they were rose stems.
There, a male voice, barely audible. I turned in the direction of the noise, and found myself at the height of a steep slope, and at the bottom Millie was collapsed against a tree, Rodney kneeling before her. She was alive, but Rodney wouldn’t be for long if I had my way.
I began a slow trek down the side of the hill, trying to move as silently as possible to take the bastard by surprise. Catching him off guard would be the only way I could get him off his feet, his center of gravity far lower than mine.
I watched Millie swing at him, but he dodged, her movements too sluggish. My rage flashed as he attempted to pull her away from the tree, though she cleverly countered by collapsing, making herself dead weight. It still wasn’t enough. He took her hair in hand at the scalp, dragging her, kicking and fighting, toward the mouth of the gorge.
There was no more time to be silent. I gained momentum, shouting loudly to startle the groundskeeper, hoping he would hesitate just long enough. It worked. The idiot stopped and looked up just as I crashed into him, taking him to the ground. The sinewy strength that outdoor labor had given him would have been in his favor if I hadn’t had him pinned, hadn’t delivered the first disorienting strike. As he’d done to my wife, I fisted his hair by the roots, holding his head in place as I landed one blow after another, crushing the bones in his face with my fists until my own knuckles bled and groaned. The pain in my hand grew, and in a far-off corner of my wrath-addled brain, I suspected I’d broken it.
I was filled with more animosity and hatred than any man could survive without expelling it, and it poured from me as I pummeled my wife’s would-be murderer, praying with every strike that his skull was splintering. The man landed a punch or two, one strong enough that I heard a crack, a searing jolt shooting through my cheekbone. Still, I couldn’t stop. I was going to kill him. There was nothing I wanted more.
A gunshot ricocheted through the air, agony exploding in my shoulder, into my chest, the force of the bullet knocking me back onto the wet earth. I clasped the wound, trying to staunch the free flow of blood, which persisted through my fingers.
Millie was somehow at my side in a breath, falling next to me, soaked, shivering, and covered in mud. She touched my cheek, her eyes clearer than I’d seen them since this all began, as though a veil had been lifted.
“Millie,” I huffed, barely able to draw in enough breath to speak, “get out of here.
“She can’t leave, can she?” Rodney slurred, waving the gun at us. “Too drugged up.”
He spat blood. “But this is perfect because now you can watch her die and then you can fucking bleed out here on the ground you claim to own. Two birds with one stone. I’ll tell everyone she went berserk and killed you, then shot herself. Isn’t that a perfect story, Millie? Especially after what your lunatic father did to your poor mother. It’s just all too believable.”
My consciousness was already slipping away, and Rodney’s words grew soft, grainy. I wouldn’t be able to protect Millie from this madman. He’d kill us both, all because I’d been too stupid to see the signs. In a crazed leap, Millie pounced toward Rodney like a wildcat, her teeth burying in his wrist. He dropped the gun, and my world grew black for a moment. When I came to, Millie was once again wrestling against the groundskeeper’s dogged determination to drag her toward the violent water.
I tried to roll onto my side, but my head swam, vision narrowing. Yet I still saw the woman, stumbling from a thicket of trees. Her flaxen hair was dark with rain, unpinned and hanging to her waist. She looked at me, blood streaming into her eyes, wide and feral. Felicity. If my mother had seen her, she would have dropped to her knees, offering honor to the Good Folk who governed this land.
Felicity turned away from me and knelt down, retrieving the gun Rodney had dropped during Millie’s attack. She raised it.
“Millie,” I wheezed, the weak warning unheard.
The gun went off, and I couldn’t turn away, forced by my lack of strength to witness the true last moments of Millie’s life. But it was Rodney who buckled over, a hand to his stomach. Rodney who looked up, confused, toward his sister, who stood, trembling, the revolver still outstretched.
In the mayhem, Millie took her chance, shoving the wretched groundskeeper with all her might. He flailed, slipped on the muddy embankment, then plummeted backward out of sight.
