told her what he’d done.
Now, Allie knew who loaded the gun because she had watched him load the gun. It wasn’t Julian, it was her father. She had seen her father load the gun. She had buried the memory, only to have it recovered now. She’d watched horrified as he closed the cylinder and raised the gun to his temple, just like Kyle would do only hours later, in the exact same spot.
Her mouth had dropped open in shock at what she was seeing, at what he was doing, but she froze, paralyzed. She wanted to shout to her father to stop but no sound came from her mouth. She couldn’t utter a single word. Her father was going to kill himself. He was raising a gun to his head. He was going to fire a bullet into his brain. He was all she had left. Her mother was gone, Jill was gone, and her father was going to leave her, too. Allie would be alone. She would have nobody. No family, no nothing.
Suddenly her father lowered the gun, wrapped it back up, and put it back into the hole, and began to cover it with dirt. Allie turned and ran all the way home, not wanting to be discovered. She got home in no time, panting and crying, running upstairs to her parents’ bedroom, to cry there, to keep what she could of them. And then she’d seen her mother’s tranquilizers on the night table.
Allie was hysterical, desperate, terrified. She tore off the cap and gulped some pills down with water. She had to get numb. She had to forget what she knew. She couldn’t bear the thought that her father wanted to kill himself. She had to escape her own mind. She stayed high all day and took more pills. That night, she felt so calm from the pills, floating on a cloud when she met David at the trail. She felt relieved that Kyle wasn’t with Sasha and Julian, so Allie drank vodka, fast. She got more and more out of it. She remembered David’s kisses and Kyle being so late. Allie was totally wasted by the time Kyle came. She tried to tell him not to play the game, but it all happened so fast, Kyle played, and the gun had gone off.
Her father hadn’t unloaded the gun, and Allie knew that now. She knew that then, too, but after Kyle had shot himself, that knowledge had been swallowed up in her memory of Kyle putting the gun to his head the same way that her father had, in exactly the same spot, only this time the gun had gone off, killing Kyle.
Allie realized with dread that she had known all along that the gun was loaded. All this time, in the back of her mind, her memory of what her father had done with the gun lay beneath what Kyle had done, and all of her sleepless nights, grisly instant replays, nightmares, health issues hadn’t been only about Kyle. They’d been about her father, too. Allie had been obsessed with Kyle’s death, and her father was why.
Tears flowed down her face. Her knees buckled. Her father was at the door, calling her, knocking. He’d loaded the gun that killed Kyle. Someone knew all this time.
And that someone was her.
EPILOGUE
Allie Garvey
The winter sun filtered through the window, washing the kitchen in a pale light, and Allie sipped her tea, sitting in her cozy bathrobe and flannel nightgown, while Larry sat across the table from her in his sweats. His head was buried behind the sports page but his bare feet rested on hers under the table, a habit of theirs.
We’re holding feet, she’d told him once, and they both had laughed.
The Sunday newspapers lay scattered on the tabletop, but she’d read her favorite sections. She could’ve cleared their plates, but she didn’t feel like rushing to do that, either. The TV played on low volume on the counter, showing political talking heads until noon, when the NFL programming machine came on, with its trumpets and transformers, gearing them up for the Eagles game, as if anybody in Philadelphia needed help getting excited over any team. Her father, her in-laws, one of Larry’s brothers, his wife, and their two boys were coming over, so there would be a lot to do, but Allie had already gone food shopping, and right now, she found a moment of stillness with her thoughts. She inhaled slowly, then exhaled.
Her tea had