Unraveling Isobel (29 page)

I saw his mouth moving, and I was pretty sure I could make out the word “mommy.” He called his mom “mommy”? Ew. And he thought I needed therapy? I shook my head slowly back and forth, my finger pinning him in place.

CRACK.
A flash of lightning lit up the entire night sky like a thousand fluorescent lights. I jumped back away from the window before Dick could see me. The skies opened up and the rain dumped down. I was instantly soaked to the skin.

Dick strode toward the window. I picked up the dress and started to run back toward the well. There was a loud boom of thunder, and then I heard the office window slam open.

I tore around the corner of the house, my feet nearly sliding out from under me. The yard was already turning to mud. I crouched underneath one of the trees and held my phone ready to take a photo.

I almost screamed when I saw Dick. He came running around the side of the house holding an axe and a flashlight. He stopped short when he saw that there were already boards broken off the well cover. He used the axe to whack away at the remaining board. Dick looked into the well and cursed. I took a few quick photos with my phone. There was no flash, and I prayed they would show up in the dim light.

Just then my phone rang. Anita's number flashed on the display. I dropped it in the muck and scrambled to pick it up. Dick's head whipped around. Oh shit. I scrambled back but he had already spotted me. He shot forward and grabbed me.

“You.” Dick's nostrils were flaring in and out, and the vein on his forehead was bulging.

“Let go of me.” I tried to pull my arm back, but Dick had it in a vise grip. My eyes started to burn. I wiped my face and realized the black hair tint was running down my face. My heart was beating a thousand beats a second. The beads on the dress were drilling into my arm where he was holding me.

“I should have known,” Dick snarled.

“You killed them. You stole money from your daughter, and when your wife found out and wanted a divorce, you killed them both.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That's what I know.”

“I didn't kill them. We fought and Sylvie stormed off on the boat. Evie fell off the deck because she was screwing around. That wasn't my fault. The fact that the water was too cold for them and Sylvie couldn't pull her out, that isn't my fault either. None of it was my fault.”

“You saw what happened.” My mouth fell open. “You must have watched them through the telescope in the library. You saw the whole thing. You could have called for help.”

“By the time anyone got out there, they would have been already dead. There wasn't anything anyone could do.”

“You don't know that. If you had called for help, at the very least they would have found Evelyn's body.”

“Who cares? She didn't know who she was half the time. You think it matters where her body is?”

I pictured the figure of Evie in my room, her mouth open in a scream. “I think it does matter. I think she knew you left her out there.”

“You know nothing,” Dick spat.

My mind spun around. I thought about Nate talking about his mom and how she would do anything to protect Evie. “Why weren't there any life jackets on board?”

Dick's mouth twitched.

“You took the life jackets off the boat.”

“If she cared so much, she should have checked before she
went out.” Dick shrugged. “She thought she was so perfect all the time, but even the perfect Sylvia made mistakes. Evelyn wouldn't have died if she had been wearing a life jacket. Sylvia was in such a hurry to get away from me that she didn't make any safety checks. If there is anyone to blame it's her.”

“Was my mom involved?”

Dick laughed. “No. But when I called the law firm, your mom was all too happy to give me information about what Sylvia was up to.
She
hit on me, you know. You should have seen her flashing some cleavage and expressing how sorry she was to tell me my wife was planning to leave me. Then when they died she could hardly believe her luck. She didn't care my wife and daughter were barely dead. We cooked up the online story so you wouldn't realize how easy your mom is.”

“You're a dick. What about them?” I motioned to the well. “Do you have an explanation for them, too?”

“They had no right to be on this property, but their family still could have sued us because the well cover was rotted. Our family could have lost everything because they were nosy.”

“So you left them there to die.”

“I left them with the consequences of their actions. Why should my family or I suffer because of their stupidity? How did you even find them?”

“That doesn't matter. You can't hide them anymore,” I said. I wanted to spit in his face for what he had done to Mandy.

Dick's face broke into a smile. He pulled me closer. I could smell his breath. “No one is going to know.”

“You can't keep me from telling.” I tried to keep from shaking. I didn't want him to know how scared I was. His nose was twitching like he could smell the fear and he liked it. “You can call me crazy all you want now, but people are going to listen to me. They're going to believe me when they see this.”

“No one will believe you if you never have a chance to open your big mouth.”

I looked down. Dick was still holding the axe. His hand was clenching the handle like it was a lifeline. “I've already told. People know,” I lied.

Dick laughed. “If you told anyone, you wouldn't be standing out here in my mother's dress trying to collect clues. You haven't told anyone and you're not going to.” Dick began dragging me toward the back of the house, near the cliff. I put my feet down and tried to hold myself in place, but between the mud and Dick's strength, he wasn't having any trouble moving me along. “This is your own fault. I would have been willing to get along with you, but you never were happy to leave well enough alone. I hope you're happy. This is going to break your mother's heart.”

“What? That she's married to a psycho?” I kept yanking on my arm, trying to get free.

Dick stopped. We were standing on the back patio. The rain bounced off the stone tiles, hitting me on the legs. “She's going to be so upset that you killed yourself. I hope she doesn't blame
herself. She should have recognized how troubled you really were. I told her that residential care might be your best bet, but she didn't want to send you away. It's her fault for dragging her feet on making a decision. Your body being found in my mother's dress will really cement the fact that you've been much more unwell than we imagined. I saw you out here and tried to stop you.” Dick shook his head sadly. “I'll be devastated, of course.”

