What My Sister Knew

by Nina Laurin

  “So you’re saying that…” I don’t know what I think she’s saying. My head is spinning.

  “He tried to contact you, to come see you. Which means he knew where you worked, and what time, and what road you took home. Which in turn means that he must have been keeping an eye on you for some time.”

  Milt has had enough. He steps forward and takes my hand. His palm is dry and hot, in contrast to my clammy, icy grip, but I gratefully take it and intertwine my fingers with his.

  “Does this mean Andrea is in danger?” he asks forcefully.

  “Not necessarily. If he wanted to hurt her, he already had a chance. Although now that he’s wanted by the police, he’s cornered and desperate. It’s better that Andrea stay someplace safe and keep the door locked.”

  I shift uncomfortably, wishing they wouldn’t talk about me over my head like this.

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m not in danger,” I say, surprised at how powerful my voice is. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “You don’t know that.” Figueroa studies me with interest. “He did kill your parents without a second thought.”

  But he dragged me out of the fire, I almost say. My hand pulls out of Milton’s, and I stop it midair, an old habit awakening—the need to touch the rippling burn on my neck, to feel the new skin, smooth and pearly pink like the inside of a shell.

  “I think it’s best that you take a leave of absence from work,” Figueroa is saying. I can’t take a leave of absence. There’s no one to fill in for me because no one wants to work so late in the bad part of town with the most difficult subjects of all—the ones who fall through the cracks, the runaways, the drug addicts who come to the shelter as a last resort.

  “There’s no need,” I say, but she silences me with a glance.

  “And Andrea, I need you to think very hard. About anything from last night, anything out of the ordinary. And the preceding couple of weeks, maybe even a few months.”

  A few months? She thinks that’s how long my brother might have been spying on me?

  “If anything jumps out at you, get in touch with me at once.” She folds her hands in her lap. “And don’t worry—I’ll talk to your boss. You can have that leave of absence and your employment will not be in danger.”

  I’m supposed to thank her. That’s what Milt and Cynthia do, he with a subtle nod and she profusely, her hands clasped in front of her ample chest. But to me, the promise to talk to my boss sounds more like a threat.

  “Oh, one more thing,” Figueroa says lightly, too lightly. “You can have this back. We have no further need for it.”

  She nods at Childs, who reaches into his satchel and comes out with one of those plastic evidence bags, on which something is scrawled in untidy Sharpie marker. He hands it to Figueroa, who tosses it on the coffee table with seeming carelessness. It lands with a clack, and after looking at it uncomprehendingly for a couple of beats, I finally identify the murky dark rectangle inside. My phone.

  “Is that all?” she asks.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Your things,” she says patiently. “You have everything back?”

  “There was a thermos,” Cynthia chimes in. I grit my teeth.

  “That’s okay,” I say quickly. “I don’t need it back.”

  Figueroa nods graciously. Cynthia hides the fact that she’s fuming. Then they’re leaving. That’s all. It’s over.

  Except one thing is missing. It’s not in my purse or in the pockets of my coat, and I’m willing to bet it’s not in the wrecked remains of my car.

  And I have a pretty good guess where it is.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Her twins were Cassie Bianchi’s blessings, she said. Occasionally she would bring them to the store with her when she had weekend shifts. “They were great kids,” a coworker of Cassie’s, who wished to remain anonymous, said in an interview. “Never caused any trouble. And she loved them—everyone could tell. Everyone loved them, especially the boy, Eli. He’d follow us around to see if we needed help with anything, and we’d give him little tasks like gluing on discount stickers, just to keep him busy. And he looked so proud of himself, that he was helping out.”

  The elementary school they were attending during that time didn’t report anything out of the ordinary. Eli was well liked, had no trouble making friends.

  When the twins were ten, Cassie married Sergio Bianchi, moved into his house, and transferred the children to a smaller school closer to home.

  That’s when the golden child began to show a dark side.

