Page 60 of What You Never Knew

“You thought I didn’t really know anything, didn’t you?” she asks with a smug smile.

June leans forward. “Willa, I’m June. Not April. Do you know that?”

“I know damn well who you are,” she snaps back. “That day I came here to blackmail you, you thought I was just bluffing. Didn’t you?”

$$##June shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Willa. Just please untie me.”

Willa pokes a bony finger at June. “West told me everything.” The old woman doesn’t even seem to be hearing June. There’s definitely something not right about her, something dangerous, I can feel it.

$$##“I believe you,” June says calmly. “I believe that West told you everything. So, why don’t you untie me and we can talk about it.” She lifts her hands up. “This is hurting me, and I think I might need stitches in the back of my head. Please, Willa, I need your help.”

Willa flinches and looks away from June, confusion twisting her features. She gives her head a little shake, mumbles something to herself, and then looks back at June with new resolve in her eyes. “If you really believed that West told me everything, then you never would have come back. You would have been too scared to.” She pokes herself in the chest. “But I do know everything. I do.”

June stares up at Willa in silence, and I can see her trying to figure out which new tactic to take. “That’s right,” she says, her demeanor suddenly changing from pleading to challenging. “I don’t believe you know everything. So, prove it. Start from the very beginning, then.”

I’m guessing June’s strategy is to play along with Willa in the hopes that in the end she’ll be able to convince the woman to untie her. It’s a risky plan, but hopefully June knows what she’s doing.

Willa rocks side to side, from one foot to another, looking as though she can’t stand to be still. “West and I got in a fight, and that’s when it all came out,” she quickly begins, as though she’s been waiting all along for someone to come and release the story. “About the affair, even about the girl,” she says, fury building with each word. “He said he was leaving me.” She suddenly stops moving and stares straight ahead, looking as though she’s been transported back to that very time. “I was mad, so I called Simon and told him everything that West had told me. That’s why he came rushing up here.” She pauses, the fury surprisingly replaced with a look of remorse. “Because I told him.”

“You don’t know what happened to Simon, though, do you? After he came here,” June pushes, intensifying the tension in the room.

Willa looks down at June. “I do know what happened to him. I do. He was killed that night. Murdered. I swear it.”

June pulls back as though she’s been slapped. “My father is dead? You know that for sure?”

Willa looks confused. She stares at June for a few seconds as though trying to figure out who she is. Then her gaze slips away, back to the past. “The daughter, she overheard everything,” she explains.

“I didn’t overhear anything,” June says, before it dawns on her that Willa is talking about me. “You mean May overheard everything?”

Willa nods and then points at the staircase. “West said she’d been hiding in the stairwell, listening to her parents fighting about the affair, the girl. Then she came rushing out at him. It all happened so fast.” Willa slams her palms together, causing June to jump. “Happened just like that.”

“What happened so fast?” June practically yells.

“She killed him. May. She heard it all and killed him.”

The color drains from June’s face at exactly the same moment that the rest of the memory dislodges. The ancient sea creature has woken, ready to drag me down to the depths of truth.

The things I heard while hiding in the stairwell that night had made me desperate with panic, blind with rage. I rushed into the living room wanting only to make my father stop saying the horrible things he was saying. I didn’t have a plan; nothing about it was premeditated.

I rushed at him, pushing against him with all my strength. He was caught off guard, stumbled backward. I smelled his cologne and the pungent scent of alcohol, my forceful shove releasing it from his clothing into the air. It would have been fine if it hadn’t been for his briefcase sitting on the floor behind him.

There was nothing for him to grab hold of and it happened so fast, the briefcase knocking his feet right out from under him, sending him crashing to the floor, the back of his head connecting with the edge of the fireplace hearth on his way down—making a fatal-sounding thud of flesh against stone.

My mother moved forward to help him, but I stood fixed to the spot, watching the strange spasms that coursed through his body for a brief few seconds before he went still. A small pool of blood spread out around his head, and his eyes stared blankly at the ceiling above him.

My mother said nothing as she searched for a pulse, listened for breathing, put a hand over his heart. Only when she found no sign of life did she turn to me. “You killed him,” she said, in an eerily calm whisper.

I sank down to the floor, my body shaking, my teeth chattering so hard I was sure they would break apart in my mouth. My mother lifted me up and guided me to the couch, wrapped a blanket around me, brought me a tumbler of my father’s Scotch, and instructed me to drink it.

She covered my father’s body with one of the scratchy wool blankets from the blanket box and then went into the kitchen. I heard the sound of the phone receiver being lifted from its cradle, the hum of the rotating dial, and then her hushed voice. I assumed she was calling the police or an ambulance, but it was West who arrived that night, not emergency services.

The Scotch worked quickly to stop the chattering of my teeth and slow the shaking of my body until it was only a slight tremor. When my mother returned to the room, I was coherent enough to focus on her words.

She knelt down in front of me and took my hands in hers, grasping them too tightly for it to feel like affection. “You need to listen to me closely, May Bennett,” she said, sounding firm but not angry. “What happened here tonight must stay a secret. If we tell the police, they will put you away for a very long time. Do you understand?” I nodded. “You will have to stay in a horrible place without me or June. You don’t want that, do you?”

My mother’s stern face blurred behind the tears that filled my eyes and spilled quietly down my cheeks. “No,” I whimpered in response.

She freed one of her hands to wipe away the tears, one of the most affectionate things she’d ever done. “Of course you don’t, and I’m not going to let anyone take you away.” Her conviction was comforting. “You are my daughter and you belong with me. Always.”