Famous Last Words

But the car slowed as it neared me, and then stopped. The driver’s side door opened, and after a few seconds, a woman about my mom’s age got out.

“Could you please — Hey, are you all right?” she asked. “Good God, what happened?”

“Please,” I said. “Call 9-1-1.”

Then I sat down in the middle of the street and passed out.

“Her name is Willa. She’s my stepdaughter. We were attacked in our house by … an intruder.” I heard Jonathan speaking before I forced my eyes open. I was propped up in his arms, on the ground, just inside the gate. He glanced down at me and relief crossed his face. “Hey, try to stay awake, all right?”

“All right,” I said. “I’m okay. I think I was just overwhelmed.”

Jonathan managed a weak smile. “You’re well within your rights on that count. The police are coming. And an ambulance.”

“I don’t need an ambulance,” I said.

“Nice try,” he said. “You’re bleeding from the head. And you’re woozy. Your eyes are bloodshot. Did he give you something?”

I thought of the white pills and nodded.

“Do you know what it was?”

I shook my head. Somebody had covered me with a jacket. “What about you?” I asked. “He hit you, too. And you almost drowned.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m all right. My mother always said I have a thick skull.”

By now there was a small crowd of people around us. And there were a bunch of people in the garage, too — they must have been helping Marnie.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Somewhere in the ravine, a pack of coyotes started howling along with them.

Jonathan kept glancing up at the people around us, and then back down at me. “Are you really okay? Did he hurt you? I can’t believe … all this time, it was … Reed. In our house. In our garage.”

I blinked back my tears. I couldn’t believe it, either.

Jonathan ran his hand over my hair in an awkward, reassuring gesture. “Your mom’s on her way back. She’s going straight to the hospital. Willa, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

At the thought of seeing my mother and being wrapped in her arms, I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. All of the emotions I’d tried to ignore all night — fear, humiliation, anger — burst forth in a tidal wave. I started to cry huge, ugly-cry sobs.

Jonathan hugged me closer, rocking back and forth. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’re safe now, Willa. You saved us.”

When my mother got to the hospital, she came barreling into the room. But she wasn’t hysterical, as I had expected her to be. She was strangely calm as she spoke to the doctors and nurses and police. She seemed so strong.

She hugged me and kissed my forehead and cheeks about a thousand times, and then she took hold of my hand and didn’t let go.

I had a concussion and a cracked rib and we were waiting for the results of my blood tests, since nobody knew exactly what was in the little pills Reed gave me. But I was feeling okay — all things considered.

Hey, I wasn’t dead — that was something, right?

After the initial flurry of activity, the room was deserted, just me and Mom.

“Don’t you want to go see Jonathan?” I asked. “I’ll be okay for a few minutes.”

“He’s fine,” she said. “I talked to him before.”

“But maybe you should —”

“Willa,” she said softly. “He’s worried about you. He wants me to stay here. I’m not leaving you, sweetie. Not tonight.”

And she didn’t. When I woke up in the morning, she was curled up in the faux-leather visitor’s chair, her hand still wrapped around mine. She told me the doctor had been by to let her know the white pills Reed had given me were sedatives, designed to make me sleepy and weak. They would be completely out of my system within a few days.

And Reed was in police custody. He would live, but he might be paralyzed. I nodded, trying to take everything in.

I thought about the house, and wondered if Paige’s ghost was gone now. If she was at peace. I hoped she was.

I was sitting up and having some orange juice when a knock came on the door. Mom and I looked up and saw Wyatt Sheppard standing there.

“How did you get past security?” Mom asked, a little alarmed.

Wyatt turned bright red.

“It’s cool, Mom,” I said. “He has co

This explanation didn’t entirely satisfy my mother, but she nodded anyway and shook his hand. Then she stood up and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll go check on Jonathan.”

When she was gone, Wyatt took a step into the room. I sat up straighter, my pulse speeding up — a fact made embarrassingly obvious by the beeping monitor next to my hospital bed.

“I …” he said softly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s a first.”

He didn’t even come close to laughing. His lips were turned down at the corners. Not a trace of his usual smirk. And his voice was low and strained. “Did he hurt you?”

“Not badly,” I said. “I mean, I don’t want to go through it again, but I’ll live.”

“Willa,” he said. “Don’t talk to me that way.”

I looked at him in surprise. “What way?”

“Like this isn’t serious. I — I feel very serious about this. About you.” He took a deep breath. “When I heard what happened, I felt like … like I’d been ripped in half. I wanted to find that guy and tear his head off.”

“There’s no need for that now,” I said, managing a little smile in spite of the stinging tears in my eyes. “He’s going to jail. Forever.”

Suddenly, I remembered thinking of Wyatt in what I’d feared would be my last moments.

“What about you?” I asked as Wyatt took a step closer to my bed. “You got arrested, right? What happened?”

Sinking into Mom’s vacated chair, he breathed into his hands and shook his head, like he didn’t know where to begin. He told me the story of the police showing up at his house, how he’d been taken to the station and fingerprinted, and then how his dad had stepped in and called in a mess of favors to keep Wyatt from being charged with trespassing — or worse.

So Wyatt wasn’t going to jail. He was, however, grounded. He didn’t even ask his parents how long the grounding would last. He figured it would let up around graduation.

But given the circumstances, his parents had allowed him this one trip to the hospital.

“Given what circumstances?” I asked.

“Given that I … I begged,” he said. “I told them that my best friend was almost murdered by a serial killer, and if they didn’t let me come see you —” His voice broke, and he looked toward the bright window, blinking furiously.

“Stop,” I said. “It’s okay.”

My best friend, he’d said.

“I’m glad you came,” I said. “I wanted to see you.”

And Wyatt reached over carefully and put his warm hand on top of mine. I laced my fingers through his and we sat there like that until Mom came back.

I was discharged from the hospital two days later, but the house was still an active crime scene, so we couldn’t go back yet. Jonathan booked a suite in a hotel and started making plans to sell the house. As far as he and Mom were concerned, we couldn’t be rid of it fast enough.

My feelings were a little more complicated.

So much bad happened there, I wrote in my journal. But it wasn’t the house’s fault. In a way it seems like the house was a victim, too. Maybe it hated its own role. Maybe the house is what gave Paige the strength to resist. Maybe somehow the spirit of Diana Del Mar was fighting alongside me the whole time I was fighting back.