“This’ll make it right,” she exclaimed as she turned away from me.
“No!” I yelled as I clutched a handful of her nightgown. “We need you! I need you!”
I gasped for air, the residual burn of a lightning flash in my eyes. I tightened my grip on the wet fabric, but it slipped from my fingers. The world came to a sudden stop as my mother jumped from the window. I flinched as I heard the sound of her nightgown flutter against the wind. It passed over the sill like a sheet falling from a bed. I could only stare at the space where she’d been a moment before, the rain beating down onto my head and face, mixing with tears I thought I’d never shed. A long silence came. I waited, knowing it would end with the faraway sound of her body crashing onto the pavement nine floors below. But it was what I didn’t hear that told me she wanted this, that maybe she needed this. I never heard her scream.
The sound of a man hollering came through the window, telling me what I already knew.
My mother was dead.
A scream came next, and then another. Thin voices called out, asking if the woman on the street might still be alive. I listened to the click-clack of shoes on the pavement, the growing chatter of strangers running to help. I fell onto my chest and laid on the tiled floor, absorbing the cold like a sponge.
I’d become numb, but felt the touch of fingers pressing my side. I winced, and then felt nothing. The room turned gray, and the voices in my ears hummed a jumble of words. I ignored them, fading instead and welcoming the black intrusion. I closed my eyes and searched the darkness. I found the faces of my dead parents. I could hear my mother’s voice like a record, playing what she said to me over and over.
My father knew.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE HAZY SUNSHINE AND the heaps of ruddy clouds told me the coming day was going to be a scorcher: a mid-summer swelter. I lifted my foot at the touch of water on my toes and wished I had worn a different style dress shoe. The grass was crisp with morning dew, the acres of green turning steely-white, save for the narrow footpaths that had begun to open up from those who’d gathered. It wasn’t humid or muggy yet, but the air was stock-still, and my skin had already begun to feel clammy. I’d sweat soon. And from the quick look of those dressed in black, the sun would make sure we’d all sweat today.
My mother would have liked her funeral. It was early in the day—the earliest time we could schedule the burial. Simple and modest, she’d call it. But nothing was simple after the police released the letter she’d written to Steve: a detailed confession of the murders. In the days that followed, in the days I needed to recover, it seemed as though the only thing I could find on television were pictures of my mother and the men we killed. The murders were better than thirty years old, yet the press treated the story as though it had happened yesterday. And I supposed for some, it had just happened yesterday. They were here too. Here to see the murderer of their loved ones put into the ground.
From the corner of my eye, I found a few of the victim’s families gathering. I saw a news truck approaching from behind them too. The truck slowed with the side door opening and spilled the news crew onto the pavement like a broken egg. I gave them a scowl, but they didn’t see me—not from such a distance. The press hounded us in the days that followed my mother’s death, and I’d hoped the funeral’s early hour would keep their attendance to a quiet few. But hope is just another four-letter word that can be empty and meaningless. Two more vans pulled in behind the first, spilling their crews too. I’d been wrong about the early hour. The press never sleep.
A chirrup erupted from the surrounding trees—the perched birds singing and chatting, becoming more active as the late morning grew long. Michael took notice of the tweeting and gripped my hand. He squeezed my fingers, and I saw a pained loss of innocence in his expression. I regretted bringing him and hated seeing a piece of his childhood slip away. But he’d insisted—even pleaded with us to come. His gaze darted back to where we were headed, and then around to the hills and flats that made up the cemetery. He’d never been to a graveyard, let alone a funeral. I gently tugged on his arm and raised my brow, indicating the long stretch of parked cars, asking silently if he wanted to wait inside. He shook his head and faced his grandmother’s gravesite, walking on with me. He choked back a fresh tear. We continued until we were gathered with the small group that had come to say good-bye. My son wasn’t a child anymore.
