The Weight of Silence

by Gregg Olsen

  “Thanks for enlightening me,” Carter says.

  “Whatever,” Brooklyn says. “I can tell that you don’t get it. That’s fine. You never will.”

  “Did you lie about where you were between nine and ten on the morning Ally died?”

  Brooklyn looks at Debbie. I think I see sparks fly between them, but I’m not sure.

  “I was at work,” Brooklyn says, heading to the door. “Hey, what are you implying? I was fucking the guy. That’s all. I have morals. I would never hurt a kid. My job is all about taking care of kids.”

  Debbie nods. “Yes, Brooklyn is great with kids. She was there at 8:00 a.m. sharp like she is every day. Don’t try to make it out any other way.”

  Debbie lingers a second as Brooklyn heads for the car.

  “She’s mixed up,” she whispers. “Cut her some slack. Her parents died in a car crash when she was six. She’s got a good heart. And, yes, she’s been experimenting a little with her sexuality. Like we did in college.”

  I didn’t go to college with Debbie. I didn’t experiment, either.

  “I didn’t know that about her folks,” I say.

  “Rough stuff,” Debbie says. “Don’t ruin her life by getting her mixed up in something she had no idea about.”

  Debbie finishes telling me what she thinks I need to know. I shut the door and face Carter.

  “What just happened here?” I ask.

  “I guess I got schooled on the new way of doing things,” he tells me.

  Carter is older than me, but not by that much.

  “Me too,” I say. “These are the times we’re living in.”

  “I still think she’s a liar. And that’s not because she’s what we used to call a skank.”

  I smile. Skank. Such a funny, stupid word.

  “She’s holding back something,” I say.

  Emma appears from the kitchen with her drawing completed.

  “Wow,” says Carter, who gets the first peek. “That’s pretty awesome, kid.”

  She beams and shows me her pancake art.

  “He’s right,” I say to my niece. “That’s the most amazing stack of pancakes I’ve ever seen. And that cherry on top—wow! That looks so good.”

  “I’m going to make another one.” Emma returns to the kitchen and her incredible array of crayons.

  In that moment the stress of the case and the encounter with Brooklyn evaporates. The world still turns the way it should. Emma is proof of that. She’s more important to me than anything. That’s why I’ll fight to the death for her.

  If I have to.

  Later, I listen as Emma takes a bath. She’s splashing around in a meringue of bubbles and warm water, unaware that her world’s about to be turned upside down once more.

  I hear Emma get out of the old claw-foot tub. A few minutes later she’s by my side, wrapped in a white towel and brandishing a hairbrush.

  “Your hair smells like lavender,” I say as I brush out the snarls.

  “I like that shampoo,” she says.

  As I continue to brush her out, I am grateful that she cannot see that my eyes are wet.

  “School starts soon,” I say.

  “Don’t have to remind me,” she says. “Summer is almost over.”

  “It’s been a good one,” I say. “Hasn’t it?”

  “I liked our trip to Seattle,” she says.

  “Ruby Beach was nice too,” I say.

  She nods her head, and I continue to work through the tangles.

  I test the uncertain waters.

  “Do you miss your mom and dad?” I ask.

  Emma thinks for a beat. “I used to miss them every day, but they are both in heaven and I know that they are okay.”

  “I see,” I say. The brush glides downward. Smoothly.

  “Yeah,” she says, “Carrie Anne told me that once we get to heaven we get to see everyone again and that we’ll all be perfect.”

  “You’re perfect now,” I say.

  She twists in the towel she wears like a robe. “I mean, if you died in a car crash like my mom, you wouldn’t show up in heaven all hurt and stuff.”

  “I like that,” I say.

  “I miss my mom and dad,” Emma finally admits, “but I know that they would both be happy that you’re taking care of me. And Shelby. They’d be glad that we have Shelby too.”

  On cue, Shelby joins us. She’s older now, but she has acute hearing. Her name could be whispered in another room, and she’d be right there.

