Page 139 of Tear Me Apart

It is his turn to have a family. It is his turn to have someone to love.

Hours are spent in this loop. Hours wondering what the police are saying to Lauren Wright inside Juliet’s home. Hours wondering how he could have let all of this happen. Hours berating himself for not trusting his instincts. He knew something was wrong with Lauren the moment he met her.

As dawn breaks, he bangs through the doors onto the oncology floor. A fine ripple of tension is moving from person to person as some sort of news spreads.

Parks sees him and starts down the hall. It is clear he has something to say. Zack glances at the television screen, immediately assuming something has changed. He is right.

The blinding flashes of light from a hovering helicopter turn the scene into a strobe. It’s like a movie set, and he knows by the stiffness in Parks’s stride that they are hitting Juliet’s town house hard, with Lauren inside. Negotiations have failed. They have decided to breach, and things rarely down go well when the SWAT team starts throwing smoke grenades into homes.

There is a television with the volume raised in the alcove outside the nurses’ station. He stops to watch, Kat glued to his side, trembling as if she, too, is under attack.

Men in SWAT gear run toward the town house. A small fire starts in the corner of the screen, almost like a flame inside a trashcan. The flames grow, he can see them rising behind the glass, the curtains catching.

Juliet’s home is on fire.

When Parks is five feet away, a long, low alarm starts going off. For a second Zack thinks it’s coming from the television until the fire alarms on the floor start to flash, a sharp white strobe, eerily similar to what he’s just been watching. Parks stops and looks over his shoulder, mouth agape. Zack tries to process what he’s seeing with what he’s hearing.

Fire on the screen.

Fire here?

Doctors and nurses appear, pushing people out of the way, and suddenly people are running, making phone calls. Some seem panicked. Some are calm.

And over the loudspeakers, a robotic voice tells everyone to evacuate the building immediately.

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The wig is black, a sharp bob, one Lauren used for Halloween the year they went to the costume party, she and Jasper, dressed as Mia Wallace and Vince Vega fromPulp Fiction. Juliet borrowed it, bless her. It was in the town house’s garage, in the big box that held things from their mother’s house that Lauren hadn’t wanted and Juliet couldn’t—or wouldn’t—part with. Their mother’s box. Their mother’s car. Juliet always keeps things in top-notch running order. She jokes she takes the car out on Sundays like a little old lady.

Convenient, finding these things in the clean darkness.

Dressed as she is, in the wig and a bit of bright makeup, Lauren walks directly into the hospital. No one gives her a second glance. She is just another person with a cross to bear—a woman on her way to visit a sick friend, or perhaps a nurse starting a shift after a date, her scrubs in her locker.

Once she’s past the first-floor gift shop, she ducks into the stairwell and runs up the two flights to the oncology floor. She stops for a moment, catches her breath. She has one chance at this. One chance to say goodbye.

Her life as she knows it is over. There is no going back.

She is furious with Juliet. Why couldn’t she have died at the house? This would be so much easier. Lauren would be the only voice people would hear. And her story was one she was certain would elicit sympathy.

More importantly now, what state is Juliet in? Lauren will find out soon enough. Juliet knows more than she realizes. Silencing her is the only choice. Yes, Lauren is guilty. Yes, she might even get arrested and go to jail, if this goes wrong.

But there are secrets no one knows, no one but Juliet. They can’t come out.

Mitigate the circumstances, as her ex-husband used to say.

Until Mindy got sick, she hadn’t thought of Kyle Noonan in a very long time. Better off without him, the fucking bastard.

Kyle’s leering face—oh, how many times has she pictured him dead? Bloated from the water, red-faced from the carbon monoxide that backed up and poisoned his lungs. His death was deserved, more so than all the rest combined.

These thoughts lead her to an image of Jasper’s kind, loving face, smiling down at her, Mindy in his arms, and she chokes back what might have become a sob in a lesser woman. He will be hurt in this, there’s no way he won’t. She must mitigate the circumstances for him as well. Protect him.

What’s most important is to protect Mindy. Mindy is the only thing that matters. The truth, and the lies, the slights and the secrets, the long shadows of Bennett Thompson and Kyle Noonan and Vivian Armstrong—everything that’s happened over the years is irrelevant now. The sacrifices she’s made for her daughter are worth it.

Lauren is prepared for the worst, but is hoping for the best. This is how she’s lived her whole life. How she’s managed to get this far.

Another seventeen minutes won’t change anything. She really should make sure there are no loose ends.

Breath caught, she thinks it through. Her moment of weakness, confessing to her sister... Yes. This is the right way. The only way.