The Good Sister

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Don’t be silly.” Jen’s mother brushes strands of hair back from her granddaughter’s face, out of her eyes. “Of course you have friends. Why aren’t you allowed to be online?”

  Carley glances uncertainly at Jen, who gives a slight shake of her head to indicate that her grandmother doesn’t know about the trouble at school.

  There’s no need to tell her, either—not now anyway, with Marie here and everything else that’s going on.

  “The Internet is a dangerous place for kids,” Jen’s father declares. “On 60 Minutes, they said—”

  “Aldo,” Jen’s mother interrupts him. “We’re not talking about 60 Minutes right now.”

  “We were talking about the Internet, Theresa, and I said—”

  “What’s going on?” Thad asks from the doorway, dressed for work in khakis and a trench coat and carrying a satchel.

  Silence falls over the kitchen.

  Carley is the one who breaks it, telling her father, “A girl from my school killed herself last night.”

  Thad’s blue eyes widen. He looks at Jen, then back at Carley. “Did you know her?”

  “Not really. I just know who she is.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Her name,” Jen tells Thad, “is Taylor Morino. Her father is Mike Morino.”

  “Mike Morino—he’s the one you—”

  “Yes.”

  Thad nods. “I didn’t know he had a daughter who went to Sisters.”

  “Neither did I, until—”

  “I didn’t know Taylor Morino’s father was your old boyfriend,” Carley cuts in—accusingly, as though Jen deliberately denied her something of great significance.

  Her head is suddenly throbbing.

  “That was a long time ago, before your mom met your dad and fell in love with him,” Jen’s mother needlessly informs Carley.

  “For what it’s worth, I never liked him,” Jen’s father says. “Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”

  “Aldo! His daughter just—”

  “That doesn’t change—”

  As her parents begin to argue, then find the self-awareness to shush themselves and each other, Jen presses her fingertips to her temples.

  She looks at Carley, wishing they could have this conversation alone. “How did you find out about Taylor?”

  “Emma told me. She heard you talking about it. About how you used to go out with Mr. Morino and how Taylor had killed herself.”

  Jen didn’t even realize Emma was awake yet today. She must have snuck downstairs, probably searching the house for her cell phone or the wifi password. Well aware that their younger daughter has a tendency to snoop, Thad locked both her phone and Carley’s into the trunk of his car, and they probably should have done the same with the password.

  A long moment of silence is broken by Thad pulling his keys out of his coat pocket. “I have to go,” he tells Jen apologetically. “I have a client coming in. I’ll call you from the office.”

  He quickly says his good-byes and heads out the door, casting one last, helpless-looking glance over his shoulder at Jen, as if to apologize for leaving her to deal with the fallout.

  She shrugs at him. What else is new?

  Her father jangles his own keys. “We should get going, too, Theresa, if you want to stop at the supermarket.”

  “I can’t even remember what I needed to get. You’re still coming to help me with the cooking, Genevieve, aren’t you?” her mother asks. “You and Frankie and the girls?”

  “Oh . . . I . . . yes. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

  What else is there to say? In the end, Taylor Morino’s death isn’t going to impact the day’s plans, and yet it’s left Jen chilled to the bone.

  Leaving Marie and Carley alone together in the kitchen, she walks her parents to the door. Her father kisses her on the cheek and heads outside, but her mother, flustered, lingers.

  “I needed something from Wegman’s, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what it is. I’m getting old.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I’ll go and pick up whatever you need before I come over. Just call when you remember what it is.”

  “You’re a good daughter, Genevieve.”

  “And you’re a good mom.”

  Her mother smiles. “So are you. A good daughter and a good mom.”

  The words catch Jen off guard. If her mother only knew that both her girls have been in serious trouble and are barely speaking to her.

  Maybe she should tell her. Mom raised five daughters and made it look so easy.

  Maybe it was easy back then. The world was less complicated. Kids weren’t faced with distraction and temptation to the extent that they are now . . .

