The Pact Read online

  "No," Chris said. "I'm not."

  IT HAD BEEN EMILY'S IDEA to go to the carousel. In part, because she knew it was likely to be deserted at this time of year, and in part because she was making a conscious effort to take with her all the best things about the world she wanted to leave, just in case memories could be carried in one's pockets and used to plot out the course of whatever it was that came next.

  She had always loved the carousel. The past two summers, when Chris had run it, she'd met him here often. They had christened the horses: Tulip and Leroy; Sadie and Starlight and Buck. Sometimes she'd come during the day and help Chris hoist the thick, damp weights of toddlers onto the carved saddles; sometimes she'd arrive at dusk to help him clean up. She'd liked that best. There was something impossibly lovely about the big machine running itself down, horses moving in slow motion to the creak and whir of the gears.

  She didn't feel frightened. Now that she'd found a way out, even the thought of dying didn't scare her. She just wanted to end it before other people she loved were hurt as badly as she was.

  She looked at Chris, and at the small silver box that contained the mechanism that activated the carousel. "Do you still have your key?" she asked.

  The wind whipped her braid against her cheek, and her arms were crossed in an effort to keep warm. "Yeah," Chris said. "You want to go on?"

  "Please." She climbed onto the carousel, passing her hand against the noses of the sturdy horses. She picked the one she'd named Delilah, a white horse with a silver mane and paste rubies and emeralds set into her bridle. Chris stood by the silver box, his hand on the red button that started the machine. Emily felt the carousel rumble to life beneath her, the calliope jangling as the merry-go-round picked up speed. She slapped the cracked leather of the reins against the horse's neck and closed her eyes.

  She pictured herself and Chris, little children standing side by side on a backyard boulder, holding hands and leaping together into a high pile of autumn leaves. She remembered the jewel tones of the maples and oaks. She remembered the yank of her arm against Chris's as gravity tugged at them. But most of all she remembered that moment when they were both convinced they were flying.

  HE STOOD ON LEVEL GROUND and watched Emily. Her head was thrown back and the wind had pinked her cheeks. Tears were streaming from her eyes, but she was smiling.

  This, he realized, is it. Either he let Emily have what she wanted more than anything, or he let himself have what he wanted. It was the first time he could remember those two things not being the same.

  How could he stand by and watch her die? Then again, how could he stop her, if she was hurting so badly?

  Emily had trusted him, but he was going to betray her. And then the next time she tried to kill herself--because there would be a next time, he knew--he wouldn't find out until after the fact. Like everyone else.

  He felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. Was he really considering what he thought he was?

  He tried to clear his head the way he did before a meet, so that the only thing in his mind was the straightest, fastest path from here to there. But this time, it would not be that easy. There was no right way. There was no guarantee that both of them would make it to the other side.

  Shivering, he focused on the long, white line of her throat, the beat at its hollow. He kept his eyes on her pulse as she disappeared out of his range of vision to the far side of the carousel, holding his breath until he saw her coming back to him.

  THEY SAT ON THE CAROUSEL BENCH where mothers rode with the tiniest babies, the wood bubbly and thick beneath their hands from consecutive coats of paint. The bottle of Canadian Club rested between Chris's feet. He felt Emily shaking beside him, and preferred to think that she might be cold. Leaning over, he buttoned her jacket all the way. "You don't want to get sick," he said, and then, considering his words, felt queasy. "I love you," he whispered, and that was the moment he knew what he was going to do.

  When you loved someone, you put their needs before your own.

  No matter how inconceivable those needs were; no matter how fucked up; no matter how much it made you feel like you were ripping yourself into pieces.

  He did not realize he'd begun to cry, partly in shock and partly in acceptance, until he tasted himself, slick and salty, on Emily's lips. It was not supposed to be this way; oh, God, but how could he be a hero when saving Em would only make her hurt more? Out of comfort, Emily's hands began to stroke his back, and he wondered, Who is here for whom? Then suddenly he had to be inside her, and with an urgency that surprised him he found himself ripping at her jeans and shoving them down her thighs, wrapping her legs around him as he came.

  Take me with you, he thought.

  EMILY STRAIGHTENED HER CLOTHES, her cheeks flaming. Chris could not stop apologizing, as if the fact he'd forgotten a condom was something she'd hold against him for eternity. "It doesn't matter," she said, tucking in her shirt, thinking, If you only knew.

  He sat a few feet away from her, his hands clasped in his lap. His jeans were still unbuttoned, and the smell of sex carried on the wind. He felt unnaturally calm. "What do you want me to do," he said, "afterward?"

  They hadn't talked about it; in fact, until this moment Emily was not entirely sure that Chris wasn't going to do something completely stupid, like throw the bullets into the shrubbery when he went to load the chamber, or knock the gun out of her hand at the last minute. "I don't know," she said, and she didn't: She'd never gotten this far in her thoughts. There was the planning, and the organization, and even the act itself--but the truth of being dead was not something she'd pictured. She cleared her throat. "Do anything," she said. "Whatever you need to."

  Chris traced a pattern on the floorboards with his thumbnail, a sudden stranger. "Is there a time?" he asked stiffly.

  "Just not yet," Emily whispered, and at the reprieve Chris buttoned his jeans and pulled her onto his lap. His arms closed around her and she leaned into him, thinking, Forgive me.

  HIS HANDS WERE SHAKING as he snapped open the chamber of the gun. The Colt would hold six bullets. After one was fired, the shell remained in the revolver. He explained all this to Emily as he fumbled in his shirt pocket, as if reciting the sheer mechanics of the act would make it that much less painful.

  "Two bullets?" Emily said.

  Chris lifted a shoulder. "Just in case," he answered, daring her to ask him to explain something he did not really understand himself. Just in case one bullet didn't do the trick? Just in case he found that with Emily dead, he'd want to die, too?

  Then the gun lay between them, a living thing. Emily picked it up, its weight bending her wrist.

  There was so much Chris wanted to say. He wanted her to tell him what this horrible secret of hers was; he wanted to beg her to stop. He wanted to tell her she could still back out of this, although he felt things had gotten so far he did not quite believe it himself. So he pressed his lips against hers, hard--a brand--but then his mouth curled around a sob and he broke away before the kiss was finished, his body folding like he'd been punched. "I am doing this," he said, "because I love you."

  Emily's face was still and white with tears. "I am doing this because I love you, too." She gripped his hand. "I want you to hold me," she said.

  Chris moved her into his arms, her chin on his right shoulder. He committed to memory the solid weight of her, and the life that ran like a current, before pulling back slightly to give Emily room to place the gun to her head.

  NOW

  May 1998

  Randi Underwood apologized to the jury. "I work nights," she explained, "but they didn't want to keep all of you up during the time I'm usually most lucid." She'd just come off a thirty-six-hour stint at the hospital, where she was a physician's assistant in the emergency room. "Just let me know if I don't make any sense," she joked. "And if I try to intubate someone with a pen, slap me."

  Jordan smiled. "We certainly appreciate you being here, Ms. Underwood."

  "Hey," the