The Secrets of Lily Graves (24 page)

I glanced at Matt. “Do you mind if we quickly run over to Sara's so I can say good-bye?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really.” I got back on. “Matt and I will be right over.”

“Matt? Why not just you?”

“Because that's how it is, okay?”

There was a pause. “Okay.”

I hung up and said, “Thanks.”

“Doesn't matter.” He took my hand and kissed it. “I'm in no hurry. We'll have plenty of time together after Sara leaves, right?”

For days and weeks to come, I would replay that line over and over.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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W
hat I remembered were the lights, bright and aimed directly at us.

We were on the long road out to Sara's development, which was so deserted, the city saw no need for streetlamps. I vaguely recalled flipping through my iPhone, looking for a certain song, and asking Matt a question, though I've since forgotten what.

I heard him swear. He jerked the truck to the right with such force that I was flung against the door, my seat belt cutting into my neck. The lights were incredibly bright. High beams? Everything happened in slow motion and my mind reeled with confusion. Stupidly, I wondered if he was swerving to avoid an animal or if,
somehow, he'd drifted into the opposite lane.

It's odd, the random snippets that run through your mind when you are seconds away from death.

The truck more than bounced. It flew. Matt leaned on the horn as we seemed to surreally sail past the oncoming car, crossing the center line, into the ditch. Without his quick thinking, it would have T-boned us and I would have been a goner.

We rolled into a hedge and stopped, both of us shaking. The muscles in my arms and legs were taut with tension. I couldn't catch my breath.

Matt gripped the wheel and panted. “Are you okay? Oh, Jesus, Lil.” He unclipped his seat belt and flipped on the overhead light, searching my face with such fear that I was frightened that maybe I'd been injured after all.

“I think so,” I said, tentatively touching my cheek. “How about you?”

“Guess I'm fine, but . . .” He sat back, still breathing hard. “What happened?”

I checked the side mirror. The oncoming vehicle seemed to have landed off road, its red parking lights on. “Not quite sure, but whoever almost hit us is over there.”

“God, I hope they're not hurt.” Matt reached under the seat and retrieved an industrial-looking flashlight.
Then we got out and headed across the street.

The car had gone some distance in a field that, judging from the scent of fresh grass, had been recently hayed. My new suede boots were ruined as I trudged across the damp earth, keeping a focus on the yellow circle cast by Matt's flashlight.

It illuminated the back end and the distinctive ridges of a Mercedes.

My heart clenched. I picked up my pace as we got closer, praying that it wouldn't be baby-blue, that it wouldn't be Sara's. But all hope was lost when the familiar numbers of her license plate were reflected in Matt's light.
TBX 25C.

I let out a little yelp and ran to the driver's side window, which was down. A woman was slumped over in the front seat, blond hair tangled in a rat's nest.

The odor of alcohol was overpowering. “Oh my God!” I said with a gasp. “No!”

“You know her?” Matt asked.

It didn't seem possible. “It's Sara's mom, Carol.”

Matt leaned in the window. “She's drunk.”

“Do you see any blood?”

He flashed the light around. “Nope.” He shook her shoulder. “Ma'am? Are you all right?”

Carol stirred and mumbled for us to go away.

Matt said, “That's not a good idea. How about we
drive you home?”

I pulled out my phone and dialed Sara, who answered on the first ring. “Where are you? Mom's almost home.”

“Your mother nearly ran us over on County Road,” I said, pausing. “I think she's been drinking.”

Strangely, Sara didn't sound so surprised. “Is anyone hurt?”

Matt had managed to get Carol to a sitting position, though she was batting him away and telling him to let her be.

“I think we're okay, including your mother. Should I call an ambulance?”

“Geesh, no. Mom's on prescription meds, that's the problem. If the police find her . . . Look, can you just pile her into Matt's truck and I'll go back and get the car later? As it is, I'm without wheels.”

The Mercedes was up to its front end in mud and what appeared to be leftover summer hay. This would be no easy fix. “We'll do our best.”

“I'm sorry, Lil. I'll tell you when you get here what's been going on.”

