by M. R. Carey
And the other half of that same equation … She had been sloppy with the Sethis, with the kids, with the lawyer guy. There was no other word for it. Again and again she had spoken loosely and acted thoughtlessly. If nobody was onto her, it was only because nobody could be expected to guess who she was or what she’d done. But it was foolish and indefensible to arouse needless suspicions. She wanted to take Liz’s place without missing a beat or fumbling a catch. Self-respect and self-preservation both pushed her in the same direction.
She would do better. Starting from tomorrow—no, from now—she would be vigilant and she would be smart. Nobody would catch her out again.
With that decided, she drained the brandy and threw the glass against the side wall of the neighboring house, where it shattered spectacularly.
She spent the hours before dawn tidying up the house, which was still showing the after-effects of Operation Marc. She couldn’t run the vacuum cleaner so early in the day, but she could dust, sweep and put things back in their places. The kitchen, of course, was already immaculate as a side effect of scrubbing up all the blood. The family room and hall were soon looking great too, and the paint and tools she’d bought for the decorating were stowed away in the garage.
When the kids woke up, they found the kitchen a cave of mundane wonders. Coffee was percolating, juice was squeezed and waffles and syrup were set out for Molly. “You want some omelet?” Beth asked Zac, kissing him on the cheek. “I thought I could chop a little chorizo into it, spice it up. There’s frijoles too, but the can was out of date so, you know, fair warning.”
“Eggs and ancient beans would be great!” Zac said. He laughed, looking at her in mild suspicion. “What’s this about?”
“It’s about being nice to each other and getting on with our lives,” Beth told him.
“I’m always nice to each other,” Molly said, upending a bottle of Mrs. Butterworth’s over her already saturated waffles.
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Beth said. She tweaked Molly’s nose, making her giggle. “Babes who are talking with their mouths full.”
“It’s only half full!” Molly said gleefully. She opened wide to show them.
“Oh, gross!” Zac protested, but they were all three of them laughing. It was a good start, a good proof of concept. Beth felt the satisfaction you get from solving a puzzle—something coolly intellectual overlaying the warmth of them all being together. It was strange, but not unpleasant.
“You want to throw that invitation out again?” she asked Zac.
“You mean have Fran over to dinner?” he asked. “What, are we going out twice in one week?”
“Nope. I’ll cook my carbonara.”
Zac laughed incredulously. “You’ll cook what now?”
“Spaghetti with cream sauce and bacon,” Beth said, dropping the possessive. Liz evidently hadn’t had a carbonara. Had she had anything? It was hard to tell. Better to assume she was a cypher and announce every damn thing as a revelation. I can boil spaghetti now. Can you imagine? “Go ahead and ask her. I’m assuming she’s not Jewish.”
Zac laughed again. “I don’t think so.”
“Well then.”
“I’ll ask her. Thanks, Mom.”
“You’re welcome, Zachary. If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
She got the kids off to school and drove on to the Cineplex. After so long spent eavesdropping on Liz’s life, she knew the drill.
Everyone on shift wanted to hear about how her day in court had gone and everyone was shocked when they heard she hadn’t had one. Nora DoSanto said it was typical of a man that he couldn’t even self-destruct in a straight line but had to ricochet all over and give everyone around him a hard time. By way of showing solidarity, she put Beth up front in one of the ticket windows, which was an easy billet.
Colleagues dropped by in the course of the day to commiserate and to curse Marc out on her behalf. It was cathartic at first, but quickly got to be irritating. Beth liked having people on her side but hated them trying to rub themselves off on her leg. By mid-afternoon, the brave smile she was wearing began to feel like a dead weight, and she longed to throw it down.
But if the day was long, the evening was sweet. Beth’s shift ended at 3:00 p.m., which gave her plenty of time to collect Molly from school and then swing by the supermarket on the way home. She turned the shopping trip into a game, making Molly find the right aisles for cream, bacon, pasta and vegetables by spelling out the signs. Molly had pretty good radar for lessons disguised as games but she got into this treasure hunt anyway and was thrilled each time some new ingredient ended up in the shopping cart.
