old habits die hard.
Waiting for the creak on the stairs that last night, I wondered whether he would come to my door this time, or to my sister’s.
That I fervently wanted it to be her turn is perhaps the most shameful part in all of this. Yet I can make no apology for my feelings; they are what they are. I suppose it simply means that my hatred for him is even stronger than my love for her.
That night, it was my door he unlocked with the master key he kept in his black overcoat that reeked of sweet tobacco and sour sweat. There he stood, silhouetted in the doorway for a terrifying moment before he crossed the threshold and, as always, locked the door again behind him.
Even now, the memory of the key turning in the lock makes the biscuit churn with burning bile in my gut.
Every night…
Every single night, for as long as I can remember: the heavy tread of his boots on the stairs, the key in the lock…
I picture my sister waiting in the dark, praying he wouldn’t come to her-or, more likely, that he would, because she’s the better person and would want to spare me.
Then again, when faced with such unspeakable horror, is anyone really capable of such noble behavior? Maybe she was relieved to hear him enter my room and know that she was safe for that night.
I picture her with her head buried beneath her pillow, trying desperately to block out the repulsive sounds that would pierce the thin wall separating our bedrooms and a useless puff of goose down.
The first-floor rooms are dim, yet slats of golden sunlight fall across the rugs wherever draperies hang slightly parted.
Outside, wagon wheels rattle along Second Street. Voices rumble faintly from curious bystanders and gleeful ghouls.
Earlier, I peered through an upstairs window at the throng that’s grown steadily since the news broke. The crowd is held at bay not just by our sturdy wooden fence, but by the police officers stationed around the property.
“Why do you think they’re here?” I asked my sister last night.
“ To keep the murderer out, should he reappear, I suppose.”
Or perhaps, I thought to myself, to keep the murderess in, should she try to escape.
They
Then again, even if they do…
Even if they were to find the broken-off hatchet head I so carefully wiped clean of any trace of blood, or the stained dress hidden deep in my pillow…
Even knowing what they know about our family, and my open contempt for my miserly father and for Abby, whom I haven’t called “mother” in years…
They will never grasp the truth.
I am, after all, a woman.
A temperamental, sharp-tongued, spoiled woman trapped in a miserable, miserly house hold…
But a woman nonetheless.
No matter how damning the circumstantial evidence, should any of it come to light, they’ll be sure to look beyond it. They’ll be certain that things cannot possibly be as they seem. They believe, as my father did, that nothing ever is.
Fools.
I wander into the parlor and stop short, seeing a figure silhouetted before the sofa. In this faint light, I can’t see the splotched upholstery and spattered wallpaper, but I know they’re there.
“Maggie,” I say, and she jumps, startled, whirling to look at me.
The room is too dim to betray the knowing flash in her eyes, yet it’s palpable as bloodstain.
Will she hurtle an accusation?
If so, I’ll deny it-just as I did yesterday, when the house was crawling with police wanting to know where I was when my stepmother and father were hacked to death so viciously that one of his eyeballs was flung from its socket.
Never again will I see that terrible glint in his brown gaze, betraying his hideous plans for the wee hours.
Never, never again.
The nightmare is over; at last, I am in control.
For a long time, Maggie just looks at me.
Perhaps she, too, suffered sleepless nights. Perhaps she, too, lay awake, listening in dread for the creak of a heavy masculine step on the stairs. Perhaps she, too, fantasized about making it stop.
“My name,” she tells me in her soft brogue, “is not Maggie.”
No, it isn’t. But it’s the only thing my sister Emma and I have ever called her. It was easier that way; the maid before her had been Maggie.
I look her in the eye. “I’m sorry… Bridget.”
She nods, clearly satisfied.
No fool, Bridget Sullivan. She grasps what so many do not: that things are often exactly as they seem.
“I accept your apology, Miss Borden. Old habits die hard, I know.”
At long last, I smile.
“Please,” I tell her, “call me Lizzie.”
The bestselling author of more than seventy novels, WENDY CORSI STAUB has penned multiple
Industry awards include a Romance Writers of America Rita, three Westchester Library Association Washington Irving Awards for Fiction, the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple for Lifetime Achievement and the 2008 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Suspense. Readers can join her online at www.WendyCorsiStaubcommunity.com.
Programwith a Happy Ending by Cynthia Robinson
The worst part about dying alone in front of your TV is that you can’t get to the remote control. Victor Secco learned this soon after he died in his Barcalounger. His TV was on. In fact, it was blaring. That’s what the headlines said:
It’s hard to say when, exactly, Vic’s pharmacological catatonia crossed over into the big sleep. He was up to six or seven Ativans a day, and a couple of Ambiens at night, and then Marina would give him a Ritalin when she wanted him to transfer funds or sign checks. It was all kind of like being dead already. Only you watch a lot of TV.
The first couple of girls who came over-the girls from the service-they would say things like, “Let’s get you outside, Mr. Secco.” Or, “How about some fresh air, Victor?” He’d tell them, “Fuck you. Get out of the way of the
