Page 54 of Rich Little Liars

What I’m hiding.

I should run. Should pack everything and disappear before he has a chance to close in. It’s what I’ve done before. What I’m good at.

But I can’t leave Richard. Can’t walk away while he’s lying here, broken because of me, fighting for his life because of me.

So I stay. I hold his hand and watch the monitors and wait.

Somewhere around five in the morning, Richard’s fingers twitch.

It’s so small I almost miss it. Just the slightest movement against my palm. But I feel it – that tiny sign of life, of consciousness trying to surface.

‘Richard?’ I lean forward, my face close to his. ‘Richard, can you hear me?’

His eyelids flutter. Not opening, not quite, but moving. Trying.

‘I’m here,’ I tell him. ‘I’m right here. You’re going to be okay. Just keep fighting. Please.’

Another twitch. Another flutter.

Then stillness again.

But it’s something. It’s hope, fragile and uncertain but real.

I press my forehead to his hand and let myself cry. Silent tears that run down my face and drip onto the hospital sheets. Tears for Richard and Daniel and myself. For everything I’ve destroyed trying to survive.

Somewhere in this hospital, Harvey is probably still asking questions. Still building his case against me. And somewhere outside, whoever sent those notes is still watching. Still planning.

I don’t know which threat is worse.

But right now, all I can do is hold Richard’s hand and pray he lives.

Because if he dies, whatever’s left of me will die too.

And maybe that’s exactly what someone wants.

18

NOW

They evict me from the hospital at half past seven with Richard still unconscious and my clothes still stiff with his dried blood. The nurse who processes my paperwork won’t quite meet my eyes. She’s heard something – from Harvey, from colleagues, from the whisper network that runs through every institution. Whatever she knows or thinks she knows, it’s enough to make her want me gone.

I take a taxi back to East Hampton because my car is still at the house and I can’t face calling anyone for a lift. The driver glances at me in the rear-view mirror – at my ruined clothes, my unwashed hair, the exhaustion carved into my face – and says nothing. Just drives.

The silence suits me fine.

The town looks different in morning light. Softer. More picturesque than ever, like a photograph staged to sell a lifestyle I was never meant to have. The sycamore trees are shedding their leaves now, carpeting the lanes in copper and gold. The houses gleam behind their hedges. Everything is beautiful and orderly and utterly indifferent to the fact that I’m falling apart.

I pay the taxi driver with shaking hands and watch it disappear round the bend before turning to face my house.

The kitchen window is boarded up. Someone – police, probably – has nailed plywood over the hole the intruder made. It looks wrong against the yellowish stone. A wound that hasn’t healed. A mark of violence that the rest of East Hampton will have noticed and catalogued and discussed over their morning coffee.

I let myself in through the front door. The hallway still smells like blood – or maybe that’s just my imagination, my brain filling in details that cleaning crews have already erased. Richard’s blood has been mopped from the pale oak floors, but I can still see where it pooled. Can still feel it soaking through my fingers as I pressed against his skull and begged him not to die.

I close the door behind me and lean against it, breathing.

I should shower. Should change out of these ruined clothes and wash the hospital smell from my skin. Should eat something, sleep, do any of the things that constitute basic human function.

Instead, I walk to the kitchen window – the one that isn’t boarded – and look out at the park.