Killer's Cousin

by Nancy Werlin

  I had nothing to say. I turned to leave. I would deal with this, somehow, later.

  But Lily darted across the kitchen and grabbed my arm. Her little nails pinched fiercely through my shirt. “It’s all your fault,” she said. “If you hadn’t come here, this would never have happened. Things would still be the way they were.” She brushed past me and disappeared down the hall. Her bedroom door clicked quietly shut.

  After a minute I trudged on, upstairs to Kathy’s attic, where I put on all the lights.

  On the bedroom dresser was a little menorah that my mother had given me at Thanksgiving. Beside it was the unopened packet of candles. I suddenly realized it was the third night of Hanukkah.

  I walked over to the dresser, opened the box of candles, and filled the menorah—not just with the candles for that night, but completely. Eight plus the shammash. Yellow, blue, red, fuchsia, green, orange, white, white, white. I lit them all. Then I sat on my bed—on Kathy’s bed—for forty minutes in the blazing glare of the electric lights, and watched the flames flicker and dance and then, one by one, die.

  Who was I to tell anyone about right and wrong?

  CHAPTER 21

  “Oh, leave Lily alone,” Raina said. She reached past me for the turpentine, poured it liberally over the brushes massed in a small tin pail, and began scrubbing. The air stank.

  I stared at her.

  It had been a couple of days since I’d caught Lily spying on her parents. I still hadn’t talked to Vic. The previous night, after trying to fall asleep, I’d gone out to Dolly’s All-Night Restaurant over in Davis Square, eaten steak and eggs at the counter, swapped DIANA CURTIS for DEBBIE WILES, and returned to the house—feeling like I was sneaking in—around two A.M. The hallway through the Shaughnessy apartment was dark and silent. I’d gone upstairs, tried bed again, even fallen asleep for an hour. And over the course of the following day in school, I’d mentally rehearsed how I’d tell Raina the story of my encounter with Lily in the hall. Raina would be able to advise me about the best way to approach Vic and Julia. Women were good at stuff like that.

  “But don’t you think she needs help?” I said to Raina. “Don’t you think her behavior is weird? That someone should do something?”

  “Why you?” said Raina reasonably. “She has parents.”

  “But … they’re—” I stopped.

  Raina grabbed her cleaned brushes, dried them with a rag, and dumped them, bristles up, in an empty coffee can. “And, hey, didn’t you tell her you wouldn’t tell her parents? When I was a kid, I really hated being lied to.” She began to dry her hands.

  “Yeah, me too,” I said automatically. But I thought, Isn’t getting help for Lily more important than that promise? Lily even said she didn’t care if I told. Of course I hadn’t believed that.

  “I’ll think about it some more,” I said. “I don’t have to do anything right away.”

  Raina nodded. “Makes sense.” She squinted toward the windows, gauging the light, the time left before sunset. It was a squint I knew. She wanted to do some work. I should not have felt dismissed, ignored—but I did.

  I left.

  It was almost dinnertime, but I didn’t want to go upstairs. Everything else aside, all I had to eat there was a microwaveable frozen dinner. Early the next morning, I was due on a plane down to Baltimore for Christmas week vacation. I drove to Harvard Square and parked in an expensive garage. It was bitingly cold out. Above, the streetlights glared yellow; neon lights on stores pulsed in counterpoint. I shoved my hands into my pockets, keeping my head down as I forced my way into the wind, worrying about Lily, wondering where to get food.

  Just outside Tower Records, someone stepped right in front of me. “Hey.”

  I looked up. It was Frank Delgado, wearing shorts in the snow, and holding a Harvard Coop bag.

  “Christmas shopping?” I asked, just to say something. I gestured at his bag.

  “Yeah. You? Hanukkah, I mean?”

  I had a fleeting thought of Vic and Julia and Lily, for whom I’d bought the most innocuous of gifts, and shook my head. “No. Just on my way to get some dinner.”

  Frank nodded, and I had an idea. I fished in my wallet and came out with the gold Visa card with my father’s account number on it. I waved it in front of Frank. “Hey,” I said. “Wanna come to dinner? Let’s go somewhere good. It’s on my father.”