“You got everything,” Beth said at last. “You win, genius.”
“What do I win?”
“This fine zucchini.” She picked one up and offered it to the little girl with both hands, like a trophy.
“I don’t want a zookini!” Molly protested, squirming away from it in fits of giggles. “Zac wins the zookini!”
“Okay, then you get to choose dessert.”
That was a rash promise but Beth stood by it, adding four tubs of Ben and Jerry’s and a caramel cheesecake to the growing pile of groceries in the cart. A couple of Californian merlots went in too. She could handle it so long as she didn’t go crazy.
Molly had English homework: a problem sheet that asked her to color in the words of several nursery rhymes. Long vowel sounds had to be colored in red, and short ones in green. Beth spoke the words aloud, drawing out the long vowels ridiculously and reducing Molly to breathless giggles. “Rouuuuuuund and rouuuuuuund the gaaaaaaarden, liiiiiiiike a teddyyyyyyyy beaaaaaaaaar …”
Zac came home in the middle of this and told them they sounded like complete lunatics. “Compleeeeeeeeete …” Beth echoed, “looooooooon …” Molly laughed herself red in the face and Beth had to stop in case she had an attack.
“So what’s the verdict?” she asked Zac. “Am I cooking for four?”
“Three and a half,” Zac said. “Add one for Fran, subtract a half because Moll is a pipsqueak.”
“I’m rubber, Zac,” Molly said prissily, “and you’re glue.”
“If you’re rubber, that’s probably why your pips squeak. I told her seven, Mom.”
“Then I’d better get started,” Beth said. “You want to spell me here?”
She started dinner while Zac and Molly made vowel sounds at each other. Then Zac retired to his room to do teenaged-boy things (homework and masturbation, Beth guessed, but not necessarily in that order) and Molly watched a cartoon.
It was all as normal as normal could be. She had forgotten what normal felt like, its texture in the mind, but here it was: thick and dense, doubled and redoubled on itself until you lost yourself in its folds. To someone who had never known anything else, that weight and solidness might be imperceptible. Beth felt every ounce of it.
The ringing of the front doorbell came dead on seven o’clock, with the pasta draining in the sieve and the sauce at a low simmer, all ready to roll out. Beth turned it off and went to open the door.
The black man who was standing on the porch wasn’t anyone she had ever seen before. Her first thought was that he might be a cop, maybe from the Missing Persons department or bureau or precinct or whatever. He had enough height and heft to give that impression. But the polite nod he offered her had the wrong tenor, and his outfit was just the right side of the divide that separates a conservatively minded civilian from a man whose work compels him to dress like one. It looked good on him, either way. This was definitely a man who kept himself in shape. Beth had already guessed who he was before she glanced down and saw Francine Watts hovering just behind him.
“Hi,” he said. “Ms. Kendall?”
Beth almost corrected him, but remembered in time. “Yes. I’m Liz Kendall. And you’re Fran’s father.”
“Gilbert. Gilbert Watts. I know I’m not on the guest list, but I was wondering if I could have a quick word.”
“Of course,” Beth said with
false cordiality. “Come on in.”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” She threw the door wide and ushered them inside. “Fran, Zac is in his room. Probably with his headphones on, since he didn’t come out when you rang. Would you like to go tell him we’re pretty much ready to eat? Mr. Watts, if you want to join us there’s plenty of food.”
“Gil,” he said, as Fran scampered gratefully away down the hall. “No. Thank you. I just wanted to let you know something before I headed off. It’s about the night before last.”
Beth suppressed a twinge of disquiet. If he knew she’d spent that night killing her husband, he wouldn’t have driven his daughter over here to keep a dinner date. She was careful to keep her smile in place. “What about it?” she asked lightly.
“Well, you may have wondered where your son was that night. Most likely he already told you, but in case he didn’t …”
Beth hadn’t even bothered to ask. That belonged to the era of Liz, which was deader than Ancient Rome in her book.
“I trust my son, Gil,” she said by way of a half answer.
