There Should Have Been Eight, page 21
Aaron spoke the Lord’s Prayer in a voice that trembled.
“Go with God, my friend,” he said at the end, a single tear rolling down his face.
“Go with God, Nix,” I echoed, even though I wasn’t religious in the least. But it seemed right that I support his final journey in the way he would’ve wished. “Thank you for all the scrambled eggs you made me over the years, all the talks we shared late at night on our camping trips while everyone else slept”—a fact I’d near forgotten—“and most of all, for being who you were: a good husband, a good son, and a good friend.”
The others murmured their own goodbyes, with a crying Grace saying, “I wish I’d had longer to know you. The glimpses I did have of you showed me a man kind and loving and loyal, and I’m so happy you had such a beautiful life with Vansi. I wish you peace in your next journey.”
Ash’s goodbye was rough, short, and broken, Aaron’s heartfelt and the most personal of all of us.
“I’ll miss you, Nix,” he said through his tears, one hand on Phoenix’s body. “You were the best friend a guy could have. Thank you for standing up for me when I was a skinny twelve-year-old and for standing by me through life. I was going to ask you to be my best man—and you still will be. No one will take your place. No one could.”
He spoke his next words in his parents’ native tongue, a private goodbye between two boys grown into men who’d never stopped being best friends.
Then it was done.
And for all that I hadn’t wanted to handle his body, it was hard to leave my friend in this cold and lonely place. I lingered at the end, lifting my camera to my eye to take one final shot.
“Come on, Lu.” Aaron held out a hand from higher up the steps. “Nix is gone to our Father in heaven. What remains is the shell he occupied on this earth.”
I envied Aaron his faith at that moment, because I wasn’t so sure that Phoenix was at peace. That look of shock and terror on his face . . . No, I didn’t think Nix was at rest.
But I allowed Aaron to take my hand and lead me up and out.
Grace didn’t look askance at his grip when we appeared in the cellar doorway. Instead, giving me a teary smile, she took my other hand. Her hand was as fine-boned and small as Aaron’s was long-fingered and scarred over with the small burns accumulated over a lifetime by a man who loved to cook.
“It’s hard to leave him there, isn’t it?” Grace said. “It feels wrong.”
I nodded, my eyes burning as hot and as dry as the Sahara.
34
Darcie had already swept away the broken glass by the time we got back. “I convinced Vansi to lie down,” she whispered. “Gave her a sleeping pill I had. Just over-the-counter stuff. She didn’t resist—I think she wanted to shut out the world for a while.”
Her eyes searched Ash’s face.
Walking over, he ran his hand down her braid. “You did the right thing.”
The pinched look disappeared from around her eyes, her lips less taut.
Grace spoke then, but I wasn’t paying attention except to note that Ash replied to her.
Leaving the two couples to their quiet discussion, I went into the living room to check on Vansi and Kaea. I didn’t like the fact that Darcie had knocked Vansi out; I could’ve sworn that my friend had found herself again in the moments before we’d left with Phoenix’s body.
But what was the point of Darcie lying? Vansi would wake sooner or later, and then we’d all know whether she’d chosen to take the pill or not. And this wasn’t like any other situation V had faced in her life.
I couldn’t presume to predict her emotional responses.
I saw Kaea first as his sofa was closest to the door. He shifted feverishly in his sleep, his skin so hot that I didn’t even have to touch him to sense the heat coming off his body. “Kaea.” I shook his shoulder gently, was shocked at the burn of his skin.
No response. To my voice or a harder shake, a stronger call.
He was in trouble.
My heart pounding, I checked quickly on Vansi. Her breathing was even, her rest appearing peaceful. I couldn’t wait for her to wake—not just to see that she was okay, but because she was a nurse. If we needed anyone right now, it was Vansi.
“Kaea has a dangerously high fever,” I told the others from the doorway of the living area. “Do we have anything to help bring it down?”
Everyone glanced instinctively toward the spot where Phoenix’s body had crumpled.
