Page 89 of Unforgivable

I don’t say anything for a moment. My brain has snagged, frozen on the word,mother. “What did you say?”

“She whined and cried and begged just like you are.”

“My mother?”

She bends down, hands together between her knees, her face inches from mine. “Did you really think Iwantedto be your friend? Have you looked at yourself, like, ever? It never occurred to you that, when you came back to school after your mother’s funeral, maybe I had an ulterior motive in befriending you? Or did you actually believe your well-being was paramount to me? I guess the question is: did you actually believe I gave a shit about you?”

“I don’t understand!” I cry.

“No, you were never the brightest star in the firmament, Laura. That’s your problem, but let’s face it, it’s been my strength. Okay, let me spell it out. I wanted to be close to you, Laura, so that if there was even a whiff of a rumor that there was someone else on that bridge that day, I’d be the first to know.”

“No. No no. No. You can’t…No. Please, it’s not true. It’s not true.”

“Oh, but it is! I overheard my dad on the phone one day, talking about their plans. Where they’d move together, what the house was like, whether it was close to schools. Yes, that’s right, my father and your mother were inlove. My father was walking out on my mother, and I couldn’t fault him there, to be fair, I’d have done the same if I could, and your mother was leaving your father, and they were starting a new life together, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they were taking you with them, but not me. I was to stay with my mother. That’s right, Laura. You, boring, plain old you, were going to live with your mother andmyfather. And I wasn’t.”

She stands up straight and pulls out a cigarette from the pocket of her skirt. Lights it, the flame briefly illuminating her face.

“I’d known for a while,” she says, blowing out a plume of smoke. “I wasn’t going to let it happen. So, early that morning I called your house and spoke to your mother. I said I knew everything, and I was on the bridge and I was going to kill myself unless she came to explain herself. I said if she spoke to my father, I would jump. She believed me, she came. Alone. There’s no traffic on that bridge at that time of the morning. I was right up the top of the trusses. She begged me to come down, she sounded just like you just now. Listen to me! Don’t do anything! Please, please, please! She climbed up to get me. She didn’t look like she liked it much, but she did it.”

“No! Bronwyn, no!”

“I pushed her off. She tried to hang on, though; she was feisty, way more than you. I had to kick her before she let go. Then I slid along the top all the way to the other end and I came back down. And then, I became your friend.”

She drops her cigarette on the ground. I can’t speak. I can’t even take a breath.

“And then years later,” she continues, “I told my dad. I’d gone to see him at his real estate agency late one night, he was always working late, drinking by himself. I wanted money, he said no, we had an argument. He was drunk, I told him I knew what a slimy creep he was and what I’d done. He was shocked, well, he would be. He grabbed his coat, his keys and he got in his car. I followed him, and I nudged him off the road. You know what the roads are like up there. That’s how I got the idea to do the same to young slut Jenny. Oh don’t look at me like that, Laura. What do you expect? She tried to fuck my husband! She only brought it upon herself. You fuck with me, you have to die. I don’t make the rules.”

“You’re insane!”

“Whatever.” She kicks my foot. “Come on, Laura. Let’s go inside. We could kill Charlotte now if you like. Don’t look at me like that. You realize Charlotte has to die too, don’t you? You have to kill her, because then I get everything: the life insurance, the house, everything. I’m the only one left, you see? She couldn’t die if Jack committed suicide, but now? Why bother letting her live? What would be the point? But we couldn’t use the gun yet, in case someone heard the shots. But you could strangle her.”

My vision has gone blurry, black dots dancing in front of my eyes. I claw at her blindly, dig my fingernails into flesh, scramble to get a purchase. And all the time she’s laughing.

“Enough. Come on.” She grabs my hair and yanks it, and suddenly I’m upright and she has a clump of my hair in her fist. There’s a look of surprise on her face. “Oh my God! You didn’t drink the wine!”

But I’m burning with rage. In that moment, when she’s still realizing I’m not as drugged as she thought, I’ve wrapped my arm around her throat and we both fall to the ground. I’m like a drunk, blind fighter, unable to tell if my fists are connecting with any part of her, but I’m kicking and biting and there’s blood in my mouth, dirt in my eyes, and I’m no longer in control of my body or my mind. All I feel is pure fury raging inside me. Fury without consequences. But then she manages to free herself from my grasp and now we’re both standing. I think of Charlie, the way she used to ram her head into things when she was upset, and I before I know it I’ve put my head down and I run into her, feel my shoulders make contact with her chest, feel the air go out of her, feel her body move as she flies backward, arms flailing, and disappears into the darkness.

The world tilts and I fall to my knees and the pain that erupts in my head is so violent that for that split second before I pass out, I wonder if she shot me.

FORTY-ONE

But nobody shot me, as I find out when I wake up in the hospital thirty-six hours later with probes in my skull and tubes in my arms, like a broken marionette. Traumatic head injury, they said. I passed out and hit the ground, they said. I was kept under sedation until the swelling in my brain subsided. I could have died, they said. I have no memory of what has happened, so I don’t laugh.

Jack is holding my hand. His face looks different, gaunt and pale, creased by rivers of tears.

“What happened?” I ask. But my mouth isn’t moving properly, like it’s been pumped full of Novocain.

“Shhh. Go back to sleep.”

I go back to sleep and I dream of Charlie; she’s six years old, she’s wearing a yellow raincoat Jack got for her two sizes too big. She’s grinning at me, a cheeky grin, kicking puddles of water in her unicorn-patterned rain boots. She runs to me and wraps her arms around my waist, her face turned up to mine, her yellow hat fallen back, her eyes squinting against the rain. It’s the first time she’s hugged me.

I dream of Jack, of our first kiss, our bodies pressed together against the wall outside Charlie’s bedroom, I can feel the stubble of his day-old beard against my skin, the sweet smell of him, teeth knocking, his hips pressing against mine.

“Laura. Baby.”

My eyes are glued shut. No, they’re not. It’s the effort of raising my eyelids, it’s too much. A sliver of light.

“Where’s Charlie?”

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