The Good Sister

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Seriously?” Gabe looked impressed.

  “Yeah, I do it all the time. No big deal.”

  Maybe she doesn’t do it all the time, but she’s done it before.

  Well, once. And she was amazed at how easy it was to fool Sister Agatha, the elderly principal at Saint Paul’s.

  Today, Emma again faked a note for herself and wrote one for Bridget, too.

  “Didn’t you feel guilty,” Bridget whispered to Emma after they handed in the notes, “when Sister Agatha blessed us and said she’d pray for Nicki’s soul?”

  “Nope. I’m just glad she said she’s not going to the wake herself until tonight.” Emma had stupidly forgotten that everyone at Saint Paul’s knew Nicki, who’d graduated eighth grade there last year. “Can you imagine if she ran into my mom at the funeral home this afternoon and asked where I was?”

  But that didn’t happen. Things had worked out for Emma, as they always seem to have a way of doing, and now she and her friends have the house to themselves for a couple of hours. Bridget is just nervous because she likes to be the one in control, and she’s not used to being the youngest kid in the group. Plus, she keeps sneaking these sideways looks at Gabe, like she’s interested in him. When she’s around a guy she likes, she tends to get flustered. Definitely not cool.

  I shouldn’t have invited her, Emma thinks again.

  What if Gabe is into girls who are cute and perky, like Bridget? It doesn’t seem likely, but you never know. Sometimes opposites attract.

  Look at Emma’s parents. Mom is outgoing and likes to run around doing things, and Dad is quiet and antisocial.

  That’s what Mom called him once last summer when they had a fight because she wanted to go to some patio party Dad had forgotten about, and he wanted to make up an excuse and stay home.

  “I deal with people all day every day at work, Jen,” he said. “On weekends, I like to lay low.”

  They don’t argue that often; Emma listened with interest.

  “I lay low every day,” Mom shot back. “On weekends, I like to get out of the house.”

  She won the argument, of course. Unlike Dad, she’s super good at talking. She had way more to say about why they should go out than Dad did about why they shouldn’t. In the end, they went to the party and came home laughing and acting all lovey-dovey.

  Nicki was sleeping over that night. Emma heard her tell Carley wistfully, “Your parents seem like they really love each other.”

  “Well, they’re married, duh, Nicks.”

  “Yeah, but still . . . it’s nice that they laugh and kiss and stuff.”

  Personally, Emma cringes whenever her parents get affectionate. Who wants to think about that?

  “Do you guys want something to eat?” she asks, leading her four afternoon visitors toward the kitchen.

  “Like what?” Gabe tosses his down jacket over a stool at the breakfast bar, sees the glass cookie jar, and opens the top to peek in. “Are these, like, homemade?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who made them? You?”

  “My mom. They’re peanut butter.”

  “Your mom bakes cookies?” he asks, wide-eyed, as if she just claimed that her mom raises the dead.

  “She makes the best cookies,” Bridget bubbles. “Have one!”

  Gabe makes a face and pushes the cookie jar away. “Got any beer?”

  “Sure.” Without missing a beat, Emma opens the fridge.

  She moves the condiments and milk cartons around and finds four bottles of Bud. Hopefully her dad won’t notice if a couple are missing. He’s not a big beer drinker, just keeps it on hand for company. When Dad drinks, it’s usually whiskey. Emma snuck a sip once and nearly puked.

  “You want a beer?” she asks the others casually, as if she does this every day.

  Miranda and Brian, wrapped around each other in a corner, don’t even seem to hear her. Good. Dad would definitely notice if all the beer disappeared overnight, and it’s not like he’d ever suspect Carley.

  “I’ll have one, Em,” says Bridget, munching a peanut butter cookie.

  “We can share.” She plunks two bottles on the counter and twists off the caps.

  “Why do we have to share?”

  Ignoring Bridget’s question, Emma hands an open bottle to Gabe.

  Brian extracts his mouth from Miranda’s and announces, “Um, we’re going to go upstairs for a bit.”

  “Whatever. Just don’t go into my parents’ room.”

  “Which one’s yours?”

  “Second door on the right at the top of the stairs.”

  Bridget, well aware that it’s actually Carley’s room, starts to open her mouth to protest, but closes it when Emma shoots her a look.

  After they all leave, before her mother and sister get home, Emma will sneak in there and make sure nothing is disturbed. She doesn’t really want Brian and Miranda rolling around in her own sheets. Plus, this way, her bedroom is vacant, just in case Bridget gets a clue and goes home, leaving Emma alone with Gabe. She’d rather take him to her own room than Carley’s, with all those stupid stuffed animals and juvenile books she won’t get rid of, and the frilly pastel color scheme. Emma recently got her parents to repaint her own room in shades of blue and brown.

  “Brown?” Mom asked dubiously. “Isn’t that a little bit—”

  “It’s super chic,” Emma assured her, only she mispronounced it—“chick”—and her parents and sister acted as though that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Sometimes, they bring it up even now—“Hey, Em,” Dad will say, “how’s your chick brown room?”

  Hilarious.

  Sometimes, she really can’t stand her family.

