Little Threats

by Emily Schultz

  “Oh.” Carter peered down at the menu. “Well, it’s just shrimp.”

  As a lawyer, no contradiction escaped him, except the ones he didn’t want to talk about. Carter watched Gerry sip his drink. Instead of debating the ethics of pescatarianism, he blurted out, “I’m going to sell the house.”

  “What?” Carter peered at him.

  “The house. I’ve decided to sell.”

  “Now?”

  Kennedy, who was sitting on the same side of the table as he was, knocked Gerry’s silverware off with her elbow. She leaned down and picked it up. When Kennedy handed it to him, Carter could see she had an unsettled look on her face. “Do I have to go with you, like I’m twelve?” she asked.

  “We’ll check with the lawyer.”

  “Where are we going to live?”

  Wherever, Gerry said, someplace smaller. He would have sold right after the reno but it hadn’t been the right market. He tossed the celery stalk with a red splatter onto his plate and sipped his drink. It was a terrible market now, and getting worse, but neither twin reminded him of it. “Besides, she’s already taken down all her posters,” he remarked to Carter.

  Carter looked at Kennedy, who nodded reluctantly.

  “I made a mistake keeping that place.” He finished the drink. “You can stay in the past so long it comes back.”

  In the past, Carter might have reassured him, felt somehow that it was her job to tell the white lies required to maintain a good face and keep a meal going without friction. But now she didn’t care. She looked at Kennedy, whose eyes bugged. Her sister had come home after all these years, and now he was going to take it away. Vintage Gerry: you could put it on a rack and charge sixty bucks. He claimed to care about others, but at the end of the day it was only ever about what he wanted.

  “Is this because of what you just told me?” Carter forgot her sister’s earlier command not to ask about Berk. Kennedy kicked her softly under the table. The salad came, Gerry’s chicken and grits, Kennedy’s corn bread and chili, interrupting the conversation. Carter reached for the shrimp first.

  “The parole specifies I need to live with someone who owns their own home. That’s why I can’t live with her,” Kennedy said.

  “You would live with me?” For a grim moment, Carter was cheered by her sister’s vote of favor. Then she turned to Gerry. “What about Mom? Don’t you care about her memory? It was her house too.”

  “She used her last breath to dictate a divorce petition,” he said to Carter with a dismissive hand wave. “She couldn’t wait to leave.” To Kennedy: “I can own another home, you know. Pick one. I’ll buy it tomorrow.”

  A sly look came over their father’s face. He turned to Carter. He propped his chin up with one hand and raised an eyebrow. “How about I get one of those luxury units in Shockoe Slip, that big glassy tower, you know the one, right on the James. How would that be?”

  Carter blinked.

  “You’ve been inside them. Do they sell those in two-bedrooms, or only one?”

  Carter pushed another shrimp into her mouth to avoid answering. She hadn’t seen or heard from Everett, but it was obvious that somehow her father knew. Had he had him secretly tailed, the way he did to Berk after he got out of prison, keeping tabs on him as if there was something more to be revealed? Carter glanced at Kennedy, then looked down at the tablecloth. She felt light-headed as she chewed and swallowed.

  Kennedy was the one to pick up the thread. “There wasn’t anyone there, Dad.” Her voice was forceful—the way it always was a little too confident when she lied. “The alarms were on.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Maybe you’re seeing things.”

  “The leaf.”

  “A leaf’s a leaf,” she said.

  “You were the one who suggested we call the police. Why’s that? What’d you tell her before I came in?” Gerry’s voice climbed. A sweat had broken out along his hairline. “You think someone was there too. Admit it.” He dabbed his forehead with his napkin, then shoveled two forkfuls of grits into his mouth in quick succession, as if he wanted the meal to finish quicker. He turned for the waiter as he passed and handed him his glass for a refill.

  “Dad.”

  “What?”

  Carter and Kennedy radioed each other across the table. Say something. But what? Challenge? Defuse.

