by J. D. Griffo
“Nola, honey,” Alberta said. “How did you break out of jail? Vinny couldn’t have just let you out.”
“Actually, he did.”
“A stunod and incompetent!” Lori hissed. “I never liked that man.”
After the commotion and individual outbursts died down, Nola explained how she acquired her freedom.
“Your sister and Joyce have been trying to reach the two of you for the past hour, and when you didn’t respond to their calls and texts they got worried so they finally went to Vinny and told him everything that they know,” Nola said.
“And what exactly does the rest of the Ferrara clan know?” Lori asked.
“That Sharon is my mother and she killed both Jonas and Kichiro,” Nola explained. “They know Kichiro was your secret lover and figure you killed him in a sort of crime of passion. They don’t know why you killed Jonas, but now I do. He was my father and you were afraid he was going to reveal that piece of information and ruin your life. That’s why you convinced me to reverse the restraining order I had against him.”
“So Sharon did make you do that,” Alberta said.
“She told me Jonas was harmless,” Nola replied. “But he was actually the opposite, he was the most dangerous man you knew. You were afraid he would get angry and reveal the truth.”
“You’re half right,” Sharon corrected. “Jonas didn’t know you were his daughter. I couldn’t risk him finding out so I wanted to keep the relationship between the two of you civil and not raise any red flags.”
“I’m sorry you’re so ashamed of me.”
“Oh Nola—” Sharon started.
“But I convinced Vinny to let me out so I could get you to confess,” Nola said. “I know that you didn’t mean to kill them and that they were accidents or something so let me help you. Bruno is willing to be your lawyer, between the two of us we can get you off and you can put all of this behind you.”
“Poor sweet... stupid Nola,” Lori interrupted. “I guess I shouldn’t have expected you to have a smart kid since you were so screwed up your entire life.”
“What . . . what is she talking about?” Nola asked, confused by the vitriol and familiarity of Lori’s tone.
“Nola, listen to me,” Alberta said. “Sharon didn’t kill anyone, your aunt did.”
“My aunt?” Nola said, now even more confused. “I don’t have an aunt.”
“Yes you do,” Lori said. “You’ve got the baddest aunt of them all.”
The shock of Lori’s comment hit Nola so hard, she actually stumbled, and Alberta and Jinx had to grab her arms to steady her and keep her upright.
“Jonas was my father and you’re . . . you’re my aunt?” Nola asked. “And you killed my father and Kichiro?”
“Yes, yes, yes . . . and yes,” Lori replied.
Slowly, Alberta and Jinx noticed a change come over Nola. Her spine lengthened and her shoulders dropped. Her expression lost its look of surprise and fear and was replaced with steely determination. “You killed both of them? You deliberately killed Jonas . . . my father and Kichiro, my friend? Did you know this, Sharon?”
Sharon tried to back away from Nola, but there was nowhere for her to go unless she wanted to try and break through the cement blocks that formed the basement walls. “There was nothing I could do. You don’t know Lori. Once she makes up her mind, there’s no stopping her.”
“You’re right, I don’t know Lori and clearly I don’t know you either,” Nola said. “All this time I thought you were protecting yourself, at least that I could understand, but you were protecting your sister and letting your daughter take the blame for it all. How could you do that to me?”
Like a sudden inferno, Nola was engulfed with rage and without thinking backed up and pounded her fist against the wall. Instead of writhing in the pain she must have felt when her fist slammed against the metal gas pipe, she was gripped with inspiration. She yanked the loose pipe off the wall and swung it at Sharon. Her swing was wild and she missed, but in order to avoid the impact, Sharon leaped to her right and landed less than a foot from the furnace.
“Knock it off, Nola, I’m warning you!” Lori shouted.
With the bulk of the pipe torn off, gassy smoke started to fill up the small room making it difficult to see and breathe. Worse, the hissing seemed to increase in volume so it was becoming difficult to hear anything quieter than a shout.
“Listen to her, Nola, please!” Alberta cried.