  Emma turns around and looks at me. Her eyes are wide and wise at the same time.

  “You’re crying,” she says. “What’s wrong, Auntie Mommy?”

  “I’m just happy,” I lie. I’ve done a lot of lying. Best intentions or not, each lie feels like a betrayal now.

  “I cry when I’m happy,” she says. “When I watch a movie too.”

  I put down the hairbrush. “Yes, I know.”

  Emma’s hair is damp but snarl-free. I give her a big hug and breathe in all of her lavender sweetness. She’s perfect already. She always will be. I take another deep breath and try to focus on what I need to do. Stacy has given me a terrible task. I don’t see how I can tell Emma that her mother is actually alive. It would be too confusing. Too hurtful.

  The house is a tomb. Carter is gone. Emma is asleep. I lie on the sofa, looking up at the water-stained ceiling. A bathtub leak. Great. The day plays out like a thunderstorm, and I hold a pillow like a life preserver.

  My mind goes to that place that I know is wrong, but I cannot stop myself from acknowledging something so true.

  Killing Stacy is the only solution to ensure that she never returns to traumatize Emma again. It would be final. It would be irrevocable. It would also leave blood on my hands, and while I’ve done a litany of things of which I am not proud, I have never crossed such a line. Part of me thinks that with Emma at stake I could. Part of me thinks that’s the big lie I tell myself because I want Stacy gone forever.

  I do.

  I can’t deny that. But I also can’t deny that I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. I know that is true above everything that passes through the history of my life. I know that the chaos that my sister brings is like a plague that clings to her—a virus that she sheds on me whenever she puts her arms around me.

  Killing her would be absolute.

  I try to get comfortable on the sofa in the house where we grew up, where I admired everything about her until I really saw her for what she was. The old cuckoo clock my dad bought at a flea market ticks away the time as loud as a jackhammer. Emma sleeps soundly upstairs; Shelby curls up next to me. I forgo a second glass of wine because thoughts like the ones that hover over me require a clear head.

  If I kill her, I will be no better than she is.

  Yes, but she’ll be dead.

  Ding-dong.

  The insipid little wooden bird pops out of the door on the top of the clock. It startles me. Snaps me out of what I’m thinking. Most of the time I hate that clock, but right now I’m grateful for its aggressively annoying mechanism. I flip the record over. I roll the dice. I change up my thoughts to something that’s closer to who I am.

  I could turn her in.

  That thought rolls around my brain for a moment. Enveloped in it are two things that I cannot deny or change. If I bring her in, she will go down for murder. If I bring her in, I will likely go to prison as well.

  “You knew she was going to do this,” they’d say.

  “I didn’t know it,” I’d say. “I didn’t believe it.”

  “It was your duty as an officer of the court to stop her,” they’d say.

  “She’s my sister,” I’d remind them.

  The scenario could play like that for a very long time, but in the end I would lose. I would deserve to lose. What happened to Cy and Tomas was my fault. I trusted Stacy. Trusting her was somewhere near the very top of all the blunders that I’ve made in my life. Worse than gambling. Worse than Danny Ford.

  The second al
l-but-certain outcome of turning Stacy in to the authorities would be that Emma would not have a single family member living outside of prison walls. She’d be a ward of the state of Washington, shuttled from one foster home to the next. Everything that’s perfect about Emma at this very moment would be at risk of being erased by the mix of well-meaning and greedy people who foster children.

  Yes, killing Stacy would be the easiest thing to do. I might even get away with it. But for how long? Telling Emma that her mother isn’t dead after all is one thing. Finding a way to tell her that I’m the one responsible for her death is something I know I could never make sound reasonable. I would live the rest of my life knowing that, as dangerous as my sister was, I was the judge, jury, and executioner.

  And that, deep down, I’d done it more for myself than for the little girl I love with everything I have.