  Frank regarded me carefully. “Are you drunk?”

  “Can’t you tell?” I said. “I’m drunk on life.”

  “I see,” said Frank. He reached out for the Visa card and I let him have it. He read my name on the front; my signature on the back. Then he handed it back. “Let’s go,” he said, and fell into step beside me. We headed up JFK Street. “Have you heard of Upstairs at the Pudding?” Frank said. “It’s over on Holyoke.”

  “Is it good?” I asked.

  “Never been.”

  “Is it expensive?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds perfect,” I said.

  The maitre d’ didn’t blink at Frank’s shorts or at his head. We were shown very politely to an excellent corner table. The waiter said cheerfully, “A soft drink to start?”

  That killed the idea Frank’s comment had raised. Oh, well. I asked for root beer, and Frank for water. The waiter brought a basket of bread and a cruet of olive oil. I ordered appetizers for us both, and the large filet mignon for my entree. Frank ordered the grilled vegetable plate. Then I said to Frank, who was busy wiping up olive oil with a piece of focaccia: “Why’d you shave your head?”

  He put the bread in his mouth, chewed thoughtfully, and swallowed. He drank some water. Then he said, “Because it upset people.”

  A reasonable answer. “And why do you keep it shaved?”

  “To upset people.”

  “You enjoy that?” I asked.

  “Don’t you?” Frank countered.

  “No,” I said, and I realized I was telling the exact truth.

  “Too bad,” Frank said softly, and I stared at him because of course he was right. It would be easier.

  Frank ate more bread. So did I. He said, “I like watching what happens when people get upset. That’s when you find out who they really are.”

  We finished off the bread in the basket, and the lemon artichoke heart appetizer, and the cheese things, and called for more bread and more spring water for Frank.

  I asked Frank where he was applying to college, and he asked me. I asked him if money was a factor, and he said yeah, his mother was a teacher. He asked me the same question and, feeling guilty, I said no. We exchanged S.A.T. scores. His were better than mine.

  “Do you really want to go to college?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “High school … well. Let’s just say I’m ready to move on.”

  I said, “I’d rather get a job.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It should,” said Frank.

  I shrugged. Maybe if there were something I wanted to do, it would matter.

  Our dinners arrived. I ate my steak. Frank vacuumed up his vegetables. Halfway through the meal, he looked up at me and said, “I believe it gets better. I really do.”

  “You want to believe,” I said, and he grinned. But I thought, You’re not me.

  We ate four desserts between us, and the bill was satisfyingly high. I signed for it and, while I was in my wallet, swapped Frank JANE KURTZ for BOB SULLAWAY. I dropped Frank off at a double-decker house just over the Cambridge-Somerville line, and drove resignedly back to the Shaughnessy house.

  It was just before nine o’clock, and Julia was alone in the kitchen. Her surprise was obvious when I came in and greeted her. But she said hello cordially enough, turning aside from the potato she was dicing, and wiping her hands on her apron. “It’s just a stew for tomorrow,” she said when I apologized for interrupting her. “I’ve made it a thousand times.”

  “Smells great,” I said.

&nbs
p; The tiniest smile appeared on Julia’s face. “Well, Vic likes it. I always serve it on the second day. I don’t know why, but it tastes better after it’s been reheated.” And she touched her hand briefly, unconsciously, to her gray, stiffly coiffed hair.

  I knew that gesture. It was commonplace at school, among the flirty flocks of teenage girls. I’d seen Emily use it a thousand times. I could not quite believe I’d just seen it from Julia.

  Lily was right about her parents.

  “So, you’re off tomorrow for Baltimore,” Julia was saying. “Give my best to Eileen and Stuart. Vic will pick you up at the airport next Sunday afternoon. He knows when your flight gets in? Good.” She picked up her knife and began on a new potato, slanting me another one of those incongruous teenage girl looks. “So,” she said, “I hear you’re dating the girl downstairs?”

  “Well,” I answered, “I wouldn’t say—”

  But Julia continued chattily. “Vic …” Her voice lingered. “Vic says Eileen and Stuart met her when they were here at Thanksgiving; he says they liked her. She’s a good tenant. Quiet, always pays the rent on time.”