Michael pointed. I followed his gaze past the gleam of wet grass to a small group of men and women standing like statues. The families of the dead men looked like churchgoers: their arms crossed in front of them, sleeves cuffed above the elbows, wearing thick black bands around their biceps in remembrance of those they’d lost. An older woman—a mother of one of the men, I suspected—gave me a short nod as if to make sure I saw her. I had. And instinctively, I stepped in front of Michael, putting myself between them and my son—I would risk nothing.
An onslaught of camera clicks began to rival the chattering birds when I moved to block Michael. Steve came around the other side of me, catching on to what I was trying to do. I glanced over my husband’s broad shoulders to find the family members and the woman who’d acknowledged me. She was walking away, helped along by a younger man. Maybe she was satisfied. Maybe all she wanted was to be seen or to have seen someone put into the ground. I scanned the others, but their figures remained as still as the memorial statues atop some of the graves. I wondered if they would leave too. They didn’t give any indication that they would. I saw questions and curiosity beaming from their eyes. I put my hand on my mother’s casket, ready to see this burial through. I ignored the curious stares and focused on the one task I had to finish that day: to bury my mother.
Sunlight skipped off the steel-blue casket, and I shielded my face. I could see that only a handful of her friends had come to wish her farewell. A handful. Their wrinkled faces were just altered images I had in my mind of people I recognized from when I was a child. Steve told me he’d tried to keep my mother’s confession out of the press, but the story was too big—“national big,” he’d said. The break in the decades-old case had made the news and was posted online, went viral. Even Nerd had tried to quash it, but couldn’t stop the spread. Surely more of her friends would have attended if the press hadn’t revealed what she’d done.
A sudden pang of emotion nagged at me—I saw her body perched in the window and the look on her face just before she jumped. I shook it off, telling myself that I shouldn’t feel anything, not for her. But seeing so few at her graveside hit me, and I felt an unexpected sadness. I leaned into Michael’s shoulder, my legs weak. Blood rushed, pounding, into my head. I tried to focus and to gather myself.
“Mom?” Michael whispered, his voice sounding concerned as he took my weight.
He’d certainly never seen me like this. The wispy sound of shoes shuffled against the grass, and I felt a hand take my other arm. I shrank back to wordlessly thank Steve. But the grip was light and delicate. I opened my eyes to find Nerd at my side.
He mouthed the words, “I got you.”
I almost didn’t recognize him. His hair was combed straight back again—a touch of Mr. C’s handiwork, maybe—and the scruff of whiskers had been cleaned from his chin. I found his boyish eyes and saw compassion in them. I lost it then.
I almost killed him, I thought absently, remembering the blood vessels erupting in the whites of his eyes when I tried to strangle him. But on this day, he was here and holding my arm and helping. He was devoted to me, and I knew I’d never question his loyalty again.
“Thank you, Brian,” I told him as Steve motioned to take my other hand. Brian said nothing, but nodded and then dipped his chin as he stepped back to join the others. My breath came in small gasps. I held back my emotion until Steve was next to me. With my son and my husband next to me, I said good-bye to my mother.
***
Dreams are a funny thing. There’s no predicting them, no planning them, and no way to express preferences for them ei
ther. They are what they are: a mindless jumble of thoughts strung together. I used to think that. But after killing the homeless man, my dreams had become more. They were a window I could look through to see an unremembered past. A past I wished had stayed forgotten.
That day, I saw who my father had really been. We stood at my mother’s grave, her ceremony coming to a close. The few friends who attended placed roses upon her casket. My thoughts became lost in the small parade of people filing by her body one at a time. In the quiet of that moment, I discovered that I didn’t need my dreams to teach me things anymore.
In my bubble of grief, protected by the arms of Steve and Michael, I found every memory. The suddenness of seeing them overwhelmed me like a blind man whose sight had been miraculously restored. Only this was no miracle. I didn’t jump up and down in celebration. Instead, I clutched the arms of my men and cowered, shutting my eyes while begging the darkness to hide what I didn’t want to see. But there was no hiding from the memories anymore. And, like my mother’s life, my dreams of her ended.
