As Good as Dead — Chapter no 49

“Joshua, eat your peas.”

Pip smiled as she watched her dad speaking in his mock-warning voice, opening his eyes comically wide.

“I just don’t like them today,” Josh complained, pushing them around his plate, kicking his feet out against Pip’s knees under the table. Normally she’d tell him to stop, but this time she didn’t mind. This time was the last, in an hour full of lasts, and Pip wouldn’t take any of them for granted. Study them, sear them into her brain to make the memories last decades. She’d need them in there.

“That’s because I made them,” her mom said, “and I don’t add a pound of butter,” with a sharp look across at her dad.

“You know,” Pip said to Josh, ignoring her own plate, “peas are meant to make you better at soccer.”

“No, they aren’t,” Josh said in his I’m ten not stupid voice.

“I don’t know, Josh,” her dad said thoughtfully. “Remember how your sister knows everything. And I mean everything.”

“Hmm.” Josh glanced at the ceiling, considering that. Shifted his gaze to Pip, studying her just as hard back, for very different reasons. “She does know quite a lot of things, I’ll give you that, Dad.”

Well, she thought she did, from useless facts to how to get away with murder. But she’d been wrong, and one small mistake had brought it all crashing down. Pip wondered how her family would talk about her years from now. Would her dad still brag about her, tell everyone there’s nothing his pickle doesn’t know? Or would she become a hushed-up topic, one that didn’t carry beyond these four walls? A shameful secret, locked up as a ghost bound to the house? Would Josh make up excuses when they were visiting her, so he wouldn’t have to tell his friends what she was? Maybe he’d even pretend he never had a sister. Pip wouldn’t blame him, if that’s what he had to do.

“But it still doesn’t mean I like these peas,” Josh carried on.

Pip’s mom smiled with exasperation, sharing a look across the table at Pip, one that clearly said just: Boys, hey?

Pip blinked back at her. Tell me about it.

“Pip’s going to miss my cooking anyway, won’t you?” her mom asked. “When she goes off to college.”

“Yep.” Pip nodded, fighting the lump in her throat. “I’ll miss a lot of things.”

“But you’ll miss your fabulous daddy the most, won’t you?” her dad said, winking across the table.

Pip smiled, and she could feel her eyes prickling, glazing. “He is very fabulous,” she said, picking up her fork and glancing down to hide her eyes.

A normal, family dinner, except it wasn’t. But none of them knew it was really a goodbye. Pip had been so lucky. Why hadn’t she stopped to think about that before? She should have thought it every single day. And now she had to give it all up. All of them. She didn’t want to. She didn’t want this. She wanted to fight against this, rage against this. It wasn’t fair. But it was the right thing to do. Pip didn’t know any more about good or bad or right or wrong; those words were meaningless and empty, but she knew this was what she had to do. Max Hastings would still be free, but so would everyone else she cared about. A compromise, a trade.

Pip’s mom was busy listing off all the things they had to get sorted before this Sunday, all the things they still needed to buy.

“You still haven’t bought new bedsheets.”

“I can take old bedsheets, it’s fine,” Pip said. She didn’t like this conversation, planning for a future that would never happen.

“I’m surprised you haven’t started packing, that’s all,” she said. “Normally you’re so organized.”

“I’ve been busy,” Pip said, and now she was the one pushing peas around her plate.

“With this new podcast?” her dad asked. “Terrible, isn’t it, what happened to Jason.”

“Yeah, it’s terrible,” Pip said quietly.

“What exactly happened to him?” Josh’s ears perked up.

“Nothing,” Pip’s mom said pointedly, and that was it, it was over; her mom was picking up the empty and near-empty plates and carrying them off to the counter. Dishwasher sighing as it was opened.

Pip stood up and she wasn’t sure what to do. She wanted to hug them close to her and cry, but she couldn’t because then she’d have to tell them, tell them the terrible thing she’d done. But how could she leave, how could she say goodbye without that? Maybe just one, maybe just Josh.

She caught him as he climbed down from his chair, wrapping him in a quick hug, disguised as a wrestle, carrying him through and chucking him onto the sofa.

“Get off me,” he giggled, kicking out at her.

Pip grabbed her jacket, forcing herself to walk away from them, otherwise she might just never go. She headed toward the front door. Was this the last time she’d ever walk through it? Would she be a woman in her forties, her fifties, the next time she was here? The lines on her face all from that one night, etched into her forever.

Or would she never come home again?

“Bye,” she called, her voice catching in her throat, a black hole in her chest that might never go away.

“Where are you off to?” Her mom poked her head out of the kitchen. “A podcast thing?”

“Yeah.” Pip shrugged, sliding her feet into her shoes, not looking back at her mom because it hurt too much.

She dragged herself toward the door. Don’t look back, don’t look back. She opened it.

