But how much of an accident could it be, to shoot your mother at close range while she was on her knees?
You would have to make her kneel in the first place.
You would have to bring the muzzle to her head.
Nestle it into her dark hair. Right near her center part, where the skin shone through.
And pull the trigger.
* * *
“Kate?”
Kate jolted upright, hitting her head on the edge of the table. The pain kaleidoscoped into thousands of shimmering pieces, and she stifled a moan and lay back down. She wiggled her phone out of her pocket and checked the display—4:21. Fuck. What had she been doing? She could have sworn she just lay down five minutes ago.
“Hello?” Theo called. He was somewhere in the studio. She wasn’t sure where; the sound was muffled by the heavy velvet curtains at the door.
Again: “Hello?”
Closer this time. Fuck.
She didn’t move. Barely even breathed.
The door opened, and the drapes whooshed backward into the vacuum of air. Theo came through and flicked on the safelight, and there was a split second after the scene was doused in red light when Kate saw Theo not see her. One last second of him not knowing. Then he looked down and saw her still lying on the floor.
She had so often imagined Theo discovering her mid-search that the moment felt like something she had already lived. Her dreams had been filled with this moment, she realized now, as the memories surfaced all at once. In her dreams, the room was tinted gray and she was holding up some indistinguishable but important object. Then Theo came in and said What are you doing in here and the words exploded into a cloud of lilies and shredded documents that rained down around her like confetti, and she tried to get up so she could clean it up, but her limbs were chained to the floor. Someone was watching from the corner, but when Kate tried to turn her head to look, the person kept dodging away, so that all she saw was a flare of black cloth.
The reality felt like a performance of the dream where everyone had missed their cue. Parts had slipped away. There was no other person in the corner. No confetti. Kate was not locked to the floor. Theoretically, she could move if she wanted. But she couldn’t seem to make her body work. Bile made her mouth slick and sour.
“Kate,” Theo said. “What are you doing in here?”
“Hi. Hi.” She struggled to sit up, leaned against the leg of the table for support, and said—with all the nonchalance of a high schooler who had just been caught in her parents’ liquor cabinet—“Just looking around.”
There was a beat.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t drink any dangerous chemicals.”
The joke didn’t land. Or she didn’t think it did. It was hard to tell. The ruddy darkness fuzzed his features like Vaseline on a lens. Only hours ago, she had been close enough to see each pore on his face. She pushed herself to her feet, trying to ignore the swift spike of sadness between her ribs, more particular than any dreamed sensation had ever been.
“I asked you not to come up here,” he said. “Remember?”
A condescending edge to the question that she didn’t like. She remembered that morning: I was worried about you.
“I just wanted to look around,” she said.
“Kate.” He closed his eyes, passed his hands over his face. “Please stop lying to me.”
There was something off about his reaction. It took her a moment to put her finger on it. When she did, it thrummed like a swollen vein.
“You aren’t surprised,” she said slowly.
He brought his hands down. Shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I knew weeks ago that you were coming up here. That you were going through the whole house.”
Now, through the jellied light, she saw that his expression was resigned. And angry. Not the kind of anger she had expected, but something slower and darker. Embers in an ignored fireplace.
Her mind sloshed around, trying to find purchase.
“H-how’d you know?” she asked.
The look he gave her said, How do you think?
“I found some strands of blond hair on the floor in my bedroom. Before you were ever in there with me,” he clarified. “So the next day I set up a camera in there, and I saw you come in and read the diary.”
Kate opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “A camera?”