I watched her face carefully. She was building up to something, skirting the subject warily, like a dog circling a snake, uncertain of whether it were dead and harmless, or alive and capable of striking.
‘Was one of them the man who made Jennifer and her mommy dead?’
She always called them that: Jennifer and her mommy. Although she knew Susan’s name, she felt uncomfortable using it. Susan was an adult unfamiliar to her, a grown-up, and grown-ups had names that began with Mr or Mrs, Aunt or Uncle, Grandma or Grandpa. Sam had chosen to define her as Jennifer’s mommy because Jennifer had been a little girl just like her, but a little girl who had died. The subject held a kind of awful fascination for her, not simply because Jennifer had been my child and, by extension, a half-sister to Sam, but because Sam did not know of any other children who had died. It seemed somehow impossible to her that a child could die – that
Sam understood a little of what had happened to my wife and my daughter. She had picked up nuggets of information gleaned from other overheard conversations and hidden them away, examining them in solitude, trying to understand their meaning and their value, and only recently had she revealed her conclusions to her mother and me. She knew that something awful had happened to them, that one man had been responsible, and that man was now dead. We had tried to deal with it as carefully yet as honestly as possible. Our concern was that she might fear for her own safety, but she did not seem to make that particular connection. Her focus was entirely on Jennifer and, to a lesser extent, her mommy. She was, she told us, ‘sad for them’, and sad for me.
‘I—’ Speaking of Jennifer and Susan with her was difficult for me at the best of times, but this was new and dangerous territory. ‘I think he would have hurt me if I had not,’ I said at last. ‘And he would have kept on hurting other people too. He gave me no choice.’
I swallowed the taste of the lie, even if it was a lie of omission. He gave me no choice, but neither did I give him a choice. I had wanted it that way.
‘So does that make it all right?’
Although Sam was a precocious, unusual child, that was still a very adult question, one that plumbed murky moral depths. Even her tone was adult. This was not coming from Sam. There was the voice of another under her own.
‘Is that one of your questions, Sam?’
Again, a shake of the head. ‘It was what Jeff asked Mommy when they were talking about how you shot people.’
‘And what did Mommy say?’ I asked despite myself, and I was ashamed.
‘She said that you always tried to do the right thing.’
I bet Jeff didn’t like that.
‘After that, I had to go pee,’ said Sam.
‘Good. Well, no more listening to conversations that aren’t your business, all right? And no more talking about shooting people. We clear?’
‘Yes. I won’t tell Mommy.’
‘She’d just worry, and you don’t want to get Daddy into trouble.’
‘No.’ She frowned. ‘Can I tell her about Uncle Angel saying a bad word?’
I thought about it.
‘Sure, why not?’
I went downstairs, where Angel and Louis had opened a bottle of red wine.
‘Make yourselves at home.’
Angel waved a glass at me. ‘You want some?’
‘No, I’m good.’
Louis poured, sipped, tasted, made a face, shrugged resignedly, and filled two glasses.
‘Hey,’ said Angel, ‘Sam’s not going to tell Rachel I swore at those guys, is she?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re in the clear.’
He looked relieved. ‘Thank Christ. I wouldn’t want to get in trouble with Rachel.’
While they drank, I called Marielle Vetters. The phone rang four times, then went to the machine. I left a short message to tell her that I’d be heading up there to talk with her the next day, and she should go over all that her father had told her in case she’d forgotten to share with me anything that might be useful. I asked her to give Ernie Scollay a nudge too, on the off-chance that he might recall something that his brother had said. I kept the message deliberately vague, just in case she had company or someone else, like Marielle’s brother, happened to hear it.
After an hour of conversation I went to my room, but not before looking in on the strange, beautiful, empathic child fast asleep in her bed, and I felt that I had never loved her more, or understood her less.
38
Marielle heard the phone ring at the same time as her doorbell. For a moment she was torn between the two, but clearly the phone could wait while the doorbell could not.
‘You want me to see who it is?’ asked Ernie Scollay.
He had come over earlier, seemingly still troubled by the amount they had revealed down at the bar in Portland, but Marielle knew that he was also lonely. A shy man, and one who did not care much for either of the local bars, he had formed a bond with Marielle’s father following his brother’s suicide, and when Harlan Vetters in turn had died, he had transferred his affection for the father to Marielle. She did not mind. Apart from being kind, if cautious, company, Ernie was good at fixing anything from a stubborn hinge to a car engine, and Marielle’s old car needed more attention than most. Her brother’s best friend, Teddy Gattle, had frequently offered to look after it for her at no charge, but Marielle knew better than to take him up on it. Ever since they were teenagers, Teddy had eyed her with a mixture of adoration and barely concealed lust. According to her brother, Teddy had cried more than her own mother had on the day Marielle got married, and he had celebrated her divorce with a drunk that lasted three days. No, even if Ernie Scollay had not been around, she would have paid money she could little afford to maintain her car – would, in fact, have set the car on fire and walked to her two jobs – rather than accept a favor from Teddy Gattle.
Marielle stepped out of the kitchen and looked down the hall. Her brother’s familiar, rangy figure stood outside, although she could not see him clearly because the exterior light wasn’t working. Odd, she thought: I only changed that bulb last week. There must be a fault with the wiring. Another job for Ernie, she supposed.
‘It’s okay, it’s just Grady,’ she said.
He’d probably come to apologize, she figured. About time too. He’d had enough of Teddy Gattle’s hospitality, and realized what a jerk he’d been for bringing that vacant space in female form into her house. She’d been tempted to burn the sheets once Grady and whatever-her-name was had departed, the skank. Ivy, was that what Grady had said? Holly? What an idiot. What a pair of idiots.
But she loved her brother, for all his flaws, and now they were all that was left of the family. Two failures: he in art, she in marriage, both in life. She didn’t want to lose him again. Even when absent, whether at college or trying to make it as an artist in New York, and, finally, lost to his addictions for a time, a part of him had always been with her. They had been so close as children, and although he was her little brother, he had done his best to take care of her. When her marriage finally ended, he had trudged back to Falls End to console her, and they had spent a couple of days drinking, and smoking, and talking, and she had felt better for it. But then he had drifted away again, and when he came back their father was already dying.
The machine picked up the call, and she heard a voice that was kind of familiar, but she wasn’t quick enough to catch the caller’s name.
The doorbell rang for a second time.
‘Coming!’ she said. ‘I’m coming. God, Grady, you could have a little patience, you know . . .’
She opened the door and the light from the lamp in the hall caught his face. He looked sorrowful and scared. He also looked doped up. He was swaying, and having trouble staying focussed on her.
‘Ah, Grady, for crying out loud,’ she said. ‘No, no. You jerk. You stupid—’
Grady flew at her. She reacted fast enough to step back, one hand instinctively outstretched to ward him off, but he was too big and heavy for her. His weight carried them both to the floor, and her head bounced hard on the