“I’m done listening!” Nola screamed. “That’s all I’ve ever done my entire life and look where it’s gotten me!”
Still looking at Alberta, Nola swung the pipe and this time connected with Lori. The woman went flying in one direction while her gun went flying into the other.
As if psychically linked, Lori and Sharon sprang into action at the same time, both leaping up to grab the gun. But Alberta and Jinx were just as connected and while Alberta lunged to tackle Lori, Jinx leaped forward and landed on top of Sharon. In the middle of them both stood Nola, not entirely sure which group to join.
Just as Sharon was about to grab the gun, Jinx slammed her forearm onto her wrist and the woman cried out in pain. She managed to throw Jinx off of her body by raising her arm and thrusting her entire body backward so Jinx slid away from her until she rammed into the furnace door.
Nola was about to run toward Jinx to help her friend, but saw that Sharon was crawling on her hands and knees to get the gun so she spun on her heels and moved in Sharon’s direction. She grabbed her elbow and yanked it away a split second before she was about to reach the gun and pulled her arm back. Nola lost her footing and fell backward, but didn’t let go of Sharon so the woman fell on top of Nola, the both of them careening into the cement wall.
On the other side of the room, Alberta was doing her best to keep Lori on the ground, but the woman’s larger, sturdier frame was proving difficult to manage. Alberta surprised herself and used every tactic she could think of: she pulled Lori’s hair, she dug her fingernails into her arm, she pressed the heel of her shoe into her shin, but each action only seemed to fuel Lori’s fury and give her greater strength. Finally, she let out a guttural cry and flexed her back, and Alberta found herself airborne and didn’t stop until she crashed into a large metal cabinet. She felt the handles of the drawers ram into her back and bolts of pain rushed up and down her spine. The only thing that made the pain go away was the fear that replaced it when she saw Lori aim her gun at Nola.
“If you think I’m going to let you betray your mother, think again!”
Alberta wasn’t sure if it was primal or maternal instinct, but she didn’t care, all that mattered was that when Lori pulled the trigger, Sharon jumped up to shield Nola’s body taking the bullet to her chest that was meant to kill her daughter.
“Noooo!”
Lori’s scream echoed through the small room and along with the incessant hissing of the gas pipe made the sound of the second gunshot almost silent. Alberta and Jinx weren’t truly certain that a second shot was fired until they saw Lori’s body slump to the ground and blood slowly ooze through her blouse.
“Vinny!” Alberta screamed. “You don’t know how happy we are to see you.”
“I’m not even going to ask what you’re all doing down here,” Vinny said. “But luckily that secret door was left open or else we would’ve never found you.”
“We?” Jinx asked.
Scurrying into the room was Helen closely followed by Joyce.
“Do you think we were going to let the two of you have all the fun?” Helen quipped.
“Oh, Aunt Helen.”
Jinx ran into her aunt’s arms and embraced her tightly. “It’s okay, it’s all going to be okay,” Helen said.
As Vinny called for an ambulance, Joyce helped Alberta up off the floor. “Looks like you’re going to be in a little bit of pain tomorrow morning.”
“At least there’s going to be a tomorrow morning,” Alberta said.
“That’s my Alfie, always look
ing on the bright side.”
As they looked around the room they saw that, unfortunately, not everyone was going to have a bright, happy ending.
“Mom . . . Mom . . . stay with me . . . please.”
Nola cradled Sharon’s bloodstained body in her arms and was trying to will her mother to hold on and keep fighting. The sounds from the pipes, the distant whir of the ambulance, and the tears made it difficult to hear exactly what Nola and Sharon were saying to each other, and Alberta thought that was appropriate since some things that are shared between a mother and daughter were meant to be private. The same could be said for what was shared between two sisters, and as much as everyone wanted to turn away they couldn’t.
Lying in Nola’s arms, Sharon reached out her hand to Lori, who tried desperately to grab hold of her sister. Refusing to let her sister leave this earth without connecting with her one last time, Lori used every ounce of strength she had to crawl closer to Sharon. She grabbed her hand just as Sharon took her last breath.
