Page 100 of The Woman I’ve Become

“Please,” Rick urges, “put the gun down, and we’ll figure all this out.”

Alicia stares at me still, ignoring the man. Tears slip down her cheeks. Jesus Christ, Helen killed her boyfriend. Alicia has nothing to lose.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want any of this to happen.” A wave of tears glide down my cheeks. So this is it. I think of Olivia upstairs asleep in her bed. Please, God, let Phillip survive to take care of her.

Alicia shakes her head. “But she lied.” She swings the business end of the rifle toward Julia once more. “She’s the monster. She told us to kill Eleanor—it was the only way, she said.” A broken laugh issues from her throat. “Then she wanted us to kill all of you, including the kid. She had me send a text to Phillip asking him to come back. Once he was here and settled in, she ordered Brian to shoot all of you.” Her face crumples. “Now he’s dead.”

I stalled on the words—including the kid—and stare at Julia in disbelief. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Yet the idea that she would order the death of a child shatters something deep inside me. I want to leap across this table and destroy her . . . tear her apart.

Rick is talking again. Trying to persuade Alicia to put down her weapon. Julia is insisting that it was all a big misunderstanding. That I started this . . . that I am the one behind all that happened.

The blast of Alicia’s rifle makes me jump. She jerks with the recoil. Julia falls to the floor. Another blast, and I see Alicia fall backward, a hole in the center of her forehead. Rick lowers his weapon, then glances at me. “You okay?”

I’m shaking . . . I don’t understand. This is not any of the numerous scenarios I had played over and over in my head. I rush to the far end of the table where Rick is now checking Julia’s carotid pulse.

He shakes his head. “She’s dead.”

Some distant part of me regrets that the girl I believed to be my friend never really existed. She was a monster, and now she’s finally dead.

Alicia is dead too. Her boyfriend as well.

Does that mean it’s over? My heart squeezes. Can that possibly be?

“What happened?” I shake my head in an attempt to clear it. “What started this?” I gesture wildly as if I can’t decide what I want to indicate. I walked in, and this was playing out like a bad scene in a low-budget action film.

“The guy came out of nowhere and was firing. He hit Phillip.” Rick shakes his head. “Before I could put him down, Helen did. At that point, I think he was after you. You saw what happened in here.” He gestures to Julia’s lifeless body. “What a fucking mess.”

I hear sirens outside, and I realize I need to get back to Phillip. Rick catches my arm and stops me before I can escape.

“Wendy was a very disturbed woman, Julia. The other woman, the one who called herself Acacia, was working with her. They came to kill you and your family and to take your money.”

I blink. Did Alicia say all this before I came into the room?

“Wendy was put in an institution after killing the man she was living with in Manhattan more than a decade ago,” he goes on. “The story she gave you was nothing more than the delusions of a very unstable woman. Casey Duval was never coming. He was the man she killed.”

I don’t dare speak or even react for fear that I will burst out laughing in spite of current circumstances. That is—every single word of it—total fiction. My body is trembling wildly now. I think I may be going into shock.

First off, the story he just told is a version of mine. I escaped the man in Manhattan ten and a half years ago. Julia did not kill him, and she did not kill Casey Duval.

Rick is right about one thing, however: Casey Duval—Denton, whatever his name is—is dead. Because I ended him just like I did the others.

Not that I’m going to correct him on either count.

“After that article in the Times, she came to me,” Rick goes on with his elaborate fabrication, “with this story about how you stole her life. I knew she was lying from the beginning. That’s why I’ve been showing up at your door every day. But it’s over now, Julia,” he says, evidently taking my silence for the shock it is. “There’s no one left from the past to give you trouble. They’re all dead. Case closed. It’s all over.”

The way he stares at me as he emphasizes the word, I think I get the hidden meaning he’s attempting to convey.

“No one ever has to know the rest,” he adds in case I don’t get it.

“You knew.” I don’t know why I say the words. I should just be happy this is going my way, but I can’t simply toss it aside that easily. I have to know. Plus the shock is preventing rational reactions.

“The police are here,” he cautions. “Stay with Phillip. Let me do the talking.”

Rather than argue, I go to Phillip and ask Helen to please check on Olivia. If I’m really lucky, Olivia won’t wake up until this is over.

But is it over? I mean, really over?

Whatever Rick Howard believes, there is one thing I know for an absolute certainty: All the players who posed a threat to me are now dead.