by Tessa Wegert
“How nice,” she said now. “Tell him we say hello.”
“Good Lord,” said Dad. “When are we going to address the elephant in the room?”
I hadn’t wanted to bring it up until I’d gotten my bearings and inhaled some calories to fuel my brain, but my parents’ plates were already empty. It was time. I gave my mother a sidelong glance. Slowly, she rose to retrieve something from the countertop. The latest edition of the St. Albans Messenger.
“Front page,” she said, her expression grim. “Sounds like the police are getting nowhere fast.” By which she meant We’re in this for the long haul, whether we like it or not. She was eyeing the Messenger as if it might attack, so I pushed the rest of my dinner aside and spread the newspaper on the table. There it was, a smiling picture of Brett under a blaring headline.
REMAINS OF LOCAL MAN FOUND IN MISSISQUOI REFUGE, POLICE CALL DEATH SUSPICIOUS
There was some new information, too. I felt a deeper kind of hunger as I pored over the inky words.
According to the article, which was leaner than I would have liked, the Vermont State Police had received an anonymous call from a man who pointed them to the woods off VT-78, known in town as River Street. The body was found in the heart of the wildlife refuge. Thanks to the discovery of personal belongings at the scene, the local authorities managed to identify the victim in a matter of days. As for the cause of death, they must have had indisputable evidence related to how Brett Skilton was killed, because they had no qualms about calling his death a homicide. Anyone with information pertaining to the body, or about the case in general, was being directed to a police hotline. I didn’t look up until I’d read the story twice, paying particular attention to the location of the crime scene.
“God,” I said at last. “This is so surreal.”
“It’s terrible,” said Mom. “But out of all the people I’ve ever known, I can’t say I’m surprised this happened to Brett. He was always trouble. I told Felicia that from the get-go. Didn’t I tell her, Wally?”
“It was thirty-some years ago,” Dad said with a shrug. “But that does sound like something you’d say.”
“My sister didn’t need a man-child,” Mom went on. “What she needed was help, and she got none of that from him. Instead, he left her with two kids she couldn’t raise alone in her condition. She should never have married him. I shouldn’t have let her.”
The look my father and I exchanged was furtive and lightning quick. Mom’s attitude about Brett’s demise wasn’t particularly strange. Family members who suffer a loss to homicide often experience misplaced anger, some even going so far as to blame the victim for the crime. It’s hard when someone abandons you, regardless of who’s at fault.
But her response to Brett’s homicide felt different. Based on the loaded look in Dad’s eyes, my mother was experiencing a classic case of self-reproach. Brett’s death was a reminder of her sister’s failed union. A marriage for which Mom appeared to feel responsible.
“They got married right after you did,” I said. “Isn’t that right?”
She nodded. “We were both in our twenties, but Fee seemed so young to me. She looked like a girl playing house when she walked down the aisle.”
I’d seen Felicia and Brett’s wedding picture, and now my brain dragged the image to the forefront of my mind. They’d looked like gussied-up teenagers to me, too.
“He was your typical charming rogue,” said Mom. “I didn’t approve, not in the least. I should have objected more than I did.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked.
Her sigh was resigned, and a little shamefaced. “Frankly, I couldn’t wait to leave home. Watching out for Fee was draining, and I’d been doing it ever since she was little.”
This was a story I knew well. Felicia was a worrier, only hers weren’t the niggling doubts the rest of us have learned to brush off but enormous fears that opened their gaping maws to swallow her whole. My grandparents tried everything from cognitive behavioral therapy to biofeedback, yoga, and deep breathing to get her emotions under control. Nothing worked.
“I thought it would be good for her, being on her own without me tending to her every need. I hoped it would desensitize her, you know? The year after your father and I were married, she was as bad as ever. Then she met Brett.”
“I liked him, at first.” Dad gave an unapologetic shrug. “Very sociable fellow. I thought he provided a nice counterbalance to Felicia’s mercurial moods. Always good for a laugh, he was.”
