The Other Sister, page 33
She was breathing like she’d run a marathon. She felt curiously calm. It was like she’d closed a door on the normal part of herself. It might be screaming and clawing to get back in, but it couldn’t. Not yet.
“Goddamn it, G! I need…I need…”
Geraldine yanked open drawer after drawer. In one, she found a moldering envelope that turned out to have a whole pile of cash in it. There were words scrawled on it. BACK LATER TONIGHT. HANG ON TO THIS. She thought she should recognize the handwriting, but she couldn’t make her brain move that far.
She counted five thousand dollars before she crammed the whole thing into her pocket. They’d need it later.
She found what she was really looking for on the next try. Kitchen matches. The box was damp and torn but the matches themselves seemed pretty dry.
Six tries. On the seventh, the match lit. She dropped it, and the rest of the box, into the puddle.
Whomp!
Flame went up and Geraldine ran. Back in the front hall, Mom was sitting up, awake, but woozy.
“What the fuck…?” she demanded.
Shaking, wordless, Geraldine dug her hands into her mother’s armpits and heaved.
“No,” Mom groaned as she staggered to her feet.
Geraldine didn’t answer. After all these years, she was an expert at moving her mother when her mother didn’t want to go. Mom stumbled and sagged and struggled, but Geraldine hauled her out the front door and around the terrace to the remains of the carriage house, where they’d parked the car. The rain was coming down harder now and Geraldine swore.
“I said no!” Mom tried to wrench herself away.
“I told you, I am not leaving you with him!” Geraldine planted Mom against the side of the car and struggled to get the door open.
“I don’t care what you say!” screamed Mom.
“You think I don’t know that!” Geraldine screamed back. She shoved her mother into the car and slammed the door. She ran around to the driver’s side, splashing in the puddles, praying that outrage and concussion would confuse Mom just enough. Praying the rain was still too light to make any difference to what was happening inside the house.
She threw herself into the driver’s seat and jammed her keys in the ignition.
But by then her mother’s vision had cleared enough that she saw the flickering light shining between the rotted boards. Or maybe it was the smell of the smoke that got to her.
“What the fuck did you do?!”
Geraldine revved the engine. Mom struggled with the latch. The rutted lane that passed for a driveway was tight and the rain was coming down harder, and she couldn’t see. She banged the car’s back end into something but managed to wrench it around, just as Mom wrestled the door open.
She half-jumped, half-fell onto the buckling asphalt.
“Mom!”
But if her mother heard, she didn’t let it stop her. She hoisted herself to her feet and staggered through the rain, toward the house. Toward the fire.
“No!” screamed Geraldine.
Mom spun around.
“What are you going to do? Kill me? Go ahead! Kill me!” She dropped her head back and threw her arms out and stood there, crucified on the dark. “For fuck’s sake somebody just kill me!”
Something snapped. Geraldine felt it go.
That was when she screamed.
That was when she gunned the engine and felt the thud and saw her mother fall.
That was when she drove away, roaring down the hill, the passenger door flapping open and the rain blowing in. That was when she drove to the lakeshore, to wait out the rain, to drink and screw David, and to try to swim away from life itself.
That was when she did not do the one thing she should have done. That was when Geraldine Monroe did not look back.
“And what should be the punishment, for someone who has done all these things?”
—“The Goose Girl” from Kinder und Hausmärchen Vol. 1,
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812
GERALDINE, PRESENT DAY
STACEY B’S SANDWICHES AND STUFF
1.
Houses never burn completely. No matter how hot the fire, there’s always something left: a jumble of blackened sticks, the scattered remnants of ruined possessions, some cracked brick, some scorched steel.
And the stench, of course. Ash and grease and chemicals.
The old store didn’t escape unscathed. One wall is entirely black and the vinyl siding is blistered and cracked. I wonder if Marie watched the blaze. I picture her sucking in a worried breath as the wind shifted. After all, she wouldn’t want her stash damaged while she was killing Tyler.
There’s no one to see me duck under the police tape strung between trees and sawhorses. The store’s front entrance is still locked, and I still don’t have a key, but that’s okay. The screen is on the ground where we left it. The window’s even still open.
I toss my purse through and I climb in after. I crouch on the scuffed tile for a long minute, listening to the eternal sound of the wind in the trees. Nothing comes to disturb it. Well, nothing but me.
I hug my purse to my chest and scuttle toward the basement door. I stay crouched down, just in case. I don’t have a high opinion of the Whitestone County sheriff’s department, but David might have his own ideas about what constitutes proper procedure right now. His family is involved after all, and he’s going to protect them, because that’s what he does.
Sorry, David.
I hurry down the stairs. It’s dark, but I don’t try to switch on the light. Instead, I take my phone out of my purse and use it as a flashlight. This shouldn’t take long. I know exactly what I’m looking for.
I need the shoebox Marie saved. I have something to add to her stash. A gift from her wicked sister. Belated payment for all that she has given me.
I didn’t manage to save anything from the fire. Not my computer, my writing, my money. Not Tyler. But I had the photos. The ones I’d kept for my sister. The ones I’d planned to throw in her face before I left for good. Again. They’re still there, in my bucket of a purse. Marie’s past, all jumbled up with mine. Deeply personal. Absolutely irreplaceable.
