Page 33 of The Birthday Girl
“I should have killed you both years ago,” Tahlia said, the words soft as feather down. “But I thought maybe if I waited, you’d eventually understand me. Accept me. That was childish.”
“You were always a monster. I knew it then, and I know it now. Danielle and I used to talk about how your eyes never looked alive.” Her teeth clacked together with each tremor as the boat sliced through the black, windless night. “I prayed every day that you’d run away, but no. You stayed.”
“Tisha!” Steve spat, astounded by his wife’s admission.
Tahlia waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t bother taking up for me now. It’s too late. You’re still dying today, no matter what.”
Steve’s voice strangled itself, the words choking on salt and guilt. “Tahlia, you’re my daughter. I never. I never meant—” But the sentence collapsed, as if even he couldn’t bear the hollowness at its center.
Tahlia’s mouth curled at the corners, the moonlight, fractured by the rippling water, casting a silvery cage across her face.
“Intent is nothing to the drowned, Dad. You watched me go under, year after year, and you did nothing. Not even when she—” Tahlia pointed at her mother, chained and slack with terror— “told the world I was a weirdo.”
“Danielle will be looking for us,” Tisha said, her voice desperate but hoarse. “She’ll call the police. You’ll rot in jail.”
Tahlia shook her head, the movement slow enough to be condescending.
“Danielle won’t even notice you’re gone for at least a week.
That gold-digging bitch is too focused on finding Tyriq to worry about the likes of you two.
And really,” her smile curved slowly and mercilessly, “do you want to waste your final moments talking about the more worthless child?”
Tisha’s body shuddered with the violence of her fury, but her tongue failed her. Steve, slumped and sagging, let his head drop forward in defeat. The lines in his face, once softened by drink and sun, now deepened into a portrait of disappointment.
Tahlia stood, her silhouette tall and regal against the smallness of the boat’s interior.
The sound of their chains clinking together as they struggled to move was, to her, the finest jazz, every clatter a perfect note of nostalgia.
She let the moment stretch, the tension rising to a shrill, exquisite height.
“I always loved the ocean,” she mused, looking out into the open space. “There’s something honest about it. It doesn’t lie, and it doesn’t pretend to love you. It just swallows what doesn’t belong and keeps moving.”
She stepped closer to her parents, and the chain between their legs rattled against the deck as they scrambled backward until their spines pressed against the wall.
Moonlight spilled through the cabin window in broken patterns, casting her silhouette across their huddled forms. Her shoulders spanned the width of both their trembling bodies, her head nearly touching the low ceiling in the projection, and for the first time since she was eight, she looked down at her mother's face and saw fear in those eyes instead of disgust.
Tisha’s chest rose and fell in frantic jerks, her eyes wide with the realization that her voice, her power, meant nothing here. “Tahlia, I-m so—” she started to apologize, but the rest of her words dissolved into a gasp as Tahlia's palm connected with her cheek.
Steve tried to lift his head again, words catching like stones in his throat. “Baby… please—”
“Baby?” Tahlia echoed, her laugh slicing through the air, cold and humorless. “You called me that my whole life, but you let her break me down to nothing. You let her brand me a freak, and you let me drown in misery, Dad. You just stood there, smiling and pretending nothing was happening.”
Tahlia bent gracefully, retrieving the slim needle from her clutch that she had set on the table. She held it up between two fingers, admiring its gleam.
“Intent is nothing to the drowned, remember? But don’t worry. I’ll make sure you don’t hurt. Much.”
Steve shook his head weakly, his lips moving without sound. Tisha’s eyes flared, hatred burning through her terror until the needle kissed the skin of her arm. She stiffened, a strangled sound caught in her throat, before her body sagged against the chain.
Steve’s turn came with no hesitation. The sting, the shudder, then the slack collapse.
Tahlia exhaled, serene now, as if releasing years of weight. “Happy anniversary,” she whispered, her voice tender enough to curdle blood.
One by one, she dragged their immobilized bodies to the deck. Tahlia's shoulders burned as she heaved, the dead weight scraping against the rough wood.
At the edge of the boat, she paused, chest heaving.
Moonlight caught the silver ripples below, stretching toward infinity.
She rolled her mother over the side. The water opened, then closed with a wet slap that sent droplets flying back onto Tahlia's cheeks.
Her father followed moments later, his body turning once in the air before disappearing beneath the surface with a sound that clapped like distant thunder.
The surface shuddered, then stilled. In the silence that followed, Tahlia let herself collapse on the damp deck, arms trembling and lungs hungry for air scented with salt and finality. Long minutes passed. She counted the heartbeat drag of the moon’s shadow across the little waves left behind.
Inside the cabin, the champagne bottle lolled on its side and gave a plaintive clink against the glass. The gift boxes, their ribbons strangely untouched, sat like relics of a past she was too empty to grieve.
The cabin glowed with the blue pulse of Tahlia’s wristwatch, the only artificial light for miles.
The sea was calm now, the stars indifferent to the little tragedy staged on their surface.
Cold wind stung her cheeks and dried the sweat at her temples.
She pressed the heel of one palm into her eye socket until she saw bursts of white, then stood, stretching her arms to the sky.
There was still work to do. She checked the horizon.
The shore was a distant rumor, just a faint chain of lights gold-threaded on the black.
The boat bobbed in place, engine idling, a beast awaiting commands.
She walked to the helm and thumbed the throttle, easing the boat into a preordained circle.
The slow arc of the boat brought Tahlia miles from any witness.
She cut the engine and listened as the silence returned, so total that the universe felt briefly abandoned.
Then she went below and opened a storage locker behind the galley where she’d hidden her final surprise.
She checked the digital timer on the homemade device.
It was an ugly tangle of wires and a fat, taped block of C-4, courtesy of an old client in procurement who hadn’t asked enough questions.
The countdown ticked relentlessly, glowing red in the dark: 00:44:32.
She smiled, satisfied, and carried the device to the center of the hull, affixing it to the anchor post where it would shatter the craft’s spine when the time came.
There would be nothing left for the Coast Guard to find but a slick of white paint, a few bobbing glass shards, and the legend of what had become of the Banks family.