Slice

by William Patterson

  At least, Monica wanted to believe that, as she swallowed the last of her second glass of wine.

  She heard the tires of a car crunching gravel in her driveway out front.

  “She’s here!” Aunt Paulette shouted, stumbling out of her chair in excitement. A couple of tarot cards fluttered up from the table, disturbed by the breeze she’d stirred up. One fell to the floor. Monica noticed it was The Lovers.

  The Twins.

  No, she and Jessie weren’t twins.

  Far from it.

  But Jessie had been carrying twins when she miscarried. . . .

  “Oh, she’s here, she’s here!” Aunt Paulette kept repeating, happily scampering out of the dining room through the sunroom and toward the front door. “And that precious little girl, too! Helloooo! Jessie! Abby! It’s Auntie Paulette!”

  Monica walked over to the back door and peered out through the screen. Todd was still swimming laps.

  “She’s here,” she called out.

  Her husband stopped mid-stroke and looked up at her.

  “And now the fun begins,” he said.

  “Get out and help her with her bags. It’s a long hike up to Mom’s house.”

  The driveway ended at Monica’s house, and the only way up to Mom’s house—now, Jessie’s house—was by foot up a rather steep hill. Monica would have to get used to her sister and her niece traipsing past.

  She turned away from the door. From where she was standing, Monica could see the driveway through the sunroom and through the large picture windows that fronted the house. A young man was emerging from the driver’s door of a black Lincoln town car and going around to open the door in back. Monica took a deep breath. She recalled again the harrowing phone calls she’d gotten from Jessie in those first few weeks after she’d moved to New York, how terrified she had been, how she’d thought she was seeing ghosts and strange apparitions of bloody babies, how convinced she’d been that Emil was lurking somewhere out on the street, watching her, waiting for her. For a while Monica had thought she might have to have Jessie committed. Her sister had seemed to be cracking up. Finding her a place in the city hadn’t helped her. In fact, it had seemed to make things worse.

  But, then, all at once, everything had changed. A few months after Jessie’s move to the city, they’d gotten a call. Emil was dead. He’d been shot by Mexican police in a drug bust in Ciudad, Juarez. U.S. agents had identified his body through fingerprints. Jessie was at first uncertain whether she could believe it, but Aunt Paulette did a psychic reading and announced she could no longer see Emil anywhere on the planet, meaning that he must really be dead. That seemed to convince Jessie.

  From that moment on, she’d been like a woman reborn. She’d started writing for magazines and newspapers, and two years later, had had a book published called You Can Survive Anything. She’d even been on local radio stations being interviewed about it. Little Abby, meanwhile, was growing up happy and healthy—and smart, too: Monica had been impressed when she was already reading words at the age of three. Now Jessie had been signed to another book contract, and Abby was getting ready to start kindergarten. Monica had believed her sister was doing fine, and that she’d live out her life in New York. They’d see each other occasionally at holiday times. That would be it.

  But then Jessie had announced she wanted to move back in to their mother’s house, which had sat empty since Mom’s death, up on top of the hill at the very end of the cul-de-sac. Both girls had inherited it, but Todd had never wanted to live there, not liking its old Victorian floorboards and creaky stairs. That was why they’d built this modern place of spun glass and marble. Monica had figured eventually they’d sell Mom’s house, and the small parcel of land it stood on. But Jessie wanted to live there. She said she wanted Abby to grow up and go to school just like she had in Sayer’s Brook.

  Monica wasn’t happy that her sister would now be her neighbor. Not that she had to worry anymore about the kind of criminals and thugs Jessie had once associated with; she had seemed, these last five years, to have sworn off men entirely. She was a successful author now, and a happy, devoted mother of a beautiful daughter. If Monica was being honest with herself, and she was being brutally so right now, she’d acknowledge that Abby was the real reason she didn’t want Jessie living next door.

  That, and the fact that her sister looked damn good again—and Todd was sure to notice. In her heart of hearts, Monica worried that, for all his disdain of Jessie’s bohemian lifestyle, Todd might still be hot for the girl he’d dumped in high school.

