Not a Happy Family

by Shari Lapena

  Ted reaches over to her across the table. “Are you all right?”

  She shakes her head slowly.

  “Eat something,” he prods, pointing at the lasagna, her favorite.

  She half-heartedly spoons out some of the reheated lasagna onto her plate, adds a bit of salad, and tries to eat. But she begins to tremble. The fork in her hand is wobbling so much she can’t bring it to her mouth. She drops it on her plate with a clatter.

  “Catherine, what is it?” Ted says.

  She blurts it out. “What if—” She can’t continue.

  Ted gets up from the table and comes over to sit beside her. He puts his arms around her as she sobs into his chest.

  “What if what?” he whispers into her hair.

  She looks up at him. “What if Dan killed them?”

  * * *

  • • •

  ted’s feeling of dread surfaces. Catherine’s voiced a fear he’s mostly tried to ignore since the afternoon before, when Dan had behaved so oddly. He’d been so nervy and agitated, and said such inappropriate things. Now, Ted doesn’t know what to say, how to comfort her. He simply holds her. Finally, she pulls away, her face streaked with tears. Her cheeks seem to have hollowed out in the last day and a half.

  He strokes her hair. “Catherine, it’s going to be all right,” he says helplessly. “I love you.” He’s never seen her so distraught. “Come,” he says gently, guiding her back into the living room. They’ve lost all interest in food. They sink together onto the sofa and she turns to him, her eyes huge, welling with tears. “He hated our father, Ted. You have no idea.”

  “But could he do that?” he asks, swallowing his revulsion. “You know him better than I do.”

  “I don’t know,” she says, her voice hollow. “Maybe.”

  Ted feels a chill run down his back. The thought of Dan strangling his own mother and stabbing his father over and over again in a raging fury and then pretending to be innocent in front of them all is so disturbing that he feels physically sick.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” he says. But even as he says it, he asks himself, What should they do? If he’s a murderer, they can’t just continue to let him into their home, surely? He might actually be insane.

  “He’s right. They’re going to think he did it,” Catherine says, agitated, “and they’re going to question me again.”

  Ted, deeply troubled, stares blankly out the living-room windows, his arms around her. He sees two people across the street, walking up to the front door of their neighbors’. They look vaguely familiar. Then, with a jolt, Ted realizes who they are. It’s the detectives, Reyes and Barr. What are they doing on their street?

  And all at once he knows. There’s only one reason they would be there.

  Catherine must sense his sudden tension because she looks up at him and says, “What is it?”

  She follows his gaze across the street, recognizes the detectives, and inhales a sharp breath.

  “Fuck,” Ted says.

  “What if someone saw me?” she says, frightened.

  Ted’s mind is racing. Someone might have seen Catherine go out later that night. She might have been caught somewhere on camera. If the police are checking on her, they might find out the truth. This is what he was afraid of. “Then you’ll have to tell them the truth,” he says slowly. “That you didn’t tell them before because you were in shock, and afraid of what they might think, because of the inheritance. That you went over and saw your parents, they were fine, and you came home again.”

  “But . . .” she whispers at him.

  Her face has gone shockingly pale, and it frightens him. “But what?” he asks.

  “They weren’t fine. They were already dead.”

  28

  Ted looks back at his wife in shock and confusion. “What?”

  “I’m sorry, Ted, I lied to you too.” She’s crying again in earnest now, tears coursing down her cheeks.

  He pulls farther away from her, staring at her in horror. “How could they already be dead? And you said nothing?” His heart pounds as he realizes that his wife, the woman he knows so well, came home from seeing that her parents had been brutally murdered and went to bed as if nothing had happened. And then blithely told him the next morning that she’d spoken to her mother, and made up some lie about her mother asking her to intervene with her father on Jenna’s behalf. His world spins. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he gasps angrily.

  “Don’t be mad at me, Ted!” she begs. “I didn’t know what to do!” She swipes at some tissues from a box on the coffee table and wipes her eyes. She makes an effort to compose herself as he watches her, his heart still beating painfully fast, loud in his ears.

  “I went over there to talk to Mom. When I got there, it was late—around eleven thirty. There was still a light on upstairs. So I knocked on the door. Nobody answered, so I knocked again. I knew they must still be up. But I started to think it was strange, because Mom hadn’t answered her phone, and no one came to the door. I tried it, and it was unlocked. So I went in. It was dark in the hall, but there was a bit of light in the kitchen. I glanced in the living room and saw a lamp on the floor—and then I saw Mom. She was lying on the floor in the living room.” She starts to hyperventilate. “I went over to her. She was dead. Her eyes were open. It was horrible.”

  Ted sees her obvious pain and fright and listens in dread.

  “I wanted to run away, but it was like I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I was terrified. I thought Dad had killed her. That he’d finally snapped.” Her voice breaks. “I don’t know how long I was there. But I didn’t hear anything. Then I thought he must have killed himself too.”

  Jesus, Ted thinks to himself.

