Page 71 of On a Quiet Street

“We’re gonna walk home. Now. Got it? Pull any shit, and I have no problem pushing this into a kidney,” he says, looking at the knife. “I may go down, but at least you won’t have Avery,” he says, and I lose my breath.

The pain and the smell of his breath in my face as he spits threats are familiar as rain, but no matter how many times I find myself here, I still will never understand the sick mind of someone like him. Why he needs absolute command over someone to fulfill a fantasy. I always thought it could have been anyone he targeted at that resort that day. If it were anyone else, maybe I’d be free. But he’d rather go to prison forever just to hurt me—just to make sure I was separated from the only person I love. He’s an absolute monster.

“Okay,” I say, “we’ll go. We want to go,” and he nods to the open sliding doors. I hold sobbing Avery against my chest and take a step outside. He follows behind, the knife against the skin between my shoulder blades.

All of a sudden, we hear sirens, and he stops in his tracks. They’re distant. Maybe headed this way, maybe not, but that moment of hesitation gives me an opening. He’s dropped his arm and is looking up. His guard is down. I turn and dart past him as he looks over the fence to see if they’re close. I run inside the glass doors, slamming them shut and locking them behind me. I try to catch my breath. I can’t tell if it’s me or Avery howling, but I put her down on a chair so I can breathe. I hunch over with my palms on my knees and try to calm myself enough to think. He could kick that glass in any second, but I need to breathe first. I just need to—

And then I see Paige walking down the stairs in a bathrobe with her wet hair plastered to the sides of her face, carrying a shotgun. I see Lucas see her. She walks right past me, and Avery screams as the sirens shriek, getting closer and closer and hurting her ears. Lucas stops kicking the glass door when Paige aims the shotgun at it, but he laughs when he takes her in.

“You that little bitch who broke into my house?” He snorts. The look on his face goes from mockery to fear when Paige flings open the glass doors and aims the barrel of the gun at him. She walks out into her yard slowly, keeping her aim. He backs up and stumbles over a rosebush but then regains his composure and starts to run. When I see Paige move closer to him as he runs away, I don’t know what she’ll do.

“The police are coming!” I say. She can’t shoot a man in the back. But then he trips on a low row of barbed wire around the lettuce meant to keep rabbits away. He falls and bloodies his shins. When he gets up, he’s facing Paige. She stands near her beloved Adirondack chairs with the gun pointing at Lucas, his hands held up in surrender.

“Okay! Fuck!” is all he says. The police will be here in seconds, and she can hold him there until they arrive. She looks back at me and Avery, who’s still screaming and red in the face. She turns to Lucas, and without one word, she pulls the trigger. A spot of red blooms on his chest and expands, and then he falls to the ground, soundlessly.

Paige holds the gun still in her outstretched hands, and I see her whole body shake uncontrollably. I look at Lucas’s body, still and lifeless. I hear Avery’s cries and the sirens so close now. Are they coming to us? How? It’s so loud. Paige doesn’t move. I think she’s in shock.

She’s saved me. He can never come back now. I hear car doors slam and the sirens stop. Cora’s voice is calling my name. She’s banging on the front door. It’s happening so fast and in slow motion at the same time. I see a drop of blood fall onto the back of my hand, and I reach up to touch the gash on my head from that first blow Lucas gave me. No one can know he had tried to flee and had his hands up when he was shot. This was self-defense. They’ll see me and know it was. He came for me, and I need to finish this.

I take the gun from Paige. She doesn’t move to stop me, she just stares at the dead body. I hold it in my trembling hands and point it down at his body just as police officers, followed by a distraught Cora, push their way through the brush at the side of the house and into the back garden. Once they see me with the gun, they draw theirs out of caution, but I drop it immediately and fall to my knees.

Paige rushes to my side and puts her arms around me. I know they will separate us to ask questions, so I grip her hand tightly and look in her eyes. “I shot him. I had to.” She gives a slight nod of her head and squeezes my hand back.

“You had to,” she agrees.

“It’s over,” I say again and again, on my hands and knees in the muddy earth. “It’s over.”

EPILOGUE

ONE YEAR LATER

NICOLA

I’m on my way out the door when it comes. The postman asks me to sign, and then casually nods and walks off like he hasn’t handed me my future in an envelope. I push it into my handbag with shaky hands and place Avery into her pram.

The familiar, salty breeze from the Celtic Sea is bitter as I pull a blanket up around Avery and make my way toward the pier. Since returning to Cornwall, I never take one solitary thing for granted, not the cold drizzle or the perpetually gloomy sky. I even smile at the vendors, the pushy fortune-teller who hollers for us to come inside, the elderly man at the pasty shop, bent over a small chalkboard, writing out the daily specials in block letters, and the smiling, portly woman at the bakery kiosk where I stop for tea and two blueberry scones. I hand one to Avery, and we sit on a weathered bench facing the sea. I breathe it in and savor it.

I pull out the contents of the envelope, and my hand flutters to my chest when I see it. I think of Cora and Paige. None of us stayed in Brighton Hills. Last month Cora sent me a photo of herself in front of a Sold sign on a beach bungalow in Fort Lauderdale after dropping Mia off at the FSU dorms, and Paige said she and Grant should have left that house a long time ago. I understand the need to get as far away as possible. Paige and Grant will visit us here over the Christmas holiday and then maybe Maine, Paige told her. They could move there or Cape Cod; they haven’t decided yet.

I never expected this. There was no trial because the DA didn’t prosecute: the evidence of self-defense, along with eyewitnesses supporting that claim, didn’t merit one. The history of abuse was documented and undeniable. So that was it. I was just so happy it was over. That was enough.

But the money. I didn’t ask for it, but here it is in my hands. The statute that prohibits a spouse from collecting on life insurance covers unlawful and intentional killing, but when it’s self-defense and the state doesn’t prosecute, it does not apply, as it turns out. Plus, there was the estate. There is a part of me that doesn’t want it because of what having it means, but there’s the other part of me that thinks it’s a sort of poetic justice. I look at the number on the check, and it just doesn’t seem real. I examine the back, the watermark, then the amount again. I close my eyes and clutch it to my chest.

I’m free.