“That’s what Fee liked about him, too,” Mom said with a small frown. “He was always so positive, and he honestly thought he could singlehandedly conquer her disorder. I don’t doubt that his intentions were good. Trouble was, he didn’t follow through. Fee got pregnant with Crissy so quickly, and her condition got worse. Brett couldn’t handle it. The more needy she got, the more disconnected he became. It was clear he missed the simple bachelor life he’d left behind. The situation didn’t improve as Crissy got older. You know what that child was like.”
Dad chuckled. “Whorls of golden hair and petulance to spare. Got that from her father, she did.”
“As if Fee didn’t have enough to contend with,” Mom said.
“How’s she doing?” I asked. “I know Felicia hadn’t seen Brett in a long time, but this has to come as a shock.”
My parents exchanged a look. “She’s hanging in,” said my mother. “A few years ago something like this would have crushed her, but she’s healthier now, more in control. I left a message for Crissy yesterday. She hasn’t returned my call.”
“Brett’s been out of their lives a long time, but they did love him once,” said Dad.
As I reached for the newspaper and refolded it, watching the seam cut through the center of Brett’s beaming face, I absorbed my parents’ demeanor all over again. They looked depleted, utterly drained of life. Brett had his shortcomings, but he’d been a lot of things to a lot of people, including a brother-in-law to my mom and dad. We’d lost a member of the family in the most godless of ways. The whole town was talking about it. Doing the same thing now wasn’t doing us any favors.
“Hey,” I said. “The new Agatha Christie remake just came out. I bet it’s playing in St. Albans.”
Dad perked up. “I’ve been dying to see that. Smashing cast.”
“Brett loved the movies.” The way Mom cast a disapproving glance around the kitchen, I could almost picture Brett with his crooked smile and cold beer, trying to win my mother over with a dirty joke.
“Come on,” I said. “My treat.”
She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she said, “One condition. I want my own popcorn.”
I smiled. “Done and done. We’ll go to the movies,” I said.
If only the solutions to all our family problems were as simple.
SEVEN
Home. It should have wrapped around me like a hot towel from the dryer. Why couldn’t I shake the feeling that the place was full of ghosts? Everywhere I looked I saw Brett’s face, his fine, white-blond hair falling into pale Nordic eyes. It was hard to believe the chipper, crowing party boy had been reduced to dust.
By the time the anemic winter morning sunlight began to stream through my bedroom window, I was jittery and tense. I showered quickly, threw on some old jeans and a sweater, and pulled my hair into a dripping wet knob at the base of my neck. There was no one in the kitchen when I fixed my morning coffee, but my mother had left a note: she and Dad were running errands in St. Albans before dropping into a yoga class. I was glad they were trying to keep active. The movie had been a welcome diversion for all of us.
Distraction wasn’t in the cards for me today.
The drive to Maquam Bay was shorter than I’d hoped, even with the stop I made along the way. I passed a school bus full of leering little faces as I turned onto Crissy’s street. I passed Felicia’s house, too. I
’d made a point of distancing myself from the Skilton family, and Crissy had tried to do the same, but even though she didn’t have much contact with her mother now, they lived steps from each other on the very same street.
Crissy’s home was a converted trailer that overlooked the water. To the west, I could just make out North Hero State Park. To the north, my cousin had an unobstructed view of the outskirts of the wildlife refuge where Brett’s body had turned from flesh, to jelly, to bone. If you took a boat across the water, like the one tied up to her dock, it would be a short trip to where the police found her father.
I hadn’t called ahead, wasn’t even sure I was going to make this trip until I found myself turning out of my parents’ driveway. I could have gone to Felicia, and would have to, eventually. The need to talk to Brett’s family was strong. My fear of what awaited me at my aunt’s house was stronger.
When Crissy found me on her front steps, her face opened up in surprise. “Hey, cuz,” she said. “Slumming?”