  Carter laughed. The couple at the table next to theirs stood up, and at first Carter thought it was in response to the argument. Then she turned to follow their gazes. Outside of the large front window, it was snowing, chunky white flakes falling. People were turning to look, worriedly, or to ooh and ahh. The hoods of the cars parked along the curb were already covered.

  Gerry turned from the view and glared at Carter across the table.

  Kennedy pulled her hat back on, lower, as if she could hide inside it.

  “Why are you laughing?” Gerry asked Carter. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m on Lumalex. I can’t—it’s funny. It’s all so awful it’s funny.”

  “Are you high? You mess up your life again, I’m not bailing you out this time.” Gerry fumbled the words in his anger. He dropped his own fork this time and a server came over to replace it, even though no one was eating anymore.

  Carter leaned back against the banquette seating. “You want a mess, Gerry? I fucked Everett Kimberson. Whatever you think they took from us, we deserved it.”

  Gerry’s face flushed. He picked up the napkin again and mopped at his brow.

  “I’m not even good enough for him. That’s the funny thing. I love him, and it doesn’t matter because I’ll always be your daughter, your sister.” The words were coming out in between gulps for air.

  It felt like everything in the world had stopped moving except the snow falling outside. But when Carter looked around she saw that none of the other diners were looking at them as she’d expected them to be. An old woman was showing off pictures of a grandchild. A man and a woman two tables over looked like they were on a brunch date. A big guy dining alone was flipping through the weekend newspaper to the sports. A little girl had her face pressed to the glass and her mother was scolding her not to put her tongue on the window. The problems they were airing were only theirs.

  “What are you doing?” Kennedy said. “Do you hate me?”

  “I wanted something that was mine. Something not wrecked by this family.”

  Carter watched as Kennedy stood up shakily and made her way out of the restaurant. Carter looked at the crumpled napkin in her lap. She recognized for the first time since she’d started the Lumalex that it was still possible to feel sadness. She knew she’d hurt her sister deeply. Outside, the snow swirled. Carter watched as Kennedy lifted her face to it, an absolute lack of expression on her face, like a dog sniffing the wind trying to decide which direction to go.

  Chapter 28

  They agreed that the door would be closed. Kennedy had folded away her clothes and cleaned the room in case someone should open it, but it wasn’t as if they’d had time to paint. It was the one room in the house that was rough around the edges. The carpeting had aged. The blinds were outdated. The shapes where the posters had been still stood out darker than the rest of the sun-faded wall.

  Kennedy was sitting outside in the Japanese garden, smoking—even though her father had asked her not to—when the first waves of viewers for the open house arrived. She watched them pass on the other side of the glass. After an hour or so, the double door slid open and a young man with dark dyed hair stood there. “Oh my god, this is amazing.” He looked at her instead of the garden. “Are you her?” he asked.

  She put out the cigarette in an ashtray on the table. “No. I’m the other one,” she lied.

  “Can I take my photo with you anyway?” He removed a slim Canon PowerShot camera from his suit jacket pocket. He was already positioning hims
elf beside her. “Daisy, come here!” he called to someone inside.

  “Why?” Kennedy asked.

  “I read all about her. Daisy!” he hollered toward the house.

  Up close he smelled of coffee and rancid cheese, his vintage suit jacket possibly never sent to a cleaner. Kennedy stepped away from him down into the garden, even though she was only wearing her shoes, not her boots, and the snow they’d had the week before had left everything slushy, muddy.

  “The house is nice. Why don’t you go see the inside and leave me alone?”

  The man held up a finger and tapped the air with it as if she’d shared a secret with him that he thought was right on the money. His nails were painted dark blue. “I’m going to see her room. Thank you.”

  Kennedy swallowed. She watched him head back inside with his camera, then sat back down. Who came to an open house with a camera? All the photos and details of the house had already been posted online. Even though her butt was getting cold from sitting outside, she waited fifteen minutes, and when more people came out to look at the back area—a couple asking about the pond and its upkeep—she snuck inside and found Gerry with the real estate agent in the dining room by the coffee tray.

