All Unquiet Things

by Anna Jarzab

  “No,” I said, a bit too loud. I was sure she was coming to tell me Dad was dead; it was the sort of thing I had been dreading for years, as soon as I began to see what a mess he really was.

  She put her wrinkled hand up against my cheek—it was cold, which was odd since the night was warm and even a little muggy—and said tenderly, “Sweetheart, we need to talk.”

  I stood aside to let her in, tears already spilling out of my eyes. She took my hand and led me into the living room, where she urged me to sit. She hesitated, taking a deep breath, and I burst out, “Just tell me, please.” My mind was a tangle of possibilities—he’d been in a car accident, his body left bent and broken on the side of the road; he’d fallen in the bar bathroom and cracked his head against the sink; he’d started a fight and bled out from a knife wound in his stomach in the parking lot.

  “Audrey, honey—Carly’s dead.”

  I shook my head slightly to clear it, not quite sure what I had just heard. “Carly?”

  Grandma nodded. “They found her at the bridge. She’s been murdered.”

  “Murdered.” It was a ludicrous word; it didn’t make any sense when used to describe Carly. How could Carly be dead? She was so alive.

  But the look on Grandma Louise’s face was so frighteningly serious I couldn’t not believe it. I began to sob, my head swimming as if I had been holding my breath for a long time. I leaned forward into my lap, afraid I might pass out. Grandma Louise began to rub my back, but I barely felt it; my whole body seemed to have gone numb.

  “There’s more,” she ventured tentatively. I didn’t move; I couldn’t bear to look at her. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to will it all away—this had to be a nightmare, and if I just tried hard enough I could wake up on Monday morning, put on my new dress, and go out into the world I recognized, where everything made sense.

  “They’re saying that Enzo did it,” she almost whispered. “Your father has been arrested. He called from the police station to ask me to bring you home with me.”

  I shook my head violently and bolted upright. “That’s impossible!” I cried. “He would never do that.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know, I know. He’s got a lawyer, and we’re going to straighten this all out, I promise. But you shouldn’t be here right now; I’m going to go pack you a bag, okay?”

  I didn’t respond, but she didn’t need permission. I sat on the couch, trying—and failing—to find any kernel of sense in what I had just heard, crying sloppily into my hands as Grandma Louise ransacked my room for things I might need. I never went back to Dad’s house after that night. Grandma Louise hired a couple of men to move everything I wanted up to her place in the hills, and that became my home. I didn’t go back to Brighton on Monday, and from the next day forward my life was no longer my own. I was suddenly that poor girl whose dad had killed someone—her cousin, her best friend, in fact—and everyone, including Grandma Louise and Grandpa Charles, looked at me with a mix of pity and anxiety that felt like a stain that would never wash out.

  Senior Year

  I’d been to Carly’s house a few times since she died. Paul had a reception there after the funeral, but I hadn’t gone to that. Grandma Louise didn’t think it was such a good idea, under the circumstances. Dad was already being held at the town jail, awaiting arraignment, and attending the funeral was enough exposure. Paul had called me twice in the past year, asking me to pick up some of the things of Carly’s he couldn’t bear to look at anymore—all the photographs of us and our friends, glassed in and grinning out of colorful frames; her personal effects when they were released after the trial; etc.—but I used my own key to get in and he was never there when I came. This would be the first time I’d seen Paul since the funeral.

  “Why do you want me here?” Neily asked as we stood at the front door, waiting for Paul to let us in.

  I shrugged. “I need you, that’s all.” I did, I needed him. If someone had told me two years ago that I’d be saying these words to Neily Monroe, I would’ve laughed in their face. I had never hated Neily, but I had never really liked him, either. He and Carly were always so much smarter than me, so much more, shall we say, “accomplished” than I was, and when I moved to Empire Valley the summer before freshman year I felt like a third wheel in the most awkward way. Carly made a huge effort with me, and Neily was never rude, but I could always tell he didn’t want me around, or at least he wouldn’t miss me if I wasn’t. I used to tease Carly about him all the time when they were dating, and even after. But I hadn’t been the one to start calling him Think Tank. That was the boys, Adam and Cass, and they had sneeringly adopted it as his code name. After they broke up, Carly wouldn’t hear a word against Neily, though the boys said a lot behind her back. Adam was much more jealous of Neily than he ever would have suspected.

