“Of course not,” I told him. “You’d planned it for a long time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those two tickets, remember?” I said. Then, so that he could have no doubt as to just how much I already knew, I added, Those two tickets to Mexico City, the ones you bought in June.”
His face tightened. “You knew about that?”
“Yes.”
“How did you know?”
“The police found out,” I said.
He looked strangely relieved. “Oh,” he said, “the police.”
“They found out everything,” I told him.
He leaned forward slowly, his hands clasped together on the table. “No, they didn’t,” he said.
“Everything except who helped you kill them,” I said.
“Helped me?”
“Yes.”
“No one helped me, Stevie,” he said. “What I did, I did alone.”
I stared at him doubtfully. “Two tickets,” I repeated, “one for you, and one for someone else.” I paused a moment. “Who was she?” I demanded, my voice almost a hiss, visions of Yo-landa Dawes circling in my mind.
His face softened, his eyes resting almost gently upon me. “Do you remember that morning when we were all having breakfast and Laura was talking about a report she’d done in school, and Jamie kept attacking her, belittling her?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “Jamie was always at Laura,” he said, “always trying to humiliate her, to take away her dreams.”
He was right, of course, and it was easy for me to see everything that had happened that morning, the terrible hatred my brother had shown for my sister, the delight he’d taken in chipping away at her vibrant, striving character. That morning he’d been even worse than usual, his small eyes focused upon her with a deadly earnest:
My father turned away for a moment, drew in a deep breath, then looked back toward me. “I couldn’t take it that morning,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t stand to see what he was doing to your sister.” He smiled. “I knew how much she wanted out of life, you see,” he went on, “how much she wanted her life to be different.”
“Different from what?” I asked.
“Different from my life, Stevie,” he said. “Different from your mother’s life, and what Jamie’s life would probably have been.” He stopped, as if remembering her again in the full glory of her extravagant desire. “She talked to me about it, you know,” he added after a moment. “About all she wanted to do in her life, all the places she wanted to go.” He smiled softly. “She would come down in the basement where I was, and she would talk to me about it.” His eyes drifted away slightly. “Always barefoot, remember?” he said, almost wistfully. “I used to tell her to put on her shoes, but she never would. She was like that, untamed. She’d always go back up with her feet covered with that grit from the basement floor.” He grew silent for a moment, then shrugged. “Anyway,” he said, “that morning after Jamie had acted the way he did, I went out and sat down in that little room we had, the one with the vines.” He stopped, his voice a little harder when he spoke again. “That’s when I decided that it couldn’t go on like it was, Stevie,” he said. “That something had to be done about it.”
“You mean, something had to be done about Jamie?”
“About what he was doing to your sister,” my father answered. “Something had to be done about that.”
I remembered the look on his face as he’d sat alone in the solarium that morning. It was a grim, determined face, all doubt removed. It was then that he’d decided that “something had to be done,” I supposed, not while he’d sat gazing at my mother as she stooped over the flower garden, but that spring morning when Jamie had launched his attack upon the daughter that my father loved.
My father’s hands drew back, each of them finally drifting over the edge of the table. “I told Laura about it a week later,” he said. “She came down to the solarium one night. It must have been toward the middle of that last summer.” He drew in a deep breath. “I told her what I wanted to do.”
I looked at him, astonished. “Kill us,” I muttered.
His eyes widened, staring at me unbelievingly. “What?”
“That you were going to kill us,” I said, “you told Laura that?”
He shook his head. “No, Stevie,” he said, “not that.” He paused a moment, watching me brokenly. “Never that.”
“What then?”
“I told her that I’d decided to take her away,” my father said, “that I’d looked through a lot of travel brochures, and that I’d already decided on the place.” He looked at me solemnly. “I told her that I’d already bought two tickets to Mexico, and that I was going to take her there.”
“And leave the rest of us?” I asked.
“Jamie wouldn’t have cared,” my father said. “And your mother, she’d always wanted to move back to Maine, where she’d grown up.” His face took on the look of a mournful revelation. “There was someone there, Stevie. Waiting for her, you might say. Someone from way back. Someone she’d never forgotten.”
It was the phantom lover, of course, Jamie’s real father, a man in a mountain cabin, as I imagined him at that