  —Into Ashes: The Shocking Double Murder in the Suburbs by Jonathan Lamb, Eclipse Paperbacks, 2004, 1st ed.

  Fifteen years earlier: before the fire

  Andrea has never ventured into this corner of the school before. The hallway here is deserted. The only indication that the school is full of children is the faraway din. But here, her steps send an echo rolling right up to the tall door at the end of the hall, her destination. The peeling plaque next to it reads SCHOOL COUNSELOR. She’s never heard of anyone coming here of their own free will, and she wilts inside to think of what would happen if any of her classmates got wind of it. With every step she takes toward the door, her rib cage squeezes with fear. Her bladder seems to shrink three sizes, and she has to stop and press her knees together, cowardly.

  The temptation to make a run for it turns from a nagging little voice in the back of her mind to an irresistible, magnetic force. What do you expect the counselor to do, anyway? it rumbles in her ear. Even if she does something, then Leeanne and the others will figure out that you snitched, and then things are only going to get worse. This isn’t going to help, Andrea. No one is going to help you.

  The voice sounds suspiciously like her brother. No one’s going to help you. You have to take care of it yourself.

  If only she had any idea how.

  The door is open a crack, and if she leans closer, she can see inside. To her surprise, the counselor is not a woman with gold-rimmed glasses and a bun like she imagined. It’s a man. He reminds her a bit of Sergio, right down to the knitted sweater and the shirt collar peeking out of it. There’s also a whiff of tobacco so subtle she wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t accustomed to it—it’s forbidden to smoke on school grounds, and he probably goes outside to light up but the scent follows him back in. It puts her somewhat at ease.

  She clenches her sweaty hand into a fist and knocks. She only sees half of him from where she’s standing. He glances away from the boxy computer monitor on his desk with mild surprise and tells her to come in.

  The office has a lot of books in it. All the walls are bookcases, and there are the colorful spines of schoolbooks, of course, but also others, thick tomes with those reddish-brown leather spines, gold-embossed letters gleaming.

  “Is something the matter?…” the counselor—a plaque on the desk identifies him as Mr. Ainsworth—asks her. His gaze searches her face. She decides to help him out.

  “Andrea,” she says. “My name is Andrea Warren.”

  “Your lunch break is almost over. Class starts soon.”

  “I can go,” she blurts out and turns around, ready to make a beeline for the door.

  “No, wait up. If you’re here, then you must have a good reason.”

  Her face turns painfully crimson. He just confirmed her guess: Not many others waltz in here to share their misgivings with him. Especially not that many seventh graders, who are mostly at the age where they’ve become disillusioned about the adults’ abilities to solve their problems.

  “I’ll write a note for your teacher if needed. Have a seat.”

  He’s sitting in a computer chair that looks ancient but comfortable. For her, there’s a little plastic chair, just like the ones in the classrooms. She throws a glance over her shoulder at the door, which is half-open. They never close the door, she knows, because she’s heard other girls’ whisperings about incidents. Apparently, a few years back, a girl made up a story about a teacher, and there was a scand
al. So now all the doors are open.

  “So what seems to be the problem, Andrea?” he asks once she’s perched on the chair, sitting on her hands because she doesn’t know what else to do with them.

  Andrea gulps. “There are these girls,” she says. He nods encouragingly.

  “They’re giving you a hard time?”

  She forces a terse nod, and her thoughts go to all the bruises past and present, to the ruined sweater. But when she opens her mouth to tell Mr. Ainsworth about it, she closes it with a clack of teeth. There’s nothing to tell, because Eli took the sweater and Eli is the one who got in trouble for it. The sight of the crumpled note on top of the trash pops into her head, followed by the search history. A sudden flash of guilt twists her insides. Her problems with Leeanne don’t seem so significant anymore.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” Ainsworth prompts, pulling her back to the present moment. His kind patience makes her eyes burn. None of the teachers are particularly nice to her, when they notice her at all. Her grades aren’t good by any measure but never bad enough to get her undue attention, not at a public school. She peeked at a report card they mailed to her parents last term. It read Andrea could be an average, perhaps even good, student but she’s easily distracted, and I often catch her daydreaming in class and spacing out when she’s called on. For her, average would forever be the only thing to aspire to.

