My tears dripped hot on my cheeks. My throat closed so tightly, I had to cough out my words.

  “Then why? Why did you leave us alone at all?”

  She was mute, thinking. “Don’t have a good answer. I thought that he stopped doing things like that. I really did.”

  Shock suddenly became rage. Everything around me became a blur. If I had that knife in my hand, God help me, I would have cut her.

  “Fuck you, Rose. Fuck Papa. You let him get away with it. Like I was nothing to you. How could you? How do you sleep at night?” I grabbed my purse off the table by the Christmas tree and went for the door.

  “Does Dad know?”

  Her look told me he didn’t.

  She was the only one.

  “I made a terrible mistake,” she said.

  “A mistake?” I spat at her. “That’s what you call it?”

  “Sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  The words were all wrong. They didn’t, couldn’t, even scrape the edges of the magnitude of what she’d done to me. It was like running over some kid’s dog and telling him not to worry.

  That he could get another dog.

  Everything will be all right.

  Then I let her have it. I picked words that would sicken her.

  “Are you serious? He raped me! He stuck his nicotine-stained fingers inside me. He made me suck his cock until he came in my mouth. He fucking made me scared inside every relationship I’ve ever had. He made me doubt myself. So did you. You knew what he was capable of this whole time? Well, then, fuck you!”

  “I’ll make it up to you, Violet. I promise.”

  Promise? I was so done with her.

  Her arms flailing to stop me, I pushed her away and I slammed the door. It hit the frame so hard, it sounded like a gunshot.

  A bomb.

  I wish it had been.

  My mother, my betrayer, had kept a secret all those years.

  Which, to my way of thinking just then, was the same thing as telling a big, fat lie.

  I don’t know how I made it home that night. I was so angry and distraught as I drove over the Narrows from the Peninsula to Tacoma, I thought of ramming my car into the bridge guardrail. My hands hurt as I tightened my fingers on the wheel, fighting the urge to crash and tumble over the edge.

  I was over the edge.

  I could have killed Rose. At least throttled her for her weak, pathetic apology. I’d killed Stone and Grayson for the side of right. I was a blooming flower, or maybe a snake shedding its skin. Changed. I was stomping a boot on the cycle of abuse. Ending those men. Freeing others just like me. To try to reconcile that with my mother’s fucked-up nothingness was futile. She was the opposite of me. She had purposely locked away critical information and perpetuated an evil.

  There could be no denying she did it to save herself. Plain and simple as that. In doing so, she’d sacrificed another little girl.

  Me.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  After Everything Happened

  Rose

  In prison, waking hours are consumed by revisiting the past. I’m sure some girls think about where they went wrong, the fatal mistake they made. I’m the opposite. I think about what I did right. I play back the last conversation with Violet in the living room the night of Grayson’s murder. The anger she aimed at me was soul-crushing.

  And completely deserved.

  I lie atop my blue bedspread and close my eyes. The sounds of my unit float through the air. The girls across the hall, both in for drug trafficking, are talking about a letter one received that afternoon from her boyfriend. Not a happy letter. A corrections officer is bragging about her ski boat. Again. I hear the girl pushing a squeaky-wheeled cart with the usual spate offerings of self-help and hobbyist books.

  No crime. True or otherwise.

  Plenty on crocheting and gardening.

  I revisit my arrest.

  Detective Hoffman was at the front door three days after the murder. He was as handsome as ever. Any idiotic thought that I had about him evaporated the night my girls killed Piper’s attacker. He wasn’t alone; a woman he introduced as Detective Carol Smith stood right behind him. She was about Violet’s age but with an impassive face that didn’t betray any emotion.

  “We’re here with a search warrant, Ms. Hilliard.”

  He used to call me by my first name.

  I skimmed the paper.

  “Car is in the garage.”

  I directed them through the kitchen to the door to the garage.

  A minute later, maybe two, I heard Detective Smith’s voice.

  “Blood. Passenger’s side.”

  Then Detective Hoffman’s. “Tech’s on the way.”

  The rest of that day was ill-fitting pieces to a puzzle that I’d created with every mistake I’d ever made. Grayson’s security camera had recorded my car at the murder scene. The plates were blurred, and it took the forensic lab in Olympia to decipher the last three digits. Other teachers, former friends, said they were worried about me. Really? None had said so to me. Richard said I’d been acting strangely ever since my father died. Maybe I am? My life had been upended, and things that I didn’t want to think about wouldn’t go away. My own mother said mental illness could be a factor.

  Later, my lawyer told me that the detectives’ interviews with my girls yielded little for the prosecution. That was the saving grace. They weren’t in Gig Harbor when it happened. Both said, however, that I had talked about Piper at Christmas and had promised I would do something to help her.

  That something, both suggested, was that visit to Grayson’s place with the knife.

  The only one who thought I might not have killed anyone was Hoffman.

  When the jailers brought me to court for sentencing, the detective and I met one last time. It was in the corridor outside the courtroom. I thought he’d keep going, not really looking at me, the way people avert their eyes from the homeless. Instead, he planted his feet.