  Emma looks over at Gabe and finds him looking right back at her. He smiles and her heart beats a little faster as she takes a sip of beer.

  Then he asks, “So how come your friend blew her brains out?”

  She blinks. “You mean Nicki?”

  “You got another friend who blew her brains out?”

  Emma looks at Bridget, who raises an eyebrow at her.

  Yeah, it is a little insensitive of Gabe to phrase it like that, but you can’t really blame him. After all, he’s new in town and didn’t even know Nicki.

  “She didn’t blow her brains out.”

  “No? What’d she do?”

  “Slit her wrists.”

  “Yeah? How come?”

  “She was depressed,” Emma tells him with a shrug.

  “Yeah?”

  She nods. Actually, she has no idea what happened with Nicki. But you’d have to be pretty depressed to do what she did, right?

  A couple of kids at Saint Paul’s have asked Emma about Nicki, assuming she has the inside scoop because Carley was close to her. It made her feel kind of important.

  “Did she leave a note or anything?” Gabe asks.

  That’s a good question—and one Emma herself had asked her mother when she found out the news. Mom didn’t know the answer. But Emma doesn’t want to admit to Gabe that she’s that far outside the loop, so she nods.

  “Yeah? What did it say?” Gabe wants to know.

  “It said, ‘Farewell, cruel world.’ ”

  “Seriously?” Bridget’s blue eyes are big and round. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  Emma rolls her eyes. “I’m just kidding, you idiot. Who writes a note like that?”

  The approval in Gabe’s expression makes it easy for Emma to ignore the wounded look on Bridget’s face and her muttered “How was I supposed to know?”

  Grinning at Gabe, Emma takes another gulp of beer. “Want a tour of the house?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know what, guys?” Bridget reaches for her jacket. “I’m going home. I’m not feeling great.”

  “See ya,” Emma tells her, eyes loc
ked on Gabe’s.

  Yeah. Definitely dark and dangerous.

  Really dangerous.

  And that’s just fine with Emma.

  After Sandra Lutz died, Angel called the real estate office, offered brief condolences, and told one of her colleagues to hold off on the listing.

  “I’ve decided to hang on to the house for at least a while longer, make some repairs, and wait for the market to turn around.”

  “Just give me a call,” the colleague said hurriedly, as phones rang in the background, “when you’re ready to sell it.”

  “I will,” Angel promised.

  That might very well happen, someday, when the house has served Angel’s purposes.

  But for now, I need to be here, where it all began. And I don’t want them to know I’ve come back.

  Still, even for someone who’s never exactly been a “people person,” it’s not always easy spending so much time alone behind drawn shades, confined, after dark, to the two rooms that have lamps set on timers.

  Thank you, Sandra Lutz, for that brilliant idea.

  Ironically, instead of keeping passersby from realizing the house is empty, the goal is now to prevent the neighbors from seeing that it’s occupied.

  Angel never comes and goes through the front door. Luckily, an overgrown evergreen shrub border surrounds the lot, and the back door of the house is completely shielded from neighboring homes. Under cover of darkness, Angel cuts through a rarely used gravel parking area behind the dry cleaner around the corner on Redbud Street.

  Inside the house, Angel has learned to make the most of those precious hours when the master bedroom and living room lamps click on, not daring to flip a light switch elsewhere in the house for fear someone out on the street might notice.

  That isn’t the only potential risk. Though it can be unbearably hot and stuffy in here during the summer months, the windows must remain closed and locked at all times. But at least there’s heat when it’s cold outside, and hot water. Using online bill pay, Angel keeps up with the utilities and home maintenance services, withdrawing the money directly from Mother’s checking account.

  There’s even a working stove and refrigerator. Angel had instructed Sandra Lutz to leave the appliances intact—aside from the old chest freezer in the basement.

  “I don’t remember seeing that,” Sandra had said, long distance. “Are you sure it’s still here?”

  “Where else would it be?”

  “Maybe your mother sold it. Did you know that people use them for makeshift root cellars? They’re airtight and watertight, perfect for keeping out insects and dampness, and I read about a farmer in the Midwest who—”

  “This isn’t the Midwest!” Angel snapped, to make it stop.

  “Well, your mother must have gotten rid of it somehow, then, before she—”

  “What, do you think she carried it up the steps on her back? I don’t want it moved into storage, and I don’t want it left in the house. Do you understand me? I want it disposed of. Please.”

  “I understand.”

  “Thank you.”

  Days later, Sandra sent an e-mail saying she’d checked the basement again and the freezer wasn’t there.

  I don’t know what to tell you, she wrote, except that it’s gone. Your parents must have disposed of it. But I’ve taken care of everything else, and I left the kitchen appliances intact and running.

  And so that was that.

  Angel was forced to put aside nagging thoughts of the basement freezer, not even certain why it mattered so much anyway. Somewhere back in the dim shadows of memory, there might have been something . . .

  But Angel isn’t interested in dredging up any more childhood unpleasantness than is absolutely necessary.

  I have enough to deal with as it is. Every time I reread that marble notebook . . .

