Chapter Sixty Eight - A Meeting With The Devil

The walls felt too close, too clean. Sterile. Clinical. The ticking of the clock on the wall scraped against Harper's nerves with every second that passed. She sat in a stiff plastic chair, wrists balanced limply on the steel table, her fingers twitching restlessly. The gun sat in front of her, sealed in a plastic evidence bag. The metal looked dull under the harsh light, but it still radiated danger.

Across from her sat Detectives Harris and Shaw, their eyes hard with suspicion, but not without calculation.

Harris leaned forward, voice flat. "Harper, we had a search of your home. We found this gun under your bed. Do you recognize it?"

Harper looked at the bag, then up at him with heavy-lidded eyes. "It's a gun." she said hoarsely.

Shaw tilted his head. "It's not just a gun. It's the gun that may be tied to something serious. Maybe something you don't fully remember."

Harper looked away. "I told you. I don't know. I'm on all sort of meds. My memory's foggy."

"We know." Harris said calmly, flipping through her file. "You're on a mix of mood stabilizers, antidepressants, and antipsychotics. But we also know you've had suicide attempts in the past.."

Harper's jaw clenched. "So what?"

"So.." Shaw continued, "We want to understand why . But if you know something—and something else happened—now's the time to be honest."

Harper shifted in her chair. Her palms were clammy.

"What were you doing with that gun, Harper?" Harris asked again. "What happened the night you got your hands on it? How did you even get this gun?"

Harper said stiffly. "It belongs to someone I know in my class. Their dad owns it. He's into guns.." 

Her eyes glazed slightly as a flicker of memory forced its way to the surface.

Harper didn't knock.

The front door groaned open under her hand, just as she remembered it—ancient hinges whining like they knew this wasn't going to end well. The house was still. Too still. Even the air smelled like history and ghosts—lemon polish, old paper, and Cece's perfume, the same kind she wore the day she signed the forms that sent Harper away.

The click of a light switch echoed through the foyer.

Cece stood at the top of the stairs, bathrobe cinched, a tumbler of scotch in one hand like it belonged there. She didn't look surprised to see Harper. Just... annoyed.

"Breaking and entering now?" she said, descending slowly. "That what they taught you at your little mental hotel?"

Harper didn't answer. She waited at the bottom of the stairs, jaw locked tight, fists clenched.

Cece reached the last step and raised her glass in mock salute, almost offering Harper one.

"You're not supposed to be here, drink?"

"I need to talk to you."

"You're not exactly on my list of preferred visitors, Harper."

Harper stepped forward. "You sent me away like trash. Like I was some curse you had to bury."

"You were  a curse!" Cece spat. "You tore that house apart with your tantrums, your outbursts, your— You are sick. Someone had to do something, and as usual, your mother didn't have the spine to fix you. I had to step in."

Harper's breath came in sharp, slow pulls. "You have no idea what you did to me."

"Oh, I do." Cece said calmly, taking a sip. "I kept this family from falling apart. What did you do, Harper? Hmm? What have you ever done besides embarrass us?"

"I survived." Harper spat. "That's what I did. I survived you. That place. Everything."

"Barely. Look at you now."

Harper pulled the gun from her coat pocket.

Cece paused, raising an eyebrow—but didn't flinch.

"Don't be dramatic, Harper.."

"I'm not." Harper said, voice low. "I'm just done being quiet."

She raised the gun.

Cece eyed it. "So what's this? Revenge? You going to kill your grandmother?"

Harper stepped forward, one slow stride at a time. The barrel didn't shake.

"No." she said, voice calm—too calm. "I just want you to understand something."

Cece tilted her head. "Enlighten me."

"I have nothing left." Harper said, her voice sharpening. "No peace. No normality. My brain is wrecked. I see things I can't explain and feel things I can't handle. I am barely holding on. I probably will have to redo my senior year and that's if I make this one."

Her finger grazed the trigger.

"And that makes me the most dangerous kind of person.."

For the first time, Cece blinked.

The silence was sharp enough to cut glass.

Harper took one more step forward, gun level with Cece's chest.

"So here's how this goes.." Harper said, every word deliberate. "You're going to sit your crusty ass back down on that chair, pour yourself another drink, and I'm going to talk and you're going to listen. And if you even try to call the cops, I'll blow your fucking brains out right here, right now."

Cece stared at her.

Something dark flickered in her eyes—pride? Fear? Resentment? It was impossible to tell.

The detective slid her file across the table and opened it. Medical records, therapy notes, hospitalization dates—all annotated in red ink.

"You've had a really hard life, Harper." he said softly. "Your chart is a goddamn novel. Physical trauma, mental trauma, multiple institutionalizations. There's even mention of early childhood neglect. A history like that? People don't come out of it clean."

"I'm not a danger." Harper whispered.

"Not deliberately, maybe." He said. "But trauma festers. And with the amount of medication you're on—"

Harper shook her head, tired. She could feel herself slipping—not emotionally, but mentally, like her brain was rolling down a hill and she was too slow to catch it. She couldn't tell them the truth. Couldn't explain what it meant to stand in front of the woman who shattered her and almost let the darkness win.

So she said it again, firmer this time. "The gun was for me. I was going to kill myself."

She lied.

The night swallowed Harper whole as she stormed up the walkway, her boots slapping against the concrete with uneven urgency. Her breath came fast and shallow, clouds of it rising in the cold air. By the time she reached the front door, her fingers were stiff from gripping the strap of her bag—the bag with it inside.

She shoved the door open hard enough for it to bang against the wall, the sound ricocheting through the sleeping house like a warning shot. No lights flicked on. No voices stirred. Just the low, mechanical hum of the heater cycling through vents.

Good. Everyone was asleep.

Harper didn't stop moving. She locked the door without looking, shrugged off her hoodie, and kicked her boots into a corner. Her limbs felt disconnected—like her body was moving faster than her brain could process.

Each step up the stairs thudded. Her fingers skimmed the railing for balance.

She felt... frayed. Like a wire stripped raw and buzzing.

She barely noticed the framed photos lining the wall—smiling Baldwin kids, birthday cakes, trips to the beach. They seemed like ghost memories. Belonging to some other girl, in some other life. A girl who hadn't been sent away. A girl who hadn't held a gun tonight.

Her bedroom door opened with a soft creak. She stepped inside and locked it behind her. This time, deliberately.

She stood in the dark, her shoulders heaving. For a moment, she just... listened. The silence was deafening. The kind that sinks into your skin.

With shaky fingers, she reached into her pocket.

She pulled out the gun.

It gleamed under a sliver of moonlight sneaking through the window. The same weapon she'd held just moments earlier, hands trembling, voice raised, pointed right at the woman who ruined her life.

Her face.

Harper's throat tightened as she fell to her knees beside her bed. She lifted the mattress slightly with one hand, pushing away boxes and old clothes with the other. Her fingers closed around the cold metal of a storage bin and shoved it aside.

She made space.

She hesitated.

Then slid the gun beneath the bed.

It scraped softly against the floorboards. Harper stared at it for a moment. Frozen.

Then, without blinking, she grabbed an old hoodie—her battered camp sweatshirt—and shoved it in front of the weapon, hiding it completely. She pressed it deep into the shadows under the bed, hands still trembling.

Her breathing was ragged now. Loud in the silence. She sank onto her heels.

What the hell have I done?

The thought rose uninvited, heavy with panic.

Her legs were weak when she stood. She backed away from the bed like it might explode. Then she turned, flicked on the lamp beside her desk, and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

Red eyes. Smudged mascara. Hollow cheeks.

She looked like a stranger. Like a girl who had done something terrible.