I screamed. The sound blew back to sea. There was no way anyone in the house would hear me. I started to cry.

“Don't worry. I don't think it will hurt much. I hear the shock of the fall stops your heart before you hit the ground.” Dick pulled me closer to the edge. He was going to throw me off. He dropped the axe so that he could grab me with both hands. My body went ice-cold. I was going to die.

I dug at his face, scratching him. He might kill me, but I was going to do everything I could to make sure he would get caught. The scratches would be hard to explain. There might even be DNA under my fingernails. I wouldn't be there to see it, but Dick was going to pay. I felt my phone fall from my pocket and off the cliff. The pictures were gone. I stared him right in the eye and spit.

“Let her go!”

Dick and I both turned around to see Nate. He was looking at his dad with disgust and rage.

“Get back in the house. You're not a part of this.”

“I am a part of it. I love her.”

“This is more important than a case of puppy love. She'll ruin everything. Think about your family.”

“Let her go.”

“Go inside. I'll take care of this. Taking care of this family is always up to me.”

“And taking care of my family is up to
me
. You step away from her right now.” My mom's voice was cold, and she was holding the axe Dick had dropped. There was no shaking of her arms or hesitation in her voice. “Let go of my daughter or I'll make you let go.”

Dick let go of my arm and I stepped quickly back from the edge. Nate hugged me close. We stood next to my mom.

“I've done everything for this family,” Dick spit out.

The sound of police sirens cut through the night. They were racing up the driveway.

“You've done dick,” I said.

“You have to understand,” he said, looking at my mom. “She's sick. I found her out here raving about all sorts of crazy things. She wanted to throw herself off the cliff. We have to stick together as a family. We have to get her help.”

“You can tell your story to the police,” my mom said. “They might be interested in what you have to say. I'm done listening.”

I could see flashlight beams bouncing around the side of the house. My mom dropped the axe. Nate pulled me closer. Dick started to cry, but like my mom, I was done listening.

Chapter 41

N
ate went to the bathroom to get an old towel to rub the dye off my face. I stood at the edge of my bed. I was exhausted. I'd stripped off the dress and pulled on some sweats. I held the dress out and looked it over. The sleeve was torn and the beads were falling off. There were splotches of black hair tint on the front. It would never be the same.

“I can try and get it dry-cleaned,” I mumbled when he walked back into the room.

Nate plopped onto the bed and pulled me down so I was sitting between his legs. He rubbed my face with a corner of the towel. “I don't care about the stupid dress.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” After the police arrived, we'd all gone back inside. They had separated all of us and taken everyone's statement. I'd led one of the officer's back
outside to the well. Her eyes grew wide when she flashed her light down and saw the bones. She'd whispered into her shoulder walkie-talkie. She sent someone down the trail to the beach to see if they could find my phone. By the time we went back inside, Dick was in handcuffs.

At first I wasn't sure how the police had gotten there so quickly. When he couldn't find me in the house, Nate had decided to sneak out to look for me. My mom discovered Nate sneaking out of the library and they had fought. Anita had called her an hour before and told her she was worried about me. My mom assumed Nate and I were up to something, maybe planning to run away before my appointment in Seattle. Dick had warned her that I might need to be forcibly taken into care. She'd called Dr. Mike and the police to come out to the house.

Once we had come inside with the police, my mom wouldn't let go of my hand. She repeated over and over how sorry she was. She kept crying, and eventually Dr. Mike arranged for Dr. Wilson to come out and give her a shot of something. It seemed like we would have to keep telling our stories over and over, but finally they took Dick away and told us they would be back in the morning. I didn't tell them everything. I didn't tell them about Mandy. I let them think I'd found the bodies when I tripped over the well cover.

“I don't know what's going to happen.” Nate sighed. “For the sisters it will be a murder charge. Not getting them help is the same as having pushed them down that well. With my mom
and sister, I'm not sure what the charges will be. He just watched them die. In some ways it's almost worse than if he had killed them. At least then it would have been—what do they call it?—a crime of passion. Watching them die just feels like he couldn't be bothered.”

“I'm sorry.”

“He took the life jackets hoping something would happen. He couldn't stand the idea of anyone, not even his family, coming in between him and what he wanted. It's always been about this stupid house. Who does that? Who sits back and watches his wife and daughter die and can't even be bothered to pick up the phone?”

“Your dad's sick.”

“I always sorta knew he wasn't right, you know. People say all the time that they don't think a parent loves them, but with him I knew it was true. He never cared about me; he cared about what I could do for him.” He sighed again. “I feel bad for my mom. She would have done anything for Evie. Going out on the boat was what she always did when she was stressed. She would have known she shouldn't jump into the water when Evie fell, that it was too cold. That time of year, you'd have only a few minutes in the water before hypothermia would set in, but she never could sit by. She had to try to save her.”

“She was brave.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.”

I turned around so I could see his face. “You mean me?”

“What you did was either brave or stupid.”

“Your dad wasn't supposed to discover I was behind it. He was supposed to think it was the ghost of his mom and then rush out to cover things up so I could get a picture of it. Then we would have taken our proof and gone to the police. It was a good plan.”