And I’m going to find them.
They’re going to be hidden in that old shoebox. I’m going to show them to David. I’m going to express my great shock and consternation.
She gave them to me, years ago, I’m going to tell him. I’d put them up in the house when I moved in. I…they should have burned down with everything else. How in the hell did they end up in here? David…Well, no, maybe not David. David knows me too well. Gary. Gary, you don’t think that Marie…
Gary. You can’t think that Marie…!
The box was on the set of shelves on the far wall. Third one up. Right at my eye level. I shine the phone light there. I’m imagining Cousin Gary’s blank face as I tell him the tale. I hear him sigh and say we’d better take a look.
There’s one problem. My hand freezes, and the light shakes.
There’s no box. There’s a hole—a dark gap where the old shoebox used to be.
I stand there for a long time staring at it. I will myself to move my phone, shining its bluish light so I can search the nearby shelves. Maybe I moved it. Accidentally put it back in the wrong spot. Maybe Tyler did. I was a little distracted at the time. I could have. He could have.
But we didn’t. It’s gone.
So that’s that. That is fucking well that. My sister was one move ahead the whole time. Stupid Geraldine. Slow Geraldine. Can’t even get her revenge right. Can’t even…can’t even…
I’m sorry, Tyler. I’m so sorry.
But it’s pointless, because it can’t change anything. It never could.
I consider trashing the place. I could. Smash everything to bits. It is, after all, what I do. I know it would feel good. But eventually I’d run out of things to break and nothing would be changed. Like always.
I climb the stairs because I don’t know what else to do, with my bag full of useless evidence and my ruined plans. I’ve lost. I’ve been outsmarted by my sister, used by my father. I’m nothing but the wicked sister at the end of the story. Come, give me my punishment. Put me in a barrel full of nails and roll me downhill. Send your birds to peck out my eyes. Put on the red-hot iron shoes. I’m ready. I’m done.
Somebody just fucking kill me. I lean against the wall. Please.
My phone buzzes. I have it out and in my hand, and hope is clawing at my insides before I remember it can’t possibly be Tyler, because Tyler is dead.
I blink back the tears I didn’t even feel form and stare at the screen. It tells me I have one missed call. I thumb the buttons so I can see who it was.
It’s not Tyler. But it is Angela. His sister called while I was in the basement. I hesitate. How can I talk to her? What can I tell her? There’s nothing.
But while I’m staring, the phone rings. I jump and almost drop it.
Angela. The screen lights up to display her name. She’s calling again. Right now.
My fingers move to turn it off, but I stop, because I’ve got that much sympathy left. I deserve my pain, but she doesn’t. I can do this much for her before…
Before.
I hold the phone to my ear with one shaking hand. “Hello?”
“Geraldine?”
“Yeah, Angie. It’s me.” We’ve met a couple of times. Talked some on the phone when she called Tyler, for his birthday, for Christmas. I liked her. I wanted to be friends.
“Oh my God, Geraldine. I’ve been trying to…I just…”
“I’m so sorry, Angie. I…I’m so sorry.”
“What happened? I…this guy, a cop, whatever, he wouldn’t tell me anything. He just? Shit. Hang on.” She’s saying something rapidly, maybe in Spanish, to somebody else. “I’m at LAX now. I’m trying to get a flight. Please. Talk to me.”
She means about Tyler. I have to talk to her about Tyler. What can I possibly say? “We haven’t got all the details—”
She cuts me off. “Did you guys have a fight?”
“Yeah. We had a fight. And I thought he’d left. I thought…” Those tears are falling now, trickling down the sides of my face. They run down the groove that is my scar and sting my dry lips.
Angie doesn’t make me struggle any further. “He called me,” she says.
“Wh…what?”
“He called me. It must have been right before…before it happened. He was really wasted. He told me you’d broken up again. He told me he wasn’t done. He understood everything.”
Tyler you stupid, sloppy drunk.
“He said you didn’t mean it. He’d met your dad and he knew—”
“Wait. Wait.” I press my hand against my eyes. “Stop. Tyler said he met my dad?”
“That’s what he told me. He said your dad was just like a high-class version of ours.” She pauses. “He…told you about Pop, right?”
“A little.”
“Yeah. Well, he said it wasn’t your fault. He…anyway, I thought you should know that.”
“Yeah.”
She hesitates. She’s registering that something’s wrong, but she’s not sure what to ask. “Shit,” she says. “They’re calling my flight. I’m on my way. We’ll…figure out what to do when I get in, okay? Can somebody pick me up? I’ll text you all the info.”
I say yeah. I hang up. I stare at the ruin where my old house used to be. I clutch my purse strap and breathe in the smoke and ash.
I remember.
I realize.
There’s only one possible way Tyler could have met my father. Only one moment unaccounted for. That’s if Dad came to the old house and found Tyler there, waiting for me to come home.
A loose end. A picture that did not fit the frame.
Dad found Tyler. Not Marie.
I turn toward the road and the hill and I run.
