Page 132 of Poison Wood

“You’re not going to get what you wanted, though. I lied about having that coat. I didn’t lie about what was in the pocket. The police have it now.”

Eleanor’s smile falters. Bile rises in my throat as I raise my gaze to her head. A fist full of blond hair.

An animal instinct tells me to get ready.

Rosalie reacts first. She lunges for her shotgun, but Summer moves a second faster and kicks it away. In one deft move, Eleanor retrieves it and holds it up against her shoulder like the hunter she is. My father had called her the best. The one with the most patience.

I move my body between my father and Eleanor’s raised gun. His shotgun is only a few feet away.

“Rosalie,” Eleanor says as if she is speaking to a child. “Your brother killed Crowley.”

“Johnny knew it was you,” Rosalie says. “He saw you that night. The police didn’t believe him back then. He couldn’t prove it. Until that coat.”

I look between Eleanor and Summer. The coat Johnny hid, thinking it would incriminate him. The hair in the pocket. Thepregnancy test. The love note Heather saved. How far would Eleanor Chamberlain go to protect her daughter and herself?

“Summer,” I say.

Something creaks on the staircase above us.

Summer raises her head and looks at me. “I was the idiot,” she says in a barely audible whisper. “I didn’t mean for it to go that far. I was just flirting, you know. I was just trying to prove something, get out of Poison Wood, but I needed money and”—she releases a slow, shaky breath—“then Heather found out I was pregnant.”

Eleanor’s jaw clenches. “That’s enough.”

Summer’s jaw matches her mother’s. She’s no longer chewing her fingernails. “It is enough.” Her voice strengthens. “I’m done.”

Eleanor’s eyes darken. I catch Rosalie looking toward the stairs. Johnny is pressed against the wall near the bottom step. He made it down those stairs as if he were Summer’s size.

“I’m done lying.” Summer turns in my direction. “Heather walked in that cottage at the wrong time. She saw us all fighting, yelling. I had that stupid knife I kept under my pillow. I didn’t mean to cut her with it. Crowley grabbed me.”

Eleanor looks at Summer like she wants to kill her. “Shut up, Summer.”

Summer gasps but doesn’t stop talking. “Heather grabbed the shovel. She was just trying to get him to let go of me. After she hit him, he was still alive.”

“Stop!” Eleanor yells.

Summer flinches and looks at her mother. “Until she gave him the insulin.”

Now it’s Eleanor’s turn to gasp. “No,” she says in a whisper.

Summer trembles but keeps her eyes on me. “I know why Heather called you. She trusted you. She called me too. She said we needed to talk to you together, come clean since the skull had been found. But I refused to go.”

I stare at Eleanor Chamberlain. Summer had said at our lunch her mother was diabetic. And insulin, when injected in a nondiabetic, is poison. Did Eleanor take her insulin to Miami as well?

“I went to prison instead of you.”

We all turn toward the stairs. Johnny towers over us. Eleanor faces him, her finger on the trigger.

“Someone has to pay for that,” Johnny says.

Eleanor points the gun back toward Rosalie. “It might be your sister who pays if she doesn’t kick that gun over to me.” She nods to my father’s shotgun near Rosalie’s feet.

“Keep that gun on me,” Johnny says to Eleanor. His eyes dart to his sister. “Rosalie, do what she says.”

But instead of kicking my father’s gun, Rosalie bends down and grabs it.

A thundering boom echoes on the cinder block walls around us. Summer screams, and Rosalie falls to the concrete floor, blood pooling around her.

“No!” Johnny yells and lurches toward Eleanor.