  Shelby stirs and I pick her up. She stretches her body and lies limply, happily, in my lap. Her satiny belly is warm. It calms me as I pet her. The right thing to do is oftentimes the hardest thing to do. Killing Stacy would be easy. Turning her in would be nearly impossible.

  I shift Shelby a little so I can get to my phone and start a list of things that I need to do to make things right. The list is short, with only four items that need my attention.

  Say goodbye to Dad.

  Make arrangements for Emma’s future without me and her mother in the picture—because that’s the worst possible outcome.

  Merge any assets I have into a single account under Emma’s name.

  Think of a way to get Stacy back to Bellevue so that I can turn her in to the police.

  That last item will be the most difficult. I have a feeling that a Nordstrom half-yearly sale no longer has the magnetic pull it used to when we were girls. Stacy’s taste and budget have moved far beyond a discounted Vera Wang blouse and a latte served in a real cup, not a paper one. She’s rich. She’s seen the world. She’s far from the climber from Hoquiam, Washington.

  I think of my sister, ensconced in her less-than-luxurious room at the Quinault Beach Resort & Casino. She’s glued to her phone, flipping through the images of the beautiful people and the things they are selling. She’s treating the images as though it were a fashion Tinder, swiping to the left and right as she decides what would look best on her. She’s a product of growing up in a town in which everything seemed out of reach. Stacy has come back for a reason. It involves Emma. It’s possible that she misses her and wants to be a mother. Not likely. But possible. She might be here for another reason. A place to hide out, maybe? Who knows what she’s gotten herself into since she blew up the house and ran off with Julian? I wouldn’t put anything past her.

  I plan my next day. Seeing Dad, telling Carrie Anne that I’ll need her to watch Emma while I go to Seattle, going to the bank to make financial arrangements, and, finally, making sure that Emma has a future. Getting rid of her mother. It might be the only thing I can give her now.

  I picture myself in jail, then in prison. I try to hold that feeling in my bones. I’m lonely. Foolish. But I’m also a hero. I wonder if Stacy will be nearby. If I’ll see her in the cafeteria or in the prison yard. Will she offer a wave and a smile at me or conspire with another inmate to kill me? I play all of those scenarios over and over until I think I can own them—until I think that I can live with either outcome. In a very real way, I don’t see that I have any other choice.

  And although it sounds juvenile and takes me back to our childhood, telling on my sister is the only thing I can do.

  Shelby jumps from the sofa to the scuffed living room floor, and the two of us start up the staircase to Emma’s bedroom. The vintage eyelet curtains I put up when we moved in are open, and a stream of moonlight falls over her. She’s beautiful. Her hair is strawberry and her skin is peaches. She’s perfect, all stretched out like a starfish on her bed. My sister’s old bed. I pull a sheet over her and sit on the edge of the bed for a moment to watch her breathe. I wonder if this is our last night together.

  I don’t say the words out loud, but I compose what I would say to her if I had the courage to do so just then.

  I’m going away. I need to take care of something important. This will be hard for you to understand. It is even harder for me to explain. Your mommy did some bad things and I knew about them. That means that I did some bad things too. I need to try to make things right, Emma. I need you to be strong for me. I need you to understand that whatever happens is because I love you more than I love life itself. Seeing you here in the room where I grew up gives me hope, it reminds me that new beginnings are possible. This will be a new beginning for you. And maybe for me too. Sleep, my precious. You have my heart always.

  I lean in and give her a soft kiss on the cheek. She stirs. I don’t want her to wake just yet. I don’t want her to see me crying.

