Slowly it dawned on Alexia where this was going.
“I’d heard rumors about a woman,” said Lucy. “Someone Billy had loved in his youth and apparently still carried a torch for. He was drinking quite heavily by then, and he used to talk about her—about you, Toni—in bars and at pool halls, to anyone who’d listen. I dimly remembered the name from the trial. Gilletti. But it wasn’t until I finally saw an old picture that I was able to put two and two together. Well, you can imagine my shock. My horror. You, my neighbor, probably my closest friend in the world. You and Hamlin had been lovers! You were there when Nicko died! Now I finally knew why Teddy had been tracking Billy all these years, just like I was. It was because of you. I was torn at that point, I’ll admit it. Billy had gone to England to try and find you. I guess he wanted to warn you. Maybe he sensed you were next in line, I don’t know. But the truth is, I hadn’t decided.”
“Decided what?” Alexia asked.
“Whether to kill you or not. Oh, I scared you a little. With the phone calls, although those worked a lot better on Billy . . . and getting someone to do away with that awful little rat of a dog that used to follow Teddy everywhere. What was his name?”
“Danny.” Alexia felt sick.
“But I honestly didn’t know if I had the heart to go through with killing you. The problem was, I liked you. Loved you even. Our kids grew up together. You were like a sister to me. It was hard.”
Is she asking for my sympathy?
“But once again the Lord opened my eyes. He brought you to me, here, on this island, and you told me, told me to my face, that it was you all along. You were the one who let my brother drown! Billy Hamlin, the man I’d devoted my entire adult life to destroying—he was merely your accomplice. An afterthought.” Lucy shook her head in disgust. “Can you imagine what that felt like, Toni? Can you even imagine? I’d shared dinners with you. Laughed with you. Cried with you.”
“Terrorized me,” said Alexia angrily. “Butchered my dog.” Lucy’s cloying self-pity was too much to bear, like being drowned in a vat of cream. “Your brother’s death was an accident. An accident.”
“No! It was murder. The court said so.”
“The court? The court that convicted the wrong man, you mean?” Alexia scoffed. “What the hell did that court know about the truth? They wanted a scapegoat and Billy Hamlin provided one. I was there when Nicholas died, Lucy. I don’t need to guess what happened. I know. It was an accident and that’s a fact.”
“Be quiet!” Lucy commanded. Walking over to Alexia, she kicked her hard in the ankle, her heavy hiking boot zeroing in on the pain like a drone missile. Alexia screamed in agony. “You do not speak, do you hear me? You do NOT speak. You listen. You’re not in Parliament now. No one’s hanging on your every word. There’s no one left who even cares if you live or die. I’m talking now.”
The pain in her leg was so excruciating, Alexia didn’t even have the strength to nod. Instead, whimpering quietly, she allowed Lucy’s insane ramblings to wash over her.
“After that, I knew I had to kill you. Of course, in the end that taxi driver, Drake, almost beat me to it! Can you imagine if he’d succeeded? But the Lord didn’t let that happen. He spared you such a clean, painless death. He was saving you for me. He knew I had to make you suffer first, just like Billy had suffered. And that wasn’t easy, what with your position and all.” She spat the word out tauntingly. “For a while I wondered if I’d done the wrong thing by persecuting Billy Hamlin for all those years. But then I figured, no. Billy Hamlin lied for you. He protected you. He knew you were responsible for Nicko’s death and he did everything he could to help you evade justice. So now you both had to suffer equally. Billy had to know what it felt like to lose a child. And so did you.”
“Michael.” Alexia breathed the word softly.
“Oh, yes, well, Michael.” Lucy waved a dismissive hand. “Michael survived, unfortunately. Although I try to comfort myself with the knowledge that he’s as good as dead. Perhaps, in a way, that’s more painful,” she mused.
Alexia felt a rush of hatred so strong she could have choked on it.
“My biggest disappointment wasn’t that your worthless son survived,” Lucy continued. “It was that Billy Hamlin never got to see his child die. After decades spent patiently watching and waiting, biding my time, I was robbed of the chance to make Billy suffer the ultimate loss. Some junkie in London stuck a knife in his heart and gave him a clean, easy death.”
Lucy shook her head bitterly. The evil spewing out of her mouth was breathtaking.
“That was hard to take.”
“I’ll bet,” said Alexia, through gritted teeth. The pain in her ankle was unbearable. “But you had Jennifer Hamlin murdered anyway. Just for the hell of it. A wholly innocent young woman.”
“Aren’t you listening to me?” Lucy screeched. “That bastard never got to see his daughter’s death, her suffering, the way that my mother had to with Nicko. He’d already evaded so much justice. You both had. I had to put things right. An eye for an eye . . . it was what God wanted. One child’s death deserves another.”
There was no point trying to reason with Lucy. Alexia could see that now. Years of grief had been carefully nurtured till they morphed into hatred, then rage, and ultimately psychosis. Yet she couldn’t allow Lucy to end her life without striking back, without making Lucy suffer in some small way for what she’d done to Michael, and all the other victims.
“You talk about truth,” Alexia said. “But you still don’t know the truth. After all those years of watching and waiting, you missed so much! It’s pathetic.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Billy Hamlin wasn’t killed by ‘some junkie.’ ”
“Yes, he was. The police report said so. He was stabbed by an addict looking for cash.”
“Rubbish,” Alexia taunted. “The police didn’t have a clue who did it. They still don’t. But I do. It was Teddy!”
A look of profound confusion passed across Lucy Meyer’s face.
“No. That’s not possible.”
“Of course it’s possible. It’s a fact.” Alexia relished twisting the knife. “He confessed to me privately, after he was charged with killing Andrew Beesley. He did it to protect me, to protect our family. Teddy thought Billy was trying to blackmail me, you see. He knew the truth all along and he forgave me. So after all those years of waiting, Teddy beat you to the punch!”
“Shut up!” Lucy shouted. “I don’t believe you.”
Alexia smiled. “Yes, you do.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. Who cares? Hamlin’s dead, his daughter’s dead. And soon you’re going to join them.” Reaching into her backpack. Lucy pulled out a set of handcuffs. “Get on your knees.”
Alexia shook her head.
“DO IT!” Lucy pressed the barrel of the gun to Alexia’s temple.
Alexia said calmly, “I can’t do it, Lucy. My ankle. I can’t move.”
“Fine,” Lucy snapped. Lifting up her own left foot, she stamped down hard on Alexia’s ankle. The last thing Alexia heard was her own screams as her bones shattered. Then everything went black.
Summer stopped and listened, as still and alert as a deer in the forest.
Was that a seagull shrieking? Or a human scream?
She froze, hoping, praying to hear it again. But there was nothing.
She’d walked these paths before with her mother, but not since her teens. They were more of a maze than she remembered them, and the heat, combined with her own exhaustion and panic, made it hard to concentrate.
She tried not to think about her mother’s letter. Part suicide note, part confession, it was the rambling product of a truly addled, broken mind. The tone shifted wildly throughout. There was the matter-of-factness with which she wrote about Michael—I know it’ll hurt you darling, but I’m afraid it had to be done—the eerie biblical references woven through the text that showed how wholly deranged and psychotic Lucy had become. She’s ill, Summer thought. She needs help. But nothing could excuse or conceal the bald facts of what her mother had done, and what she intended to do.
I have to find her. I have to.
If she sees the police, she’ll panic.
Summer was close to the ocean now, could hear the rhythmic crashing of the waves against the cliffs. A crunch beneath her feet made her stop. She stooped down and picked up an empty plastic water bottle. It was Nantucket Springs, the brand her mother bought.