The Good Sister

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Remembering the disapproval etched on Sandra Lutz’s face, Angel sighs.

  Really, Sandra got what she deserved.

  As did Mother.

  And now . . .

  Striding back over to the laptop, Angel leans into the screen, hoping to see that QT-Pi has resurfaced.

  She hasn’t.

  What if she’s suspicious? What if . . .

  No. Don’t get all worked up.

  If you can’t make her come to you one way, you’ll get to her another. You’ll just have to bide your time.

  Rushing things could be dangerous. That’s when mistakes happen. There’s no reason to take chances.

  But you promised me it would be tonight, Ruthie’s voice explodes inside Angel’s brain. You said you’d take care of it!

  “I will! I’ll do it!”

  Hands clenched into fists, Angel glares at the computer screen, willing Carley Archer to cooperate one final, fatal time.

  Carley is lying on her bed, arms folded across her chest, staring at the ceiling, when someone knocks on her door.

  “What?”

  “Carley, it’s me. Can I come in?”

  She wonders what her mother would do if she said no. Probably just turn the knob and walk right in.

  How stupid for a house not to have locks on bedroom doors. How cruel of her parents to deny Carley’s request last fall that they add one to hers in order to put a stop to Emma’s snooping. If she had a lock, her mother could stand out there in the hall and talk to her all she wants, and Carley wouldn’t have to let her in.

  “Carley?”

  She sighs. “Yeah.”

  The door opens. “What are you doing?”

  “Resting.”

  Her mother’s footsteps cross the floor as she continues to stare at the ceiling, tracing a faint crease in the paint that runs from the ceiling fan light fixture to the slightly cobwebby corner above the window.

  “You didn’t eat any breakfast. I was thinking of making some pancakes.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Would you rather have eggs?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Carley.” Her mother sits on her bed, all but forcing Carley to shift her gaze in her direction.

  “What?”

  Her mother hesitates. She doesn’t look like her usual cheerful—or forced-cheerful—self today, that’s for sure.

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “I was thinking . . . maybe it would be a good idea for you to talk to someone.”

  “About what?”

  “About whatever’s on your mind.”

  “The only thing that’s on my mind,” Carley tells her, “is that I’m in solitary confinement and it’s not fair. I’m not allowed to go to school, and I’m not allowed to get online . . .”

  “I’ve been rethinking that.”

  Carley blinks. “You have?”

  Her mother nods. “Maybe that wasn’t fair to do to you. You’ve never abused that privilege.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you the wifi password so that you can spend some time catching up online. I have to run a couple of errands on the way over to Grandma’s, and you can meet me over there later with Aunt Frankie and Emma.”

  Carley is so relieved at the promise of getting back online that she doesn’t bother to mention that she’d forgotten all about going to her grandmother’s to help prepare the holiday feast today.

  In years past, she’s always looked forward to that tradition: three generations of females gathered in that cozy, familiar kitchen, chatting and preparing Sicilian recipes that had been handed down by her grandmother’s grandmother.

  Today, she’s not in the mood.

  There’s only one thing she wants to do: get in touch with Angel.

  And now she can, thanks to her mother.

  “What about my phone?” she asks.

  “That’ll have to be up to Daddy. He put it away someplace and he’s at the office for the day. You can talk to him about it tonight. Okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Mom,” she says softly, and smiles at her for the first time in days.

  To her horror, her mother’s eyes fill with tears. “You’re welcome. I just . . . I love you so much, Carley. I hope you know that.”

  I love you, too, she wants to say as her mother wraps her arms around her, but somehow, the words are lodged in her throat.

  “Well, it’s about time. Look . . .” Angel grins, holding the open laptop in front of Ruthie’s skull with its blackened, withered skin. “You see that?”

  At long last . . .

  QT-Pi is online.

  Entry from the marble notebook

  Friday, February 14, 1986

  The most unbelievable thing just happened!!!!!!!!!

  The doorbell rang not long after I got home from school, and I answered it! This man was standing on the porch with a big package wrapped in green tissue paper, and I saw the florist truck parked at the curb.

  He asked me my name, and when I told him, he smiled and said, “These are for you, then.”

  I thought it was a mistake, and I told him that, but then he pointed to my name on the little white envelope attached to the package.

  It turned out to be a HUGE bouquet of beautiful bright pink flowers that smell better than roses or lilacs, even.

  The card inside the envelope was pink. All it said was Happy Valentine’s Day (printed on the card) and then it was signed, From your Secret Admirer!

  Mother and Father are still at work, so I brought the bouquet up to my room, and I can’t stop shaking and I can’t stop staring at them.

  I wonder who sent them?

  I’m so afraid to even guess, in case I’m wrong.

  LATER

  I thought I could hide the flowers from Mother, and I probably could have if they didn’t smell so good. The minute she came home, she came charging up to my room like some rabid bloodhound. I tried to stash them in my closet but she found them.