  It’s the middle of the night. I wake up with an audible gasp. I’m sweating. I’m sick to my stomach. I push my hot-water bottle dog, Shelby, to the side, and I find my way to the bathroom and sit on the toilet. I’m unsteady. I’m going through something that’s making me sick. I turn and flush. As I stand, I look at myself in the mirror. The light from a butterfly night-light Emma gave me for my birthday casts a bluish glow over my face. I wonder if I will ever be the same if I resort to what I know will be something that I could never really live with.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Sunday, August 27

  The coffeepot sits on the counter, and I watch it like a TV. I could run away. I could. I could get Emma and Shelby and pack the car with whatever I can fit into the trunk and the backseat of my Accord. I could do that. I probably should do that. I can’t see any upside to Emma being reunited with her mother even for a short time. For one thing, Stacy is a snake and I can’t trust her alone with Emma. I’d have to be like the CPS worker that sits idly by, pretending to read a magazine while observing every movement, every utterance. Even if I could do that and if Stacy would allow it, I still have the problem of telling Emma that her mom isn’t dead after all. How do I manage that without revealing myself to be the liar that I am? I made up a story that I thought I could live with. I thought it would spare Emma the pain of wondering where her mom had gone. It would keep her from knowing that her mom had chosen money and freedom over loving her. Now I realize that was impossible. Stacy was never going to fade away completely. She was going to linger like that stench in Luke’s Subaru.

  God, help me.

  I think of Dad just then. He’s gone in every sense except for his living and breathing body. He told me more than one time that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Truth. I see it so clearly. My lie came from a good place. I only wanted to protect Emma from the nefarious facts of her mother’s life.

  God, I wish for a do-over.

  Later that night I put my head on my pillow. I think how much I love this little girl with all my heart, and yet my dreams take me to the dark places inhabited by my sister.

  In my dream, Stacy is a smoking crater and I am peering inside, looking to see if there’s any sign of life in her crystalline blue eyes. She sits on a blue velveteen chair with the Pacific behind her filling the window of her suite at the Quinault. She’s ordered room service. A bottle of wine with a French label that I’m certain is of the type that’s under lock and key at grocery stores sits in an ice bucket. Definitely not found among the wines that occupy my go-to lower shelf. Stacy always had a knack for the finer things in life. Dungeness crab claws encircle a salad that looks like it was designed in preparation for Instagram.

  Claws. Stacy. So precisely appropriate, I think.

  “You look a little wan,” she says. “I ordered your favorite.”

  “I’m not here to socialize,” I tell her, “but thanks for the compliment.”

  She lets my pushback slide by. Stacy never takes the bait. You don’t have to when you set the trap. Or are the trap.

  “Did you poison Shelby?” I ask.

  She gives me a flat stare a
nd crosses her legs. God, how I hate her perfect ankles.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she asks.

  I don’t even know why I brought it up. I told myself that I wouldn’t. That she’d just lie about it. I can’t stop myself.

  “You sent the dachshund postcard to me,” I say.

  She smiles faintly and turns to the wine. “Have some wine.”

  I shake my head. “Then you did send it. Or you had someone else do it. I don’t know. But it was you, wasn’t it?”

  “You must really hate me,” she says, deflecting as she always does.

  I take the chair across from her. How could this girl that I loved so much turn out like this? My little sister. What happened to her after Mom left that made her into what she’s become? Or, I wonder, was it our mother’s blood and our father’s broken heart that forged this creature that looks so lovely but has no soul?

  “I know you killed Candy too,” I say.

  “My pony?” she asks, now acting wide-eyed and innocent. “I admit what I did to Cy, but I had no choice. Now you want to suggest that I’m a monster of some kind that has left a trail of deaths of all kinds in my path. You seriously need to cancel your Netflix account.”

  I remind her that it was more than just Cy.

  “You killed Tomas Vargas too.”

  She shifts in her chair. It’s subtle, but I see the annoyance in her eyes.

  “You are so unfair,” she says. “That really was an accident, and you damn well know it. Look, I’m trying to make amends here. I want to move on and fix things between us. For Emma.”

  I ignore her olive branch.

  “Stacy, something is very wrong with you.” I find my eyes grow wet. “I know it isn’t completely your fault. I don’t know why any of this happened. I don’t know what happened to you that made you like this. You need help. And as far as Emma goes, you can never have her back.”