  She looks him in the eye, gulps, and instantly knows she won’t tell him about Leeanne. Something tells her he already knows anyway. A lot of them know. They won’t do anything about Leeanne because her parents donate to the school, and with government funding getting tighter and tighter every year (if her parents’ conversations are to be believed), they can’t afford to get on their bad side. Leeanne never listens in class, but they always pad her test scores.

  Andrea’s decision is split-second.

  “It’s not the girls,” she says, breathless with her own courage. “It’s something else. What are you supposed to do if you think a friend is being abused at home?”

  She barely wraps her tongue around the last words. She never imagined she’d ever have to utter such a thing out loud. These things only happen in those melodramatic, preachy books from the library.

  The shift in Mr. Ainsworth is instant and, she suspects, irreversible. The warmth is gone, replaced with laser focus. And she’s in the crosshairs.

  “Abused? What makes you think that?”

  There’s nothing she can say that won’t give away who it is: either her or Eli, because she doesn’t have any friends she’s that close to. Not close enough to share that sort of thing with her.

  “Did they confide in you?” he asks carefully.

  Stricken mute by regret and wishing she could go back, she can only shake her head.

  He sighs and rubs his chin, another gesture that makes her think of her stepfather.

  “Andrea,” he says in a carefully measured voice. Dread creeps into her chest when she realizes he thinks it’s her—and the whole “friend” thing is just the oldest tactic in the book. “Can you wait here for a minute? Don’t go anywhere, okay?”

  It’s the last thing she wants to do. But in that moment, an idea glimmers dimly in her mind. “Okay,” she says.

  He exits the office, not in a hurry but without wasting time either. She’s alone now, and it’s her chance to slip out unseen. She hops off the plastic chair and is about to dart for the door but something stops her, a strange, voyeuristic impulse. Instead of going in the opposite direction, she takes a step closer to the desk and peers across it. On the computer monitor, she catches a glimpse of a game of solitaire right before the screen saver kicks in, the school logo crawling across the screen. There’s also a ledger of some kind and a pretty bowl of tinted cut glass like amber, the kind you keep candy in. She peers into it, and indeed, there are a few hard candies, looking old, their once silver-and-gold wrappers scuffed. She cringes. There are also keys, paper clips, erasers, and other odds and ends she has no use for, but one thing that glints beneath it all catches her eye.

  A glance at the door—no one is coming yet—and she reaches into the bowl, her heart thundering with excitement. She grabs it, sticks it in her pocket, and leaves the office as quickly as she can.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I’m going home, Cynthia,” I say, feeling like I’m once again on the cusp of thirteen, bewildered by my new family and their house and the regulated existence I’m forced to endure, like zoo animals, eating and sleeping at designated times and constantly, constantly watched. Except instead of a charity case meant to bring her husband votes, I’m now the source of her disgrace. I don’t know why she would object to my leaving.

  “Out of the question,” she says. The moment the door closed after the detectives, her demeanor did a one-eighty. The shaky voice, damp eyes, knitting brows all vanished without a trace, and Cynthia as I know her was back, the same Cynthia I saw at the hospital—no-nonsense, fully in damage-control mode. And damage control doesn’t allow for excessive emotions. Unless the right people are there to witness them, of course. “If there are journalists here, can you imagine the swarm that’s already waiting for you at your door?”

  So this is what it’s all about. Not my well-being. Or my safety.

