Here She Lies

Julie.”
    “But why” — I tried to steady my trembling voice — “do you have the knife?”
    “If we unclog the sink, and clean the knife better, and put it back, no one has to know.”
    Outside, a car passed the basement window and dragged a shadow across his face, blotting him out except for a gray shimmer that surrounded him like fog.
    Agree, I told myself. Just agree.
    “Okay,” I said.
    “Annie—” He stepped abruptly closer. Lexy’s lowerlip jutted out and her eyes searched my face for a signal. I kissed her, pressed my cheek to hers, rubbed her back. “You have to understand. Julie was just so—”
    “I know what she is,” I said. “I loved her, too.”
    He came closer, so close I could smell his sweat, the sharp, earthy smell of panic. If he thought he could bring me over to his thinking, convince me to trust him, get me to stay, he was wrong. But I had to pretend I was open, that I was listening carefully enough to maybe change my mind.
    “The minute I drove up to her house,” he said, “and saw Zara lying there dead, I knew the whole thing was insane. It was a nightmare, and I woke up. I thought Zara was you, and it just hit me how much I love you, and I couldn’t go through with it.”
    “So you and Julie — you planned it? To kill me ?” Was it even worse than I had come to understand? Had they actually wanted me dead? Julie and Bobby both?
    “No one wanted to kill you,” Bobby said, and his tone grew urgent, speeding like a reckless train, and I recognized this burning insistence from childhood, trying to convince my parents of something-I-hadn’t-done-but-actually- had . “She wanted to make it look like you killed Zara. It was all planned out. She wanted you in jail and out of the way so we could...” And then his voice trailed off.
    “Why didn’t you two just run away, Bobby?” It seemed so obvious. “Why go to all that trouble when you could have just left?” As I asked this simplest of questions I felt myself shattering like a million pieces of broken glass barely holding the shape of a woman. But I could not, would not fall apart. I had children. Ihad my self, beneath the broken outside layer of what had been my life.
    “It was never an option.” He stared at the grimy, pocked cement floor. “It was Lexy she wanted, really. Not me.” He looked at me and I stared into his weak, filmy, nothing eyes. “All this was her idea,” he said. “Never mine. You have to believe me.”
    “I don’t believe you!” My voice was loud and hard, like a rock through a window. Smashing it. I didn’t care.
    “It’s true.”
    “You’re lying.”
    He steadied his eyes on me. “She hates you.”
    “No, she doesn’t.”
    “She does.”
    “But why ?”
    “Annie... how can I explain this?” His forehead tightened as he sought the words. “When Julie looks at you, she sees a better version of herself, and she can’t stand it.”
    “What about you? Do you hate me, too?”
    “No.”
    “But you went along with it. You gave her the knife.”
    “She took it,” he said. “Last March, when she was here. She took it right after you used it, so it would still have your fingerprints. She said identical twins didn’t always have the same fingerprints”
    “You knew, all the time, what she was planning? What you both were planning!”
    “Not me. Her. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’tback off. I didn’t believe she would actually go through with it.”
    What could I possibly say to that? He had participated in everything that had happened leading up to my walking out of this house last spring and he hadn’t believed it was for real ?
    He stepped closer, and closer, until he was only a foot away from us. Lexy was silent, frightened. I squeezed her to my left side. My right hand gripped the knife. Sweat now coated Bobby’s face like oil and I could see in his eyes that some kind of calculation was taking place.
    “I made her give me the knife so I could bring it home and clean it, so I could protect you. I told her if she didn’t give me the knife I would tell the police everything.”
    “Which would have screwed you, too, Bobby. You saved yourself, not me.”
    “You’re wrong,” he said. “I love you. Please. Wash the knife with me, help me clean out the sink. We’ll replace the pipes. This can be over.”
    I would do it, if I had to, to survive the next hour. But there was one thing I had to ask first: “Bobby, what does Julie expect from you