She stepped back, her brow furrowing. “What do you mean?”
“I love you so much, Ash.”
“Mason, what are you doing?” She took another step back from me.
I took a moment to plan it in my head. I would sing out the words, and then she would punch me. I would be hurt. Lynn would come back to save me, just like after the car accident.
“Don’t be crazy, Mason,” Shelly warned from behind me.
She hadn’t seen crazy yet. I was a man possessed by fear. By grief. By insecurity. And I needed my wife back.
I began to sing very softly. “Come out…come out…wherever you are…”
I made sure there was a tiny, playful little lilt to my voice.
I watched as Ash’s face transformed. As fear overwhelmed her. As the past came back to haunt her. I saw it all flash across her face in the space of a heartbeat.
What I didn’t see ahead of time was the knife that lay on the counter. Had I seen that before I started to sing, I might have planned a little differently.
As I waited for the first blow to strike, I sang out again, “Come out…come out…wherever you are…”
Ash turned and picked up the knife. She lifted it above her head, and brought it down with deadly precision. I felt the slice of my skin, like a knife slicing butter. The pain nearly brought me to my knees.
“No!” Shelly screamed from behind me, just as another blow from the knife hit my skin. I sank to my knees as Shelly knocked the knife from Ash’s hand and pushed her to the floor. She covered Ash’s body with hers.
“Don’t hurt her,” I said. “Take care of her.”
“I’ve spent my whole life taking care of her, Mason!” she screamed.
She worked to calm Ash, to stop her flailing, trying to stop her from getting to me as I bled out on the floor, the red of my blood staining the white tile floor, slipping into the cracks between the tiles.
Shelly was still trying to calm Ash as my eyes closed.
This wasn’t at all how I’d hoped this would go.
42
Shelly
* * *
Through the years, I had learned to have a grudging respect for Mason. I might have hated his guts—and I seriously did—but I respected him as a person. My sister loved him, and all her alters did too. They didn’t love him just because of his broad shoulders or his quirky grin. It wasn’t because of his advanced degrees or his compassion. It was just because he was their Mason. All theirs.
And more important, they were his. He accepted them just as they were. He never, not even once, looked at Lynn like she was broken. He never tried to push the alters away. He never tried to change her. She’d been changed enough.
Our father had made her into what she was today.
That’s why I killed our father.
I made it go away. I always did. Anything that could hurt Lynn…I made it go away.
I probably should have made Mason go away too, but then I realized that the son of a bitch was just as fucking crazy as me. And, like me, he’d do anything to keep Lynn safe. He’d even get himself killed by one of the alters.
I was afraid that’s what he’d just done.
When I saw Ash pick up the knife, I knew immediately what he’d done. He’d used the song. The song was the one thing that could make Ash go crazy. She was happy-go-lucky all the rest of the time. She was kind and sweet and kick-ass awesome. But let her hear that song, and she went berserk. Mason knew it. And he used it.
I saw it happening, almost like a slow-motion movie playing in my head. One moment, he had his hand on her belly, and Ash knew that he knew. Yet Lynn didn’t know that he knew, so knowing wasn’t as important in that moment as what he did next.