  “And I need to buy a new phone,” I say. Mine, predictably, is no longer working. Figueroa only told me she found it in my car, under the passenger seat. I could have sworn I looked for it there, but then again, I was out of it, and blood was pouring into my eyes. I told her and Childs as much. There are cracks on the screen, but I’ve seen phones in much worse shape still working as good as new. Did she do something to it? I have no illusions about that. If she gave it back, it means there was nothing more she could extract from it.

  “I’ll get you one,” Milt volunteers. There goes my excuse to leave the house.

  “You’ll stay in your old room,” Cynthia says, pretending he hadn’t spoken.

  I don’t have any of my things here, not even a change of clothes.

  “Until at least the end of the week.”

  She’s got to be joking.

  “It’s not necessary, Mrs. Boudreaux.” I hate how he always calls my adoptive mother that. You’d think we were fourteen and he’s come to take me out on a date that lasts past curfew. “She doesn’t have anything to tell them, and they know it. They’ll leave her alone eventually.”

  “Yeah. I’ll believe that when I see it,” she says.

  “This is ridiculous,” I mutter, which makes my adoptive mother glower at me.

  “Andrea.” Milt takes my arm, carefully, like I might turn on him and bite him. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs and talk.”

  He leads me without leading me—I could pull my arm away at any moment but instead I follow him without arguing, feeling Cynthia’s heavy glare on my back the whole time.

  Upstairs, he closes the door of my old bedroom. I plunk down on my bed like a petulant teenager.

  “Andrea,” Milt starts, “are you okay?”

  “That’s a broad question, all things considered.” I only manage half a smirk.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I really don’t,” I say, crossing my arms on my chest. “Why did you play along with Cynthia? Why did you let them all hide it from me? You should have just told me. Immediately.”

  Every time I look at him, I still can’t believe he was ever mine, even for a relatively short time. Even though it all went to hell and it was all my fault. I throw a glance at the shut door and catch myself subconsciously licking my lips. In spite of everything, all I want right now is to jump on him, devour his lips with mine, sink my fingers into that wheat-colored hair, like I used to do when we were together, when I was determined to get my fill of him before he moved on. I was sure that any day now he’d find someone else, someone who’s a better fit, someone gorgeous and rich and unburdened by an infamous last name. And then this hypothetical someone would take him away from me and the rightful orde
r of things would be restored.

  But there was no leggy blond undergrad or smoldering lingerie model or pampered heiress—in the end, it was me who put a definitive end to it by pawning that family-heirloom rock he gave me at a shitty pawnshop in downtown Denver.

  “What I mean is, are you going to be okay? Can I let you go home by yourself? Or are you going to—”

  Pour wine on my cereal and sprinkle it with cocaine, he means.

  “I’m fine,” I snarl. “I just got my two-month chip.”

  “You have to keep going to your meetings,” he says. He lowers himself to my level—for him it means kneeling on the floor next to my bed. He puts his hands on my upper arms, and I dip my chin, scorched by the caring and concern in his eyes.

  “Yeah.” I chuckle bitterly. “I’m sure those paparazzi will just love that.”

  “Have Chris come pick you up.”

  Chris is my sponsor, who I doubt will want to land in the center of media (not to mention police) attention right now, or ever, on my account. So I tell Milton that.

  “Then I’ll drive you. If that’s what it takes.”

  In this moment, it really hits me. He thinks—he actually believes—that we will be getting back together at some point. My heart crumbles inward on itself like an eggshell being crushed. Just yesterday, a mere twenty-four hours ago, this would have been all I wanted. Maybe it would have been difficult, after everything, but I would have made it work. But now it’s impossible. Everything I’ve built over the last fifteen years—as tenuous and shaky as it may have been—is about to come tumbling down, and again, I have my brother to thank.

  I hastily gulp back the tears that have cropped up, but it’s too late; they spill out, their wet tracks tracing the half-moon circles under my eyes. Milt reaches for my face in a clumsily tender gesture, with the intention of wiping them away, probably, but I turn my head at the last second.