  “One thing bothers me,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Blood on the passenger side.”

  “Oh?”

  “How did it get there?”

  I repeated the answer I provided when he and Detective Smith mentioned it. “I threw my coat over on that side of the car.”

  “As you know, we never found that coat.”

  We were toe to toe then. “You took ten coats and jackets from the house.”

  His stare was unblinking. Either he was no longer trying to charm me, or I was immune to such things now.

  “Right, but none had a single spot of blood.”

  Of course, I hadn’t told him about the dumpster behind the Japanese restaurant. Violet’s and Lily’s bloody clothes were likely still there. If the police recovered them, my daughter would be put away. Maybe both of them. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Luminal lit up the passenger side of the car like fireworks over the Commencement Bay on the Fourth of July.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Seems remarkable that no blood was found on any items of clothing in your house. And certainly not any coat.”

  “Sounds like a real mystery.”

  The jailer with bad breath tugged on my shoulder. “Got to go.”

  I gave Hoffman one final look. Maybe he knew the truth and let it slide. Maybe he would do the same thing for his daughter. I know from letters from strangers that flood my cell that, as brutal as Grayson’s murder was, no one wanted to lock me up and throw away the key.

  They thanked me, lauded me.

  For something I didn’t do.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  After Everything Happened

  Violet

  Rose insists court-ordered therapy with her prison counselor is helping. I hope so. She has a lot to process. We all do. She keeps asking me to come for a family counseling session, but I keep putting it off. I have a life separate from her. Separate from everyone but Zach and Lily.

  Lily.

  She alone is the reason I’d ask God for a do-over of what happened that night. It is all I would ask for, because to erase everything Papa did to me and what I’d done to Mike Stone would eliminate the good I’d done for others like me.

  It is in my head, locked tight.

  It is always there, just below the surface.

  I just have to close my eyes and I see it.

  I was a Rorschach of blood when Lily and I sped from Grayson’s place. I let her drive. She barely said a word the whole way home. I did all the talking, filling up the space between us with a rambling dissertation on why I’d done what I’d done. The heater blasted me, and the drying blood crackled and pulled at the skin on my forearm.

  “We freed that girl,” I said. “We did what had to be done, and it felt good. After all the fucking things he’s done to little girls over a lifetime, he thought he was invincible. Like the sickness that could never be cured was a shield. Delusional. Fucked up. Dangerous.”

  My mouth ran. I told Lily about Stone in Yakima, Faraday in Hawaii. How I’d learned that letting these men go on only served to continue the disease. They were a virus infecting the children they touched.

  “Some victims will be predators,” I went on in a kind of stream of consciousness that kept her rapt and my lips moving. “Some will be fucked up for the rest of their lives, afraid to love and trust. Some won’t even know they are fucked up until it comes back to them in a fever dream that loops continuously.”

  Even with Lily’s silence, her eyes fixed on the road and not in my direction, I could tell she understood every word I was saying. I didn’t need a response. She knew from what had happened to me how the act of an abuser—sexual, physical, emotional—leaves an indelible mark on its target. It implants a GPS code that leads a life where it tells it to go. To keep secrets. To never reveal too much about what was done to you because, by doing so, it only invites another abuser to step in. Not always sexual, of course. Some abusers are those who listen and pretend to understand.

  “No one can understand. Not even you. Not completely. You know that, right?”

  She was crying.

  “This is going to be all right, Lily.”

  Mom wasn’t home when we arrived back at the house. She was on a walk. Dad, who’d left before breakfast that morning, was probably back fucking Shondra under her fake Christmas tree. I’d bet money on that one. On Christmas Eve, I’d gone into the master bathroom looking for some Advil, and noticed Dad was still using his black leather shaving kit. He hadn’t really unpacked. His place at the table on Christmas was likely just another example of the way our family dealt with reality.

  I calmly instructed Lily to open the passenger door. The less I actually touched, the better.

  “Easier cleanup,” I added.

  Still quiet, I followed Lily to the side door that led inside from the garage.

  “Get me some newspapers.”

  She did what I asked and retrieved them from the recycling bin.

  “I need you to spread them out so I can undress on top of them.”

  “Okay,” Lily said.

  She had spoken. Finally. Good, I thought. That meant she was taking this in and was fine with it. I knew she would be. Sisters know things about each other. We share a bond that can never be undone. What happened had been a secret of the highest order. One I hoped, after it was over, we’d never mention again.

  I’d lock it inside. So would she.

  Our family was adept at that.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  After Everything Happened

  Lily

  The gummies from We’re Just Buds on Bishop Boulevard are kicking in nicely. I’ve been overdoing the cannabis lately, so I’m trying to leave that indulgence for weekends only. From my bed, I watch as rain licks the windowpane. Stormy weather almost always fits my mood.

  Violet texted me last night about Mom’s continued plea for family counseling. What a joke. For one thing, we were never a family. I don’t know how my sister can forgive her. I can’t and I won’t. Counseling? Seriously messed up. I don’t need to go over things that happened the day after Christmas.