  She swallows. “Somehow I walked down the hall to the kitchen. I could see then that there was blood on the floor and I avoided it. And then—” She stops.

  Ted watches her, stunned. He can’t process any of this. “Go on,” Ted says. “Tell me everything.”

  “I didn’t go in, I just stood at the doorway. Dad was on the kitchen floor. There was blood everywhere. The carving knife was there, beside him.” She seems to freeze, as if she’s seeing it all again in her mind’s eye. As if he’s not there at all. The expression on her face makes him queasy.

  “Why didn’t you call 911?” Ted cries. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought—I thought—” But she can’t seem to get the words out.

  Ted says it for her, realizing. “You thought Dan did it.”

  She nods almost imperceptibly. She’s stopped crying now; she just looks numb. “I thought Dan came back that night and killed them. I knew he needed money and that Dad wouldn’t give him any. And I was afraid.”

  “Afraid—”

  “That he would be caught.” She turns her eyes on him. “I just wanted to give him some time—some time to get away, or to clean up . . . I knew he couldn’t have been thinking straight.”

  “Catherine,” Ted says. He says her name as calmly as he can, but he’s shaken to the core. “Dan should go to jail if he’s done this. He’s—dangerous.”

  She covers her face with her hands and sobs. “I know. But I just can’t bear it.” At last she looks up at him and says, as if she’s pleading with him, “He’s my little brother. We have to protect him.”

  She doesn’t say it, but Ted can’t help thinking it: And he’s done us all a favor.

  * * *

  • • •

  the lights are on in Catherine Merton’s house, Detective Reyes notices as he and Barr approach the neighbors’ house directly across the street.

  They show their badges and are invited inside by the owners, a man and woman in their sixties. Reyes explains that they are investigating the murders of Fred and Sheila Merton, whose daug
hter lives across the street. Their eyes grow big.

  “Were you home on Sunday night?” Reyes asks.

  “Yes, but we went to bed early,” the man says. “Had a big Easter dinner at our daughter’s.”

  Reyes says, “Did you by any chance see anyone leave the house across the street—Ted Linsmore and Catherine Merton’s house—anytime after seven thirty in the evening on Easter Sunday?”

  The two of them look at each other and shake their heads. Before Reyes can even ask the question, the man offers, “But we have a porch cam and it catches the cars going up and down the street. Do you want to have a look?”

  “May we?”

  “Sure,” he says, as his wife hovers in the background.

  Upstairs there’s an office where the security footage can be accessed via a laptop. He goes back to seven p.m. Easter Sunday and then forward. As they watch the black-and-white footage, the occasional pedestrian or car going past, they see Ted’s car return and park in the driveway at 7:21 p.m.

  They continue watching, fast-forwarding through the footage until Reyes says, “Stop.”

  The helpful neighbor goes back a bit then plays it again slowly. At 11:09, they see Catherine’s car backing out of the driveway. The video doesn’t capture who got into the car, but as it goes down the street, they recognize Catherine, in the driver’s seat, alone.

  She’s lying, Reyes thinks. And her husband is covering for her. He and Barr share a glance over the man’s head.

  “Let’s see what time she comes back,” Reyes says, turning back to the screen.

  * * *

  • • •

  catherine stands to the side of the living-room window, careful not to be seen. The detectives have been in the house across the street for a long time. She waits for them to come out. When they do, she catches both of them glancing at her house as they walk to their car. They’re not questioning anyone else. They obviously don’t need to.

  She must have been seen. They must know she went out that night. They know she lied. They know Ted lied. He lied for her, and she knows he’s not happy about it.

  If they’re checking on her, then they’re going to check on Dan and Jenna too. Dan says he never left the house that night after he got home from their parents’. Lisa backed him up.

  She knows what that’s worth.

  * * *

  • • •

  dan is in the garage, the wide door open to the street. Soon he sees them. Those two detectives are talking to his neighbors, trying to find out if anyone saw him leaving his house Sunday night. He stands in shadow, terrified.

  Maybe no one saw anything.

  Catherine had called him on his cell a little while ago, told him what the detectives were doing. Asked him if anyone on his street had cameras. He didn’t know. With his luck, somebody would have fucking cameras. He’d told Catherine—he’d told them all—that he’d been home all night. She obviously doesn’t believe him, or she wouldn’t have called.

  Everyone has an alibi, he thinks, but him.

  He’s beginning to panic. He returns to the house and finds Lisa in the kitchen, cleaning up. “The detectives are here,” he says tersely.

  “What?” she asks in alarm.

  “On the street. Go look out the window,” he says sharply. “Don’t let them see you.”

  She throws him a look of concern and creeps over to the living-room window, standing behind the drapes.

  He hovers behind her and watches her face change as she realizes what it means.