“King, what art thou doing now? Sleepest thou or wakest thou?”
—“The Three Little Men in the Wood” from Kinder und
Hausmärchen Vol. 1, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812
MARIE, NINETEEN YEARS OLD
STACEY B’S SANDWICHES AND STUFF
1.
This was, quite literally, the night they had both been waiting for.
For Dad, it was a business dinner with his first major client.
For Marie, it was something quite different, but her own quiet plans very neatly intersected with her father’s.
The client was Teddy Ford, of the car-company Fords, not the political Fords. Marie had arranged for a private dining room at the yacht club. She’d coordinated with the chef to make sure all Mr. Ford’s favorites would be available. She’d even explained to the manager how vital the evening was and he assured her they’d have a team of experienced, and pretty, servers. The two hundred dollars she gave him to help ensure that everything went smoothly came out of her own savings.
She made sure that Geraldine and Mom would both be out of the house.
Once they left, she spent hours on her hair and makeup, so she’d be just exactly what Dad needed.
Men appreciate a graceful figure at the table, he told her. It’s not politically correct to say so, but it’s true. It helps set the stage. I can count on you, right, Marie?
Of course, Dad, she answered. What else was she going to say?
During dinner, Marie sat at the foot of the table and made her best small talk. Mrs. Ford had not been invited. Mr. Ford was very appreciative, just like Dad predicted, but thankfully kept his hands mostly to himself. One less thing to deal with, Marie thought, but she carefully kept that thought from dimming her smile or making her questions lag.
She left the table after one cup of post-dinner coffee. “I’m taking some summer courses and I need to study,” she said, and Dad gave a tiny nod, approving the little social excuse. It was time for him to get down to business. She was not needed anymore.
Besides, she had other things to do.
Despite what she had told Geraldine, Marie did not really expect Dad to bring Mr. Ford back to their house. Dad cultivated a certain image for his clients, and this little old house didn’t fit with it. He needed to be seen on a grander stage. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t make things comfortable for when Dad did come home. It was all in the details. Like putting Duke Ellington on the stereo and fixing a glass of good Scotch.
She took her time making sure his drink was just right. But even when she was certain she had everything perfectly arranged, Marie couldn’t make herself sit still. She circled the room, straightening and adjusting and inspecting. Be patient, she told herself. You’ve waited two years. You can wait another half hour.
Two years ago, Dad had come up to the Rose House to save her from Aunt Trish, and Geraldine, in a way. She had stood at the top of the steps, watching her sister fall, watching her blood spill onto the snow. Dad had gathered her up, so tenderly, and held her so tightly, not caring that the blood got all over his jacket and his hands. He had his daughters close again, and he would never let them go.
It was in that moment that Marie understood what she would have to do. The understanding had never once wavered, and tonight those two years of planning and waiting would come to their conclusion.
But despite her certainties, she still couldn’t calm down. The sound of every passing car made her cringe. The rain had started up again. She could hear it patter on the roof, and it felt like each drop was tapping on her skull.
Where is he?
It was eleven now. She’d only asked Geraldine to keep Mom away until midnight. She sank into the creaking armchair and gripped her hands together in front of her. What if they came back before Dad did?
When she heard the door slam outside, Marie literally jumped to her feet.
What if it’s them? She faced the door, heart hammering. What do I do?
The door opened. Marie felt like she was going to scream. But it was Dad who walked in, and he was beaming.
“Well?” she asked, too loud and too high. She could only hope he’d mistake that for enthusiasm. “How’d it go?”
Dad didn’t answer right way. Instead, he settled onto the sofa and stretched his arms out across the back. “We got it.”
“I knew you would!” Marie turned away, biting her lips to try to get herself under control. “Drink to celebrate?”
She handed him the glass of Scotch she had all ready. Dad took it easily and leaned back.
“Aren’t you going to have one?”
Marie felt herself hesitate. That was a mistake. She should have been pouring the second drink right as he walked in. That would have looked better, more relaxed. She couldn’t neglect those details. It looked strange to only have the one ready.
Dad laughed at her. “Oh, come on, Marie. I know you’re only nineteen, but it’s okay. Your father says so.” He hoisted his own glass toward her and took a swallow. “You should learn to drink, you know. The right way. Not like your mother. Don’t worry,” he added patiently. “I’ll help you. Just a little to start with, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, because what else could she do. Dad leaned forward so his elbows were on his knees and watched while she poured Scotch into a second tumbler. When she had about two fingers, he lifted his hand.
“That’s plenty to start.”
She sat in the armchair with her drink. Dad smiled and lifted his own glass in another toast. He drank and watched her over the rim. Marie looked at the liquor and sipped.
He wants me to learn to drink the right way. He said so, she told herself. That’s the only reason he’s watching so close.
But that didn’t stop her from running down the mental tally of her appearance. Hair. Face. Clothes. It was all still perfect. There was nothing strange or out of place. She sat back in the chair, not on the edge. She held the glass in only one hand instead of clutching it in both. After all, she was relaxed. Everything was exactly as it should be. She was sharing a sophisticated drink with her father, to help him celebrate.
