Page 67 of Haven't Killed in Years
“What doesthatmean?” asked Natalie.
“I mean it’s interesting. Don’t get mad about it; it’s not a bad thing. I like the way you think about things. Or don’t think about them.” Gwen chuckled.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Oh my God.” Gwen threw her head back. “No!” She tossed her pillow playfully across the room at Natalie. “Trust me, you will know if I don’t like you.”
“Okay,” said Natalie, sliding off her bed to dutifully return Gwen’s pillow.
Gwen grabbed it and shoved it back under her head while Natalie returned to her own bed.
“I think you should try writing in a journal,” suggested Gwen. “Maybe if you write things down, it will help you think. It will give you more ideas.”
“About what?”
“Anything. Your life. Maybe you won’t sayI don’t knowto every question I ask. Plus, we’ve figured out it’s much better for you not to keep things bottled up, don’t you think?”
“Yeah.”
“Just try it. It couldn’t hurt. Remember, we aren’t going to be in this place forever!” Gwen barely got the sentence out before she burst out laughing. Then both girls giggled until there was a familiar tap against their door.
“All right, girls, that’s enough…lights out.”
“Ugh.” Gwen rolled her eyes and flipped off her bedside table lamp. “Good night,” she whispered.
“Good night,” Natalie whispered back.
Gwen was asleep within minutes. Natalie was used to Gwen’s snoring now and even found it comforting. This last-resort lock-and-key children’s institution had turned out to be the place where Natalie could finally feel at home. And, dare she say, optimistic?
Thirty-Five
Gwen
All I thought aboutwas killing Natalie. What it would feel like. What it would mean. How I could continue justifying that it was nothing like what my father did when he took a life. How I could go back to work and to Painting Pots and on dates with Brian knowing I had killed again, telling myself it was different this time.
I was glad I had finally visited my father, confronting what I had long been afraid would happen if I did so. It felt good to defy him, to deprive him of what he wanted, but my mental state was like that of a zoo animal set loose into the wild—appreciative of my newfound freedom but ill prepared to survive on my own. It didn’t help that I was focusing so much of my attention on Natalie and what I was going to have to do to her. The mental gymnastics required to feel free from my father while planning a murder were causing my brain to overheat.
I craved being near Elyse. She was a release valve for the pressure in my head. I had earned her trust somehow—I was the worstpossible person in the world for her to trust, but she did. She didn’t know I was Marin Haggerty, but she’d figured out that Gwen Tanner was dark and fucked-up too. My parents dying in that fire must have really affected me, because I was not appalled by her plans or the callousness with which she discussed them. I encouraged her to talk about killing Natalie, letting her say all the things out loud so that I didn’t need to think them alone.
I sat in Elyse’s aesthetically dull kitchen. I watched her run a sponge around the edges of the sink, pausing in spots to scrub hardened grossness away.
“I was thinking about motive,” she mused. “If I take a bunch of things like jewelry and her wallet, the cops will think it was a robbery gone bad.”
“Marin is too much in the public eye right now,” I cautioned. “It’s going to be suspicious no matter what you do.”
“They’re going to assume it’s whoever did the other killings.”
“But how are you going to actually do it? The act?”
“Stab her?” Elyse kept scrubbing at the counter that was already spotless five minutes ago. “What do you think?”
“I think stabbing is really personal,” I said. “You’ll have to be so close to her and she’s going to look you in the eyes. She’ll beg you not to do it. If you panic and don’t finish it, you’re done. You’ll go to jail and she’ll be a hero.”
Elyse pulled the sponge away from the counter to look at me. Her face was unaltered by my attempt to set the chilling scene. “I can stab her from behind,” she suggested. “I would surprise her.”
I had to remember who I was dealing with. She had seen her whole family dead, splayed out, covered in blood. The thought of her nemesis in that condition was not going to spook her. My only chance was logic. “You have to hit an organ or cut a vein. There are lots of places you can survive a stab wound.”
She was scrubbing again. “What do you think? I should shoot her? I don’t know how to get an untraceable gun.”