Jinx fought the urge to wrap her arms around Nola, knowing that she needed these few moments to say goodbye to her mother so instead she and Helen joined Alberta and Joyce, who were standing next to Vinny. Without realizing it or agreeing, they all bowed their heads and started to pray silently. For the woman who just died and the two she left behind, both devastated in their own way by her death. Their relationships in life were incredibly complicated and not easily understandable or reconciled, but death brought with it a simplicity and finality that sometimes made things clearer. It stripped away everything that was unnecessary and left only what was important.
Alberta knelt down and placed Lori’s hand on top of Sharon’s, they were together again, their bond unbroken. “Dove c’è la morte, c’è la vita,” Alberta whispered while making the sign of the cross.
And she was right, where there’s death, there’s always life.
EPILOGUE
La famiglia e tutto.
The crisp autumn air seemed to have a cleansing effect on everything it touched. The sky was cloudless, a light azure color, so perfect it was almost fake. Even though most of the trees were stripped of their leaves, Tranquility Park radiated energy, filled with the sounds of crackling leaves stirred by the wind, the chirps and coos of defiant or lazy birds who had yet to fly south for the coming winter, and the smells of roses and daisies and lilies combined with the faint smell of burning chimneys to create a fragrance that straddled all seasons. Although the park had been witness to two recent deaths, life emerged from every nook and cranny.
Underneath the tree house was a blanket of flowers placed there by residents in memory of their fallen brothers, Jonas and Kichiro. It didn’t matter if people didn’t know them personally, the need to honor their lives and acknowledge their deaths was universal, visceral, and the sight the bevy of flowers created was beautiful to behold, it made the tree house look as if it were floating in the air. When Alberta and Jinx saw the memorial it took their breath away.
“Dio mio,” Alberta gasped. “È bellissimo.”
“Jonas and Kichiro touched a lot of lives.”
“Yes they did . . . I hope that they knew that.”
Alberta and Jinx added their own flowers to the overflowing display and knelt side by side on the grass to offer silent prayers.
“Do you believe in heaven, Gram?”
“I do.” When Jinx didn’t comment, Alberta knew she was struggling with the concept. “You have doubts?”
“I don’t want to, but yes, I do. I just don’t know.”
Alberta wrapped her arm around Jinx’s shoulder. “I did too, but they’ve gone away. And at least you’re not adamant that there’s nothing after this life here on earth, so there’s hope for you yet, lovey.”
Jinx laughed in her grandmother’s arms and almost felt guilty for feeling so happy when she was kneeling at the threshold of such a solemn ceremonial landscape. But she couldn’t feel guilty because she was part of the reason that the real murderer had been caught. She just wished there hadn’t been so much collateral damage.
“How’s Nola?” Alberta asked.
“As well as can be expected,” Jinx replied. “I mean her entire world has literally been turned upside down. She found out her biological father was a man she’d known for years and never really gave the time of day, and then she finds out he and her friend died at the hands of an aunt she never knew she had.”
“Poor thing, she must feel all alone,” Alberta mused.
“She does,” Jinx admitted. “I told her that she has all of us and she said she’s very grateful, but all she really wanted was to get to know her mother, and now she’s never going to get the chance.”
“At least she knows that her mother loved her.”
“Are we sure about that?” Jinx questioned.
“You saw what Sharon did,” Alberta said. “When push came to shove, Sharon made the ultimate sacrifice for Nola. It’s what any mother would do for her child.”
“Would you do that for my mother, Gram?”
Alberta was surprised by the question. It had almost become an unspoken rule that neither one of them would ever mention Lisa Marie, keep the elephant in the room silent. But even though she was surprised, she didn’t hesitate in her response. “Without question,” Alberta replied. “Your mother and I, we have our differences, but we love each other, don’t you ever forget that. And I would give my life to save hers. Same way I’d give my life to save yours, you’re my family, and la famiglia e tutto.”