I turned my face up to the sky. The brightness shone through my eyelids as if a giant lightbulb had been turned on. I saw everything for exactly what it was. I saw my father’s face alight, and heard him telling me it would be okay, that he was sorry she’d done that again. And I could smell our old station wagon, the scant odors of the night, and the stench of death covering my bare arms and legs and clothes. We’d carried a body just hours before, and the redolence would stay with me for days.
“Come on, my baby girl,” my father said.
I felt his large hands beneath me, cradling me, picking me up from the seat next to my mother. My skin felt sticky and it peeled away from the vinyl as he lifted me out of the station wagon. Darkness shrouded our movements like a secret, but there was just enough light to show me the outline of his face above my eyes. And in the setting moonlight, I could see a gleam of wet perched on the end of his chin.
“How could you? Why won’t you stop?” he cried, but kept his voice to a whisper for fear of waking our neighbors. “And why do you keep taking Amy? What kind of monster are you?”
My mother whipped her head around, a tempered evilness in her face. She told him to shut his mouth.
He said nothing, but grumbled a few words. She gave him a that’s-what-I-thought look that ended the exchange. She slammed the station wagon’s door. My father jumped at the loudness and glared back at her, his expression pleading for her to be quiet. The first of the morning birds called back a reply to them, and I peered to the east side of our house to see the faint colors creeping over the horizon’s soft lip.
I curled up in my bed, my feet sliding against the bedsheets as I fell in and out of a light sleep. My mother had come in to sit next to me like she sometimes did, the mattress sagging and my small body easing toward her. From their bedroom, I heard my father’s stifled cries. I wondered if he would leave again.
Will he take me with him this time?
My mother told me how sorry she was and promised that it would be the very last time. The morning crept through my window—a glint of honey light cutting the dark and catching my mother’s face.
“That was the last time. I’ll never take you again,” she said, but her eyes lied.
She cast hopeful glances toward her bedroom door, lifting her voice loud enough for my father to be able to hear the apologies. And though I was young, I could tell she wasn’t at all sorry. She was only trying to calm him down, to soothe his anger with promises—and then with something more when the bedroom doors were closed. Our walls were thin.
I was right about her lying. I was always right. It wouldn’t be the last time. Weeks would pass. Quiet weeks when we acted and seemed almost like a normal family. But there’d come a night when my father wasn’t home, when he was traveling for work, and it was just my mother and me. I’d hear the sound of her pacing—her bare feet on the wood floor in front of our living room’s big window. I’d keep myself out of her sight, I’d keep myself hidden like a church mouse, finding the deepest, most undisturbed corners of our house. Sometimes I’d act as if I were asleep, tucked beneath my covers. And sometimes I had a notion to call my father, to tell him it was an emergency and that he needed to come home. I never did, though. I waited and listened to the gait of her steps as if they were a countdown to the start of a big race. And maybe I knew I’d wait. Maybe I wanted to wait, wanted to be in the race. When the sound of her pacing stopped, I’d hold my breath, anticipating the sound of her voice calling out my name. I’d answer, and she’d tell me to get my father’s belt.
“We’re going for a ride,” she’d say.
***
“Amy?” I heard Steve’s voice and felt his fingers on my elbow. “Babe, it’s time.”
I opened my eyes, the dream ending. All my dreams were over. Michael stood in front of me, looking handsome, looking grown-up, a single long-stem rose propped in his closed hands. He offered the flower to me as if it were a key to forever locking my mother’s grave. I moved toward the casket like a robot, my feet and arms moving in rehearsed motion divorced from what was racing through my mind.
My father knew. He’d always known.
And like a bad taste, I couldn’t rid myself of the sourness that came with knowing he could have saved me. But more than that, that he could have saved all of those men too.
I glanced over to the victims’ families—and felt a sudden urge to run. I couldn’t take them staring at us anymore. I dropped the rose as though I’d been pricked by one of its thorns. The flower plunked onto the casket and I swung around, stepping away briskly, swearing to myself I’d never look upon my mother’s grave again.