  She didn’t believe me when I told her I have no idea who sent them, and she called me all kinds of terrible names.

  Then she handed me a pair of shears and she made me cut them up and throw them into the garbage.

  Of all the cruel punishments she’s ever given me, I think that was the worst of all. The whole time I was doing it, I was crying so hard I could barely see.

  Before I threw the garbage bag into the shed out back, I saved a couple of petals. I’m going to press them in this page and I’m hoping the scent won’t ever fade away, but it probably will. Everything does.

  Chapter 14

  Seeing Debbie’s silver Lexus parked beside the portico when she pulls up in front of the Oliveras’ brick Colonial just before one o’clock, Jen knows immediately that her friend has left the house at least once today. Debbie always keeps her car in the garage overnight, then leaves it on the circular driveway during the day as she’s coming and going.

  But she never stirs on a Saturday morning unless it’s absolutely necessary.

  I don’t want to be disturbed for anything less than fire or blood.

  Blood . . .

  Nicki died on a Saturday morning.

  And now Taylor Morino.

  Did Debbie go to Mike when she heard the news?

  What if she hasn’t heard the news?

  Maybe I should have called her first.

  Too late now. Jen is already out of the car and putting up the hood on her raincoat as she walks toward the door, carrying a bouquet of pink tulips that caught her eye at Wegman’s. She’d stopped there after her mother called to say she needed dry lentils for the soup she always served as a first course at the Saint Joseph’s table.

  The ordinariness of that interlude—walk
ing the brightly lit, bustling aisles of the supermarket—should have brought a measure of comfort. Instead, it left her even more troubled. Everywhere she looked, there were mothers and daughters: mothers with pink-clad babies in slings; mothers pushing pigtailed toddlers riding in cart seats; mothers chaperoning Girl Scouts at the cookie table set up outside the door; mothers clashing with chubby daughters in the junk food aisle. Serene-as-the-Madonna mothers and harried mothers; prettily pouting daughters and daughters clutching American Girl dolls in outfits that matched their own. . . .

  Mothers with no clue, it seemed, of how fragile it all is; how you can wake up one morning to find that your little girl has become a stranger—or that she’s no longer alive.

  When she left the house, both Carley and Emma were still in their respective bedrooms.

  Emma—presumably unaware that her sister has the new password and is back online—was unwilling to come along to her grandmother’s this afternoon, even when Jen reminded her that she’s still being punished and not allowed to leave the house otherwise.

  “I don’t care” was the response, spoken through the closed door.

  “Don’t push it,” Frankie advised. “I’ll see what I can do. With or without her, Carley and I will meet you over at Mom and Dad’s at around two. Go ahead and run your errands, and try not to worry for a little while.”

  Jen promised to try. She didn’t tell her sister that one of her errands entailed dropping by the Oliveras’ house.

  She isn’t sure why she’s here, exactly. She just felt compelled to reach out to Debbie when she heard about Taylor’s death, and . . .

  And maybe you want to figure out the connection between Taylor and Nicki . . .

  Between Debbie and Mike . . .

  Maybe you want to make sure that what happened to them doesn’t happen to you.

  Jen rings the doorbell. Listening to the steady rain splashing into puddles, dripping from the eaves, and pinging into the downspout, she wonders what she’s going to say.

  I’m sure you’ll think of something. You always do.

  Too bad it’s usually not the right thing.

  She’s still second-guessing her impulsive decision to lift the Internet ban for Carley, violating one of her and Thad’s cardinal rules of parenting: Never reverse a punishment. If Thad had been home, she’d have talked it over with him. But she was so spooked by what her sister said about the suicide epidemics that she didn’t bother to think it through.

  The last thing she wants to do is isolate Carley even further.

  When she thinks about what those wretched girls in her math class did . . .

  The thought is curtailed as Debbie opens the door.

  This time, she’s wearing not her dead daughter’s sweatshirt, but a simple white blouse, black blazer, jeans, and boots. Her face is fully made up, but there’s no mistaking the raw traces of tears. It’s been only a couple of days since Jen last saw her, but she looks as though she hasn’t slept since, and has dropped another five pounds she couldn’t afford to lose.

  “Jen! What’s going on?”

  “I wanted to stop by to talk to you for a minute. Is Andrew home?”

  “Andrew,” Debbie says grimly, “is never home. Why?”

  “I just heard what happened.” No need to waste time getting to the point; no need, either, for Debbie to pretend she doesn’t know what Jen is talking about.

  “You mean Taylor Morino.”

  “Yes. I’m so . . .” Jen pauses, not sure what to say. She’s sorry, yes, but this loss is not Debbie’s. She’s disturbed by it, of course, but the girl was a stranger. She’s upset, concerned, so many things, but she’s not sure what, exactly, to say until she knows for sure about Debbie’s connection to Mike.

  Then go ahead and ask. Just get it over with.

  “Debbie, did you see Mike this morning?”