  I remember it all.

  Buzzed or drunk or some combination of the two, I will always remember.

  When we got to Grayson’s house, Violet told me to wait in the car.

  “Mom doesn’t have the guts to do this.” She opened the door and faced me head-on. “But I do.”

  Now, when I look back on that exchange, Violet’s words take on a different meaning. I thought she wanted to go see Grayson to just talk with him. Threaten him. The knife was only for show. I thought she was going to tell him that he’d better get as far away from Piper and Gig Harbor as possible. I realize now how stupid that might sound to someone—like a nosy counselor—now.

  My sister was working from a completely different reality.

  My first clue should have been that Violet told me not to bring my phone.

  “We don’t want any interruptions.”

  I told her that I could put my settings on silent.

  She wouldn’t budge. “No, we need to focus. No distractions.”

  I remained in the car, listening to the radio and thinking how boring life was without a phone. Ten minutes later, I caught sight of Violet winding her way up the walkway. The parking lights were dim, so I couldn’t really see her face.

  “Open the door, Lily,” she said. Commanded, I think now. Her voice was lower than normal, and white puffs of warm air escaped her mouth with each syllable.

  “It’s not locked.”

  “Get out of the car and come open it from the outside.”

  I didn’t get what she was talking about.

  “Now, Lily.”

  As I opened the door, the dome light illuminated the black coat she was wearing. Blood spatter covered the front like a shiny appliqué. Droplets of red mottled her face and hair. Her bare hands looked as if she’d put on red gloves.

  My heart nearly exploded.

  “Holy fuck, what happened?”

  She ignored me. “You’re going to drive.”

  “Are you all right? You’re bleeding. We have to get you to a hospital.”

  She got in the car. “Now shut the door.”

  I did as she asked—commanded again—and got behind the wheel.

  “Just drive.”

  “St. Anthony’s?”

  “Home. Right now. I’m fine, Lily. He’s not.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I cut out the cancer.”

  I stayed quiet the rest of the way. I wondered how doing the right thing meant going off somewhere to kill someone. In my silence, I knew what Violet had intended from the minute I texted her. My sister and I grew up in the same house. Yet we were nothing alike because Papa never touched me the way he touched her. It poisoned her. Changed her. Maybe modified her DNA. She wasn’t acting on a compulsion for which she had no control. She’d been rational. She’d planned it.

  She didn’t want us to bring our phones.

  Cell towers recorded user locations.

  She said we’d need to mix bleach in water to clean the car.

  We both stared straight ahead as she talked about what she’d done on her honeymoon and during a work meeting in Yakima. It was a flood of information—little pieces that neatly fit into a puzzle I hadn’t even known that I’d been putting together. How Violet had changed. How she looked. I just nodded. My heart was thumping so hard that I thought I might have a heart attack. I wished I would.

  It would save me from whatever was going to happen next.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  December 26

  Rose

  As soon as the door to the garage rumbled open, I saw Lily kneeling next to the passenger door of the car. Beside her was an orange Home Depot bucket—of something. In her hand was what appeared to be a pink cloth. My nose filled with the scent of bleach.

  “Close the door, Mom!”

  Terror filled her eyes.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Shut the door!”

  I pushed the button as though I’d been gored with a spear. My stomach dropped. Adrenaline pumped through my body. My brain raced.

  “Were you in an accident? Where’s Violet?”

  Lily wrung out the rag she’d been using. “She’s fine. In the shower now.”

  The water in the bucket was tinted red. The cloth was not a pink one but white and stained with red.

  “What’s going on?”

  My youngest daughter kept cleaning. Vigorously so. I put my hand on her shoulder to get her attention.

  “Talk to me, Lily. What happened?”

  Her focus stayed on the carpet on the floorboard of the passenger side. She started dabbing at what I knew were specks of blood.

  “Lily, talk!”

  She gave me only a brief look. “Violet did what you couldn’t, Mom. What you could never do. She stopped Piper’s molester. She saved Piper. Mom, she fucking killed him!”

  What I could never do.

  Her eyes were a wild animal’s. Scared.

  I lost my balance, and my right knee smacked the concrete. Pain surged through my body. Disoriented. Confused. The garage spun around me. Lily went about cleaning with quick, manic movements.

  I crawled toward the door to the house, hoisted myself up, and managed to get inside. I slid down the wall by the bathroom door. When the shower stopped running, I heard Violet open the door.

  This was my fault. Mine and no one else’s. I couldn’t blame my mother. Richard. Papa. The watery blood in the bucket was all mine.

  I’d done this.

  An eternity later, though likely but a minute, Violet emerged with a towel around her body and another one on her head. She appeared like she did when she was sixteen. No makeup. Beautiful. Sad eyes.

  I spoke first.

  “I’m sorry.”

  No answer. Instead, she sat down next to me and put her hand on my throbbing knee and leaned her head against my shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She gave a little nod. “Mom,” she said, “I killed someone.”

  “You snapped.”

  She shook her head. “No. I didn’t. I’ve done it before.”