  “Jessie, honey, welcome home!”

  Aunt Paulette’s voice came lilting in from outside.

  Monica watched as Jessie stepped out of the backseat of the car, the sun catching the gold in her hair. Right behind her little Abby came scrambling, her golden ringlets a match of her mother’s. The little girl ran straight into Aunt Paulette’s outstretched arms.

  In that moment, Monica hated her sister more than she had ever loved her.

  Stretching her lips into a tight smile, she headed outside to welcome Jessie home.

  TWO

  “The neighborhood still looks the same,” Jessie was saying, as she, Abby, Monica, Todd, Aunt Paulette, and Abby’s nanny, Inga, headed up the hill to Mom’s house, each of them carrying a suitcase. Even Abby lugged a little bag, though hers was filled with dolls. “Does Mrs. Gorin still live across the street?”

  “Sure does,” Todd replied, as he hauled Jessie’s heaviest bag. “And she’s as nosy a bitch as ever.”

  “Hush, Todd,” Monica scolded. “Voices carry.”

  “I found her once peering into my back window,” Aunt Paulette said, a mountain of Jessie’s clothes draped over one arm. “Gert claimed she’d tried ringing the doorbell, but I knew she just wanted to catch me casting spells or stirring my witch’s cauldron.”

  “Are you a witch, Aunt Paulette?” Abby asked, her little pink face looking up at the older woman.

  “No, sweetie, but some of the neighbors think I am.”

  “Why do they think that? You don’t wear a black pointy hat like Elphaba.”

  “Well, I have a pink pointy one that I’ll show you one of these days!”

  “That’s like Glinda’s!” Abby exclaimed.

  Jessie grinned and looked over at her sister. “I took Abby to see Wicked five times. She loved the show.”

  “You’re going to miss being able to do things like that,” Monica told her, “now that you’re not in the city anymore.”

  “Oh, we’re less than an hour away,” Jessie replied. “Besides, I want Abby growing up hiking in the woods and catching fish in the brook, not hiking up Second Avenue and catching subways.”

  She smiled, looking around at the family property. It was good to be home. The maples glowed with a greenness as vivid as Jessie remembered from her childhood. The tall fir trees still resembled the protective sentinels she’d imagined they were as a kid. The birds hooted in the trees as they always did; the brook that cut through the property still babbled like it had in the days when it lulled her to sleep. The family owned seventeen and a half acres—most of it had come from Mom’s family, though when she’d married Dad, they’d bought the lot next door as well, adding to their domain. Aunt Paulette had gotten her share some time ago—as well as the little cottage that had once housed the estate caretaker, back when the Clarksons had employed servants. But, being childless, she was leaving it all to Jessie and Monica, so the land was definitely staying in the family.

  Jessie had told Monica that with the money she hoped to make on this new book, she planned to buy her half of the estate, including Mom’s house. She also wanted to pay her and Todd back for helping her move to New York five years before.

  That seemed like such a long time ago now. Jessie no longer even thought about Emil or the baby boy she’d miscarried—well, at least she didn’t think about them much. She’d found herself again, the girl she’d been in high school, not the angry rebel of college or the mad
woman bent on self-destruction, as she’d been during her time with Emil. She looked forward to being back here in Sayer’s Brook, reestablishing herself as part of the community, and bringing Abby up in the same place. If some in the neighborhood and the town still remembered her wilder past—the swarms of blue-uniformed policemen that had once swept across these very same green hills, looking for Emil and his stashes of drugs—well, then, Jessie would just have to show them that she had grown up and changed. People had loved Mom in Sayer’s Brook. Jessie hoped they’d love her and Abby as well.

  “Wait a minute,” she suddenly said, pausing in their trek up the hill. Mom’s house was still a few yards away, but Jessie had noticed something in the trees to her right. “What is that?” she asked, pointing.

  A brick structure loomed over the tops of the maples.

  “That’s John Manning’s house,” Monica told her.