  Obviously taken aback by the question, Debbie bites down on her lower lip. Then, with a hint of resignation, she opens the door wider. “Come on in.”

  Jen steps over the threshold, almost expecting to find disorder in the house given the emotional chaos endured by its occupants, but she should have known better. The Oliveras have a housekeeper. Everything is perfect as always. A stack of sympathy cards on the hall table beside a framed photo of smiling Nicki is the only hint that something is amiss.

  Jen hands over her wet jacket, wipes her feet on the doormat, and asks Debbie if she should take off her sneakers. This has always been a leave-your-shoes-at-the-door kind of house.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Debbie says in a desolate tone. “I really could care less about the floors today.”

  She leads the way into the living room, turns on a lamp to dispel the gloom falling through the tall windows, and they sit.

  For a long time, the only sound is the patter of falling rain and the rhythmic swaying of the pendulum wall clock. Jen fights not to start blurting questions. The ball is out of her court.

  “He called me when he heard,” Debbie finally tells her, not looking at her. “Mike.”

  Jen waits.

  “I went to meet him. He’s a mess, and . . . look, I don’t know what to say.”

  “About Taylor?”

  “About . . . any of it. How did you find out?”

  “About Taylor?” Jen asks again, then reinterprets Debbie’s question when Debbie allows eye contact at last. “Oh. You mean how did I find out about you and Mike?”

  Debbie nods.

  So it’s true.

  Jen chooses her words carefully. “If you’re worried that I heard about it somehow, you know, around Woodsbridge, or—I didn’t. I guess I just picked up on some kind of vibe between the two of you.”

  “When did you even see us together?”

  “I haven’t, other than . . . It was at the funeral,” she admits uncomfortably.

  Debbie seems to need to digest that before moving on. Her fingers clench and unclench, her sparkling diamond wedding band catching the lamplight.

  Jen battles her own instinct to fill the silence, only to be caught off guard by Debbie’s next question.

  “So Carley didn’t say anything to you?”

  “Carley? No! Why? Does she know about it?” She can’t stomach the thought of her daughter, with everything else she’s gone through, wrestling with the secret of a sordid extramarital affair.

  “I don’t know. I wondered if maybe Nicki mentioned it to her before . . .”

  Before the two girls drifted apart? Or before Nicki died?

  Jen shakes her head, silently waiting for elaboration, trying hard not to judge her friend, wishing it weren’t so easy to do so.

  It isn’t that Debbie was having—is still having?—an affair . . .

  Come on, Jen. Who are you kidding? Yes, it is. Partly, anyway.

  But Jen can’t help it. She’s old-fashioned enough, or moral enough, to have a problem with adultery.

  And beyond that: Why Mike?

  Who are you to wonder about that? You went out with him for years, even after you knew he wasn’t the nicest guy in the world.

  Only now, though, does she see him for what he really is—a bully, no better than the girls who tormented her own daughter.

  Back then, though, Jen was just a kid: secretly insecure, like most teenagers, and charmed by Mike’s good looks and his line and the fact that every girl at Sacred Sisters would have killed to date him.

  But Debbie was a grown woman when she got involved; a wife and mother with a lot more to lose than her self-respect and her virginity. She should have known better.

  And you’ve done plenty of things in your adult life that you shouldn’t have done, haven’t you? Everyone has. So get off your moral high horse.

  “Jen . . . Look, I need to talk to you. I can’t carry this around with me anymore; I feel like it’s going to suf
focate me.”

  Recognizing the guilt in her friend’s eyes, she shakes her head. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself. It’s not your—”

  “No, Jen, I don’t. I don’t have to stop. It’s not just me blaming myself. It’s Nicki.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I wasn’t going to tell you—I wasn’t going to tell anyone, except . . . look, I trust you. You’ve always been good with secrets. Promise you won’t tell anyone.”

  “I promise.” As soon as the words leave her mouth, she wants to take them back.

  No. This isn’t like it was back then.

  “Promise you won’t tell, Jen,” Debbie said on that long ago night. It was March, just as it is now, and raining then, too. But it changed over to snow the next morning, and the world went from sodden to brittle in an instant.

  “Don’t worry,” Mike said. “She won’t tell. She’s good with secrets.”

  She is. But that was different; it was . . .

  Long ago and far away.

  Debbie’s voice cuts into her memories: “Nicki blamed me.”

  “For what?”

  “For not wanting to live. For what she did. You asked about a note, and I lied. She did leave one.”

  “What did it say?”

  “It was horrible. I found it on her laptop, and I . . . I deleted it. I couldn’t let anyone see. It was about me—me and Mike. How she knew what was going on, and how ashamed she was, and she couldn’t live with me, couldn’t stand the sight of me. She called me terrible things, Jen. My own daughter . . .”

  Jen rests an arm on her shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”

  “How can I go on without her, knowing . . . How can I live with myself? How can I live with the guilt?”

  “Don’t do this, Debbie. You were a good mom.”