Killer's Cousin

  I blinked, interested. I raised an eyebrow at my father, but my mother was looking at Frank in ill-concealed dismay. “Thank you,” she said hastily. “But as my husband says, we’re working on something else.”

  My mother was unsure about Frank. In particular, she didn’t care for his solution to my hairstyling problem. I had let Frank loose with scissors and an electric razor that day. My parents had arrived later to find me just as bald as he was.

  “It will all grow back, won’t it?” my mother had asked urgently, unnecessarily. After all, my scalp had not burned, only my hair. It was my back that would need a skin graft.

  “But it’s not so bad, on the whole,” the specialist had said, changing the dressing. “You were very lucky, young man.”

  I was lucky in another way, too. Nearly all the reporters had finally given up; moved on to other, more important, stories. But the day after the fire, there had been cover stories in all the local papers. The stories, my father told me, had featured still photos taken from a video that a neighbor shot. The video itself had made both the local and national news. I had seen none of it, and I didn’t want to. I’d heard enough from the nurses, the doctors. Everybody seemed to think I was a hero. It was more pleasant than the previous year’s tide of hate, but just as wrongheaded, just as misinformed.

  I closed my eyes just for a moment. My mother noticed and leapt to rush everybody out of the room. I needed peace, she said. I needed to rest. They’d be back later.

  I was tired. But even so I didn’t much like being alone. I couldn’t stop thinking, worrying, about Lily. I didn’t want to. We weren’t finished, Lily and I.

  I wondered what Kathy would think about what had happened. I wondered if this was the kind of help for Lily she’d had in mind. I wondered what the psychiatrists would make of Lily, and she of them. I wondered and I worried.

  The next morning I asked once more to see Lily, and once more my parents exchanged glances, and told me I would have to wait. I said then, bluntly, “Has Lily asked to see me?”

  “Yes,” said my father after a moment.

  “What’s the problem, then? Is it Julia? Vic?”

  My father sighed. “You have to give Julia time, David.”

  “I’m not interested in Julia!” I snapped. “Or Vic. I’m interested in Lily. Don’t you see—”

  “It’s not our decision,” my mother said. “It’s Vic and Julia’s. Please understand, David, there’s nothing we can do.”

  “I saved Lily’s life—”

  “There’s nothing we can do.” They said it together, almost in sync, and then glanced at each other, embarrassed.

  I shut up. But I brooded. And later that afternoon, I talked to Frank. I had to talk to someone, or burst.

  “So you just want to speak with her?” he said at the end.

  “Yeah. I know it would help her. I just know.” I paused. “And it would help me, too. It’s just … it’s important.”

  Frank leaned forward in his chair, steepling his hands. “What if I could sneak in to her?” he said. “With a message?”

  I stared at him. My mind whirred. I imagined there’d be tight security on the psychiatric ward—but Frank had, after all, gotten past my father’s hired guard.

  “What do you have in mind?” I asked.

  “I’ll think of something. Trust me.” He shrugged. “What’s the worst they can do? Throw me out? I’m out already.” He was utterly calm. I thought how much I liked him.

  “Well?” said Frank. “Should we do it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He was intent. “Okay. I’ll try tonight. What should I tell her if I get in?”

  “Tell her … say …” I paused to gather my thoughts.

  On the night I told my father about Lily, he had given me the reaction of a reasonable, logical person. I knew the psychiatrists would be the same. Lily would have told them she was responsible for Kathy’s death. But who would believe that a seven-year-old girl could actually commit murder? Far easier, far more sensible, to think that she had imagined it out of guilt and fear. Yes, the psychiatrists would tell Lily that she had made up a story.

  The point was … the point was it didn’t matter. To Lily it was one and the same. She needed to be believed.

  I did believe her. Possibly no one else ever would.

  “Tell Lily,” I said to Frank, “that I believe her.”

  “That’s it?” said Frank.