  Then Jessie remembered. John Manning. The bestselling horror writer. He’d bought a portion of their property the year Jessie had moved to New York. No wonder she didn’t remember right away. She’d been dealing with horrors far more real at that moment than Manning’s vampires and werewolves. So she’d never met him, just heard about him from Monica. But now she was remembering something else. . . .

  “Wasn’t there,” she asked, “some kind of scandal a couple years ago . . . ?”

  “Yeah,” Todd was saying, lifting an eyebrow over at the house. “John Manning. The guy who killed his wife.”

  “Todd,” Monica scolded again. “What did I say about voices carrying?”

  “He killed his wife?” little Abby asked.

  “No, sweetie, that’s not what your uncle said,” Abby’s nanny, Inga, piped in, taking the child’s hand and leading her a few feet away, pointing at a flock of geese that had landed near the brook.

  Jessie was grateful to Inga. She was a lithe but sturdy German girl of nineteen. With all of Jessie’s writing deadlines and interviews over the past year, Inga had been indispensable. Inga had spent more and more time with Jessie and Abby, becoming part of the family. It seemed only natural to invite her to move with them here in Sayer’s Brook. Jessie was going to need help not only in taking care of Abby, but also in fixing up the old house. Inga was particularly good with her hands. At the New York apartment, she’d rewired lighting fixtures for Jessie, and retiled the bathroom. Jessie figured Inga would prove very handy around Mom’s house, which was over a hundred years old, and had now sat vacant for more than five years.

  “He was cleared after an investigation,” Monica was saying, coming to their famous neighbor’s defense.

  Todd just shrugged.

  “John Manning is no murderer,” Monica insisted. “He’s just a very private man, so everybody jumped to conclusions when they found his wife’s body.”

  Todd made a face. “But she had told friends she feared for her life, that he might try to kill her.”

  “Millie was paranoid,” Monica retorted. “She used to come to my basket classes. She was always thinking that her husband’s fans were following her. She was jumpy and nervous and unbalanced. No wonder she fell.”

  “I don’t know,” Aunt Paulette said. “When I tune in, I feel very mysterious energy emanating from that house.”

  “Oh, please, enough with the mumbo jumbo,” Monica said. “John is a little mysterious. After all, he’s a horror writer. But he’s not a murderer.”

  They had resumed walking. Jessie tried to get a better glimpse of the house, but much of her view was obscured by the tall pines. She could make out a tall wooden fence surrounding the house. She was remembering now some of the details she’d read about the case. “The wife fell down the stairs or something, right?” she asked.

  “Actually, she fell off the back upstairs deck,” Todd corrected her. “Facedown onto the concrete patio.” He winked at her. “Splat.”

  Jessie shuddered. But she wondered if her shudder was from the image of the woman’s horrific death or from the fact that Todd had just winked at her.

  She had a flash—high school—Todd Bennett, varsity track star, winking at her in chemistry class. He’d winked, he’d smiled, he’d flashed some pearly whites and the deepest dimples Jessie had ever seen. Not long after that, they’d started going out together. Jessie had been head-over-heels in love.

  But now Todd was her brother-in-law.

  With exactly the same dimples.

  They had reached Mom’s house. Except, it was no longer Mom’s house. It was Jessie’s house. Jessie and Abby’s house.

  The little girl ran up the front stairs. “Can I go inside ?” she asked excitedly.

  “You sure can, Abs,” Jessie told her. “This is home now.”

  The living room looked as if Mom were still living there. The old checkered sofa was still rumpled and throw pillows were still scattered across it, as if Mom had been stretched out there just this morning, doing her crossword puzzles and watching Dr. Phil on the old television set in its wooden cabinet across the room. Little figures of Buddha and Quan Yin still stood on nearly every mahogany table, surrounded by dozens of ancient votive candles in little glass jars, burned down to almost nothing. Framed family snapshots—Mom and Dad on their honeymoon in Aruba, Jessie and Monica in second and first grades—still hung on the walls, their glass shrouded in a thin veneer of dust.