  Or were they?

  “Mom,” Jen begins—only to be interrupted by the sound of a car honking outside.

  Her mother sighs. “Your father is losing his patience. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  Jen swallows against the ache in her throat as she closes the door and rests her forehead against it for a moment, feeling utterly abandoned. Reminding herself that she isn’t, not really, she offers a silent, familiar prayer for strength.

  Then she returns to the kitchen, where Marie and Carley are having what sounds like a painstaking conversation about piano. The ordinarily effervescent Marie is clearly preoccupied by the news of Taylor’s death, and Carley—Carley isn’t herself this morning, by any means.

  She hasn’t been herself in so long that maybe, Jen finds herself speculating, this is who she really is now. Maybe she’s always going to be this brooding, dejected soul capable of volatile behavior like last night’s explosion; capable of God only knows what else.

  No!

  Not my daughter. Not my daughter.

  “Sweetie . . .” Jen reaches out to rest a hand on her shoulder, feeling the tension emanating from her body. “Do you want to take piano lessons again? Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  “Maybe. I . . . maybe.” Carley attempts to shrug away her mother’s touch along with the question.

  “You don’t have to decide right this minute.” Marie checks her watch and reaches for her coat. “Think it over.”

  “I will. Thank you. It was nice meeting you,” Carley says politely, and turns abruptly to face her mother, succeeding in shaking the hand from her shoulder. “Can I go back upstairs?”

  “Don’t you want breakfast?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Carley tosses over her shoulder, already on her way to her room.

  Marie pulls on her coat and wraps a filmy floral lavender scarf around her neck. “She seems like a sweet girl.”

  “She is. She’s . . .” Jen finds herself swallowing hard. “She’s very sweet.”

  And she’s hurting and I can’t reach her and I can’t help her.

  “Why don’t you give me a call later this week? We’ll talk about lessons then. Right now, I really have to get going.”

  Jen walks her to the door and touches her arm as she reaches for the knob. “Marie . . . wait. What we were talking about before my parents showed up . . . I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “Debbie and Mike.”

  Jen nods. “If they really were—really are—connected in some way, then what happened to Taylor is either a tragic coincidence or . . .”

  “Or it isn’t,” Marie says simply. “You’re thinking she might have been influenced by what Nicki did?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m thinking.” Jen rakes a frustrated, confused hand through her hair. “I think I’m going to talk to Debbie about it. Maybe if we both went over there right now and—”

  “Even if I thought that was a good idea,” Marie cuts her off, “I can’t. I have back-to-back lessons for the rest of the day, and I’m late already. I’m sorry to run out on you like this, but . . .”

/>   “No, it’s okay. I understand. Thank you for coming to talk to Carley. And Marie . . . I’m sorry to hear about Taylor. When you see Mike . . . please give him my sympathy.”

  “You won’t come to the wake?”

  Jen hesitates, then shakes her head. “I don’t really know him anymore. That was all so . . .”

  “Long ago and far away?”

  “Exactly.” And that’s exactly how Jen had expected it to stay. “I just—I feel bad about assuming he was still married.”

  “He is married. Again. Wife number three,” Marie adds with an ironic little smile and nod. “Good-bye, Genevieve. Take care of yourself—and take care of your daughter.”

  Marie’s parting words seem to linger ominously after Jen closes the door after her.

  “Was that Mom and Dad?”

  She looks up to see Frankie at the top of the stairs behind her, pulling a sweatshirt over her head.

  “They left a few minutes ago. That was Marie Bush.”

  “I would have loved to have seen her after all these years.”

  “I’m sure she would have, too, but this probably isn’t the best time.”

  Frankie nods, descending the flight. “I heard what happened.”

  “Did Emma tell you, too? I didn’t even know she was down here listening.”

  “No, Carley told me.” Frankie puts her arm around Jen. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m . . . I’m just so glad you’re here. Come on. I’ll get you some breakfast.”