“I’m glad to hear it. But still, I think you ought to know that he slept over with us. He called Fran, she asked me, and, yeah, I had my misgivings, but I just wouldn’t have been happy with the idea of him sleeping out. So I made up the sofa bed and he slept in my living room.”
Beth waited for a few moments, but that seemed to be the end of the recitation. She nodded gravely. “I appreciate you telling me. And I appreciate you putting a roof over his head. We’ve been through some bad times lately, as a family. I don’t know if Zac has told you?”
“I made a point of not asking. It’s not my habit to pry.”
“Then that’s one more thing I’ve got to thank you for. But I’d like you to know. I had a court appearance the next day. My ex-husband—Zac’s father—was arrested for assault a few weeks ago. It was … an argument that got physical. And that was the day when the trial was meant to happen. It had been hard on all of us, and that night …” Beth hesitated. She found that she wanted Gil Watts to think well of her. That fact surprised her. “We quarreled,” she finished. “Zac and I. And he walked out. I would have followed him, but I didn’t want to force him to come home if he didn’t want to. We were all processing what was happening in our different ways.”
It was a long speech. Gil heard her out in silence, not reacting at all, but when she was done he shook his head. “I can’t abide a man who resorts to violence when he runs out of words,” he said. “Meaning no disrespect, I hope your ex-husband got the book thrown at him and the bookcase as a chaser.”
Beth laughed. “He didn’t show,” she said. “We’ve got it all to do again. This time I’ll try to make sure I keep my kids within doors. I appreciate your frankness, Gil. You’re sure you won’t stay and eat with us?”
“No, ma’am,” Gil said. “Thanks for the invitation, but I’ve got some work I need to finish for tomorrow, and I had a big lunch. I’ll probably just break open a bag of green salad. I need to lose weight in any case.”
No, you do not, Beth thought. And on the heels of that she thought about how it would feel to have Gil Watts’ weight on top of her, and how long it had been since a man had gone near her with any intent other than to end her.
Put a marker in that one, she decided. And revisit it soon.
“Well, if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure. But thank you, Ms.…”
“Beth.” Damn it! “Or Liz. Either’s good.”
“Maybe another time.”
“Another time would be good. It was nice to meet you.”
“And you.”
He gave her one final, respectful nod, then turned and walked away. Beth closed the door, still seeing his face in her mind’s eye. His dark eyes, and the doubled arch of his lips. The olive brown of his skin.
Too long.
“Okay,” she called out, still savoring that thought. “Dinner is served.”
Fran’s second visit with the Kendalls was different from the first in a whole lot of ways.
First there was the fact that her dad dropped her off. She had tried to argue him out of it, but he’d said he had to clear the air about Zac having spent the night with them. It was a matter of principle, and he wouldn’t budge.
“She won’t even mind, Dad. Why would she?”
“I don’t know, Frog, and I hope she won’t. I’m just not comfortable with the idea of blindsiding her. So I’ll say my piece and then I’ll get out of your hair.”
Fran couldn’t argue. She still hadn’t told him about her unscheduled appointment with Dr. Southern. She was afraid of how he might react when he found out she’d gone behind his back on something that important. Afraid of Picota too. She had tried to pretend she wasn’t, but Jinx kept trying to argue her out of it and that had to be a sign that her subconscious mind was unsettled. From the moment when Dr. S had said he would try to arrange it, she had been wondering if she was making a mistake.
So what with one thing and another, she surrendered meekly, despite her misgivings, and went over to Zac’s house in her dad’s car. And it turned out it was okay after all. Liz was cooler than cool with the big reveal. Even a few minutes before, that would have left Fran wobbly-kneed with relief. But by then she had other things on her mind.
She saw the change as soon as Liz opened the door, but for a second she wasn’t sure what it was she was responding to. Something was different. Something big and obvious and …
Then when Liz stepped to one side to let them through into the hall, the penny dropped. And just for a second Fran couldn’t keep from gawking like an idiot. Liz had only moved once. Not twice. There was no out-of-sync ghost echo.
