Page 81 of Girl, Undone
Her insight into Maxwell's psyche.
‘Your sister,’ Ella spat.‘She drowned.’
It stuck a chord.
The tension fell from Maxwell’s shoulders.
‘What?’
‘That’s how I knew you’d be by the lake.This is your way of coping.Trying to deal with her death.’
Maxwell’s posture loosened.
‘And?’
Ella, observing the shift, pushed further.‘It was here, wasn’t it?This same lake.This place is a shrine.’
For a moment, the night held its breath, and the only sounds were the gentle lapping of water against the shore and the distant call of a night bird.
Maxwell's posture stiffened again, and the brief flare of vulnerability that had flickered in his eyes was quickly overshadowed by a resurgence of confusion.
‘How did you know?’he asked.‘That… wasn’t in my textbook.’
Ella, despite the pounding in her head, sensed a shift in the air.Maxwell's momentary lapse into emotional turmoil had cracked open a door, and she wedged her foot in it.
‘Not everything needs to be written down.If you pay attention… you can work things out.’
Maxwell's grip on the rock faltered.
‘You can’t understand,’ he said.
Ella, seizing the moment of Maxwell's vulnerability, responded with a raw honesty that bridged the gap between them, not as detective and killer, but as two souls who shared a common past.
‘The pain never goes away.It might go numb, but it’s always there.’
In the silence that followed, Maxwell went limp for a split-second, but suddenly tensed when he caught Ella’s eye again.With a growl that seemed to tear from his core, Maxwell became a coiled spring of wrath.
‘Itwillgo away!'Maxwell cried and raised the rock high.Ella couldn't read the sudden flood of emotions, but her survival instincts surged to the forefront.Her mind was clear in spite of the concussion ringing around in her temples.Ella gathered every ounce of strength left in her body, angled her hips, and pushed herself up off the ground, bringing her attacker with her.The momentum was all she needed.Maxwell rolled onto the ground.The surprise of his displacement was written on his forehead as he scrambled to regain his footing.
But Ella seized the momentary freedom.She channeled everything she had left into her next move.One clenched fist flew with the ferocity of a comet through the night sky.Time halted, and the world narrowed to the space between her fist and Maxwell's unsuspecting face.
Ella's knuckles connected with Maxwell's nose with a crunch.The force of the blow turned Maxwell’s face into a canvas of dark red.
And then, he was falling.
He landed with a heavy, graceless thud, face down in the shallow embrace of the lake's edge.
The same lake where his sister had drowned.
Maxwell lay still.Alive, dead.She didn’t know.
The monster that had haunted her steps, that had taken so much from those she sought to protect, had been vanquished.Not with a bullet, but with the force of justice wielded by her own hand.
She regarded the fallen creature.He plucked his face out of the lake and spat out a mouthful of water.
Alive, then.
The realization brought no joy, only weariness.