  “And why do you need me?”

  “Shhh, he’s coming.”

  Paul opened the door, looking grim.

  He had changed a lot since Carly died. His hair had gone completely gray, and he had gained weight, especially around the midsection and in his face. His teeth had yellowed a bit, and there was tobacco under his nails; despite being a doctor—or maybe because of it—Paul loved to smoke, but Miranda and Carly had hated the habit. He had taken it back up after they died.

  “Good,” Paul said. “I’m glad you’re here.” He eyed Neily for a second and then shrugged. “Come on in.”

  Neily and I stood in the dark foyer while Paul riffled through a box full of papers.

  “It’d be nice if you could go through the rest of Carly’s things,” Paul said. “Pick out anything you want to keep, and I’ll toss the rest. I’m going to put the house on the market next month.”

  “You’re leaving town?” I asked.

  Paul nodded. “I’ve lived here practically my whole life. I don’t think I’m going to miss it.”

  “Amen,” Neily said under his breath. Paul looked at him. “Sorry. That was probably rhetorical.”

  “What are you doing here, Neily?”

  “I asked him to come,” I said.

  “Fine.” Paul turned to Neily. “I’m sure there’s probably a few things up there you’d like to have.”

  “Oh, I doubt it,” Neily said.

  Paul put his hand on Neily’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t be so sure.” He disappeared into the hallway, calling back, “There are boxes in the garage and pizza in the fridge.” Then we heard a door slam, and Paul’s car pull out of the driveway.

  Neily raised his eyebrows at me. “Wow.”

  “I know. Just when you start thinking it’s all about you.”

  “It’s easy to say that now, but where was he back then? After Miranda died, he was like this phantom—Carly almost never saw him, and when she did they hardly spoke.”

  “That’s kind of harsh, don’t you think?”

  “No. Seriously—where was he?”

  “Where were you?” I snapped.

  “Oh, don’t even start with me—where were you?”

  “This conversation is getting us precisely nowhere.” I started climbing the stairs, and Neily followed.

  “You two seem okay. No animosity there?”

  “After everything that happened, Paul kept trying to convince me he didn’t blame me,” I said. “He went out of his way to make sure I knew he didn’t hate me. I think he feels sorry for me, for having the dad I do, maybe even a little responsible for how he turned out.”

  “I don’t remember him being that warm and cuddly when Carly was alive,” Neily said.

  “The thing is, I kind of wish he would blame me,” I said. “I feel like a traitor, accepting Paul’s forgiveness. Like I’m admitting that my dad is guilty.”

  “Yeah.” Neily paused at the top step. “How come you don’t call him ‘Uncle Paul’?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “When I was growing up, he was just ‘Paul,’ or ‘fucking Paul,’ although I wasn’t allowed to repeat that one.” Neily gave a small laugh. He was cute w
hen he smiled. A little nerdy perhaps, but he was, on the whole, a pretty handsome guy. Nothing like Adam—who was an Adonis, and I’m not exaggerating—but the way Neily’s face used to light up when he looked at Carly, you would’ve pegged him for the best-looking guy in the room.

  We stood in the doorway of Carly’s room, which was a complete disaster.

  “This is new,” Neily said.

  “What?” I asked, wading into the middle of the wreckage. I picked up a couple of blouses and heaped them onto the unmade bed.

  “When Carly and I were together, she was really neat.”

  “I think you mean Miranda was really neat. Carly couldn’t have given a rat’s ass. You know, I don’t think Paul’s touched a single thing in here since she died. You see that jacket?” I pointed to a red corduroy lump on the seat of Carly’s armchair.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I lent that to her a month before she died.” I picked it up and tossed it onto the bed with the other clothes. “Are you okay? You look sick.”