It was gone. It was just … gone. Liz wasn’t doubled anymore. There was only the one of her.
Maybe that shouldn’t have been such a big surprise: Fran was used to things changing around her, after all. But Liz had been two-in-one every time Fran had seen her. She was almost like Jinx, a symptom that had stuck around long enough to become normal.
Jinx had her own opinion, of course.
One of them killed the other one. That’s why there’s just the one left now.
Fran didn’t answer. Just smiled a sappy smile and scampered off to knock on Zac’s door when she was told. She had to knock three times before he answered, and he had the headphones in his hand when he came to the door. He’d been playing some console game, as his mom had guessed.
His face lit up when he saw her. “Hi, Fran,” he said. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise, goon,” Fran said. “Hey, is your mom …?”
She never got to finish the sentence. Molly came barreling out of nowhere and gave Fran’s knees an enthusiastic embrace. “Fran!” she yelled. “It’s Fran! It’s Fran! It’s Fran!”
“It’s Molly!” Fran yelled back, picking her up and swinging her. “It’s Molly! It’s Molly!”
“Mommy is making carbonara!”
She put the six-year-old down again. It was hard because Molly was making running-on-the-spot movements and Fran didn’t want to make her run into a wall when she touched down. That was normally a problem you only got with cartoon characters. “Cool,” she said. “I love carbonara. Do you?”
“I don’t know what carbonara is.”
“But you like spaghetti, right?”
“Right.”
“Then you’re probably gonna be fine.”
“Let’s play Lego!”
“Maybe after dinner.”
“Okay, Moll,” Zac said. “Scoot, and let the grown-ups talk.”
Molly was scornful. “You’re not a grown-up, Zac.” She trotted back down the hallway and into the living room, her dignity very much intact.
“Wow,” Fran said. “Burn.”
“I’m used to them. Is my mom what?”
“Sorry?”
“You started to say, ‘Is your mom …?’”
“Oh. Yeah.” But Fran didn’
t know how to ask the question that was really on her mind. She settled for a more general sounding out of the situation. “Is she okay? I mean, how is she handling all this?”
They both looked along the hallway toward the front door, where Ms. Kendall was still talking to Fran’s dad. Zac stepped back inside his room and Fran followed him. Evidently the answer wasn’t going to be a simple yes or no.
“She seems okay,” Zac said with a noncommittal shrug. “Good, even. She was wound up really tight before the trial, and I thought Dad not showing up would make it worse, because nothing got settled. It was all still up in the air. And yesterday afternoon she was all over the place. She forgot to pick Molly up from school, even. But then she took us all out to dinner, and to see a movie, and she was great. It was like she just decided to put it all behind her.”
“That’s cool, then,” Fran said, remembering how tightly Zac himself had been wound. “Isn’t it?”
“I suppose. So long as she doesn’t get all bent out of shape again when they find Dad and reschedule the hearing. I mean, she’s still got to go through it all sooner or later.”
“But it has to be okay now, surely. He skipped bail. He’ll do time just for that, I think. It’s all good, Zac.”
Fran hoped it was true, but the whole while she was talking she was still thinking about Liz. Liz and Bruno Picota. Or at least, Bruno’s description of Fran as a skadegamutc. The same girl, but there wasn’t just the one of her. They were swapping. Switching over.
Liz Kendall had looked like that. Only now she’d managed to fix herself, somehow. So maybe Fran could too.
She killed the other one. You can see it in her face!
No, you can’t, Jinx. Don’t be ridiculous!
She said the words in her mind, but her lips must have moved too. “What did you say?” Zac asked her.
“Dinner,” Fran said quickly. “I forgot, your mom said dinner is ready. We should go sit down.”
The spaghetti was really good. Molly dominated the conversation, which meant it was mostly about dragons, but Liz Kendall was in a pretty chatty mood too. She asked Fran about her dad, what he did for a living, what his hobbies were. And about her mom too—like, how long had it been since she died, and how had he been coping since. “Some guys, they just need a woman around, you know? Is that what Gil is like?”