Adult issues
, Mom had said. I felt kind of crummy for being so caught up in my own crisis that I hadn't paid attention to hers. “Hang tight. We'll be right there.”

I hung up, and Matt handed me the flashlight. “I'll get the truck. You stay with her.” He jogged off, leaving me to handle the mess that was Sara's mother.

Feeling super awkward, I knelt next to the open door, wishing this hadn't happened and also reminding myself how lucky it was that everyone was alive.

“It'll be all right, Mrs. McMartin,” I said. “We're going to get you home.”

Sara's mother swiveled toward me, her face bloated and red. “Is that you, Lily?”

I forced a smile.

Her chest started heaving and I panicked, thinking maybe she was having a heart attack or internal bleeding. “Are you okay?”

“It's my fault. I never should have gotten you into this.” She was sobbing uncontrollably.

I patted her arm. “Do you think you can step out of the car? We'd like to get you home.”

She threw one leg out, then another, leaning on me harder than I expected. When Matt returned with the truck, we managed to push and pull her into the front seat. I was sweating by the time we got her secured between us.

“This is mind-blowing,” I said to Matt outside the truck while, inside, Mrs. McMartin slumped, jaw slack. “What do you think happened to her?”

“I think she's a drunk, Lil. Not much more complicated than that.”

“But she doesn't drink. Her religion forbids it.”

“Uh huh.” He scoffed. “Wasn't she drunk at the wake?”

“Yep.” I chewed my lower lip, trying to figure out what was happening in the McMartin family that would land Sara in lockdown and send her mother running for the bottle.

Matt slid behind the wheel of the Mercedes and, after an appreciative assessment of its butter-leather interior, tried to start up the car. The wheels spun in the mud, splattering his truck. And me. “The damn rain and snow from earlier this week. The ground's too soft. I'm going to have to come back and push this out.”

“I think we should get her home.” Cars were slowing, curious.

“Agreed.” He turned off the ignition, took the keys, and climbed behind the wheel.

Carol McMartin was passed out and snoring. Matt said, “Lovely.”

“Never a dull moment,” I said as we bounced out of the field onto County Road. “Not with Lily Graves.”

Sara was on the doorstep, waiting with her arms folded, when we got to her house. She kept apologizing repeatedly as Matt and I held Carol between us and got
her upstairs, Sara directing. Matt laid her on the bed and then left Sara and me to remove her shoes and tuck her under the covers, positioning her to the side in case she threw up.

“This is . . . so embarrassing,” Sara whispered, closing the bedroom door behind her.

I thumbed to where Carol was passed out. “How long has this been going on?”

She shrugged. “A while, I guess. I'm not sure. All I know is that it's one of the reasons Dad's been so anxious to get us on a mission. He's convinced that if he sticks Mom in the outback of India, she won't be able to get her hands on any meds or booze.” Sara grinned lopsidedly. “I suppose that's one advantage of being adopted, huh? Don't carry that alcoholism DNA.”

I opened my arms, and she fell into them, hugging me tight. “I don't know what I'm going to do without you, Lil. You've seen me at my best and now my worst. You're the only one who knows all my secrets.”

“Ditto.” And then I had a brilliant idea. “Why don't you come live with me? We have plenty of room at our house, and that way you can finish up senior year.”

“I can't. I wish I could.” She gave me a squeeze. “Thanks, but Dad needs my help with Brandon.”

Now I understood why it had been Sara's duty to get her little brother ready for school and make his
lunch. She'd had been shouldering all this parental responsibility for years and I'd been too self-centered to notice. Talk about being a crappy friend.

“Hey!” Matt called from the foyer. “If we're gonna get your mom's car, Sara, we better do it now before someone sees it and calls the cops.”

I headed downstairs, with Sara following. “Let me go,” she said, unzipping a suitcase and removing a pair of rain boots. “It's my car, and the cops won't be suspicious if I tell them I avoided hitting a deer or whatever and ran off the road.”

Matt and I exchanged glances. He would have much preferred me, but Sara did have a point.

“Just keep an eye on my mother, okay? Dad should be home any minute and then he can take care of her.”