  He shook his head. “Is this Carly? This—stuff? Is this all she is now?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I still can’t believe that people can exist and then not exist, from one second to the next. And when they’re gone, all they are is an accumulation of things. They’re reduced to whatever possessions they leave behind.”

  “People don’t have to die for that to happen, believe me.” There was already a stack of empty boxes in the corner. I put my hands on my hips and sighed. “So where do we start?”

  Neily shrugged and grabbed a box. “Is there anything of Carly’s you really want to keep?”

  I sucked at the inside of my mouth. “I don’t want to say.”

  “Come on, Audrey. I think we’re past acting coy.”

  “The jewelry. If there’s anything of Carly’s I want it’s the jewelry Mams left her.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  I glared at him. “I know what you’re thinking, and stop it.”

  “You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he said. “I’ll take the bookshelves.”

  “Yeah, I do. You’re thinking how interesting it is that Audrey’s dad kills Carly for her diamond necklace, and then who ends up owning it in the end? Audrey!” I shook my head. “You can stop looking at me like that.”

  Neily began opening each of the drawers in Carly’s desk and sorting through the various papers and notebooks he found in them. “You knew you were Carly’s beneficiary, right? I mean, before she died.”

  “Yes,” I said sharply. “And I wouldn’t say it like that. It’s not like I inherited all her money—just a few things that mean something to me.”

  “You don’t have to get defensive, I was just asking a question.” He looked up from what he was doing. “Are you going to help?”

  I started shoving the dirty clothes into plastic trash bags, figuring I’d take them to be laundered, then donate it all to Goodwill. To be honest, there wasn’t much of Carly’s I wanted to keep. We had left each other our possessions because we knew that, in the unlikely event that anything should happen to either one of us, we of all people would know what was important enough to save. I didn’t count clothes, makeup, or bed linens among those things.

  “I’m just saying, if you think about it, it’s a completely brilliant plan,” Neily said. “Your father kills Carly, possibly with your help, then you inherit all her valuable property. And then you rope me into helping you prove he’s innocent, both giving your act a witness and nabbing yourself a coconspirator on your quest to free your guilty father.”

  “That’s not funny,” I snapped. For all his smarts, Neily certainly knew how to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

  “What? You can accuse me of murder, but I can’t have my own theory?”

  I threw a trash bag full of clothes into the hallway and walked out. “I’m going to get more boxes.”

  The boxes in the garage were unassembled, so I grabbed a roll of packing tape and started to put them together. There was a knock on the door, and when I looked up Neily was standing there, looking penitent.

  “I guess I hit a nerve,” he said, shifting awkwardly.

  “I don’t like being accused of murder.”

  “Yeah, well, neither do I,” he barked.

  “Point taken.” I took a deep breath. “Okay, what if we agree to go easier on each other? If we’re going to do this, we can’t always be second-guessing and pointing fingers.”

  “That only works if we actually believe one another.”

  “I believe you. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes,” he said begrudgingly.

  “What a rousing vote of confidence.”

  “I believe you, but I don’t want to act like we just stepped into this not knowing each other,” Neily said. “We have a history. I’m not going to pretend we don’t.”

  “I don’t expect you to.”

  “Yeah? Well, you’re acting like everything’s fine—forgive and forget. I can’t do that. I’m not built that way.”

  “That’s your choice,” I said hotly. This was getting ridiculous—maybe I was better off doing this alone. “You can go on hating me—I don’t blame you. But can you really trust me if you keep holding on to all that old junk?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’ll try. For Carly’s sake.”

  “So, you can forgive her, but not me? I’m sorry, Neily, I really am, for everything I helped her do to you, but I am not the monster you’re painting me as. I didn’t break your heart, Carly did.”

  “Of course I don’t forgive her, but she’s dead. It’s kind of a moot point.”