I managed a smile. “Hardly. This is some location.” I gestured at the lake, visible through the windows behind her. “You made a great choice with this place. Got a sec?”
Crissy bit her lower lip and said, “I’m getting ready for work.”
“I was hoping we could talk. Just for a minute.”
Her eyes hardened as she looked me over, spending a smidge too long on my scar. “Okay,” she said dispassionately, and I was in.
Crissy was the type of girl who’d always longed to become an adult. I’d heard Felicia warn her to be careful, but boys were Crissy’s paper dolls, and she took pleasure in bending them to her whims. Crissy was cool, commanding, and pretty. I had a vague recollection of her confessing her goal in life was to be a model girlfriend, the kind that made men drool and brag to their friends. She would have been about twelve.
The woman who stood before me now was almost unrecognizable. Her pert nose and sharply arched eyebrows reigned eternal, but paired with pasty skin and a bouffant blond hairstyle, they made me think of Malibu Barbie on a bender. The weight she’d gained over the years had somehow settled in her chest, which verged on the obscene. She was dressed in a white T-shirt with a deep V-neck and donut-patterned pajama pants, and her living-room-slash-kitchen smelled of cheap perfume and instant coffee. Crissy held a mug but didn’t offer one to me. Didn’t offer me a seat, either.
“How are you?” Cold water from my wet hair trickled down my neck as I lingered by the door. “And the boys, they must be—what—seven and nine now?”
“Eight and ten.”
“Time flies.” Behind my cousin, I could see the makings of a school lunch on the kitchen counter. “I brought them something. Must have just missed them, huh?” I handed her the bag in my hand, heavy with the weight of two boxes of maple sugar candy. She dropped it on the coffee table without a second glance.
“Crissy,” I said, “I’m so sorry about your dad.”
There was no embrace between us. She didn’t clasp my hands, and I didn’t tip my forehead to meet hers. All Crissy did was open her mouth enough so I could see her tongue stud glinting silver, and rearrange her lips into a wry smirk. That mouth was what I’d dreaded most about seeing my cousin, the way it pitched upward on one side and made her look so sanctimonious. Brett had that same smile.
She walked to the couch and plopped down with a sigh. Her home was a mishmash of cheap furniture and frayed rugs, but the frames that held her boys’ school photos looked new, maybe even pricey. There were no pictures of their father, I noticed, nor of her brother or Aunt Fee.
“This must be exciting for you,” Crissy said. “A murder, right here in Swanton.”
“Exciting?” I repeated, taken aback.
“Isn’t that why you’re here? You haven’t bothered to visit in years, even though I know you come around to see Wally and Della, but you smell blood and you’re back, circling my house like a fucking hyena.”
Crissy and I were never close. It wasn’t the age difference, though we were three years apart, but that we had little in common. I’d always been a tomboy, so I refused to let her do my makeup or show me how to shave my legs. If she paid attention to me at all, it was because she needed a scapegoat for her crimes. When we were young, she’d steal sugary cereal—our Saturday morning treat—from my parents’ pantry and blame it on me. Later on, she began using sleepovers at my house as an opportunity to sneak out and meet friends.
If I’m being honest, Crissy had always made me a little nervous. At fifteen, she was missing for two full days before a search party, which included my father, found her in the woods on the outskirts of town. The story became a cautionary tale local parents recounted to their little ones at night. Crissy was wild and rebellious, with no regard for her health or well-being. Some people said she ran away from home; others insisted she’d been abducted. I always assumed she’d gone on an epic drinking binge, and if my parents knew otherwise, they weren’t telling.
“That’s fair,” I said, though it wasn’t. A fucking hyena? Please. I slipped out of my winter boots and crossed the room to sit down. She tucked her legs under her, and I saw I’d misconstrued the pattern on her pants. It wasn’t donuts but pink and yellow diamond rings.
“So, what,” she said, “you think the local cops can’t hold a candle to a big-shot detective? They’re not good enough, just like Swanton wasn’t good enough for you?”