Matt abruptly stepped past Sara and boldly kissed me full on the mouth. “I'll be back soon. Don't start getting safe on me.”

I smiled and kissed him back. “Not a chance.”

Sara, eyes wide, quickly averted her gaze and went out into the night. The door closed with a slam and Matt's truck started up, rumbling down the driveway. I went back to the kitchen and sat on a stool.

The house had been stripped bare. The dozens of family photos had been removed from the white walls, along with Mrs. McMartin's watercolors of sunsets and
her needlepointed
SINCE GOD COULD NOT BE EVERYWHERE, HE CREATED MOTHERS.

Everything was being dismantled, I thought. This house. This family. Sara and me. Our whole world.

There was an awful retching coming from the master bedroom. I ran upstairs and opened the door to a sickening odor of vomit. Mrs. McMartin was crying, her front covered in puke.

“Help,” she pleaded.

Bringing my hand to my nose, I ran to the bathroom, grabbed a roll of toilet paper, and returned to find that she'd undressed down to her underwear, her clothes heaped on the bed. “We need to hide these before Sara's father finds out,” she mumbled. “I need a shower.”

She stumbled into the bathroom and closed the door with a slam. I flicked on a bedside table and, seeing that the sheets had been ruined too, decided to wash them as well. The shower turned on. There was more vomiting.

I yanked back the comforter and the top sheet. The fitted sheet, however, was fastened to something at the footboard. Slipping my hand between the mattress and the box spring to unsnag it, I cried in pain as something sharp cut into my finger.

Blood streamed down bright red as I cursed
whatever had gotten me. A nail? Wrapping my finger in the sheet to stem the bleeding, I hoisted up the corner of the mattress and stared dumbly at what lay before my eyes.

Two silver scalpels and what appeared to be a man's shirt, speckled with dark-brown splotches of dried blood.

I shrieked and let the mattress fall. The shower turned off and Carol stuck her head out. “Oh, Lily, you don't need to do that. I'll change the sheets. You just go on and say good-bye to Sara.”

Then she closed the door and turned on the water again. Did she know what was hidden at the foot of bed? Did she know . . .
everything
?

I collapsed on the floor, reeling. Facts that had seemed so disjointed before now fell into place, creating a picture almost too gruesome to be true. Dr. Ken was a doctor. Erin had interned in his office the summer before. He was older and married, and naturally she didn't want anyone knowing they were having an affair.

Neither did he, especially after he learned she was pregnant. Allie had said the father was pissed. How pissed?

I thought of the scalpels secreted away in the bed.
That
pissed.

Poor Sara.

For a second, I didn't know what to do. My first instinct was to leave everything, go outside, and wait for Matt and Sara. I could claim that I felt ill and had to go home. I could pretend I never saw what I saw.

But if I did that, then Erin's killer would be in India by Monday, never to return.

Think, my brain commanded. Use your logic.

I went to the balcony off the master bedroom and unlatched the double doors, stepping outside to escape the stench of that bedroom. Sara and I used to pretend this was Rapunzel's tower when we were little girls because the balcony overlooked a dramatic wooded slope that bottomed out at the railroad track.

The same railroad track that ran behind Erin's house, I realized. Of course, that was why the last car the Krezkys saw was Kate's, because Dr. Ken came and left on foot. He had only to travel maybe a quarter mile at most before reaching Erin's backyard.

Erin would have let him in her sliding door, too, because this was a man she trusted—possibly loved. Her parents were out of town. Mrs. McMartin was probably passed out, drunk, so Dr. Ken would have had no problem slipping away unnoticed.

That Saturday night, knowing she'd be alone for hours, he'd brought with him the tools of her
destruction in case she didn't comply with his wish. An abortion? Out of the question for both of them, since Erin was super Catholic and certainly that conflicted with Dr. Ken's religion.

Then again, so did murder.

Mrs. Krezky gave a statement to police that she'd peeked inside the Donohue house and saw Erin arguing with a male. The only problem was, why would she have told Sara he looked like Matt when Dr. Ken was lankier, like Alex Bone, with a dark beard?