  “Yes.” I hesitated. “Frank?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He ducked his head. Its bald pate gleamed under the fluorescent lights. “It’ll be fun.” He paused, and then said, “One more thing.” He reached into his backpack, pulled out a manila envelope, and tossed it on my bed. “This is for you,” he said, and left.

  Something from school, from Dr. Walpole? I opened the envelope, and pulled out a small drawing in charcoal and red ink. Caught my breath. I recognized the artist immediately: Raina. And the subject: my face.

  The drawing blurred before my eyes. I had a sudden vivid memory of her other drawing of me; the one I’d destroyed. I could see the mouth in that one, as it gasped for breath at the bottom of the dish of water.

  I couldn’t stand to look closely at this one. Not right away. I shoved it back into the envelope and threw it into my bedside drawer. I wondered if Raina had found Frank, or he her. I wondered if I wanted to see Raina. I thought so.

  But not yet.

  I waited up all night for Frank, but he didn’t come and he didn’t call, and I had no message from Lily.

  CHAPTER 36

  The next morning, my parents bounced in. My mother was glowing. “We signed the sublease.” She smiled warmly at me. “It’s a wonderful place, David—three bedrooms, furnished, overlooks the Charles. It belongs to a couple of professors on sabbatical. You can walk to school. I can’t wait!”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “We’re moving up here for the rest of the year,” said my father calmly. “Your mother got six months’ leave of absence from the library. I had most of my cases reassigned, though I’ll still keep my eye on a few from up here. And I’ll need to fly back down to D.C. for a few court dates.”

  “I’m going to take some courses at Harvard Extension,” announced my mother. “I’ve got my eye on one—”

  “Wait,” I said to my parents. I needed to make sure I understood. “You’re moving up here to …”

  “To be with you,” said my mother. “While you finish out the school year. Isn’t it exciting? We’ll be a family again.” Her voice faltered then. “David?”

  I felt … I didn’t know what I felt. For the flicker of an instant it was August again, and I was alone, sweatily trudging upstairs to the Shaughnessy attic with armloads of stuff. I could almost see the attic apartment, Lily seated on the floor in its very center. I should live here, she had said then. Instead—perhaps because of me—she had selected it to die in.

  They were looking at me, and my father was wearing one of his courtroom faces: still, watchful. I looked back. Did my parents think we could simply erase the past few months? That, here in another city, we could be who we’d been before? That, magically, I would again be the Davey they’d once loved?

  There was still Emily. There was always Emily.

  My silence had gone on too long. My mother turned abruptly and left the room. My father walked to the window so that I had an excellent view of his back. He said then, “I suppose we should have asked you first.”

  “Yes,” I managed finally.

  “I—” He stopped. “I take it then that you don’t think this is a good idea.”

  I cleared my throat. “I don’t know …” I couldn’t go on.

  “We could cancel the lease,” said my father’s back. “You could live with Frank, if that’s what you want.”

  “Give me a minute!” I burst out. “Can you please just give me a minute!”

  He did. The minute elongated. I blink
ed hard. I tried to gather my thoughts.

  As if my silence were puppet strings pulling on him, my father turned. His hands dangled. His shoulders were braced.

  In a way it was like looking at that sheet of fire before I ran through it with Lily. I had come to Cambridge on my parents’ assurance that it was the right thing to do. I had to say what I thought. What was true. Even if it hurt them. Even if it hurt me.

  “If we’re a family again,” I said slowly, “you have to understand … it won’t—it can’t—be like before. I’m not the David you used to know.”

  I was silent for even longer then, and he let me be. Finally I found words. “I killed my girlfriend, my lover,” I said to my father. “I live with that now. I will always live with it. I choose to live with it, because otherwise—otherwise I would have to die.”

  Lily had taught me that truth. Her truth. And I would now try to teach her mine. Your punishment is to live with it.

  Perhaps shared, the burden would grow easier. Perhaps, up ahead, I’d find ways to atone. Strangely, I had hope for that now. Somehow, Lily—saving Lily—had given me hope. Lily needed me. And I needed her.

