And these are ones that’ve been ripped out. Most of them are barely more than fluff. “I saw the cutest shoes today.” My throat closes up. “I saw the prettiest girl today.” My heart starts to race so hard that I feel dizzy, sitting back hard on my ass. My socked feet scrape across the carpet as I lean forward and put the pages between my legs, so I can drop my head between them to help ward off the feeling of vertigo.

Behind me, on the nightstand, is an empty bowl that was full of beef broth. Aaron brought that to me. I’m being spoiled today. Technically, I’m supposed to be packing for the safe house, but your girl needed a cigarette and a moment.

One does not take a confession of love from Oscar Montauk lightly.

“Pen liked girls,” I say, turning the page and finding a rant about Mr. Darkwood that makes me smile. And then frown. I have no idea if he’s still alive. I hope so. In fact, if I were a woman of any sort of faith, I’d probably pray for it. I switch the pages again. This one is a bucket list. I can barely stand to look at it.

Is there anything more depressing than unfulfilled potential? And this is why I hate rapists. This is why I hate murderers (although, I suppose, I am one myself now). How dare you corrupt beautiful souls and act like there’s any excuse for it.

The back of the bucket list page is blank, making me wonder if there isn’t another page stuck to it. I doubt anyone would notice it, but Penelope always wrote on both sides of her notebook paper. I’ve rarely seen one without something scrawled on the back of it: be it a list, a note, a drawing of a sun or a heart or a moon with a face.

I peel the pages apart and find something that I feel like Sara Young may very well want to keep.

“The worst part is the way she talks to me when nobody else is around. She says that I ruined her life. She says that I stole her youth. She tells me all sorts of things that mothers should never whisper to their daughters in the dark.

She wants me dead.

She wants me gone.

She says I took her man.

She says she’s going to kill me.”

I stand up suddenly, snagging a pair of blue jeans and stuffing the hot water bottle in the front. I don’t bother to zip or button them up; they just sort of hang there. But I have better shit to do. I take off, throwing open the bedroom door and heading down the stairs to find Oscar and Vic turning on a pile of new phones.

“Look what we got you, wife,” Vic starts, his cigarette hanging from his lips. He pauses when he sees me and then frowns hard as I snatch Aaron’s cordless receiver. Without skipping a beat, I grab a card from beside the phone, one that has Sara’s number on it.

With the page clutched in my shaking hand, I call Police Girl up.

“Hello, Bernadette?” she says, almost like it’s a question. I assume she’s programmed this number into her own phone.

“Why did you arrest my mother?” I whisper, holding that damned page and shaking so hard that I wonder if my skin isn’t going to split in half. “It wasn’t for assaulting me, was it? And it wasn’t for Neil’s murder either.”

There’s a long pause before Sara sighs, like she’s had a long debate with herself on what she might tell me if I should ask. But she still thinks she can build trust with me, that she can get me to confide in her.

“Bernadette … I had your mother arrested on multiple counts. Namely, I’m focused on her connection to Neil and the GMP.” There’s a long, dangerous pause here. I barely recognize the sound of my own breathing. “But I think what you’re asking is, was she arrested on suspicion of murdering your sister?”

Frankly, I’m not sure how to respond to that.

“I left you one page in the box,” Sara tells me, and I feel that strange twisting inside my chest. Like with Ms. Keating. The part of me that still wants to believe is intrigued. The rest of me thinks we should bury Police Girl six feet deep. “You come to your own conclusions, but you’ll hear more once the case progresses. For now, unless she posts bail, your mother is in the jail at the county courthouse.”

I hang up before Sara can say anything else.

Glancing down at the page in my hand, I wonder why I didn’t just tell the Havoc Boys to put Pam into the coffin with Neil.

“You alright, Mrs. Channing?” Vic asks, coming up behind me and putting his hot hands on my upper arms. As soon as he touches me, my numbness shatters to glass. It hits the floor with a sound like bells as I turn my head back to look at him.

“Sara Young offered me a plea deal,” I say, and Vic’s hands tighten almost imperceptibly.

“Yeah? What were the terms?”

I turn back around toward him.

“I don’t give a fuck what the terms were. I don’t work for the cops. I only work for Havoc.” I stare back at my husband, the head of heads when it comes to this five-headed hydra beast that is Havoc. He stares right back at me, and that magnetic pull that both pushes us together and launches us leagues apart, I can feel it and it almost hurts. “Pretty sure she wants me to testify against my mother.”

“For?” Vic asks, glancing over at Oscar. He’s wearing one of his suits again, as polished and perfect as always. He gave me everything and then he panicked. But I was there, and I felt his heart beating against my back. He most certainly has a strong one. I’ll let him act the lead part in his personal plays all he wants when we’re around other people. But alone, I want to see that skeleton masked ripped clean off.

“Murdering my sister for one,” I say, and then I lift up the page from Penelope’s notebook. I release it into Victor’s hand. Our fingers, when they brush, create sparks. He stares at the page for a minute and then looks up at me. I’m so fucking numb without you, Vic. “She … how …” I pause, and my mind strays back to that night where Penelope stared Pam straight in the eye and told her about the dress. “I took it, and I sold it.”

And then the image of her, lying on her bed, wrapped up in blankets … Pamela’s pills on her nightstand.

Pamela’s pills …

Pamela’s …

Victor reaches out and uses two fingers to lift the chain from inside of my shirt, the one with his grandmother’s ring hanging from it. I don’t move; I don’t speak. I just stare into his ebon eyes and let myself fall. He’ll catch me. That much, I know for sure.

He spins the chain around so that he can access the clasp, unhooking it and then taking the ring off. Victor slides it back down my ring finger.

“Pamela and not Neil,” he says, like even he’s surprised by this one. He looks down at the water bottle sticking out of my pants. It’s just an old glass bottle with the label removed, something one of the boys probably dug out of the recycling. But, heat it up under the tap to make sure the glass doesn’t break when you pour in the boiling water, and you’re golden. His eyes lift up to my face. “What do you want us to do?”

Pamela is at the county jail.

On suspicion of murdering my sister.

But the VGTF is investigating the Grand Murder Party.

Neil was involved with the GMP; Pamela likely was, too. She has all those rich friends, doesn’t she? I start to shake. What if she sold us to the Kushners? I wonder. What if, all along, she’s been a part of this? Woven into the very fabric of my demise.