mother felt.
She turned to me. 'Didn't people like him at work?'
'Oh, yes,' I replied. 'We all liked him. And he was very well respected.' All of us but Art, I thought.
'Have the cops any ideas who did it?' Eddie asked.
'I don't think so,' I answered.
'Simon seems to be their best guess,' said Lisa. I glanced across at her sharply. 'The questions that Sergeant Mahoney guy has been asking. It's obvious what he's thinking.'
Eddie looked at both of us. Two years Lisa's senior he had dropped out of medical school several years previously and was in some kind of post graduate school at the University of California in San Francisco, studying social work. Lisa admired him for following a career path devoted to helping those in need, which paid little. I tried not to think middle-aged thoughts about perpetual students. He and I had never had much to do with each other. As little sister's boyfriend and then husband, he was both suspicious and polite to me. As a titled Englishman who worked for an East Coast financial firm, I was irredeemably uncool. Since his father had left the rest of his family, he had taken on the role of man in the family; his mother and his younger sister hung on his every word. I suspected he didn't like the way they showed every sign of hanging on mine, too.
And, of course, I had been introduced to Lisa by his father. This put me on the wrong side of the family divide that figured so prominently in Eddie's mind.
'But wasn't Simon with you?' he asked Lisa.
She shook her head. 'Uh uh. That's the problem. I was working in the lab. Simon was at Marsh House, seeing Dad. He was the last one to see him alive.'
'Really?' Eddie was looking at me closely.
'It's true,' I said. 'He and I had had an argument at work, and I went up to Marsh House to sort it out. I didn't get anywhere, so I left. Apparently he was killed sometime between then and ten o'clock that evening.'
'Really?' said Eddie again.
'Don't look like that, Eddie,' said Lisa, grasping my hand, finally aware of the difficulty she had raised. 'Of course Simon had nothing to do with it.'
'Of course not,' said Eddie, with an indulgent smile at his younger sister.
She smiled back, glad to clear up the misunderstanding. But from Eddie's glance towards me I wasn't at all sure she had done any such thing. 'The police will catch whoever did this,' she said.
'I hope they do,' said Eddie. 'I'd never thought I'd say this, but he deserves the chair. They've brought the death penalty back in Massachusetts, haven't they?'
Lisa didn't answer my question. I shook my head. 'I don't think so.'
'Really? I thought I'd read they had.'
Lisa concentrated on her lasagne. Ann looked adoringly at her son. I felt mildly irritated. Lisa knew very well that Massachusetts hadn't brought back the death penalty, but the last thing she was going to do was contradict big brother. All Eddie's pronouncements, of which there were many, were greeted with rapture by his mother and sister. He was an intelligent man, and often said interesting things, but sometimes he was just plain wrong.
I knew better than to contradict him. I had become involved in an argument with him the year before at Thanksgiving. It was over a small thing, whether Helmut Kohl was a Social Democrat. He thought he was, I knew he wasn't, Lisa and her mother were sure Eddie couldn't be wrong. I had stood my ground, and briefly spoiled what had been a very pleasant evening.
'Must have missed it,' I said, pouring Eddie some more wine.
There was a brief silence, then Ann spoke. 'I thought you got on so well with Frank,' said Ann. 'I'm sorry you parted on such bad terms.'
'So am I,' I said. 'I do feel bad about it. There's a lot I'd have liked to say to him before he died.'
'Me too,' said Lisa flatly.
We finished in silence, the shock and anger seated with us like extra guests at the table.
That night, as I lay in bed, trying to get to sleep, I felt the bed shudder gently. I reached over and touched Lisa's shoulder. It was shaking.
'Come here,' I said.
She rolled over into my arms. I felt her warm tears trickle down my chest.
'You know that shirt Dad was wearing? The plaid one?' she said.
'Yes?'
'I gave that to him for his birthday last year. He really liked it. And now it's covered with his blood.'
I squeezed her even tighter into my chest. She cried some more. Eventually, she broke away, sniffed and reached for some tissues beside the bed.
'It must be awful for Eddie,' she said.
'It's awful for everyone.'
'Yes. But he hasn't seen Dad for six years. He's barely spoken to him since he and Mom broke up.'
'Why do you think it got to him so badly? You had no problems with your father, did you?'
'I don't know. I really think it would have been better if they'd told us the real reason they split up. I mean they said they just didn't want to live together any more. Eddie thought Dad was running away from us. He never forgave him.'
'I wonder if we'll ever know why now.'
'I guess now I'd rather not. Now Dad's gone. I mean one of them was probably messing around with someone else. Mom, I guess. I don't know.'
'I suppose that's why Eddie's so angry,' I said.
'Because he feels guilty about not seeing Dad? Probably. But you know Eddie. He can get pretty angry anyway.'
Actually I didn't know Eddie that well. And I was quite happy to keep it that way.
'I'm angry too,' Lisa went on. 'It's just so
This outburst surprised me. Lisa had been so submissive up to now in the face of Frank's death. But she was right. Murder wasn't just evil. It was callous as well.
We lay in silence for a while. Then Lisa spoke; this time her voice was so quiet I could hardly hear it. 'When I was little and felt bad or scared, Dad used to sing to me. He had a terrible voice; he never liked to sing in front of anyone but me. I wish he could do it now.'
I couldn't sing to her. But I could hold her. I didn't let her go until, a long time later, I heard the regular breathing of sleep.
8
Frank was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Brookline, where the Cook family had lived when it was still a family. The ceremony was simple. After the
The