  “Who are these weirdos?” Kennedy whispered in his ear.

  “I’ve already been asked twice if the murder weapon is hidden here,” Gerry hissed, his complexion ashen.

  There was a snap of a large camera shutter. Kennedy and Gerry both looked toward the kitchen, where a lady in her forties was using a bulky pro camera to photograph the knife block and the slot for the missing knife. She was a curvy woman with dyed black hair in pigtails and a dress with a skull design on it. Kennedy at seventeen might have admired her, but Kennedy now elbowed Gerry.

  “Is she allowed to do that?” Gerry asked Miranda, the real estate agent.

  Miranda smiled nervously. She didn’t look like a real estate agent so much as a kindergarten teacher. She had blond-brown hair that she wore loose over her sweater, much longer than most women in their fifties; a daisy-patterned skirt; and a “fun” necklace made from colored ribbons and glass beads dangling over her chest. Kennedy guessed she’d had no idea what she was dealing with when she took Gerry on as a client and booked the open house. “I suppose it can only help find a buyer—they all seem very excited, don’t they!”

  “Yes, but excited by the wrong things,” Gerry muttered.

  “Let me see what I can do.” Miranda went over and steered the woman toward the refrigerator and the stove, opening them, an overwide grin on her face. “All new appliances and the owner is open to including them. Wouldn’t you love to make dinner every night in this kitchen? That countertop is real marble.”

  A man in a suit interrupted Miranda to ask about the furnace. They spoke for a moment, then he moved on—down to the rec room to get a good look at “the bones of the house.”

  The goth lady lifted her camera and took a shot of the contents of the fridge. She reached in and moved some jars around, as if searching for something in particular, then lifted the camera and shot again. “Are there closets?”

  “Lots of closets!” Miranda exclaimed, taking her by the elbow and guiding her into the hall.

  “Can I get shots of all of them?”

  “Oh good god, get me a drink,” Gerry said in Kennedy’s ear.

  “No way,” Kennedy said, watching as the man who had spoken to her on the back deck posed on the couch in the family room. “You brought these people here, you stay sober and deal with it.”

  “We could both leave.”

  “That’s a thought. Do you trust them here alone?”

  “Just one drink.”

  “Fine, but you call me Carter today. If they think I’m me, it’s all over.” Neither of them had spoken to Carter since the restaurant.

  “Deal.”

  Kennedy went into the kitchen and fixed a vodka soda for Gerry. She put it in a tall glass so it would just look like he was drinking fizzy water. As she stared at the glass, she remembered that it was how Carter used to do it when they were young—so no one would know he was drinking at times when others weren’t. Kennedy had always felt hot shame when she saw her sister do it.

  Kennedy hid the vodka behind the cereal boxes. While she was in the kitchen, she grabbed the knife block and stashed it in the bottom cupboard behind some pans. She returned to the refreshments, where she’d left Gerry, but he was gone. An old woman carrying a Chihuahua in her shopping-bag purse was there, nibbling the scones they’d put out.

  “He doesn’t bite,” she informed Kennedy, and Kennedy accepted the invitation, reached out and touched the dog on its bony head.

  She couldn’t imagine an elderly person wanting to own such a large house but at least the woman didn’t seem like the murder fans swarming the place.

  “How long have you been here?” the woman asked. Her short hair was white and she had on a cardigan and a cashmere coat that she’d undone.

  “Um, since ’87. We lived in the city before that.”

  “No, I meant how long have you been out?”

  Kennedy took her hand back from the dog. “Um, no, I’m Carter.”

  “People who say um are nervous.” The lady selected another scone. It crumbled in her hand and she fed part to the wiggly dog. “I’ve been following local crime for years. I still say it was the Butler boy, but maybe you could tell me better?”