  Angel knows it by heart now—page by page, line by line, word by word of blue ballpoint handwriting.

  When this is over—when everything has been made right—I’ll burn it. I’ll burn it, and the house, and I’ll walk away and never look back.

  For now, though, for however long it takes, Angel is compelled to stay under this roof, a restless ghost doomed to walk in the shadows, endlessly reliving the tragedies of the past.

  Yes, now the old place really is haunted.

  And no one in the neighborhood is any the wiser. As far as they’re concerned, it’s deserted.

  You could have always gotten your own place—a regular apartment even right here in the neighborhood. No one would ever be the wiser.

  But it wouldn’t feel right.

  Angel needs to be here again. Here, under this roof, it’s impossible to lose sight of what needs to be accomplished.

  There was just one real risk reclaiming the house after Mother died, and that was having wifi installed.

  It had to be done. Regular Internet access is crucial to the plan. While it would be easy enough to tap into a neighbor’s unprotected wifi service, that’s far too dangerous. If anyone stumbled across Angel’s online activities . . .

  But no one will. The house now has its own password-protected wireless network. Shortly after moving in, Angel ordered it online using Mother’s existing telephone service account, and was taken aback when informed that someone would have to show up here to install the equipment.

  The technician, who was in his early sixties, introduced himself as George Berry. He was perfectly pleasant and didn’t give Angel a second glance, though he did comment on the empty house.

  “Did you just move in?” he asked, as their footsteps echoed through the empty rooms.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a great neighborhood. I’ve lived here for years.”

  With that single innocuous comment, the installer sealed his fate, much as the overly chatty Sandra Lutz had sealed hers.

  “Really? Where do you live?” Angel asked casually.

  “You know that stretch of Denton Road where there are a bunch of ugly little ranch houses that were built in the fifties and sixties? Yeah, that’s where I live. In one of those.”

  “Nice.”

  “Not really. Not all that nice, and not big enough even for my wife and me. My entire house is less than a thousand square feet, and that includes the attached two-car garage. What I wouldn’t give for a big, beautiful old house like this. You’re lucky, you know that?”

  Angel wasn’t so sure about that, but one thing was certain: the technician was most unlucky.

  As George Berry worked in the cellar, whistling and setting up the new network, Angel paced the first floor. What if he mentioned to one of the neighbors that the big old house on Lilac Avenue has a new occupant?

  I can’t take that chance.

  “Are you going to be here for a while?” Angel called down the stairs.

  “At least an hour,” he said, “while I get this panel installed and get the service up and running.”

  “I have to run a quick errand. I’ll be back soon.”

  George had left his jacket hanging over a doorknob. In the front pocket was a set of keys.

  Angel slipped them out and went directly to the hardware store. Not the small mom-and-pop operation just two blocks away, where the elderly owner provides cheerful, hands-on service and proudly declares that he never forgets a customer’s name or face, but the huge superstore just off the thruway exit.

  There, a disinterested high school kid duplicated the entire set of keys without once glancing up or uttering anything more than a mumbled “Here you go,” when the job was done.

  Less than twenty-four hours later, George Berry and his wife, Arlene, met an untimely death due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

  According to the newspaper coverage, one of them had absentmindedly forgotten to turn off the car engine after pulling into the garage and closing the
door. Accompanying the article was a sidebar about the domestic hazards of even minor memory loss in the aging population.

  No one would ever suspect that someone had slipped into the Berry home in the wee hours with a copied house key. It was a chilly September night; the windows were closed and locked and so was the garage, where a pair of Chevrolets, one a silver Malibu and the other a black Impala, were parked.

  The keys to both were conveniently hanging on a hook just inside the kitchen door. With gloved fingers, Angel removed a set, started the Malibu, closed the door, and disappeared out into the night.

  At least it was an easy way to go. Much easier than burning alive, or bleeding out.

  Much easier than the fate that lies in store for the others.

  Angel grins.

  Sandra Lutz.

  George and Arlene Berry.

  Nicki Olivera.

  Four down.

  Two to go.

  As they make the painstaking mourners’ crawl up the freshly shoveled sidewalk and through the funeral home’s carpeted foyer and anteroom, Jen occasionally wipes away tears and sees Carley doing the same.

  They’re hardly alone in their sorrow. Everyone else, strangers and familiar faces alike, is doing the same thing, punctuating the hush with muffled sniffles and whispered conversation.

  But when the line inches forward through the archway into the chapel room, and the shiny white casket comes into view—closed, as Jen had assumed it would be—there is a noticeable shift in the subdued mood immediately surrounding them.

  The whispering becomes murmuring, with a few audible “Oh my Gods,” and the trio of teenage girls directly in front of Carley breaks down in tears.

  Jen instinctively reaches for her daughter’s hand, only to find that Carley’s fingers, clammy and trembling, are already groping for hers.

  “Are you okay?”

  Rather than bristling at the latest inane question to escape her mother’s lips, or claiming to be “fine,” a pale Carley gives a slight shake of her head.

  “Do you want to go back outside?”

  “No. I just . . . I need a second.” She takes a deep breath as if to steel herself for the ordeal ahead.