  Frankie winces. “Maybe just some strong black coffee.”

  In the kitchen, Jen pours her a cup, then quickly loads the other ones into the dishwasher, starts it, and sinks wearily onto a stool beside her sister.

  “I didn’t realize you’d even seen Mike Morino in years,” Frankie tells her.

  “I hadn’t, until Nicki’s wake. He was there,” she says simply, opting not to get into her suspicions about him and Debbie, “and that’s when I found out his daughter is at Sisters with Carley. What are the odds that two girls who are connected to her—two girls with everything going for them—would do something like this in the space of a week?”

  “Higher than you might think.”

  Frankie’s response catches her by surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “Kids who kill themselves sometimes trigger other kids who have been thinking about it to take action. There have been quite a few high-profile teen suicide rashes—I went to a seminar a few years ago where we studied the case in Minnesota where nine kids in the same school district killed themselves. Most of them had been bullied in one way or another.”

  The word sets off shrill warning sirens in Jen’s brain.

  “Carley was tortured by what happened with the Spring Fling princess election, Frankie, and ever since . . .”

  “I know. She told me about it last night. I didn’t let on to her that I already knew about it. It broke my heart, hearing her trying to articulate the pain . . . but I thought it was good for her to talk it out.”

  “I’m glad you were there for her. I keep praying she’ll let me be there for her, too, but she’s shut me out.”

  “It’s because she feels like she’s let you down.”

  “Why? I’ve let her know every chance I’ve had that I’m with her and I’m proud of her. I’ve tried to do everything right, but . . .” Jen trails off helplessly, flailing in a tidal wave of emotion.

  “She’s disappointed in herself, I think. She feels weak. And it’s not just that, Jen.” Frankie glances at the doorway, as if to make sure no one is there, and lowers her voice. “She told me what happened in math class. She didn’t take it upon herself to cheat on that test. Those girls set her up. It was more bullying.”

  Jen’s stomach turns over. “What happened?”

  As Frankie relays what Carley told her last night, fury sweeps in to push back the sorrow.

  “She told me in confidence, and I wasn’t going to tell you, but . . . I thought you should know after I heard about this second suicide. And there’s one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “She was asking me about a book—The Virgin Suicides. Do you remember it?”

  The title is a fist in Jen’s gut. “I read it years ago for book club, but . . . Nicki was reading it. I saw a copy in her room, after . . .”

  Frankie nods. “She must have told Carley about it.”

  “I don’t think—I mean, they weren’t even really friends anymore.”

  “Maybe it was a while ago. I think you need to get some professional help for Carley, Jen.”

  “A shrink?”

  “One who specializes in kids.”

  “Where do I find one?”

  “The school social worker should be able to give you a couple of names.”

  “I’m meeting with her on Monday.”

  “That’s good. And in the meantime, we’ll keep an eye on Carley all weekend and keep the lines of communication open.”

  “She doesn’t talk to me as it is. And I’m not sure she has any friends to talk to, but if she does, I just brilliantly cut her off from them when I took away the Internet.”

  “You were doing what you thought was best for her.”

  Jen shakes her head glumly.

  “Don’t worry, Jen. She’s going to get through this and be okay. Where are you going?” Frankie asks, as she pushes back her stool abruptly.

  “Upstairs to talk to Carley. I just want to make sure . . .”

  “You probably shouldn’t mention that I told you about what happened in math class. She told me in confidence.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t,” Jen assures her.

  The last thing she wants to do is cut off yet another line of communication.

  “Where is she?” Angel asks Ruthie, after checking the laptop yet again to see if QT-Pi has signed on and seeing that she hasn’t. “This isn’t like her at all.”

  Still propped in the dining room window seat, Ruthie sits silently by, but her empty sockets seem expectantly trained on Angel.

  “Don’t worry. I’m sure she’ll turn up any second now.”

