The Good Sister (12 page)

That might very well happen, someday, when the house has served Angel’s purposes.

But for now, I need to be here, where it all began. And I don’t want them to know I’ve come back.

Still, even for someone who’s never exactly been a “people person,” it’s not always easy spending so much time alone behind drawn shades, confined, after dark, to the two rooms that have lamps set on timers.

Thank you, Sandra Lutz, for that brilliant idea.

Ironically, instead of keeping passersby from realizing the house is empty, the goal is now to prevent the neighbors from seeing that it’s occupied.

Angel never comes and goes through the front door. Luckily, an overgrown evergreen shrub border surrounds the lot, and the back door of the house is completely shielded from neighboring homes. Under cover of darkness, Angel cuts through a rarely used gravel parking area behind the dry cleaner around the corner on Redbud Street.

Inside the house, Angel has learned to make the most of those precious hours when the master bedroom and living room lamps click on, not daring to flip a light switch elsewhere in the house for fear someone out on the street might notice.

That isn’t the only potential risk. Though it can be unbearably hot and stuffy in here during the summer months, the windows must remain closed and locked at all times. But at least there’s heat when it’s cold outside, and hot water. Using online bill pay, Angel keeps up with the utilities and home maintenance services, withdrawing the money directly from Mother’s checking account.

There’s even a working stove and refrigerator. Angel had instructed Sandra Lutz to leave the appliances intact—aside from the old chest freezer in the basement.

“I don’t remember seeing that,” Sandra had said, long distance. “Are you sure it’s still here?”

“Where else would it be?”

“Maybe your mother sold it. Did you know that people use them for makeshift root cellars? They’re airtight and watertight, perfect for keeping out insects and dampness, and I read about a farmer in the Midwest who—”

“This isn’t the Midwest!” Angel snapped, to make it stop.

“Well, your mother must have gotten rid of it somehow, then, before she—”

“What, do you think she carried it up the steps on her back? I don’t want it moved into storage, and I don’t want it left in the house. Do you understand me? I want it disposed of.
Please
.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you.”

Days later, Sandra sent an e-mail saying she’d checked the basement again and the freezer wasn’t there.

I don’t know what to tell you
, she wrote,
except that it’s gone. Your parents must have disposed of it. But I’ve taken care of everything else, and I left the kitchen appliances intact and running.

And so that was that.

Angel was forced to put aside nagging thoughts of the basement freezer, not even certain why it mattered so much anyway. Somewhere back in the dim shadows of memory, there might have been something . . .

But Angel isn’t interested in dredging up any more childhood unpleasantness than is absolutely necessary.

I have enough to deal with as it is. Every time I reread that marble notebook . . .

Angel knows it by heart now—page by page, line by line, word by word of blue ballpoint handwriting.

When this is over—when everything has been made right—I’ll burn it. I’ll burn it, and the house, and I’ll walk away and never look back.

For now, though, for however long it takes, Angel is compelled to stay under this roof, a restless ghost doomed to walk in the shadows, endlessly reliving the tragedies of the past.

Yes, now the old place really is haunted.

And no one in the neighborhood is any the wiser. As far as they’re concerned, it’s deserted.

You could have always gotten your own place—a regular apartment even right here in the neighborhood. No one would ever be the wiser.

But it wouldn’t feel right.

Angel needs to be here again. Here, under this roof, it’s impossible to lose sight of what needs to be accomplished.

There was just one real risk reclaiming the house after Mother died, and that was having wifi installed.

It had to be done. Regular Internet access is crucial to the plan. While it would be easy enough to tap into a neighbor’s unprotected wifi service, that’s far too dangerous. If anyone stumbled across Angel’s online activities . . .

But no one will. The house now has its own password-protected wireless network. Shortly after moving in, Angel ordered it online using Mother’s existing telephone service account, and was taken aback when informed that someone would have to show up here to install the equipment.

The technician, who was in his early sixties, introduced himself as George Berry. He was perfectly pleasant and didn’t give Angel a second glance, though he did comment on the empty house.

“Did you just move in?” he asked, as their footsteps echoed through the empty rooms.

“Yes.”

“It’s a great neighborhood. I’ve lived here for years.”

With that single innocuous comment, the installer sealed his fate, much as the overly chatty Sandra Lutz had sealed hers.

“Really? Where do you live?” Angel asked casually.

“You know that stretch of Denton Road where there are a bunch of ugly little ranch houses that were built in the fifties and sixties? Yeah, that’s where I live. In one of those.”

“Nice.”

“Not really. Not all that nice, and not big enough even for my wife and me. My entire house is less than a thousand square feet, and that includes the attached two-car garage. What I wouldn’t give for a big, beautiful old house like this. You’re lucky, you know that?”

Angel wasn’t so sure about that, but one thing was certain: the technician was most unlucky.

As George Berry worked in the cellar, whistling and setting up the new network, Angel paced the first floor. What if he mentioned to one of the neighbors that the big old house on Lilac Avenue has a new occupant?

I can’t take that chance
.

“Are you going to be here for a while?” Angel called down the stairs.

“At least an hour,” he said, “while I get this panel installed and get the service up and running.”

“I have to run a quick errand. I’ll be back soon.”

George had left his jacket hanging over a doorknob. In the front pocket was a set of keys.

Angel slipped them out and went directly to the hardware store. Not the small mom-and-pop operation just two blocks away, where the elderly owner provides cheerful, hands-on service and proudly declares that he never forgets a customer’s name or face, but the huge superstore just off the thruway exit.