“I need to go,” I told Steve. He nodded, understanding, but didn’t move. “I need to go. Now!”
“Don’t you want to wait—”
“Steve, I have to go. You can get home without me. Can’t you?” I asked without waiting for an answer and reached into the pocket of his suit jacket. When my fingers closed around the car keys, I started walking.
“Where’s Mom going?” I heard Michael ask, and I turned back to see his confused face.
“I can’t stay here, okay?” I pleaded, tipping his chin with my fingers and hoping he’d understand. “You and Daddy will get home without me. I just need to be alone.”
His lip trembled. I wrapped my arms around his middle, pulling him close to me.
“I wanted to help you feel better,” he said, his words breaking as he swiped at his eyes.
“Oh you did, baby. You did,” I assured him, then kissed his forehead. I squeezed Steve’s hand, reassuring him too before I faced the line of parked cars again.
The grass had already dried, which helped speed my escape. I glanced once more at the gathered families, their eyes beaming, fixed on me as if they knew I’d been my mother’s accomplice, that I’d killed too. The faster I walked, the more piercing their stares became. I was certain it was all in my head, that I just imagined it, but I picked up my knees, lifted my feet, and threw my shoes off so that I could run anyway.
I never looked back after that, finding the gas pedal on the car floor with my bare toes. I weaved through the maze of small roads, cutting through the grassy cemetery, speeding on and off as I raced over the blacktop. When I found the tall, time-pitted gates and the ancient square pillars marking the entrance, I knew where I had to go.
TWENTY-EIGHT
I TURNED ONTO MY mother’s street, grateful to see it empty of reporters and parked news vans.
They’re all at the funeral, I reminded myself as I scraped the car’s rear wheel against the curb. I cringed at the grating sound, knowing I’d rushed impatiently—but I’d never been good at parallel parking.
I left my shoes behind and tiptoed over the rough asphalt. The street burned my feet like hot sand, and I hurried across in a near run, rushing through the front gate and into my mother’s yard. The gate closed behind me with a clap, and I fell to the grass and stared into the dim blue sky unt
il the burn eased from my toes. I still wasn’t sure why I’d come, but it was the one place I believed I had to be.
When I was ready to face my past, I got back to my feet. The house looked abandoned, desolate, and bleak. The sight of it reminded me of the grim horror Katie’s house had become in the weeks that followed her murder. Spots of rust and chipped paint showed where the patio furniture had once been placed, the stained concrete matching the placement of the table and chair legs.
Taken by the neighbors, I assumed. One less thing for me to deal with.
I didn’t care about the furniture, but I felt a sad twinge when I saw her potted plants and garden gnomes. They’d been smashed—nearly pulverized—into a ruin of ceramic puddles.
“Someone did that in anger,” I muttered, nudging my toe against one of the pieces. It fell over, clinking against a shallow pile of rubble. I didn’t know what to make of the broken pottery: a warning maybe?
Then my gaze fell upon the windows and her front door. A smear of dried egg and broken shells. They had splattered and run downward like a clock pegged at the bottom of the hour.
“Fucking teens,” I said, speculating. Time hadn’t changed high school that much—I suspected I’d still find plenty of drinking and partying going on under the abandoned railway bridge where I used to go too. “Some decorative retaliation for something you’d forget about by morning.”
The For Sale sign had drastically changed too. Crooked red letters covered the front, spelling out the words “Price Reduced.”
“Price reduced is right,” I said to no one. It was my house now, and leveling it to the ground had been my first thought. Given the choice, I’d never set foot in it again. A shudder of mixed emotions passed over me like clouds breaking the sunlight. I shook my head and pleaded with my father’s ghost to help me understand why he hadn’t stopped my mother. Beneath my foot, I felt something smooth and hard. I curled my toes around it and dug them into the cool dirt, unearthing the rock like a gemstone.
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 39