The doctor in the group.
The one who’d been looking after our friend.
His startled, broken face flashed into my mind, a jigsaw outlined in red.
Jerking away my head, I found the others doing the same. We started talking all at once, but soon realized that the only thing we had was paracetamol—the kind anyone could buy at the grocery store or chemist, nothing stronger.
“Then we give him that,” I said. “It might help a little at least.”
Some small grain of knowledge at the back of my head said that a fever wasn’t dangerous only because of what it signified in terms of what was happening within the body—but of its own accord. Did it really heat up the brain? Or was I making that up?
Vansi would know, and even tortured by grief, she’d help Kaea. That was just who she was. Which was why I found it all the more surprising that she’d taken Darcie’s pill. “Vansi didn’t say anything about Kaea before she took the sleeping pill?”
Darcie flinched before squaring her shoulders and jutting out her jaw. “I didn’t drug her, if that’s what you’re implying.” Words thrown out like bullets. “Do you think I’m behind everything?” Her pitch was too high, hurtful to the ear. “That I smashed my own head and put that cursed doll on my bed?”
“I’m sure Luna doesn’t think anything like that.” Aaron, always the peacemaker.
But I was through with peace. Especially given the intensity of Darcie’s reaction. I wanted answers. “You’re the one who brought us all together.” I refused to break eye contact. “We’re in your house. You know every single secret room and passage. And how could anyone but you have Beatrice’s doll? Only you saw her after she died. Only you had access to her belongings. Only you got to say goodbye.”
If my other statements had been bitter accusations, my final words were a broken softness. “Why didn’t you let us say goodbye, Darcie?”
Her face went white, so much tension to her body that she appeared like one of those gruesome “medical artworks”—humans preserved without flesh, just bone and tendon and muscle. “Why do you care so much?” she screamed. “You were nothing to her. Just a pathetic puppy dog who followed her around. She used to laugh about you!”
If Darcie expected to cow me with that “revelation,” she didn’t know me at all. I’d never reacted well to emotional manipulation—and I knew exactly what I’d had with Bea. That treasure box of stolen tchotchkes? I still had it. I also still had the complete file of the nude photos Bea had asked me to take of her “while I’m young and beautiful, Nae-nae, so I can look back on them during my grandma years.”
I’d been the keeper of Bea’s secrets since the day we’d met and she’d slipped me a chocolate bar to hide in my jacket because, for a period, Mr. and Mrs. Shepherd had been militant about no refined sugars in the house. We’d later shared that chocolate bar while lying under a tree in the park, staring up at a blue sky patterned with leaves.
She’d turned, smiled at me, and I’d thought she was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. A bird with dazzling blue eyes who was meant to soar high while I watched from below to ensure she didn’t fall.
“Listen to yourself.” My voice was as cold as Nix’s skin. “We all know Bea was too kind to ever mock a friend that way. So not only didn’t you give us a chance to farewell her, you’re now trying to assassinate her memory!”
Ash attempted to step in, speak, but Darcie yelled over him. “I was grieving when I made my decision about Bea!” Red spots on her cheeks, a hard glitter in her eyes. “I’d just said goodbye to the last member of my family. I didn’t want spectators to my grief! Why the hell don’t you understand that?”
“So you sent her off with nothing?” Bea’s necklace burned against my skin. “Was that your final revenge on a sister who was brighter and more popular than you?” It was a truth none of us had ever spoken aloud, a silent contract of friendship.
Because though both sisters were stunning and accomplished, it was only Bea who carried within her the special spark that made people gravitate toward a person. Only Bea who glowed with charisma. Only Bea who could walk into a room and stop all conversation. And only Bea who Ash had loved with a mad devotion.
I didn’t look at him, not cruel enough to dig at that wound. But the knowledge hung in the air, a silence so shocking that Grace’s eyes had gone huge and round, Aaron a statue beside her.
“That’s enough, Luna.” Ash’s golden skin held a pink undertone, his hands fisted at his sides. “I know you’re distraught, but that’s no reason to attack Darcie.”