Now I tilted my head. My relationship with Crissy may have failed to thrive, but it wasn’t inherently hostile. She was a woman in mourning, further soured by her shaky relationship with Felicia, but why the hell was she taking all of that out on me? I couldn’t plumb the depths of her aggression.
“I’m sorry it’s been so long. I should have kept in touch, stopped by when I was home.” I showed her my bare palms, the blistering burn. I had nothing more to offer. Before today I’d no sooner have visited Crissy than skinny-dipped in Lake Champlain in January. Too many bad memories. Too much psychological baggage.
“The thing is, I don’t want to know,” Crissy said, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. “What happened to him, who did it, whatever. It doesn’t change anything. He’s gone, and we got stuck with her.” She slurped her coffee, deliberately loud. The her in question was Felicia.
“Have the police been by to see you?” I didn’t like the way Crissy was talking. This blatant indifference to her father’s murder wouldn’t go over well with investigators.
That smile again, oily as an eel. “I can’t believe it,” she said with a hand on her heart, playing at affected. “Who would do something like this? Why us?” Just as quickly, the tender maiden act was history. “I’m not stupid, Shana. I bawled like a baby and told them what I know, which is pretty much nothing.”
Jesus. Apart from her looks, my cousin hadn’t changed a bit. “Crissy,” I said, “this is serious. Don’t think for a second the police will hesitate to slap you with an obstruction charge just because they see more jaywalkers around here than felons. They’re treating Brett’s death as suspicious. There are plenty of good reasons to find his killer beyond giving your family some answers. Twenty years ago, someone was so angry and desperate to wipe him out they felt the only path forward was to take his life. The authorities are looking for that person now. Have you stopped to consider where that leaves you?”
My cousin stared at me, uncomprehending.
“You’re Brett’s daughter,” I said, “and yes, you may in fact have no information of value to share. But Brett’s killer doesn’t know that. The discovery of Brett’s body is all over the news. Any criminal with half a brain would be trying to gauge what the cops know. They’ll be keeping an eye on the people who were close to Brett back then. Do you get what I’m saying? Whoever’s responsible for his death could be back now—if they ever even left—and they’re going to be watching. Are you comfortable with that person sharing the town where you work, where your ki
ds go to school, now that you know what they’ve done?”
We were so close to each other I could see her cleavage, crinkly from years of tanning, pulse like a puppy’s hairless belly. She looked away from me, her face shuttered tight, and for a second I saw what she did. Her boys, getting off the bus to find their front door ajar. A stranger greeting them instead of their mother, holding Crissy’s favorite coffee mug while he coaxed the children inside.
“You want to know why I’m here?” I said. “I came to tell you to be careful. However you may feel about Brett, he suffered at the hands of someone whose motive we don’t yet understand. Don’t stray too far from home, okay? Keep those boys of yours close.”
She cast me a dispassionate glance. “I’ve fought off plenty of men who’ve gotten handsy. I’m pretty sure I can handle this.”
I wanted to tell her this wasn’t like when some repellent high school boy had his mitt down her pants. What I said was, “Terrific. Don’t let me make you late for work. Really great seeing you, Crissy. I’ll show myself out.”
EIGHT
The sun was high in the winter sky by the time I left Crissy’s, and my stomach had started to growl. Knowing Mom, there’d be a pot of soup on soon, maybe even some freshly baked rolls, but moments after I got into my car and cranked the heat, my mobile phone chimed an alert. It was a new message from Suze. OMG are you in town? I’m teaching all day at the dance studio on Merchants Row. Please come by, I would LOVE to see you!
I stared at the message. How could Suze know I was back in Swanton? I looked up from her tiny profile picture to see a cloud of my own breath. Beyond the windshield, the bay water rippled and shimmered, but there was no motion whatsoever on Crissy and Felicia’s street. Despite the sparse population, or maybe because of it, word traveled fast in this town.