  To heal. If we could.

  What my father needed to understand, however, was that there was no going back. That I no longer had the guarantees of a regular, “normal” future. That I didn’t even want them. Not anymore.

  I looked at him now, straight on. My father’s eyes held guarded nightmares. They were the eyes from the famous photograph. He said heavily, “I know that’s how you feel. But I don’t want it to be that way for you.”

  “I know,” I said to him. “You and Mom both. But please see. For it to be any other way—for me—would be wrong.”

  He held my eyes. He was silent.

  I said, “I am someone different from the son you planned and hoped for. I don’t know yet who that is.” And then I was the one who had to look away. I swallowed. “I can’t change Emily’s death. But there will be things—I hope there will be things—that you can be proud of. One day. They just … they won’t be the ones you wanted. Before.”

  I said the last thing then. It was a gift to him. I had said it under oath, but never had I said it directly to my father. Even though I knew he needed to hear it.

  I said: “Dad. Before. I never hit Emily. I never laid a hand on her that wasn’t—” I stopped and then continued. “—that wasn’t in love. I swear to you. I swear it.”

  He put his hands on my shoulders, and I winced as the burns flared with new pain. My father snatched his hands away as if they too were on fire. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked. “Why did you only say it on the stand—only when you had to?”

  I said, “I wanted you to know without asking.”

  We looked at each other.

  “I’m sorry,” said my father. He sounded exhausted. “I’m not … I’m not built like that.”

  I nodded. He was a criminal lawyer. Somewhere in me I knew that I was still disappointed, would always be disappointed. But it was time to let that go. “No,” I said. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I was being a child.”

  “You are my child,” said my father.

  We were quiet.

  “Why did Greg lie?” asked my father, finally. I flinched, even though I knew it was not because he doubted me. It was because he wanted every thread tied.

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said. “I have guesses, but I will never know.” I looked at him then. “I loved him once, too,” I said, with difficulty. “He was my best friend. That last year, he really was doing a lot of coke. I was occupied with Emily; I wasn’t paying much attention to him. I don’t know if …” I stopped. “I don’t know,” I said again, more strongly. “By the end, I didn’t know Greg. I didn’t know him at all.”

  There was silence. I waited until my father chose to speak—and had a glimpse, then, of how it had been for him, waiting for me. But after a minute or two he said, quietly, “I am proud of you, David. Not someday. I’m proud of you right now.”

  He swallowed audibly. “When I woke up the other night at the Hyatt, and you weren’t there … when I saw your note … and then the phone rang, and it was the police … when I got to the hospital … and Julia, Vic …” His voice broke completely, and I realized I hadn’t thought to ask for the story of the night of the fire from his point of view.

  “I have that video,” my father went on. “I’ve watched it a dozen times. And every time I think how you almost died. I wasn’t there; I didn’t help; we put you there, in danger. I didn’t understand what you told me about Lily. I can’t … I can’t …”

  He sat down in the chair that my mother had vacated. He held his face in his hands. His shoulders heaved. And then he looked right up at me, and he said clearly, “They had to sedate Lily to get her away from you that night. After you fainted; when you were in the ambulance. I wish I could arrange for you to see her. There’s nothing I …”

  I stared at him.

  “You’re right,” said my father. “You’re not … you’re no longer who you were. And you’re not the son I thought you were going to be. But I don’t care. I barely remember who that was. That boy—that man—wasn’t real. You are.

  “I couldn’t be prouder,” said my father. “David. I simply couldn’t be.”

  My father took off his glasses, wiped them clean, and put them back on. He began to wander the room. “I was looking forward to living here for a while. I haven’t since law school, you know. And your mother wants to take a course at Harvard Extension: ‘Deciphering Ancient Maya Hieroglyphs.’”

  At last I knew what I felt. Warm. Like I’d been propped on pillows and wrapped in a blanket. “I wouldn’t want her to miss that,” I said. “Uh … did you want to take it too?”

