Lena held her breath, inching closer to the stairs, chancing a look.

Paul’s back was to her. Terri stood directly in front of him.

Lena slid back behind the corner, her heart beating so hard she could feel the artery thumping in the side of her neck.

“When’s he going to be back?” Paul demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Where’s my medallion?”

“I don’t know.”

She had given him this same answer to all of his questions, and Paul finally snapped, “What do you know, Terri?”

She was silent, and Lena looked downstairs again to make sure she was still there.

“He’ll be back soon,” Terri said, her eyes flicking up to Lena. “You can wait for him in the garage.”

“You want me out of the house?” he asked. Lena quickly pulled back as Paul turned around. “Why’s that?”

Lena put her hand to her chest, willing her heart to slow. Men like Paul had an almost animal instinct. They could hear through walls, see everything that went on. She looked at her watch, trying to calculate how much time had passed since she had called Jeffrey. He was at least fifteen minutes away, even if he came with lights and siren blaring.

Paul said, “What’s going on, Terri? Where’s Dale?”

“Out.”

“Don’t get smart with me.” Lena heard a loud popping noise, flesh against flesh. Her heart stopped in her chest.

Terri said, “Please. Just wait in the garage.”

Paul’s tone was conversational. “Why don’t you want me in the house, Terri?”

Again, there was the popping noise. Lena did not have to look to know what was happening. She knew the sickening sound, knew it was an open-handed smack, just as she knew exactly what it felt like on your face.

There was a sound from the nursery, Rebecca or Tim shifting in the closet, and a floorboard creaked. Lena closed her eyes, frozen. Jeffrey had ordered her to wait, to protect Rebecca. He hadn’t given her any instructions on what to do if Paul found them.

Lena opened her eyes. She knew exactly what she would do. Carefully, she slid her gun out of its holster, aiming it at the space above the open landing. Paul was a big man. All Lena had in her favor was the element of surprise, and she wasn’t going to give that up for anything. She could almost taste the triumph she’d feel when Paul turned that corner, expecting to see a frightened child but finding a Glock shoved in his smug face.

“It’s just Tim,” Terri insisted, downstairs.

Paul said nothing, but Lena heard footsteps on the wooden stairs. Slow, careful footsteps.

“It’s Tim,” Terri repeated. The footsteps stopped. “He’s sick.”

“Your whole family’s sick,” Paul taunted, pounding his shoe onto the next stair; his Gucci loafer that could pay the mortgage on this small house for a month. “It’s because of you, Terri. All those drugs you did, all that fucking around. All those blow jobs, all those ass fuckings. I bet the jism’s rotting you from the inside out.”

“Stop it.”

Lena cupped the gun in her hand, holding it straight out in front of her, pointing it at the open landing as she waited for him to get to the top so she could shut him the fuck up.

“One of these days,” he began, taking another step. “One of these days, I’m going to have to tell Dale.”

“Paul-”

“How do you think he’s going to feel knowing he’s put his dick in all that?” Paul asked. “All that come just swirling around inside you.”

“I was sixteen!” she sobbed. “What was I going to do? I didn’t have a choice!”

“And now your kids are sick,” he said, obviously pleased by her distress. “Sick with what you did. Sick with all that disease and filth inside you.” His tone made Lena ’s stomach tighten with hate. She felt the urge to make some kind of noise that would get him up here faster. The gun felt hot in her hand, ready to explode as soon as he passed into her line of vision.

He continued to climb the stairs, saying, “You were nothing but a fucking whore.”

Terri did not respond.

“And you’re still turning tricks?” he said, coming closer. Just another few steps and he would be there. His words were so hateful, so familiar. He could be Ethan talking to Lena. Ethan coming up the stairs to beat the shit out of her.

“You think I don’t know what you needed that money for?” Paul demanded. He had stopped about two steps from the top, so close that Lena could smell his flowery cologne. “Three hundred fifty bucks,” he said, slapping the stair railing as if he was telling some kind of joke. “That’s a lot of money, Ter. What’d you use all that money for?”

“I said I’d pay you back.”

“Pay me back when you can,” he said, as if he was her old friend instead of tormentor. “Tell me what it was for, Genie. I was only trying to help you.”

Lena gritted her teeth, watching his shadow linger on the landing. Terri had asked Paul for the money to pay the clinic. He must have made her grovel for it, then kicked her in the teeth before she left.

“What’d you need it for?” Paul asked, his steps receding down the stairs now that he had found an easier prey. In her head, Lena was screaming for him to come back, but a few seconds later she heard his shoes hit the tile in the foyer with a loud bang as if he had jumped down the last steps in glee. “What’d you need it for, whore?” Terri didn’t respond and he slapped her again, the noise pounding in Lena ’s ears. “Answer me, whore.”

Terri’s voice was weak. “I used it to pay the hospital bills.”

“You used it to carve out that baby inside you.”

Terri made a wheezing noise. Lena dropped the gun to her side, her eyes squeezing shut at the sound of the other woman’s grief.

“Abby told me,” he said. “She told me everything.”

“No.”

“She was real worried about her cousin Terri,” he continued. “Didn’t want her to go to hell for what she was going to do. I promised her I’d talk to you about it.” Terri said something and Paul laughed. Lena pivoted around the corner, gun raised, aiming at Paul’s back as he struck Terri across the cheek again, this time so hard that she fell to the floor. He grabbed her up, spinning her around just as Lena hid herself back behind the corner.

Lena closed her eyes again, her head playing back in slow motion what she had just seen. He had reached down to grab Terri, yanking her up as he spun toward the stairs. There was a bulge under his jacket. Was he carrying a gun? Did he have a weapon on him?

Paul’s tone was one of disgust. “Get up, you whore.”

“You killed her,” Terri accused. “I know you killed Abby.”

“Watch your mouth,” he warned.

“Why?” Terri begged. “Why would you hurt Abby?”

“She did it to herself,” he said. “Y’all should know better by now than to piss off ol’ Cole.” Lena waited for Terri to say something, to tell him that he was worse than Cole, that he had directed everything, put the idea in Cole’s head that the girls needed to be punished.

Terri was silent, though, and the only thing Lena heard was the refrigerator kicking on in the kitchen. She peered around the corner just as Terri found her voice.

“I know what you did to her,” she said, and Lena cursed the woman’s brazenness. Of all the times for Terri to develop a backbone, this was not it. Jeffrey would be here soon, maybe in another five minutes.

Terri said, “I know you gave her the cyanide. Dale told you how to use it.”

“So?”

“Why?” Terri asked. “Why would you kill Abby? She never did anything to you. All she ever did was love you.”

“She was a bad girl,” he said, as if that was reason enough. “Cole knew that.”

“You told Cole,” Terri said. “Don’t think I don’t know how that works.”

“How what works?”

“How you tell him we’re bad,” she said. “You put all these terrible ideas into his head, and he goes out and punishes us.” Her laugh was caustic. “Funny how God never tells him to punish the boys. You ever been in that box, Paul? You ever get buried for seeing your whores in Savannah and snorting your coke?”