  She paused a second, and then added, surprisingly, “Why don’t you bring her up to dinner sometime, so we can get better acquainted? I’ll make a roast. I saw in the circular that they’re on sale all next week. Raina eats meat, doesn’t she? Or is she one of those vegetarians?”

  This was not a Julia I knew. This was someone else. “I think Raina eats meat,” I said slowly. “But I don’t know if—”

  “Good. Then after you come back, we can pick a night. It’ll be fun.”

  Fun. Right. “Okay,” I said, not seeing a way out. Maybe Raina wouldn’t want to come.

  “Vic will be so pleased,” said Julia. She nodded, and I said good-bye and retreated.

  So much for telling Julia about Lily. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t, not then. I wasn’t prepared to break into Julia’s love affair with her husband by telling her that her daughter had been spying on them.

  I would tell Vic. After New Year’s. When I got back.

  CHAPTER 22

  My last night in Baltimore, New Year’s Day night, I had a dream. I was standing with Frank Delgado in an early Gothic church. I recognized it: Rothenburg, a nearly perfectly preserved medieval town in Bavaria. Dr. Walpole had shown us slides of it. And although she was not there, I could hear her voice saying: “The altar is circa 1490. It is dedicated to St. Francis.”

  Frank snorted and I turned to face him. He was dressed like a monk, his bald head for once looking appropriate. From his rope belt hung a rosary. Carefully, in both hands, he held up a thick, dusty library book. I recognized the letters but could not decipher them. Frank winked. “It’s The Guide for the Perplexed,” he said. Then he held out a Star Market card. “Swap?”

  I reached into my pocket, scrabbling frantically, but I couldn’t find a card. And then Frank disappeared, and Raina, wearing tight jeans and a T-shirt, stood in his place. She took my hand and pulled. “Let’s climb to the top of the tower,” she said. “There’s a view.”

  “No, come to the torture museum,” said Lily, who was suddenly beside me, clutching my other hand with remarkable strength. Raina disappeared. And Lily and I were inside the cold wet stone walls of a dungeon. “Over there,” said Lily, pointing to an iron maiden lying open on its back behind a velvet rope. “Come see.” She let go of my hand and ran forward, swinging on the rope, peering inside the iron maiden, swinging back, forward, back again.

  I walked up beside her. I looked inside the iron maiden and saw the tiny bathtub from the attic in Cambridge, filled with clear water. Kathy lay immersed in it, her arms crossed on her breast, flowers strewn about her. She was impaled on spikes, bloodless, and quite dead.

  Lily giggled. “It’s me,” she said. “I—”

  “Shut up,” I said. I grabbed her up in my arms, ignoring her squirming, and strode through the stone corridors of the museum, shoving through crowds of tourists, calling for Raina, for Frank. And then for Vic and Julia. And then for my parents. And then—my throat raw—for Emily.

  Emily. Emily, Emilyemilyemily …

  No one was there but strangers. And then even they disappeared, and I was alone with Lily—now screaming, kicking, and biting—in my arms.

  I forced myself awake. I was sweating; had thrown off the heavy quilt. I reached out automatically for the bedside lamp, but I was in Baltimore and the nightstand was on the other side of the bed. Finally I found the lamp and, sitting up, switched it on. The sudden light hurt my eyes, so that for a moment I didn’t see her. Then I did.

  No shadow. No humming. No.

  Down by my feet, sitting on the edge of the bed, was my cousin Kathy. As in my dream, she was pale. Her hair was wet. Her eyes, narrowed and anxious and more than a bit fierce, met mine. She put out a paper-white hand, and her lips moved. “Lily,” she whispered rustily. “Help Lily.”

  One moment she was solid. The next—she dissolved. I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and opened them again, and there was nothing there.

  I had imagined it. Surely I had imagined it.

  I stumbled into the bathroom, and immersed my head in cold water in the sink. Then I got dressed for running, and went out into the predawn cold on a long route that—like every other outing that week in Baltimore—went nowhere near Emily and Greg’s house.