  “No, something else caught my eye,” said my father.

  “What?”

  “Beginning saxophone.” We looked at each other and I knew that, at least for the moment, I understood him and he understood me. Maybe one day I’d think it was worth what had happened to me to get to this place.

  It would never be worth Emily’s death.

  I found my voice. “Welcome to Cambridge, Dad.”

  My father’s face went very still. “We should have come in August,” he said. “With you.”

  I said, “I don’t know. But I’m glad—”

  “Yes,” said my father. And then, after another whole minute, he went off to find my mother.

  CHAPTER 37

  I awoke suddenly. There was a flashlight shining directly into my face. Then it snapped off and a voice grunted, “It’s Frank.”

  “What took you—”

  His hand clamped down over my mouth. “Shhh! This place is packed with professional paranoids who think everything is their business.”

  My bedside clock said 2:05. Careful of my back, I eased myself up to sit on the edge of the bed. Frank had cupped the flashlight in his palm so that there was only the faintest light inside the room, but more filtered in from around the edges of the door, which he had left slightly ajar. Next to him in the dimness there was a wheelchair, and in that wheelchair …

  “Lily,” I whispered. I didn’t think; I opened my arms. There was a squeak from the wheels as Lily hurtled out of the chair and landed against me, hard. Her hands scrabbled directly on top of the dressings. It hurt horribly and I barely noticed. “Hey,” I said. She was shaking but not crying. Not my Lily. I held her with one arm and stroked her hair with the other. Even in the fire, she had not held me so fiercely. “Hey,” I said. “I’m here.”

  Her voice was muffled. “Don’t go away.”

  “I won’t,” I said, and I thought of Boston University, just across the river.

  We were quiet then, my cousin and I, in the almost-dark.

  After a bit I looked over Lily’s head toward Frank. He was peering out into the corridor. “All the other patient doors are wide open,” he said matter-of-factly. “Eventually someone’s going to want to look in here. Plus, I th
ink we’ve got about fifteen minutes before I have to get Lily back up to her bed. I’m taking advantage of a shift change upstairs.”

  In the stronger light by the door, I could see that Frank was wearing a green smock with a badge on it. And—

  “What’s that on your head?” I asked. “A squirrel?”

  “I think I’m very attractive as a blond. The woman in personnel hired me this morning.” Frank’s teeth gleamed. “I’m an orderly. They were desperate. Nobody wants to work the night shift.”

  An amazing guy, Frank. “Thanks,” I said, inadequately. “Thanks.”

  He nodded. “I’ll be back in fifteen.” He slipped out into the hospital corridor.

  In my arms I could feel Lily’s weight. Fifteen minutes.

  “I asked for you,” Lily whispered.

  “I asked for you.” I paused. “What have you told them?”

  She sighed, and I felt it against my skin. “It’s bad, isn’t it?” I said.

  “They don’t believe me. About Kathy. You know.”

  I knew. I hugged her, but at that moment it wasn’t the right thing to do and she stiffened. I loosened my arms and she settled down, but I could feel the caution in her. This was still Lily.

  She said, as she had in the attic, “David, please tell me—how do you feel? Now? Every day?”

  I drew in a breath. And then I told her, articulating it aloud for the very first time. “I think of it as an abyss. Before, you’re standing on one side of it, with everyone else—and you don’t even see it. And then, after, you’re on the other side.

  “And it doesn’t matter,” I said with difficulty. “It doesn’t matter how you got there, or whether you never meant to do anything so horrible. What’s true every day is that you are on the other side. Alone. Knowing—”

  “That you could do it again,” finished Lily softly. “That it’s possible.”

  Anyone in this world can have the power of life and death over someone else. It’s horrible, but true. All you need do is take it. And once you have—there is no going back.

  “Yes,” I said to Lily. “It’s always possible now. For us.”

  We were silent. Then Lily said starkly. “How can I be sure I won’t do it again someday? Now that I know I can?”