  * * *

  • • •

  ellen cutter draws herself a bath that evening, humming a little, thinking about Audrey’s long visit earlier. Apparently she is not going to inherit a fortune after all. How quickly things change. She’d spoken rather wildly about Fred’s children—how they must have found out about his plan to change his will and killed him and Sheila too. Ridiculous, Ellen thinks, adding some bubbles to her bath. That’s a bit over the top, even for Audrey, who’s always had a vivid imagination.

  They have been friends for a long time, but Ellen is feeling just a little bit of schadenfreude.

  29

  Jenna is pleased to see that for once in her life, Catherine’s trademark composure is nowhere in sight. Catherine had called her cell and asked her to come over, even though it’s a little late. Her superior older sister is going to pieces in front of her, and Jenna tells herself that she wouldn’t be human if she didn’t enjoy it, just a little.

  Still, what she’s hearing is startling. Catherine and Ted have lied to the police. That’s not particularly surprising—Jenna has lied to them herself. What’s shocking is that Catherine found the bodies that night and didn’t tell a soul. Not even her husband. She waited two days and let Irena find them. Catherine says she kept it to herself to protect Dan.

  Jenna glances at Ted, who looks grave and preoccupied, and wonders what he thinks of Catherine now. Is she still the woman he thought he married? How cold-blooded do you have to be to see your parents’ murdered corpses and go home and act like everything’s fine?

  It tells her something about Catherine—she’s a great actor. At least up to a point. It looks now like the stress is getting the better of her. “Do you really think Dan did it?” Jenna asks now.

  “That’s what I thought at the time,” Catherine says uneasily. “It’s why I didn’t say anything that night. But he says he was home with Lisa.”

  “Maybe he was,” Jenna says doubtfully.

  “Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Catherine says, “because the detectives are looking for witnesses.”

  Jenna says, her voice grim, “Maybe we should ask Dan point-blank if he did it. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with. Maybe we can help him.”

  “He’s already denied it!” Catherine says. “And why would he admit it to us? He would never trust us that much.”

  “We never did trust each other much,” Jenna says.

  “Well, we’re adults now,” Catherine says, as if that makes a difference.

  But really, Jenna thinks, the stakes are just higher now.

  “I’m trusting you,” Catherine says, “with the truth.”

  “So,” Jenna asks, “if the police find out you went out that night, what are you going to tell them?”

  Catherine glances quickly at Ted, then back at her. She swallows. “Maybe I should tell them the truth. That I went there, they were already dead, I came home and said nothing.”

  “They’ll want to know why,” Jenna presses.

  “I’ll tell them I was in shock,” Catherine says.

  “For fuck’s sake, Catherine, you’re a fucking doctor. You need to come up with something better than that.” Catherine is silent. Ted is standing off to the side, anxiously biting his lip. There’s a long pause as they consider the options. “If you don’t want them to think you immediately suspected Dan,” Jenna suggests, “you could tell them that Dad told us that night that he was going to sell the house. You could say you were afraid they would think you did it.”

  Catherine looks back at her rather coldly.

  “I’ll back you up about the house,” Jenna says, “and I’m sure Dan will too. If you didn’t do it, you have nothing to be afraid of.”

  It seems as if all the air has been sucked out of the room.

  Finally, Catherine counters, “Or I could tell them they were fine, I spoke to Mom and came home.”

  Jenna watches Ted. He’s clearly uncomfortable with the lie.

  “Maybe you should just tell them the truth,” Ted says.

  “How’s it going to look if I tell them the truth?” Catherine protests. “They’re going to think it was either me or Dan. Even if he was home all night and Lisa vouches for him, they may not believe it.”

  Jenna shrugs and says, “They’re going to think it’s one of us no matter what.
”

  “I suppose you have an alibi?” Catherine says.

  “Yes. Jake was with me at my place all night.”

  * * *

  • • •

  much later that night, Ted lies in bed, awake. Catherine hasn’t decided what to tell the police, but had agreed when Ted insisted she take a lawyer with her the next time the detectives ask her in for questioning.

  They’d watched the eleven o’clock local news before bed. The police haven’t released any more information to the public about the investigation. They’re still looking for the pickup truck seen near the house the night of the murders. Ted still hopes, but with little conviction, that the truck holds the key—that the driver of that truck is the killer, and only needs to be found.

  He doesn’t like what his wife has done to protect her younger brother, who, Ted has to admit, is possibly a killer.

  “Irena obviously thinks Dan did it,” Catherine said to him, clearly troubled, as she turned out the light. “Why else would she clean the knife?”

  Now Ted stares at the ceiling in the dark. He can’t close his eyes, because when he does, he imagines Catherine finding her mother dead. Her family is clearly a lot more fucked up than he ever knew. He imagines her finally gathering the courage to go into the kitchen and finding her father’s mutilated body, the realization dawning that it was probably her younger brother who’d killed them. Even though Ted doesn’t agree with it, he can understand her desire to protect Dan. She presumably understands why he might have done it—clearly she thinks he must have his reasons. But whatever they may be, Ted thinks, that’s no excuse for murder.