Return to Summerhouse (The Summerhouse 2)

“If I do this, then I’m going to leave,” Zoë said. “You’re always saying I owe you my whole life, but this will pay it off.”

“Of course,” Karen said. “I’ll give you anything you want. I’ll help you find an apartment and I’ll help you decorate it. And Bob will get you a car. How about a nice BMW convertible? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Zoë wasn’t so naïve that she thought Karen would actually help her, and when she said “leave” she hadn’t meant an apartment two miles away from Karen. No, helping her sister in this crisis would get rid of the burden of gratitude that Zoë lived under.

Karen stepped aside so Zoë could go into the house. Her heart was beating hard as she went inside. She left the door open in case she wanted to run out. The house was dark except for a light shining around a half-closed door to her left, and it seemed eerily quiet.

“Mr. Johnson?” she called out, but he didn’t answer. She went to the door and pushed it open. The room was his study, with bookshelves around two walls and big glass doors leading out to a patio. There was a blond oak desk and behind it sat Mr. Johnson. He was holding a gun to his head.

“Please,” Zoë said. “Mr. Johnson, please don’t do this.”

“Zoë, I can’t live like this anymore,” he said, then he shot himself through the temple.

For a moment she couldn’t move. She just stood there staring at him.

In the next second, his wife ran into the room. She looked from her husband, his bloody head slumped on the desk, then she looked at Zoë. She raised her hands in fists as she ran toward her.

“You killed him!” she shouted. “You killed my husband.”

“I…I didn’t,” Zoë stammered, backing up toward a wall of bookcases, her arms across her face to protect herself. When Karen appeared behind the woman, Zoë had never been so glad to see anyone in her life. Karen ran to Zoë, put her arm around her shoulders in a protective way, and led her out of the house while the wife ran to the phone.

“He shot himself,” Zoë said, her whole body shivering. “I saw it.”

“That’s what I was afraid would happen. Look, I have to do something, so you take the car, and—”

“Karen, you can’t go back in there. There’s a loaded gun in there. She’ll kill you.”

“I have to get some things. Look, Zoë, you take the car and go. Meet me at that drive-in on Fourth. I’ll be there as soon I can get there. All I ask is that if the police question you, you say I was with you.”

“You can’t—” Zoë began, but all she could see in her mind was that man shooting himself.

“Trust me,” Karen said as she led Zoë back to the hidden car. “I know I’ve not always been the easiest sister in the world, but you don’t want to see me in jail, do you?”

“Jail?”

“There are some things of mine in that house that could make people think I had something to do with his death.”

“Things?” Zoë asked. She couldn’t seem to think very well.

“Letters. I have to find them and get rid of them, and I have to have an alibi. Remember! I was with you all night. Now go.” She shoved Zoë behind the steering wheel and put her hand on the key. When Zoë didn’t react, Karen started the engine for her, then closed the door. She didn’t stay to wave goodbye, just ran back into the house.

“So I left,” Zoë said to Faith and Amy, “and about a mile away, I drove into a tree. When I woke up, I was slathered in bandages, I couldn’t remember anything, and the whole town hated me.”

“She put you behind the wheel of a car after you’d seen something like that,” Faith said in wonder.

“Your sister told the town the man was having an affair with you, didn’t she?” Amy said.

Zoë shrugged. “When all that was going on, I was in a hospital bed unconscious, and when I rewrote history, my accident hadn’t happened, but, yes, I think that’s what she did.”

“An all-time low,” Faith said. “Even for a sister.”

Zoë nodded. “As you pointed out, on the night I was supposed to be in the car wreck, I was in bed with the man I was to marry.”

“So what happened this time around?” Faith asked.

“After I left Russ’s apartment the next morning, I realized what day it was and I wondered if Mr. Johnson had still shot himself. Or had I changed things so much that he didn’t do it? I checked the Internet and he had, indeed, killed himself.”

“Was your sister there?” Amy asked.