  Angel even impulsively text-messaged Carley’s phone, hoping she wouldn’t remember that she’d never provided her cell number. If she asked about it, Angel would say she’d given it a while back and must have forgotten because of everything that’s gone on.

  The text read simply: where ru? im worried and i have a great surprise for u

  When this is over, it’ll be just as easy to delete the message from Carley’s phone as it will be to wipe away traces of their correspondence on her laptop. Angel just has to remember to find the phone from her pocket or bag—wherever she keeps it. One thing is certain: There’s no danger of a teenage girl leaving her house without it.

  For now, it’s back to pacing, from the dining room through the archway into the living room, past the worn spot on the oak floor where Mother’s favorite chair once sat, gradually wearing away the finish, the wooden rockers tilting back and forth, back and forth, year after year after year until . . .

  “I did it, you know,” Angel tells Ruthie. “But that time, it wasn’t for you. It was for me. For what she did to me.”

  Turning to note that Ruthie’s teeth are bared in a silent grin, Angel knows she approves.

  “I know it might not seem so terrible, compared to what Father did to you, but . . . You know, Ruthie, that’s the irony. I didn’t know about that—about how he was abusing you—until I found the notebook. If I had—well, maybe I would have understood why Mother did what she did to me. Maybe I would have seen that she was trying to protect me from him, in her own bizarre way. But by the time I figured that out, it was too late.”

  Angel turns again to look at the spot where Mother was sitting on that spring night two years ago.

  “It was my sh
rink’s idea. Dr. Ellis is his name. He thought I should make the trip back here to confront Mother, maybe give her a chance to apologize. He thought it was important for me to make peace with her, because she was getting old, and I had spent so many years in therapy, trying to reconcile it all on my own, and it wasn’t working . . .”

  Angel can see Mother there, rocking, working her rosary beads in her hands. They were the heavy wooden rosary beads she’d had for many years, not the pink glass ones found wrapped around the marble notebook. Those had belonged to Ruthie. They used to sit in a shallow glass dish on her bedside table, a lost memory that was rekindled after Sandra Lutz handed over the notebook.

  “I didn’t call to tell Mother I was coming. I thought she might tell me not to. I wasn’t even sure she was going to let me in that night when I knocked on the door, but she did. She saw me standing there, and she didn’t say a word, just opened the door and motioned for me to come in. I was only going to talk to her—well, really, what I wanted was for her to talk to me. But she refused. I talked, and then I cried and I begged—I begged her, Ruthie, for something. For an explanation, an apology, some words of regret, something. I got nothing. She just rocked and worked those rosary beads in her hands and I don’t even think she was listening.”

  Ruthie is, though. Angel senses her rapt attention.

  “Finally, I couldn’t stand it another second. I picked up one of the pillows from the sofa and I walked over to her, and I pressed it against her face. I smothered her, Ruthie. And when she stopped moving, I put the pillow back on the sofa and I walked out of that house—no, not out the front door, or the back door, because she had those new locks with the keys in them . . .”

  Angel smiles faintly, remembering the long-ago day Sandra Lutz had pointed out the new locks, never imagining that Angel already knew all about them.

  “Mother and Father had never repaired the lock on the window in your room. Maybe they never even knew that it was broken. I knew, because I used to spend a lot of time in there, after you were gone. It made me feel closer to you. Anyway, that night—the night that I—the night that Mother died, I still had no idea why that window lock was broken. I just remembered that it was, and so I went upstairs and opened that window, and I climbed out onto the mudroom roof, and I pushed the window back down from the other side. I drove away—I drove nine straight hours back to Long Island. And then I waited. The more time that went by, the more certain I was that by the time they found her, she would be too far gone for anyone to guess that she’d died of anything other than natural causes. And even if they had guessed . . . no one would ever suspect me. As far as they knew, I hadn’t visited that poor old woman in years.”