Silent Fall

realization hit Catherine hard. They’d been wrong about Dylan’s father.
    It was Julie. It had always been Julie .
    Catherine glanced at Dylan and saw the same shock in his eyes.
    "Julie, what’s this about?" he demanded. "What’s going on?"
    "You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought you were so smart."
    "I know my father isn’t my father."
    "Very good," she said. "Give the boy a prize."
    Dylan stared at her in confusion. "You knew that?"
    "Of course I knew."
    "I don’t get it. You set me up? This is your work? I thought we were friends. Why would you do that to me? Why would you use Erica? Shit! Why would you kill Erica? She was an innocent woman."
    "Not so innocent, and she was just the means to an end. I wasn’t going to kill her at first, but I knew they wouldn’t be able to pin a murder charge on you without a body, so she had to go. I wanted to see you in jail, suffering, trapped. I saw how happy you were when you sent the senator there. Even though he hadn’t been convicted yet, you crowed about how he would never be free again. You don’t know what it’s like not to be free. You need to know. I figured you’d believe the senator was behind the plan to frame you, that you’d never suspect me, and you didn’t. I left you that video from the Metro Club so you’d wonder about your father, about Blake. And I told you that Blake had gone to Seattle with Erica so that you’d eventually figure out to come here. Even though you didn’t remember me, I thought you might remember coming here. Then I planted your mother’s obituary in the drawer of your old house."
    "Julie, you’re not making sense."
    "I’m not making sense? Maybe you’re not listening. You never listen. You’re far more interested in talking."
    "I’m listening now. Tell me the rest."
    "When you came to the station the other day I knew you were going to keep running, that it would be difficult to send you to jail, so I had to change the plan. I had to kill you. But first I wanted you to suffer, because dying is easy. It’s the rest that’s hard." She drew in a quick breath, her eyes filled with the fire of hate. "I wanted you to be afraid of every shadow, every sound, to worry if you would die every time you stepped outside or in front of a window. I wanted you to feel trapped, the way I’ve been trapped in this chair for the last twenty-three years. And I wanted you to come here, to know the truth before you died. I sent the house key to Erica weeks ago. Originally I was planning to have her come here and leave you a paper trail to follow. But she started asking for more money. She was going to be trouble, so I had to revise a few things."
    "You killed her, Julie. Do you even understand that?"
    "I didn’t pull the trigger."
    "You ordered someone else to do it." Dylan paused. "But what did I do to you?" he asked in bemusement. "Why do you hate me so much?"
    "Because you were born," she said in a shrill, high voice. "You ruined everything. You made my mother crazy. She found out about you, about my father and your mother." She spit out the words. "Do you finally get it? Our parents had an affair."
    Dylan swallowed hard. "Your father is..."
    "Your father," Julie finished. "And because he couldn’t keep his pants up, my mother went insane. She completely lost her mind. She wanted to punish my father. She wanted to destroy everything he had, so she put my sister and me in the car and she drove up to the house where they used to make love. All the way there she ranted about him and her. She said she couldn’t leave us with him. He was a bad man. And he had to suffer. He had to pay for what he’d done."
    Catherine held her breath as Julie stared at Dylan with wild, crazy eyes. The woman was reliving some horrible moment from her past, and Catherine was almost afraid to hear it. But Julie was going to tell them. She wanted Dylan to know. She’d probably always wanted Dylan to know. That was why she hadn’t had him killed before now.
    "So my mother drove us off the cliff into the water," Julie said. "She thought we would all die, but guess what? I didn’t. I was in terrible pain, but somehow I got out of the car. I tried to open the front door where my sister and mother were, but I couldn’t. It was jammed. I could see my mother slumped over the wheel, my sister’s hands pressed against the glass, the terror in her