Smiling, Jinx replied, “It is everything, isn’t it?”
“What else do you have in this world, truly, except your family?” Alberta said. “We’re lucky to be friends with our family, to want to be with the people whose blood we share, not everybody has that.”
In the distance they saw the figure of a man walking toward them.
“And then there are some people who don’t share your blood,” Alberta observed. “Who are as close to you as any family member could be.”
Without saying a word, Vinny knelt down next to them and laid a beautiful bouquet of red roses, white lilies, and blue carnations, a fitting tribute to a policeman who spent his life upholding truth, justice, and the American way.
“How are you doing, Vinny?”
“Not so good, Alfie,” Vinny admitted and had to swallow hard to continue speaking. “He really was like the son I never had.”
“Did you ever tell him that?”
Laughing, Vinny shook his head, “No, I never said those exact words, but I think he knew. One time after we got called in to stop an armed robbery, one of the perps got nervous and started firing his gun, willy-nilly, it was a miracle that no one got shot. When we were riding back to the police station we were both pretty quiet until Kichiro said, “We got lucky today, Pops.” He never called me that before or after that, but it was nice to hear it at least once in my life. If only he had confided in me about the whole Sharon thing, maybe none of this would’ve happened.”
Alberta had never heard her friend speak so vulnerably, and she knew that he might never do it again so she didn’t add her own words. Anything she said would have just been clutter so she patted his hand for a moment and hoped he understood that he was not alone in this world. And neither was Alberta, nor would she ever be. Helen and Joyce entered the park from the opposite side and knelt down next to Jinx. Joyce placed a small bouquet of tiny red roses on the ground, while Helen began to rummage through her pocketbook.
“Are you going to pull a bunch of flowers out of your purse?” Alberta asked.
“I don’t like flowers,” Helen replied, still searching. “They attract bugs, they smell, and they get all dry and crumbling when they die.”
“Also too, they’re expensive.”
“Shut up, Joyce,” Helen said. “I’d rather offer something that might bring Jonas and Kichiro some peace.”
Helen pushed some flowers out of the way in order to make a little clearing in the grass. When she wa
s done, she placed a beautiful string of white rosary beads on the grass, then bent over and kissed the medallion of the Blessed Mother in the center of the beads. Alberta shook her head and thought to herself, my sister will never cease to amaze me. When Helen spoke, Alberta knew she was right.
“I feel sorry for Lori.”
“Really, Aunt Helen?”
“You can visit her in the state pen where she’ll be for the rest of her life once she gets out of ICU,” Vinny said.
“Don’t you think she belongs in a mental institution?” Alberta asked.
“She might wind up there after they get through with the evaluation,” Vinny said. “But first she’ll be sent to prison; after all, she did kill three people including her sister.”
Dismissing Vinny’s comment with a wave of her hand, Helen explained, “That was an accident, she was trying to kill Nola.”
“Helen! I know you don’t like the girl very much, but that’s harsh even for you,” Joyce said.
“I don’t want to see the kid dead,” Helen said. “Banned from the theater maybe . . . What I mean is that in her own delusional way Lori was protecting her sister, that’s why she shot at Nola and that’s why she killed Jonas and Kichiro. I’m not saying it’s right, but I’m saying I feel sorry for her because it’s what every one of us would do. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do in order to protect our family.”
No one could dispute Helen’s logic because everyone knew she was right. They knew that what Lori did was wrong and reprehensible and punishable, but it was also understandable. However, there was one person gathered on the grass who was still a little confused as to how Lori turned out to be the Tree House Killer.
“Alfie?”
“Yes, Vin.”
“I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics as to why Lori was pointing a gun at Sharon. Do you mind filling me in on all the details maybe over a plate of your lasagna?”
“Don’t worry,” Alberta said, wrapping an arm around Vinny’s waist. “I’ll tell you everything you need to know to make it look like you solved the crime all by yourself. But we both know the truth.”