Not open, broken. Glass was all over the gravel pathway, grinding underfoot. There were shards like grinning teeth left in the bare frame. Vickie's house had been broken into.
"She asked him in," Bonnie cried in agonized fury. "Why did she do that? Why?"
"Stay here," Meredith said, trying to moisten dry lips.
"Stop telling me that. I can take it, Meredith. I'm mad, that's all. I hate him." She gripped Meredith's arm and went forward.
The gaping hole got closer and closer. The curtains rippled. There was enough space between them to see inside.
At the last moment, Meredith pushed Bonnie away and looked through first herself. It didn't matter. Bonnie's psychic senses were awake and already telling her about this place. It was like the crater left in the ground after a meteor has hit and exploded, or like the charred skeleton of a forest after a wildfire. Power and violence were still thrumming in the air, but the main event was over. This place had been violated.
Meredith spun away from the window, doubling over, retching. Clenching her fists so that the nails bit into her palms, Bonnie leaned forward and looked in.
The smell was what struck her first. A wet smell, meaty and coppery. She could almost taste it, and it tasted like an accidentally bitten tongue. The stereo was playing something she couldn't hear over the screaming out front and the drumming-surf sound in her own ears. Her eyes, adjusting from the darkness outside, could see only red. Just red.
The record player clicked and the stylus swung back to the beginning. With a shock, Bonnie recognized the song as it started over.
It was "Goodnight Sweetheart."
"You monster," Bonnie gasped. Pain shot through her stomach. Her hand gripped the window frame, tighter, tighter. "You monster, I hate you! I hate you!" Meredith heard and straightened up, turning. She shakily pushed back her hair and managed a few deep breaths, trying to look as if she could cope. "You're cutting your hand," she said. "Here, let me see it."
Bonnie hadn't even realized she was gripping broken glass. She let Meredith take the hand, but instead of letting her examine it, she turned it over and clasped Meredith's own cold hand tightly. Meredith looked terrible: dark eyes glazed, lips blue-white and shaking. But Meredith was still trying to take care of her, still trying to keep it together.
"Go on," she said, looking at her friend intently. "Cry, Meredith. Scream if you want to. But get it out somehow. You don't have to be cool now and keep it all inside. You have every right to lose it today."
For a moment Meredith just stood there, trembling, but then she shook her head with a ghastly attempt at a smile. "I can't. I'm just not made that way. Come on, let me look at the hand."
Bonnie might have argued, but just then Matt came around the corner. He started violently to see the girls standing there.
"What are you doing-?" he began. Then he saw the window.
"She's dead," Meredith said flatly.
"I know." Matt looked like a bad photograph of himself, an overexposed one. "They told me up front. They're bringing out..." He stopped.
"We blew it. Even after we promised her..." Meredith stopped too. There was nothing more to say.
"But the police will have to believe us now," Bonnie said, looking at Matt, then Meredith, finding one thing to be grateful for. "They'll have to."
"No," Matt said, "they won't, Bonnie. Because they're saying it's a suicide."
"A suicide?. Have they seen that room? They call that a suicide?" Bonnie cried, her voice rising.
"Oh, my God," Meredith said, turning away.
"They think maybe she was feeling guilty for having killed Sue."
"Somebody broke into this house," Bonnie said fiercely. "They've got to admit that!"
"No." Meredith's voice was soft, as if she were very tired. "Look at the window here. The glass is all outside. Somebody from the inside broke it." And that's the rest of what's wrong with the picture, Bonnie thought.
"He probably did, getting out," Matt said. They looked at each other silently, in defeat.
"Where's Stefan?" Meredith asked Matt quietly. "Is he out front where everyone can see him?"
"No, once we found out she was dead he headed back this way. I was coming to look for him. He must be around somewhere..."
"Sh!" said Bonnie. The shouting from the front had stopped. So had the woman's screaming. In the relative stillness they could hear a faint voice from beyond the black walnut trees in the back of the yard.
"-while you were supposed to be watching her!"
The tone made Bonnie's skin break out in gooseflesh. "That's him!" Matt said. "And he's with Damon. Come on!"
Once they were among the trees Bonnie could hear Stefan's voice clearly. The two brothers were facing each other in the moonlight.
"I trusted you, Damon. I trusted you!" Stefan was saying. Bonnie had never seen him so angry, not even with Tyler in the graveyard. But it was more than anger.
"And you just let it happen," Stefan went on, without glancing at Bonnie and the others as they appeared, without giving Damon a chance to reply. "Why didn't you do something? If you were too much of a coward to fight him, you could at least have called for me. But you just stood there!"
Damon's face was hard, closed. His black eyes glittered, and there was nothing lazy or casual about his posture now. He looked as unbending and brittle as a pane of glass. He opened his mouth, but Stefan interrupted.
"It's my own fault. I should have known better. I did know better. They all knew, they warned me, but I wouldn't listen."