  “Excuse me,” Kennedy said, and grabbed the drink off the table and went upstairs to find Gerry. Even before she could get to him, she saw that her room had been opened, the door slightly ajar. The man who had asked about the furnace was at the top of the stairs engaged in a discussion with his wife about whether the house was priced right for them. He was ticking things off on his fingers. He seemed serious enough about the place that he’d probably been the one to open it.

  Kennedy squeezed past them with a fake smile. She was about to go to her room and look inside when the goth woman at the end of the hallway said, “I wouldn’t go in there.”

  She was lining up a close-up shot of a framed photo on the wall of Carter and Kennedy at a duck pond when they were ten. Kennedy remembered only that shortly after the photo was taken an angry goose had chased her and she’d wound up running through the pond and getting her tights soaked. She’d been wet and miserable for the rest of the day trip.

  “What do you get out of this?” Kennedy asked.

  “It’s history. Don’t you like history? They said you did, in the articles. That it was where you met her. History class.” The woman faced her and let the camera hang more loosely around her neck now.

  “It was English class. Carter had history with her.” Kennedy realized after she said it that she was supposed to be Carter.

  “Are you going to be interviewed on Crime After Crime?”

  “What?”

  “Interviewed,” the woman said, drawing the word out as if Kennedy hadn’t heard her. “I read online that they were looking at your case.”

  Kennedy felt her brow furrow. “I don’t know what that is.”

  In her father’s office she could hear Gerry’s voice rise: “Please don’t touch that!”

  The woman lifted the camera again to take a photo of Kennedy.

  Kennedy bolted for her bedroom.

  “Really, don’t—” the woman started to say, but it was too late. Kennedy had already rammed the door open.

  A man in a blue polo shirt sat on the bed, his back to her, as if he was staring out her window. Maybe he wanted to see what she saw when she woke up in the morning. Kennedy had known the room would get opened at some point, but she’d thought the curious would pop their heads in, then politely duck out. She hadn’t been prepared for the kind of people who would come to gape at the place where they lived. She was already a couple steps into the room—about to ask him to leave—when she heard the man br
eathing fast. She saw his penis before she saw his face. There it was, white and wormy, the head cupped in his wobbling hand, the rest hidden in his khakis. He gazed over at her: he had a skinny face, his jaw clenched with concentration. He looked like anyone, some man who worked in an office. She didn’t want to be there when he finished, leaving a mess on her bed. She didn’t want him to look at her. She ran, brushing past a guy in a ball cap in the hallway, spilling half her father’s drink as she sped downstairs.

  On the front lawn she found herself still holding on to the glass. She drank what was left and fought back tears. She was about to go back inside and tell Miranda to call the police when a compact car crept up and parked in the line of cars at the end of the driveway. The engine cut and Marly Kimberson stepped out of the vehicle.

  * * *

  —

  Mrs. Kimberson came up the walk slowly, looking the house up and down as though Kennedy weren’t even standing there. As she got closer, Kennedy saw that Marly’s mouth moved though she wasn’t speaking, more like her tongue was searching the space inside. Marly stopped a couple steps away. She peered up at the façade.

  “Mrs. Kim—” Kennedy began, an apology the only thing to do in this situation. But Marly didn’t let her finish.

  “Wow, I thought this place was hot shit back then. I thought, ‘Look at my daughter. She’s really made it. She’s always had a good head, always had the grades, but now she’s got a job in a law office, hanging out with these people. She’s going places! She could get into a real college, have a real life!’”

  Marly was speaking but almost not to Kennedy. She knew Mrs. Kimberson had gotten pregnant at eighteen. She’d been a mom and worked at the outlet mall that opened, the kind where you had to drive from one end of the parking lot to another just to go to a different store. Kennedy stared at her. She’d aged an unfathomable amount, lines around her eyes and lips, and her shoulders slightly bent. Up close she looked older, closer to sixty-five than the fifty Kennedy knew her to be.