Sister

“Her baby had died. She just wanted his father not to be ashamed of him.”

His hands were still held up, he tensed his fists, and for a moment I thought he was going to hit me. Then he let them drop to his side.

“It’s that boy you should be questioning, always following her around with that bloody camera of his. He was obsessed with her. And jealous as hell.”

“I knew that Tess wouldn’t have asked anything from Emilio if Xavier had lived,” I say. “But when Xavier died, it would have been intolerable to her for Emilio to deny him then.”

When I had watched Dad at your graveside, he had redeemed himself. When it mattered—when your dead body was going into the muddy, cold earth—he had stepped up as the man who is your father. You cannot disown a dead child.

Mr. Wright waits a moment before asking his next question. “Did you believe him about Simon?”

“I was suspicious of both him and Simon, but I had nothing tangible against either of them; nothing that would challenge the police’s certainty that she committed suicide.”

I have told Mr. Wright about my encounter with Emilio as if I were a detective, but the heart of it for me was as your sister. And I must tell him that too, in case it is relevant. It’s embarrassingly exposing, but I can no longer be modest and shy. I must risk what he thinks of me. So I continue.

Emilio was standing at the open front door, anger sweating out of the pores in his face, holding the nude paintings of you.

“You just don’t get it, do you? It was sex between me and Tess, great sex, but just sex. Tess knew that.”

“You don’t think that someone as young as Tess may have been looking to you as a father figure?” It’s what I thought, however many times you denied it.

“No. I do not think that.”

“You don’t think that because her own father had left and you were her tutor, she was looking to you for something more than ‘just sex’?”

“No. I don’t.”

“I hope not. She’d have been so let down.”

I was glad I had finally said it to his face.

“Or maybe she got a kick out of breaking the rules,” he said. “I was out of bounds and maybe she liked that.” His tone was almost flirtatious. “Forbidden fruit is always more erotic, isn’t it?”

I was silent and he moved a little closer. Too close.

“But you don’t like sex, do you?”

I was silent and he watched me for a reaction, waiting. “Tess said you only have sex to pay for the security of a relationship.”

I felt his eyes on mine, spying into me.

“She said you chose a job that was dull but secure and the same went for your fiance.” He was trying to rip away the insulating layers of our sisterhood and still he continued, “She said you’d rather be safe than happy.” He saw that he’d hit his mark and continued to hit it. “That you were afraid of life.”

You were right. As you know. Other people may sail through lives of blue seas, with only the occasional squall, but for me life has always been a mountain—sheer faced and perilous. And, as I think I told you, I had clung on with the footholds and crampons and safety ropes of a safe job and flat and secure relationship.

Emilio was still staring at my face, expecting me to feel betrayed by you and hurt. But instead I was deeply moved.

And I felt closer to you. Because you knew me so much better than I’d realized—and still loved me. You were kind enough not to tell me that you knew about my fearfulness, allowing me to keep my Big Sister self-respect. I wish now that I’d told you. And that I knew if I dared look away from my treacherous mountainside, I’d have seen you flying in the sky untrammeled by insecurities and anxieties, no safety ropes tethering you.

And no ropes keeping you safe.

I hope you think I have found a little courage.

15

Mr. Wright has listened to my encounter with Emilio and I am trying to detect whether he thinks less of me. Mrs. Crush Secretary bustles in with coffee for Mr. Wright in a china cup, Maryland cookies balanced on the saucer, the chocolate melting onto the white china. I have a plastic cup with no biscuits. Mr. Wright is a little embarrassed by the favoritism. He waits for her to leave and puts one of his cookies next to my cup.

“You said the funeral gave you two new leads?”

Lead? Did I really use the word? Sometimes I hear my new vocabulary and for a moment the absurdity of all this threatens to turn my life into farce.

“It’s Colonel Mustard in the kitchen with the candlestick.”

“Bee, you’re so silly. It’s Professor Plum in the library with the rope!”