  It had been a strange, unreal week, full of places not visited, people not seen, conversations not held. All my old friends were probably home from their colleges, but of course I hadn’t called them. I couldn’t.

  Everywhere I looked, I saw Emily.

  I stayed in, watching TV, reading. Toward the end of the week I finally sat down and finished my college applications—to five big faceless medium-ranked city schools that the year before would have been, at best, safety selections—and e-mailed them in. That last morning, after the nightmare, I printed out the final list of places I’d applied to and handed it to my parents over breakfast.

  “What about Yale? Stanford? And—” began my mother, but then she stopped, biting her lip.

  “It’s a done deal,” I said. She didn’t sigh, but I heard it anyway.

  “What are you thinking about for a major these days?” asked my father.

  “Psychology,” I said, surprising myself. I had written “undecided” on all my applications. For a few minutes there was only the overly loud sound of my teeth crunching on Cheerios.

  “You could do with a little less self-pity,” said my father.

  I was watching the last few Cheerios drift around in the bowl of milk. It took everything I had right then to turn my head and look straight at my father. He looked just as he always did at the breakfast table: Washington Post carefully sectioned beside him, coffee cup in hand, the thick glasses masking his real thoughts. Even dressed in casual Sunday clothes, he looked formal.

  “Your point is?”

  “You need to get on with your life,” said my mother urgently. “Let the past go. Stop … stop …,” she faltered.

  “Stop feeling responsible for what I did?”

  “I … I just don’t see why you have to let it change your whole life …” She stopped again.

  “I’m not,” I said reasonably. “I’m finishing high school. Going to college. What more do you want?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But I’m just afraid you … you’re not—”

  “Not what?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said my mother. “I don’t know.” She put her hands over her eyes.

  “Do you know?” said my father to me. “Do you know what you’re doing to yourself? Do you know why?”

  I didn’t reply. I thought at him: Why can’t you understand that everything’s changed forever?

  He didn’t hear me. We sat in silence.

  Eventually I pushed my chair back from the table and left the room. A couple of hours later they drove me to the airport, and a couple of hours after that, I was once more in Boston, where, at least, Em
ily was less … less present.

  Sitting in the car with Vic, I found myself glad to be back. There were some people I liked here. Raina. And, incredibly, Frank Delgado.

  Before I’d left for Baltimore, I had promised myself I’d tell Vic about Lily’s behavior. And now I’d had orders from Kathy’s ghost—or, if you preferred, from a hallucination conjured up by my paranoid and guilt-ridden subconscious—to do so. Help Lily. It couldn’t have been clearer, really.

  But looking at Vic, hearing his chatter about how he and Julia had gone ballroom dancing on New Year’s Eve, my courage failed. I’d wait for a few days, I decided. I’d see how Lily was acting. Maybe she was adjusting.

  I would give her a little more time before I told Vic.

  CHAPTER 23

  “Wow,” said Raina, as she, and I, and Vic, and Julia clustered somewhat uneasily in Julia’s kitchen the following Friday evening. “That roast smells amazing.”

  Julia smiled, visibly pleased. She had meant it about inviting Raina and me to dinner. She’d delivered a formal note to Raina right after I got back from Baltimore, and a few days later, there we were. I’d wondered if I needed to warn Raina that Julia thought we were dating, but in the end, I couldn’t figure out how to do it without possibly triggering a conversation I didn’t want to have.

  But Raina seemed straightforwardly delighted merely at the prospect of a large meal. I could hardly believe this was the same person who ate can after can of tomato soup. She prowled the kitchen like a panther, sniffing ecstatically. “Fresh bread! Yum!”

  “It’s just the basic white loaf recipe from Joy of Cooking,” replied Julia. She wore an apron. Her hair was carefully styled.

  “Wine, dear?” said Vic.

  “Oh, yes.” Julia held out her glass and Vic, courtly and freshly shaven, poured her half a glass of merlot. Julia grinned at him and he grinned back. Raina smiled at me, an aren’t-they-cute smile. I did my best to return it. Vic poured us some wine, too.

  “Not too much,” said Julia coyly. “They’re underage.”

  “A little wine at home never hurt anyone,” said Vic. “To the new year,” he toasted, and we clinked glasses.