I barely heard him; this wasn’t about Ash or Aaron or anyone else. Stepping forward, I faced Darcie with only inches between us. “Why did you cremate Bea instead of burying her in the family plot beside your parents? Why did you throw her away so far from home?”
Ash, in the process of raising his hand as if to push my shoulder so I’d back off, went still . . . then lowered his hand.
And waited for his wife to answer the question.
Darcie looked from me to him . . . and screamed. Just threw back her head and screamed. When she looked at me afterward, it was with the bite of venom in her gaze. I’d seen it before. Not often, but enough to understand that Darcie would make a bad enemy.
“Since you refuse to accept what I’ve already told you,” she said with icy precision, “I cremated my baby sister because the rope that she used to hang herself had rubbed her skin raw, and her face was all puffed up. Nothing of her looked like Beatrice. She also wasn’t found for a few days—there were maggots involved.”
Even as Grace uttered a shocked cry and put a hand to her mouth, Darcie curled up her lip. “Happy now?”
But, forewarned by her earlier description of going to see Bea’s dead body, I was ready this time. “Beatrice would’ve never hung herself.” Quiet. As precise as her own diction.
“She told me once that of all the ways a person could die, suffocation was the worst.” I didn’t blink as I held Darcie’s gaze. “She always said that if she ever had to do it, she’d take a poison that’d put her to sleep. Painless oblivion.”
A flicker in Darcie’s eyes, a skittering.
35
Iwished that my vision was better, that I could be sure, but it wasn’t and so what I saw could’ve been real . . . or nothing but a dance of shadows.
I gritted my teeth.
“My sister was mentally disturbed.” A quiver in her voice, a liquid shine to her eyes. “I wouldn’t put too much stock in what she said before.”
Ash stepped between us, physically breaking the line of sight. “Enough,” he said once more, and this time there was a sense of authority in his tone. “We are not going to start fighting between ourselves when we’re already dealing with a horrific situation.”
He glanced at Aaron. “Do you think you might be up to making us tea or coffee?”
“Sure, of course.” A fervent desperation in this friend who was as gentle as Darcie was hard. “I’ll make grilled cheese, too. It’s way past lunchtime.”
Ash pinned me with gray eyes gone as flat as steel. “I think it might be a good idea for you to sit down and go over your photographs. Take a bit of time out.”
This was the reason I preferred to live life at a distance, behind the lens of a camera; because when my emotions did emerge, they were too big, too wild. It was why my parents had put me in therapy after my adoption at age three. No one knew what had happened to me in the years prior, but I’d come to them with a black rage within.
No one would’ve blamed them if they’d given me back like an unwanted dog.
But they hadn’t. Instead, they’d been my parents. They’d gotten me help—and the therapist had taught me to regulate my emotions. Until now, I couldn’t cry even when I wanted to.
I’d regulated myself to bitter dryness.
“I need to get my laptop from upstairs.” My voice was as brittle as my eyes, a thing arid. “But I don’t think anyone else should go up there. I’ve already contaminated it with my presence, so I can take a list and collect whatever people want. It’s the only way to make sure we don’t disturb the floor runner.”
I glanced at Aaron and Grace, two people I was sure would back me in this. “I also think we’ll be safer together, whether against the snow or . . .”
No one pushed me to finish that sentence, put our fear into words that we couldn’t dial back.
I carried on. “The living area is already warm and we can keep it that way, and the sofas are plenty big enough for us to rest on. We can also drag in mattresses from the lower-level rooms.”
Pretending Darcie wasn’t there, I spoke only to Ash. “Assuming there are any downstairs mattresses that are safe to use?”
A curt nod.
Shifting, he took Darcie’s hand. “I think Luna’s right on this point.” A brush of his fingers over her cheek, but he wasn’t quite looking at her. “It’s going to be impossible to heat all the rooms to the extent needed against snow. We’ll have to take shifts feeding the living room fire as it is, to ensure it never goes out.”