  “It is not a moot point. It does matter. If you can’t forgive her, how are you ever going to move past this?”

  “You sound like Harriet,” he sneered.

  “That woman is a pain in the ass, but she makes sense,” I said. “You think those dreams are a coincidence? That’s your brain telling your heart that it’s time to let go.”

  “I still can’t believe you read my file. I don’t know how you expect me to trust you.”

  “I told you the truth, didn’t I?” I sighed. “You’re right, I’m sorry. It was a stupid thing to do, and wrong, I get that. But I was desperate. I needed to know if you were who I thought you were.”

  “And am I? Actually, here’s a better question—who did you think I was?”

  “I don’t know if you remember this, but you didn’t take the breakup that well. And after Carly died, you became this wall of solid anger. I needed to know that underneath all that hostility you were still the guy who loved Carly.”

  “And?”

  “And I think you’re still that guy, Neily. Under all the sarcasm and resentment and fear, you’re still you.”

  “And the fact that I’m having dreams tells you that?”

  “No. The dreams are none of my business,” I said.

  “Now it’s none of your business? You steal my cell phone and read my psychiatric file, but you’re not going to weigh in on anything that really matters?”

  “You don’t even care what I think!” I shouted, throwing up my hands. “I don’t know why I bother talking to you at all.”

  “I do care. I know I might act like I don’t, but I do, because you’re the only person I know who isn’t trying to feed me a line.”

  I paused. “Well, I don’t know what it means. But I have a theory.”

  “Okay.”

  “That bit about the dreams made me realize that I could come to you. I took it to mean that, whatever you might have convinced yourself of, you weren’t wholly certain that Carly’s murder was solved, that you had doubts too.”

  “I do have doubts. And I’m willing to do this with you, but I need you to be straight. No lies, no tricks, no secrets. I need you to promise that this is going to be an equal partnership.”

  “No lies, no tricks, no secrets,” I said, holding out my hand. He shook it. “I promise.”

  He held fast to
my hand. “Do you realize,” he said slowly, “that by doing this we are putting ourselves in a lot of danger? Somebody killed Carly—the same thing could happen to us if we’re not careful.”

  I stared at him for a moment, completely at a loss. I couldn’t disagree with him, because he was right, and to pretend that such a thought didn’t run through my mind a thousand times a day would be ridiculous. “We’ll just have to be careful, then,” I said.

  As Neily let go of my hand, we heard a loud crash coming from the lawn.

  “Neily, I think there’s someone out there,” I said.

  “Let’s go see who it is.”

  We ran out the side door and around to the front. A ceramic planter near the door had been knocked over and smashed, geraniums and dirt spilling out all over the brick.

  “Hey!” We turned to see a tall, broad man coming from the direction of the garage and carrying some kind of stick. When he walked into the light, I could see that the stick was a broom and the man was wearing a white collared shirt with a name tag. “What are you kids doing here?” he asked.

  “My name is Audrey Ribelli,” I told him. “Paul Ribelli is my uncle. He knows we’re here.”

  “Oh.” The man switched the broom to his left hand and held out his right for me to shake. “Frank Gordon, private security.”

  “You’re a security guard?” Neily asked.

  “Did Paul hire you to watch the place?” I asked.

  “On nights he’s on call, yeah,” Frank said.

  “I wonder why he didn’t mention it,” Neily said.

  “Maybe he forgot,” I said. “How long have you been working here, Frank?”

  He thought for a moment. “Almost a year, I guess.”

  “Why were you hired?” I asked.

  Frank shrugged. “When I started, Mr. Ribelli said something about a break-in. I figure he’s trying to keep it from happening again. These Castlewood homes got a lot of expensive shit in them.”

  “A break-in? When?”

  Frank hesitated.

  “You’re right,” I said, smiling at him reassuringly. “I really should be asking Paul these questions, shouldn’t I? I’ll just go inside and give him a call—would you like me to warn him about all this while I’m at it?” I gestured to the broken planter. “What happened here, anyway?”