“I love you all,” she shouted, loud, louder than she meant to because it covered the cracks in her voice. She shut the door behind her, the slam cutting her off, severing her from them. Just in time too, because she was crying now, heaving sobs that made it hard to breathe as she unlocked her car and sat inside.

She bawled into her hands. For a count of three. Just a count of three. And then she had to go. To Ravi. She was broken now, but this next goodbye would shatter her.

She started the car and she drove, thinking of all the people she couldn’t say goodbye to: Cara, Nat, the Reynolds brothers, Naomi. But they’d understand, they’d understand why she couldn’t.

Pip drove down Main Street, veering off the road down Gravelly Way, toward Ravi. Toward the goodbye she’d never wanted to make. She pulled up outside the Singhs’ house, remembering that naive girl who’d knocked on this door so long ago, introducing herself by telling Ravi she didn’t think his brother was a killer. So different from the person standing here now, and yet they’d always share one thing: Ravi. He was her best thing, this girl and the one before.

But something was wrong, Pip could tell already. There were no cars in the drive. Not Ravi’s, not his parents’ cars. She knocked anyway. Putting her ear to the glass to listen. Nothing. She knocked again, and again, ramming her fist against the wood until it hurt, invisible blood dripping from her knuckles.

She held open the mail slot and called his name. Reaching for him, in every corner and crack. He wasn’t here.

She’d told him she was coming; why wasn’t he here?

Had that been it, on the phone? No last goodbye, face-to-face, eye-to-eye? No tucking her face into that place where his neck met his shoulder, her home. No holding on to him and refusing to let go, to disappear.

Pip needed that. She needed that moment to keep her going. But maybe Ravi didn’t. He was angry at her. And the last she would hear of him before all their conversations were from a prepaid prison phone was that strange “OK,” and the final click as he’d let her go. Ravi was ready, and so she had to be too.

It couldn’t wait. She had to tell Hawkins tonight, now, before they dug too far and found any link to those who had helped Pip that night. A confession was how she saved them from her, how she saved Ravi, even if he hated her for it.

“Bye,” Pip said to the empty house, leaving it behind her, her chest shuddering as she climbed back into her car. Peeling away, both the car and her.

She turned back on Main Street, driving south toward the police station, leaving Fairview, her part of Fairview, behind her in the rearview mirror, and part of her wanted to go back and stay there forever with her people, the ones she could count on her fingers, and the other part wanted to burn it down behind her. Watch it die in flames.

She felt numb inside now and she thanked that black hole in her chest for taking the pain too, letting the numbness spread as she drove toward the police station and the bad, bad place. She was just this journey, she didn’t think about what came after, she was just this car and these two yellow headlights, carving up the darkening sky.

Pip followed the road, over the bridge, dark trees pressing in around her as she focused on the turn up ahead, the road that would lead her to the station, to the end. Headlights were coming toward her, on the other side of the road, passing by with a small shush. There was another set, down the road, but something was wrong. They were flashing quickly at her, flickering in her eyes so the world disappeared in between. The car was getting closer, closer. A horn pressed in a three-part pattern: long-short-long.

Ravi.

That was Ravi’s car, Pip realized as it passed her and she scanned the last three numbers of the license plate in her mirror.

He was slowing down behind her, swinging dangerously across the road to turn.

What was he doing? What was he doing here?

Pip turned on her signal and pulled off the road, onto a drive that led up to a locked gate, blocking her from the old half-torn-down gas station. Her headlights lit up red, dripping graffiti against the dilapidated white building as she pulled open the door and stepped out.

Ravi’s car was pulling in behind her now. Pip held her sleeve up to her eyes against the glare of his headlights, to wipe her rubbed-red eyes.

He had barely stopped the car before he jumped out.

It was just the two of them, no one else around except the shushing of a passing car, too fast to pay them any mind. Just them and the moon, and the run-down building behind. Face to face, eye to eye.

“What are you doing?” Pip shouted across the dark wind.

“What are you doing?” Ravi shouted back.

“I’m going to the police station,” she said, confused as Ravi started shaking his head, stepping toward her.

“No, you’re not,” he said, his voice deep, taking on the wind.

The hairs rose up Pip’s arms.

“Yes, I am,” she said, and she was pleading, that’s what that sound was. Please, this was already the hardest thing. Although at least now she had seen him before.

“No, you’re not,” Ravi said, louder now, still shaking his head. “I’ve just come from there.”

Pip froze, trying to understand his face.

“What do you mean, you’ve just come from there?”

“I’ve just been at the station, talking to Hawkins,” he said, yelling over the sound of another passing car.

“What?!” Pip stared at him, and the black hole in her chest gave everything back: the panic, the terror, the dread, the pain, the shiver up her back. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s going to be OK,” Ravi said to her. “You’re not confessing. You didn’t kill Jason.” He swallowed. “I’ve

fixed it.”

“You what?!”

