She looked at me like I was a child who’d asked why fire burns or seasons change.
“Well, it’s like praying for rain, isn’t it, Mr. Kenzie?” She raised her hands to the clear, white sky. “Praying for rain in the middle of a desert.”
We left the bridge and wandered out across a wide soccer field and then through a small stand of trees and small slopes that led to a collection of dorm quads. Siobhan tilted her head up at the tall buildings.
“I always wondered what it would be like to go to university.”
“You didn’t go back home?”
She shook her head. “No money. And I wasn’t the brightest in the bunch, if you know what I mean.”
“Tell me about the Dawes,” I said. “You said they were evil. Not sorta nasty, but evil.”
She nodded and sat on a limestone bench, pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her shirt pocket, offered me one. When I shook my head, she extracted a bent cigarette from the pack, straightened it between her fingers, and lit it. She pulled a stray piece of tobacco off the tip of her tongue before she spoke.
“The Dawes had a Christmas party one year,” she said. “There was a storm that night, so the party was sparsely attended, and there was far more food served than eaten. Mrs. Dawe had once caught me taking leftovers after a party, and she made it very clear that leftovers were for the poor, yeah, and I was to dispose of all food following a party. So, after this particular party, I did. At three that morning, Dr. Dawe entered my bedroom holding the husk of the turkey. He threw the turkey on the bed. He raged at me for throwing away food. He screamed that he had grown up poor and what I’d thrown out would have fed his family for a week.” She took another hit off her cigarette, pulled another piece of tobacco off her tongue. “He made me eat it.”
“What?”
She nodded. “He sat on the edge of the bed and he fed it to me, piece by piece, until dawn.”
“That’s-”
“Against the law, I’m sure. Have you ever tried to get a job as domestic help, Mr. Kenzie?”
I held her gaze. “You’re an illegal, aren’t you, Siobhan?”
She stared into my eyes with that flat, sullen gaze of hers, a look that said if she’d ever had expectations, they’d been dispelled on her travels, a long time ago.
“I think you should limit your questions to things that concern you, Mr. Kenzie.”
I held up a hand and nodded.
“So you ate food that had been thrown in the trash.”
“Oh, he washed it,” she said with sarcasm that died wetly in her throat. “He was quite clear about that. He washed it before he came up, and then he fed it to me.” She smiled brightly through her hard, acne-stained skin. “That’s your good doctor, Mr. Kenzie.”
“This abuse,” I said eventually, “did it ever cross the line into anything more than psychological?”
“Ah, no,” she said, “not with me. I don’t think with Karen, either. He looks down on women, Mr. Kenzie. I doubt he thinks we’re worthy of his touch.” She thought about it some more, then shook her head emphatically. “No, I spent a lot of time with Karen near the end. We’d drink a lot, to tell you the truth. I think she would have told me that. She was no fan of her stepfather.”
“Tell me about her.”
She crossed one leg over the other, puffed her cigarette. “She was a wreck, Mr. Kenzie. She begged them to take her back for just a few weeks, you know. Begged. On her knees in front of her mother. And her mother said, Oh, we couldn’t possibly, dear. You have to learn to-what was the word?-self-rely. That was it. You must learn to self-rely, dear. Karen cried something awful at her feet, and her mother had me bring tea. So Karen would meet me for drinks, yeah, and then she’d go boff strangers.”
“Do you know where she was staying?”
“A motel,” she said, and the word sounded forlorn. “I don’t know the name. She said it was in the…sticks was what she called it.”
I nodded.
“That’s all she told me. The sticks, a motel. I think…” She looked down at her knee, flicked her cigarette away from the bench.
“What?”
“She suddenly had money the last two months. Cash. I didn’t ask where she got it, but…”
“You suspected…”
“Prostitution,” she said. “She suddenly became profane regarding sex. It wasn’t like her.”
“That’s what I don’t get,” I said. “Six months ago, she was a whole different person. She was-”
“All sweetness and purity, yeah?”
I nodded.
“You wouldn’t believe she had a dirty thought in her body.”
“Exactly.”
“That was always her way, yeah. She dealt with it-all that fucking madness in that fucking house-by becoming that thing. I don’t think it was natural, though, you know. I think it was who she wished she could have been.”
“What about that shrine of photographs in the foyer?” I asked. “There’s a young guy in them, looks like he could be the doctor’s little brother, and then that little girl.”
She sighed. “Naomi. The only child they had together.”
“She die?”
Siobhan nodded. “A long time ago. She’d be fourteen, I think, possibly fifteen by now. She died just before her fourth birthday.”
“How?”
“There’s a small pond behind the house. It was winter, and she chased a ball out onto the frozen surface.” She shrugged. “She fell through.”
“Who was watching her?”
“Wesley.”
I could see the small child on the white frozen surface for a moment, reaching for the ball, and then…
A small shudder corkscrewed in my bones.
“Wesley,” I said. “He’s Dr. Dawe’s little brother?”
She shook her head. “Son. Dr. Dawe was a widower when he met Carrie, a widower with one child. She was a widow with one child. They wed, had their own together, and she died.”
“And Wesley…”
“He had nothing to do with Naomi’s death,” she said with a hint of anger in her voice. “But he was blamed, because he was supposed to be watching. He took his eye off her for a moment, yeah, and she dashed onto the pond. Dr. Dawe blamed his son because he couldn’t blame God, could he?”
“Do you know how I could get in touch with Wesley?”
She lit another bent cigarette, shook her head. “He left the family long ago. The doctor won’t allow his name to be spoken in the house.”
“Was Karen in touch with him?”
Another shake of the head. “He’d been gone, oh, ten years, I believe. I don’t think anyone knew what became of him.” She took a small hit off her cigarette. “So what are you going to do next?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Hey, Siobhan, the Dawes said Karen saw a psychiatrist. You know the shrink’s name?”
She started to shake her head.
“Come on,” I said. “You must have heard it over the years.”
Her mouth parted slightly, but then she shook her head again. “I’m sorry, but I really can’t recall it.”
I stood from the bench. “Okay. I’ll find out somehow.”
Siobhan looked into my eyes for a long time, the smoke from her cigarette rising up between us. She was so sober, so stripped of levity, I wondered if the laughs she’d had in her life were separated by months or years.
“What are you after here, then, Mr. Kenzie?”
“A reason why she died,” I said.
“She died because she came from a fucking horror show of a family. She died because David was hurt. She died because she couldn’t handle it.”
I gave her a small, helpless smile. “That’s what I keep hearing.”