“Kaea’s so sick, too,” Grace blurted out. “The person on fire watch can keep an eye on him at the same time.”
Darcie had looked over when Grace spoke, now gave a hard nod without ever glancing at me.
“Tell me what you want,” I said to all four. “I’ll get it from your rooms.”
This time, Darcie’s glance was cutting. “The rest of us can also avoid the runner, Luna. We’re not blind.” Spite, out in the open, striking a blow she didn’t even realize. “I’d rather you didn’t paw through my belongings.”
“I’ll go.” Ash squeezed Darcie’s hand when she would’ve spoken again. “I’ll mirror your footsteps, Luna, avoid the runner.”
“I don’t mind if you get my things.” Grace’s smile was awkward, a woman caught between forces she had no way of comprehending. “Sweetheart?”
“Yes, same. Lu, you can grab my stuff.”
The other couple gave me a short list before they headed to the kitchen cloaked in an air of haste. I didn’t blame them. The atmosphere in the hallway was thick with tension vicious and ugly.
Darcie glared as Ash and I walked up the staircase.
He didn’t say a word to me until we’d reached the landing and moved past the twisted runner, and could no longer be seen from downstairs.
A glance back, a pause, then he was looking directly at me.
I expected anger, even a repeat of Darcie’s venomous sting, but his shoulders sagged, his face . . . sad. Just sad. “I loved Bea. God, how I loved Bea.” Throat muscles moving, eyes blinking rapidly. “But I also love Darcie. We’re about to have a child.”
He jabbed a finger into the air toward me, but . . . there was nothing powerful about it, not like when he spoke of Bea. As if he was playacting what was expected. “I asked you to keep an eye on her, and you do this? Jesus, Luna.”
Hell no. Ash might be acting the concerned husband out of guilt at his continued love for Bea, but Darcie wasn’t going to snake out of this by playing the victim. And no way in fucking hell would I allow her to smear Bea’s name with impunity. “Is that what she’s told you all these years?” My nails cut into my palms. “That Bea hung herself?”
“I never asked.” His hands trembled as he shoved his hair back once again, the strands abused golden silk. “I didn’t want to know. I’ve always preferred to imagine her fading away in a drug haze. Beautiful and bright and happy.” His voice caught. “Just falling asleep and never waking up.”
“Bea didn’t do drugs.” She’d only ever done lines that one time and no one else knew about it.
“Nothing hard; the odd joint. Usually with Kaea.”
“That doesn’t count.” I wasn’t into drugs, but I wasn’t preachy about them, either—because I’d battled my own vices. Wine, beer, vodka, there’d been a time I’d have overdone any poison that’d blur the edges of my world, make me feel more normal, less like an error in the code.
A year into my time at university, during a weekend when Kaea, Vansi, and Aaron were all away for reasons I couldn’t remember, I’d woken to find I’d smashed every glass item in our kitchen, and that my feet were bleeding and studded with glass.
I should’ve gone to the emergency room.
Instead, I’d sat on the floor of our bathroom and used my makeup tweezers to pull the glass out shard by fine shard. I could still remember the sting of the antiseptic I’d wiped over the torn-apart flesh in the aftermath, the smell of iron rich in the air, and the crunch of glass as I swept it up.
I’d gone cold turkey for six months after that, and never again dropped that far into the abyss. Not even during Vansi’s bachelorette party. Because blurring the edges wasn’t as important as maintaining control. I hadn’t shared the incident with anyone, had just spent the rest of the weekend hobbling around charity shops finding replacements for our mismatched glassware.
No one had noticed.
“I just liked the mental image.” Ash’s confession was raw. “Imagining her slipping away in peace. It brought me comfort. Now that’s gone forever.”
I felt for him, but not enough to shroud the truth. “Bea did not hang herself.”
“Fuck it, Luna. Please. I’m begging you, don’t pick at that wound. You saw how Darcie was after Bea’s suicide—mad with grief.”