The gun went off in her chest six times.

“I fixed it,” he said. “I told Hawkins it was me—the headphones.”

“No no no no.” Pip stepped back. “No, Ravi! What have you done?”

“It’s OK, it’s going to be OK.” Ravi walked forward, reached for her.

Pip batted his hand away. “What did you do?” she said, her throat tightening around her words, breaking them in half. “What exactly did you say to him?”

“I told him that I borrow your headphones all the time, sometimes without you knowing. That I must have had them with me when I went round to the Bells’ house to see Jason one evening a couple weeks ago. The twelfth, I said. Accidentally left the headphones there.”

“Why the fuck would you have gone round to see Jason?” Pip whisper-shouted, and her mind was reeling away from him, pushing her feet back, almost against the gate. No, no, no, what had he done?

“Because I was talking to Jason about an idea I had, to set up some kind of scholarship scheme in Andie’s and Sal’s names, a charity thing. I went to discuss ideas with Jason, showed him some printouts, and that’s when the headphones must have fallen out of my bag. We were in the living room, sitting on the sofas.”

“No, no, no,” Pip said quietly.

“Jason liked the idea but said he didn’t have time to be involved. That’s how we left things, but I must have also left the headphones there. I’m guessing Jason later found them and didn’t realize they belonged to me. That’s what I said to Hawkins.”

Pip clamped her hands to her ears, like she could make this go away if she couldn’t hear him anymore.

“No,” she said quietly, the word just a vibration against the back of her teeth.

Ravi finally reached her. He pulled her arms away from her face, held her hands in his. Grip tight, like he was anchoring her to him. “It’s OK, I fixed it. The plan is still in play. You didn’t kill Jason. Max did. There’s no direct link to you anymore. You haven’t had contact with Jason since April, and Hawkins didn’t catch you in a lie. It was me; I left your headphones there. You knew nothing about it. You told me about your interview today, and that’s when I realized it was me who had had contact with Jason, who left the headphones there. So I went down to the station to clear things up. That’s what happened. Hawkins believed me, he will believe me. He asked me where I was on the evening of the fifteenth and I told him: I was in Stamford with my cousin, listed all the places I went.

Got home just before midnight. Airtight, ironclad, just like we planned. And no connection to you. It’s going to be OK.”

“I didn’t want you to do that, Ravi,” she cried. “I didn’t want you to ever talk to him, ever to have to use your alibi.”

“But you’re safe,” he said, eyes flashing at her in the dark. “Now you don’t have to go.”

“But you aren’t!” she said. “You’ve just directly implicated yourself in the whole thing. Before we could keep you separate, you were separate from it all, but now…What if Dawn Bell was home on the twelfth? What if she tells them you’re lying?”

“I can’t lose you,” Ravi said. “I wasn’t going to let you do this. I sat on my bed after you called and I did that thing I do when I’m nervous or scared or unsure about something. I asked myself, What would Pip do? What would she do in this situation? So, that’s what I did. I came up with a plan. Was it reckless? Probably. Bravery to the point of stupidity, that’s you. But I thought it through and I didn’t overthink it. I acted, like you do. It’s what you would have done, Pip.” He breathed, shoulders rising and falling with it. “It’s what you would have done, and you would have done it for me, you know you would. We’re a team, remember? You and me. And no one’s taking you away from me, not even you.”

“Fuck!” Pip shouted into the wind, because he was right and he was wrong and she was happy and she was devastated.

“It’s going to be OK.” Ravi wrapped her up into him, inside his jacket, warm even when he had no business being so. “It was my choice and I chose you. You’re not going anywhere,” he said, his breath in her hair, along her scalp.

Pip held on, watching the road over Ravi’s shoulder. Blinking slowly, the black hole in her chest trying to catch up. She didn’t have to go. She didn’t have to be that woman in her fifties, looking up at her old family home after decades, thinking it was somehow smaller than she remembered it, because she had forgotten it, or it had forgotten her. She didn’t have to watch everyone she cared about live a life without her, catching her up across a metal table every few weeks, visits growing fewer and further between as their lives got in the way and her edges got fainter and fainter until she disappeared at last.

A life, a real one, a normal one: it was still possible. Ravi had saved her, he had, and by doing so he had damned himself.

Now there was no choice, no backing down.

She had to bare her teeth and see this through to the end.

No doubt.

No mercy.

Blood on her hands and a gun in her heart and the plan.

Four corners. She and Ravi standing in one. The DT Killer in another. Max Hastings opposite them, and Detective Hawkins opposite him.

One last fight, somewhere in the middle, and they had to win. They had to, now that Ravi was on the line too.

Pip pushed herself into him, closer, harder, her ear to his chest to listen to his heart, because she was still here, and she still could.

She closed her eyes and made a new silent promise to him, because he had chosen her and she had chosen him: they were going to get away with it.