Chapter 5
For the second day in a row I woke up late. Though I’d washed my hair twice and stood under the shower for at least half an hour before going to bed, when I smelled my pillow it stank of smoke. Another shower still didn’t remove the tarry grime from under my fingernails. I gave up and got dressed. What I really needed was coffee and something to eat.
Through the open door to Mia’s room I saw tangled bedsheets and clothes flung everywhere. I’d never heard her come in nor get up, but her purse was on her dresser, so she was still home. I found her in the kitchen, sitting in one of the ladder-back chairs at the old pine table our mother had brought from France after she and Leland were married. Dressed in a gray T-shirt that ended midthigh, my sister’s head was bent over a coffee mug in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Her long blond hair screened her face and she didn’t look up at the sound of my cane tapping on the tile floor.
“Hey, when did you get in?” I asked. And when had she started smoking again?
Mia raised her head and for a split second it was Leland’s eyes looking at me, wary and defensive, the haunted, wasted look he’d worn the mornings after he’d had too many Scotches on poker night with the Romeos.
“You’re hung over,” I said, then wished I hadn’t. All I’d done was antagonize her. But seeing her eyes, dark and hooded like two bruises, shocked me the same as if someone actually had hit her. I knew she drank at college like all kids did, and she certainly had access to alcohol at home. She looked like she’d tied one on in a big way last night. I stared again at her eyes. It wasn’t the first time, either.
“No, I’m not.”
I sat down across from her, hooking my cane on the back of another chair. “How much did you drink?”
She sucked hard on her cigarette. “A few beers.”
“Yeah, and I’m going to run the Marine Corps Marathon. Did you drive home drunk?”
She exhaled smoke out of the side of her mouth and stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray. “Will you lay off, for God’s sake? What business is it of yours what I do?”
“You’re my sister.”
She shoved her chair back and stood up. “When did that ever matter?”
I had set that up perfectly. “I’m worried about you. You’re underage. If you get caught—” I sounded too defensive.
“I can vote and join the army and get married. So I’m not legal to drink. Big goddam deal. I will be, in a few months.”
Mia had been fourteen the day she went riding with our mother when Orion, Mom’s horse, threw her as they took a jump over one of the many dry-stacked stone walls that ringed the perimeter of the farm. Mercifully she didn’t suffer long, dying later that day of internal injuries. Mia never spoke about what happened, nor explained why my mother, good enough to qualify as an alternate to France’s Olympic equestrian team, had stumbled over a hurdle so low anyone could have stepped over it without breaking stride. I always wondered if they’d been quarreling and Mom was distracted when it happened. Even back then, Mia had been headstrong and temperamental.
After Mom’s death it was as if something came unmoored inside my sister or she lost any compass she’d once possessed, because she seemed dead set on taking the swiftest passage down the road to hell, without the good intentions. She had always possessed the stunning good looks and the waiflike fragility of a runway model and, as a little girl, her gossamer hair and angelic features had turned heads. Sometime during her short life, though, she’d managed to acquire the sulky, jaded apathy of an old soul who has seen it all before. It was that bored vulnerability that attracted her to the wrong people, and vice versa. The guys she dated ran the bad boy gamut from A to Z. They always had cars that were hot and fast—and that about summed up the boyfriends, too.
“You better be careful,” I said.
“Butt out of my business.”
The grooves of our arguments were so deeply etched over the years they had become ruts we could no longer climb out of, even if we wanted to. It would end as it always did, with her storming out of the room after we shouted at each other. If there was any way to reach her or change things, I no longer knew what it was.
“Look,” I said, more quietly, “I did the same thing when I was your age, so it’s not that. But I’m worried about you. Don’t get into binge drinking. That’s really bad news. Plus if you get caught trying to buy stuff—”
“I won’t get caught. Nobody else is underage. Abby’s twenty-one already, so it’s perfectly legal for her to buy booze.”
“Abby?”
“Lang.”
“You’re hanging around drinking with Senator Lang’s daughter?”
“Where’ve you been, Lucie? We’re in the same sorority. We live in the same house. Don’t you listen to anything I say?”
“I do. I just forgot.”
“I gotta go.” She dumped her coffee in the sink. “Abby’s coming for me.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Brad and them are deciding.” She scooped up the pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. “We’ll figure it out.”
I watched her slide the matches inside the plastic wrapping. “Who’s ‘Brad and them’?”
She stood in front of me, her long tanned legs crossed over each other, arms folded, looking remote and unreachable as a stranger. “Abby’s boyfriend. And some friend of his.”
“Promise me you’ll watch it. Don’t get drunk again.”
“Lucie,” she said, “leave me alone. I know what I’m doing. I’ll see you sometime.”
“Are you coming home tonight?”
“I don’t know.” She fiddled with a strand of hair, twirling it around one finger. “I might sleep at Abby’s. I don’t like sleeping here ever since Georgia—” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Whoever killed Georgia probably knew her, Mia,” I said. “There’s not some killer on the loose stalking women in their homes.”
“How can you be sure? How do you know it wasn’t, like, random or something?”
“The police don’t think it was. Look, call me and let me know what you’re doing later. Just so I know you’re all right.”
“Let’s just leave it that no news is good news, okay? I’ll call you if there’s a problem. Otherwise, you should figure that everything’s fine.”
She left the room and I sat down again at the pine table. At least this time we hadn’t ended the conversation shouting at each other, but everything was a long way from fine.
Siri Randstad phoned while I was fixing bacon and eggs. “Can I ask a favor, Lucie?”
“Anything.”
“I’m driving to Dulles this afternoon to pick up a friend of Ross’s who’s coming in for the…uh, for Georgia’s funeral. Could you come over and stay here while I’m at the airport?”
“Sure,” I said, surprised. “Are you worried about Ross being alone?”
“Good Lord! I don’t think he’s suicidal, if that’s what you mean. He’s just so bereft that I think it would be best if he had company.”
“I’ll come,” I said. “What time?”
“Mick’s plane gets in from Miami around four-thirty,” she said. “So I’ll probably leave here at three- thirty.”
“You’ll be stuck in rush-hour traffic on the way back. You won’t get to Middleburg until well past six. What if I pick up a few things and fix dinner for everyone?”
She sounded relieved. “That would be great. The past two nights we got Chinese takeout. I’m up to here with moo goo gai pan.”
