you didn’t. You couldn’t even install the new printer. I had to come home on my lunch hour to do it for you.”
Your heels are inches from the edge of the roof now. One more step backward and you’ll be hanging over air.
“Pay attention, Marcus. I knew that Jade would be working her magic down in the basement, plotting all the IP check-ins onto a map, and I knew they would lead you straight to me. Did you see my friend Nick on all the ATM cameras? I am not as stupid as you think.”
You don’t say a word, but your expression is cussing me out.
“And how about those phones from that skeevy minimart? Did you find those?” I catch the flash of surprise in your eyes, the way your jaw goes slack, and I laugh, a harsh, bitter sound. “I gave three of them away to random people I met on the street. The fourth one I used for days. I stole money from a church, and then I spent it in a place just up the road, one with dozens of surveillance cameras. Are you getting what I’m telling you? I planned this. I sent up flares that would lead you here. I wanted you to find me.”
I see the moment the quarter drops, the way your brow clears in understanding, in shock. Your voice is both incredulous and enraged. “You fucking bitch.”
“Why, because after all these years I’m finally standing up for myself? That doesn’t make me a bitch, it makes me brave. Now apologize.”
“No.” Even now, backed into a literal corner with nowhere to go but through a bullet, you won’t say the words. You can’t get them over your tongue.
I wag the gun, pointing in the air at your face. “Repeat after me, Marcus. I am a sorry excuse for a human and I apologize for ever hurting you.”
“No.” This time you shout it. You shake your head, your expression bitter. “You’re the one who should apologize, because this is all on you. I would have stayed with you forever. I would have died for you. You fucked this up, not me. I loved you, and you fucked us up.”
I shake my head. “You didn’t love me. You only loved what I could give you—control.”
“What? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You don’t give me control. I take it.”
And that right there is the crux of the problem. The one thing you did right. For too long, I allowed you to take my power. I was complicit in my own victimization. It took an outsider, another woman—Sabine—to make me see that in order to end this, I had to demand my power back.
I give the gun another wag—hello? I’m in control now—and it works. The fury drops off your face, and your eyes get glassy.
“You were wrong before, you know. I really do love you. You are the best thing in my life. The only part that makes it worth living. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never love anyone the way I love you.”
I shake my head. There is literally nothing you can say to make me lower this gun.
“Come on, babe. We still have good times. I can still make you laugh, and remember all those days last summer on the river? You, drinking wine and sitting between my legs while I rowed? Let’s go home and do that again. Let’s pack a picnic and take out the boat.”
Your words are as manipulative as your apologies, the fake tears and grand romantic gestures that always come after a beating. A year ago, I might have said okay. I might have said you are not well, you have a problem—I won’t let you work through it alone. But I’m not the same person I was ten months ago, when I started planning this. Not the person I was ten days ago, either, when I told Sabine goodbye.
I’m Beth Murphy now, and Beth Murphy knows what you’re about to do.
I know it from the way your weight shifts and your eyes get squinty at the corners. The way your hands tense into tight, white fists, how your muscles vibrate but your knees get loose and liquid. You are a predator, ready to pounce.
At the first sign of a lunge, I tilt the barrel a half inch to the right and squeeze the trigger. Even though I was prepared for it, the pop reverberates up my arm and through my bones, a shock