Stella laughed. Whatever disaster she’d planned was close to coming to fruition and she was becoming more agitated. Meanwhile, the smell was growing in intensity. I could see that she’d stopped to sniff the air, too. Then she smiled again.
“She didn’t know her own precious husband was one of the men who couldn’t stay away. Judge fucking Alan Leightman. Paying to watch the same sluts who were ruining Simone. He’s in jail. You know that? He’s paying for his sins now. For his and his wife’s sins. He’s my little joke on her. He turned himself in. Can you imagine?”
“None of this will bring Simone back,” Nina said.
“No, but it will take me to Simone. I’ll go to her offering revenge. She will forgive me then.”
I needed to call the police and get them here. But how could I do that without making a sound? Either I backed out and hoped that I could do it quietly enough not to alert Stella, or I tried to dial from where I was.
But how could I say anything without her knowing I was there? Would 911 respond if I didn’t talk? No, they couldn’t. This wasn’t a land line; they wouldn’t know where I was. I was going to have to back out and shut the door. But I couldn’t do that until Stella turned around. I couldn’t risk her seeing me and panicking.
“Stella, I know how upset you are. I can’t imagine how horrible it is when your daughter takes her own life. But Blythe didn’t have anything to do with Simone killing herself,” Nina said, trying to reason with her old friend.
“She debased herself for those boys, and still they didn’t care. They passed the file around and all watched it, and they still didn’t want her. When I found out, I did everything I could to make her understand. I wanted to help her cleanse herself. But…but…she didn’t listen to me. All she wanted was one of those boys to put his prick in her mouth. That was all that mattered, and if she couldn’t have that…”
She was on the verge of losing control. I could see it in her eyes.
“No more explaining. No more. I’m tired. This was all I wanted. To give her this present for her birthday. Every one of those girls she copied has been punished, each of them poisoned by the very act that poisoned Simone. She’s the last one…” Stella nodded toward Blythe.
“Now it’s time to wish my baby happy birthday. Will you sing with me, Nina? Sing. Happy birthday to you-” Her cracked voice was off key.
Nina didn’t join in.
“You have to sing with me.”
I had seen people break before but it never lost its horror. Stella was angry now. Her eyes were on fire. She fumbled with the thing in her hand. It fell. She bent over to pick it up.
Now I could see what it was.
A box of matches.
Of course, she had to light the candle on the cake.
I don’t remember putting it all together.
One second I couldn’t tell what the smell was, the next I could suddenly breathe clearly and knew what it was. There was no time think about what needed to be done. Even calling out to Nina wouldn’t have accomplished anything. It would have taken me too long to explain.
In one long, slow motion, Stella moved her right foot forward, then her left. She was only two steps away from Blythe and the table and the cake. I saw the tremor in the hand that held the matchbox and heard the sound of the wooden sticks hitting each other so loudly it was as if it had been magnified a hundred times.
I ran forward, taking the steps to the stage two at a time. In my peripheral vision, I saw Nina standing with her mouth in a small astonished O.
Stella had opened the box. She shook out a match. It fell to the floor. She looked at it. Bent to pick it up. Retrieved it. Stood. Held the match to strike it.
I reached her, running right into her, knocking the box and the match out of her hands.
Shocked, she didn’t focus on me but looked down at the spilled matches.
“I have to do this. She is the last one. I promised Simone. I have to do this. Get away.” She pushed me with enormous force. I wasn’t prepared and I felt myself falling, fought to find my balance.
“Nina!” I shouted. “The theater is full of gas. She has matches. She wants to blow the place up. Get out. Call the police.”
Stella was coming at me with her hands open and her fingers curled. She tried for my eyes; I ducked. She grabbed my hair and yanked. I heard myself scream and swung my right arm. The flat of my cast made contact with her face. I heard something crack. My wrist? The cast? Stella staggered back, clutching her face. She was screaming. Blood was running through her fingers.
Nina had reached us by then.
Stella’s fingers were smeared with blood. Blood was still streaming down her chin and dripping onto her neck and it occurred to me that I had done that to her.
While Nina tied Stella’s hands together with my scarf, I pulled the gag out of Blythe’s mouth. Clearly drugged, she looked at me with glassy confused eyes.
“You’re going to be okay. Just hold on,” I told her.
Awkwardly, I pulled my cell phone out of my bag with one hand, dialed 911, gave them the address of the theater and told them to send both the police and an ambulance. “There’s a young woman here who I think has been poisoned. Hurry.”
Knowing the more information we could give the paramedics, the better the chances for Blythe’s survival, I told them all I knew. Once I hung up I turned to Stella.
Sitting in a corner of the stage, she was rocking slightly back and forth as if she could hear music and was moving to its beat. Nina, standing above her, looked down on her old friend with an expression of desperate sadness.
“What did you give her?” I asked Stella.
“She can’t hear you, Morgan,” Nina said.
I knew what kind of shape Stella was in, I could see it, but I couldn’t give up, not yet. “What did you give Blythe?”
Stella didn’t even look at me. Staring out into the distance, she was seeing something beyond Nina and me, beyond the stage and the theater, beyond the present.
“What did you give Blythe?” I was screaming now.
Stella started to answer me in a hoarse whisper and I leapt forward to make sure I heard every word.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you…” she sang in a thin, cracked voice.
“What did you give Blythe?”
As if she’d actually heard the question, she stopped singing and cocked her head toward me and I felt a flutter of hope.
“If only we’d had the cake.” Stella’s voice was low and without inflection. “It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us so much. If only we’d had the cake. It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us so much…”
Meanwhile, Nina had opened Stella’s bag and was rifling through it. “Let’s hope this is all she gave Blythe.” She held up a prescription bottle of popular sleeping pills.
Even though it was probably pointless, I tried once more. “Did you give her these pills, Stella? How many?”
“If only we’d had the cake. It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us so much. If only we’d had the cake. It would have made Simone so happy. She would have liked to see all of us…”