Blanche’s lips part slightly, eyes wide, and after a moment, she gives a startled laugh that’s too loud. “Are you fucking serious?” she asks, and Bea sees heads turn in their direction.

Frowning, she leans closer. “Lower your voice, please.”

“No,” she says, letting the remnant of her chip drop to the table. “No, I seriously want to know if you’re pissed because I’m not wearing your stupid jewelry. I want to know if that’s what’s happening right now, Bertha.”

“Mature,” Bea replies, and Blanche hoots with laughter, sitting back in the booth and crossing her arms over her chest.

“I’m asking you if your husband knows that everything about you is a lie. You’re bitching about my bracelets, and I’m the immature one, okay.”

Bea’s hand shoots out, grabbing her wrist, the one covered in those goddamn bangles, and she squeezes so hard Blanche yelps.

“You’re drunk,” Bea tells her through clenched teeth. “And you’re embarrassing yourself. Maybe leave that to Tripp.”

Dinner ends early that night, and it’s only two days later that Eddie is asking why Bea never told him her mother died in a fall.

Which is when Bea realizes there is no affair, when she realizes that even if Blanche had wanted to hurt her, Eddie did not. And because Blanche did not get what she wanted for once in her life, she’s now acting out, firing the only ammunition she has left.

Bea shows up with coffee the next morning and breakfast pastries. She even gets Blanche one of those gluten-free abominations she likes.

“Peace offering,” she says, and she can tell that a part of Blanche wants to believe it, that she wants things to go back to the way they were.

The lake trip is another peace offering. Another olive branch.

And Blanche grabs it with both hands.

Jane sits there, twirling the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, and I watch her mind work. I like not knowing exactly what she’ll do, and it is oddly satisfying to see how shallow her loyalty to Eddie really is.

I hadn’t lost him after all.

It surprises me how much that thrills me.

But maybe it shouldn’t. Some of the things in the diary were for show, to cover my tracks—the majority of it, really—but the sex? The way I felt about Eddie?

That had all been real.

But then Jane sits up a little straighter and says, “We should call the police. Tell them what Eddie did. Let him pay the consequences.”

Is she playing with me, or is that what she really wants? The ambiguity that I’d enjoyed so much just a moment ago is now irritating, and I wave one hand, finishing my wine.

“Later,” I say. “Let me enjoy a few hours of being out of that room before I’m stuck answering a bunch of questions.”

Looking around, I add, “You really didn’t do anything new with the place, did you?”

Jane doesn’t answer that, but leans closer, reaching for my hand. “Bea,” she says. “We can’t just sit here. Eddie murdered Blanche. He could’ve murdered you. We have to—”

“We don’t have to do anything,” I reply, yanking my hand out from under hers and standing up.

“The stressful part is always making the decision,” Bea used to remind her employees. “Once you’ve made it, it’s done, and you feel better.”

That’s how it was with Blanche.

Once Bea has decided that she has to die, it’s easy enough, and the rest of the steps fall into place. She invites Blanche to the lake house, then texts Tripp at the last minute. She’s going to need a fall guy this time, after all. One person dying in an accident while she’s alone with them is one thing. Two would be harder to pull off.

So, Tripp.

Blanche is not happy when he shows up.

“I thought this was supposed to be a girls’ trip,” she says, and Tripp settles on the couch next to her, already drinking a vodka tonic.

“And I am a Girls’ Tripp,” he jokes, which is so terrible that for a moment Bea thinks maybe she should kill him, too.

But no, she needs Tripp to play a part in all this.

He does it well, too. Blanche is so irritated he’s there that she drinks even more than Bea had hoped, glass after glass of wine, then the vodka Tripp is drinking.

And when Tripp passes out, as Bea had known he would thanks to the Xanax she’d put in his drink, Blanche actually laughs with Bea, the two of them dragging his limp body into the master bedroom, Bea pretending to be just as drunk as Blanche.

That’s the thing she remembers the most about it all later. Blanche was happy that night. It had mostly been the booze, but still, Bea had given her that.

One last Girls’ Night Out.

When they get onto the pontoon boat Bea bought for Eddie last year, Blanche is so unsteady, Bea has to guide her to her seat.

More drinks.

The sky overhead is dark, too, a new moon that night, nothing to illuminate what happens.

As with Mama, Bea doesn’t have to do that much work, really.

When Blanche has slumped into unconsciousness, it’s a simple matter of taking the hammer she’d bought, the heavy one, the one that looks exactly like the kind of unsubtle murder weapon a guy like Tripp would buy, and she brings it down.

Once. Twice. Three times. A sickening crunch giving way to a meaty, wet sound, and then she’s rolling Blanche off the deck of the boat. It’s dark, and her hair is the last thing Bea sees, sinking under the lake.

She stands there and waits to feel something.

Regret, horror. Anything, really. But again, once it’s done, she’s mostly just relieved and a little tired.

Swimming back to the house is something of a chore, her arms cutting through the warm water, her brain conjuring images of alligators, water moccasins. Below her, she knows there’s a flooded forest, and it’s hard not to imagine the dead branches reaching up for her like skeletal hands, to see her body drifting down with Blanche’s to lay in that underwater wood.

Something brushes against her foot at one point, and she gives a choked scream that sounds too loud in the quiet night, lake water filling her mouth, tasting like minerals and something vaguely rotten, and she spits, keeps swimming.

The story is so simple. Girls’ weekend. Tripp showing up unexpectedly. They went out on the boat, they drank too much. Bea fell asleep or passed out, to the sound of Tripp and Blanche arguing. When she woke up, Blanche was gone, and Tripp was passed out. Bea panicked, dove in the water trying to save her best friend, and when she couldn’t find her, swam back to the house.