  “I came in yesterday and cleaned up a bit,” Aunt Paulette said, wiping some of the dust off of Jessie’s grade-school face with her fingers. “But there were a lot of cobwebs. Nobody’s been in here for some time.”

  “It just needs a good vacuuming and airing out,” Jessie said, throwing open the windows to let in some of that crisp summer day. “What do you think, Inga? Anything that a new coat of paint can’t spruce up?”

  The German au pair was peering down toward the floor. “These electric sockets could use some updating,” she said. “I could try, but I expect you’d need a real electrician to do that.”

  “All in good time,” Jessie said. “We’ll just be careful not to overload them right away.”

  As the adults set their loads down in the living room, little Abby was already running out into the kitchen. Jessie followed. She half expected Mom to be in there, with an apron around her waist, baking her famous cornbread. Or, since it was Saturday, browning some pancakes in the skillet. The kitchen was small and old-fashioned, especially compared to the modern stainless-steel-and-glass kitchen at Monica’s house. But something about the old black stove made Jessie feel happy, as if everything was going to be just fine in their new home.

  “You’ll need a new fridge,” Aunt Paulette was saying. “I tried turning it on yesterday and getting it cold for you, but it’s dead.”

  Jessie placed her hand on the side of the old avocado-green Frigidaire. A couple of magnets still adhered to the door. AN EYE FOR AN EYE LEAVES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND and LIVE AND LET LIVE. They were two of Mom’s favorite sayings.

  “For now, you can keep food that will spoil over in our house,” Monica was saying.

  “Thanks, Monica,” Jessie said, and offered her sister a smile. As usual, Monica avoided eye contact. It was just that way between them, Jessie thought a little sadly.

  “Plumbing works,” Inga announced, coming out of the small bathroom off the kitchen. The sound of tap water rushing into the sink reached their ears, along with the flushing of a toilet.

  “I brought over some fresh linens this morning,” Aunt Paulette said. “What was left of your mother’s was pretty dusty and moth-eaten.”

  “Thank you so much, all of you,” Jessie said, looking around at the three of them.

  “Of course, honey,” Aunt Paulette said, embracing her. “It’s just so good to have you and Abby home.”

  “It’s good to be home.”

  Jessie noticed that Monica busied herself emptying a bag of silverware and canned goods. Todd had drifted off toward the back door, where he stood with his back to them, gazing out into the yard. He was wearing a white T-shirt, and Je
ssie noticed how fit he’d been keeping himself. His shoulder muscles filled the tee with a solidity and hardness that surprised Jessie, and his horseshoe-shape triceps flexed instinctively as he moved the curtains on the back door aside.

  “I’ll mow the grass back there,” Todd was saying. “We haven’t been keeping up with this part of the property, but now that you’re back, Abby might want to use the swing set.”

  “Oh, thanks, Todd,” Jessie said, but she was drowned out by Abby’s outburst of excitement upon hearing the words “swing set.”

  Todd smiled down at the little girl. “Yes, Abby, there’s a swing set, though it’s pretty old and rusty.”

  “Nothing a little oil and paint can’t fix,” Inga said, peering out at the decrepit metal swing set through the back window. Jessie and Monica had played on it when they were kids. Against the tall green and yellow grass, the swings looked black, like relics from a burned-out city.

  “Well, we should let you and Abby settle in,” Monica said. “You have unpacking to do, and I’m sure you’ll want to run down to the market to do some shopping. Feel free to take my car.”

  “It’ll feel strange to drive again,” Jessie said.

  “The keys are hanging next to the phone in our pantry. Just come in and get them when you need them.”

  “Thank you again, Monica,” Jessie said.

  But once more when she tried to find her sister’s eyes, Jessie was unsuccessful. Monica was already heading out of the kitchen and back toward the front door.

  Todd turned to follow his wife. But before he left he looked at Jessie and gave her another wink.

  “You’re looking good,” he told her.

  Jessie felt her cheeks get hot. “Thanks,” she said, in a tiny voice.

  Todd headed out. Jessie heard the screen door close as he and Monica left the house.