There, a disinterested high school kid duplicated the entire set of keys without once glancing up or uttering anything more than a mumbled “Here you go,” when the job was done.

Less than twenty-four hours later, George Berry and his wife, Arlene, met an untimely death due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

According to the newspaper coverage, one of them had absentmindedly forgotten to turn off the car engine after pulling into the garage and closing the door. Accompanying the article was a sidebar about the domestic hazards of even minor memory loss in the aging population.

No one would ever suspect that someone had slipped into the Berry home in the wee hours with a copied house key. It was a chilly September night; the windows were closed and locked and so was the garage, where a pair of Chevrolets, one a silver Malibu and the other a black Impala, were parked.

The keys to both were conveniently hanging on a hook just inside the kitchen door. With gloved fingers, Angel removed a set, started the Malibu, closed the door, and disappeared out into the night.

At least it was an easy way to go. Much easier than burning alive, or bleeding out.

Much easier than the fate that lies in store for the others.

Angel grins.

Sandra Lutz.

George and Arlene Berry.

Nicki Olivera.

Four down.

Two to go.

A
s they make the painstaking mourners’ crawl up the freshly shoveled sidewalk and through the funeral home’s carpeted foyer and anteroom, Jen occasionally wipes away tears and sees Carley doing the same.

They’re hardly alone in their sorrow. Everyone else, strangers and familiar faces alike, is doing the same thing, punctuating the hush with muffled sniffles and whispered conversation.

But when the line inches forward through the archway into the chapel room, and the shiny white casket comes into view—closed, as Jen had assumed it would be—there is a noticeable shift in the subdued mood immediately surrounding them.

The whispering becomes murmuring, with a few audible “Oh my Gods,” and the trio of teenage girls directly in front of Carley breaks down in tears.

Jen instinctively reaches for her daughter’s hand, only to find that Carley’s fingers, clammy and trembling, are already groping for hers.

“Are you okay?”

Rather than bristling at the latest inane question to escape her mother’s lips, or claiming to be “fine,” a pale Carley gives a slight shake of her head.

“Do you want to go back outside?”

“No. I just . . . I need a second.” She takes a deep breath as if to steel herself for the ordeal ahead.

Jen finds herself wishing that they had waited until tonight’s viewing hours to attend the wake with Thad, who’s planning on coming after work. He’s always a calming presence in a storm, and Carley isn’t the only one who can use his quiet strength right now.

Jen’s father would be the next best thing. She turns to scan the crowd over her shoulder, hoping to see her parents’ faces.

They aren’t there. She notices the middle-aged couple directly behind them watching something and turns to see that they’re staring at Carley as she leans briefly against the back of a wingback chair near the archway. Jen notices, for the first time, that she’s wearing stockings and flat leather loafers instead of sneakers with her school uniform today.

She would have suggested it if she’d thought of it herself. She swallows hard, touched that Carley did it on her own.

“Is she a friend of Nicole’s?” the woman behind Jen asks sympathetically.

“Yes.”

“Poor thing. She looks upset.”

Jen nods. No kidding.

“I used to work as a paralegal in her father’s office, years ago,” the woman goes on. “Terrible tragedy.”

Used to work . . . her father . . . years ago . . .

It takes a moment for Jen’s thoughts, swirling with concern for Carley, to process that.
Her father, her father . . .

Oh. Nicki’s father. Debbie’s husband, Andrew.

Jen doesn’t know him very well. Despite her friendship with Debbie, they don’t socialize as couples. Andrew is a busy attorney, rarely home, and the marriage isn’t the most stable one around. In all those years of playground conversations and carpools, chaperoning class trips and girls nights out, Debbie hasn’t ever gone into much detail about her relationship with her husband, other than to say they live separate lives.

“He does his thing and I do mine,” she’s often said, with a slight shake of her dark head, her eyes betraying not a hint of emotion.

Feeling a touch on her sleeve, Jen turns to see Carley motioning that the line has moved forward again.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jen asks her.

Carley nods, and together, they make their way toward the coffin. A large framed photograph of a grinning Nicki sits on a flower-bedecked pedestal beside it.

The unmistakable sickly-sweet perfume of Stargazer lilies permeates the room, mingling with the stale cigarette smoke and cooking smells wafting from the folds of mourners’ coats. Jen can smell the flowers though she can’t see them, and the distinct scent triggers an unpleasant memory that plays at the edges of her mind.

She refuses to let it in. Not here, especially. Not now.

Not so soon after walking the empty halls of Sacred Sisters, trying to forget . . .

Here, there are flowers, other flowers, everywhere—mostly in chalky shades of white and cream. Standing out among them, Jen spots the large spray of roses she ordered from the neighborhood flower shop.

“Are you sure you want to do hot pink?” the florist had asked over the phone. “We’re mostly doing whites . . .”

“Hot pink,” Jen said firmly. It was Nicki’s favorite color.

She sent the flowers with a card that reads simply,
With Deepest Sympathy, The Archer Family
.

“Is there anything else you want to say?” the florist asked.

Yes. So many other things she wants to say . . .

But none seems appropriate or meaningful enough to write on a card sent with funeral flowers for a fifteen-year-old girl who killed herself.

Positioned by the casket, flanked by her husband and her mother, Debbie Olivera seems to have aged a decade in the couple of weeks since Jen saw her last. The skin around her eyes and mouth is sallow and sunken; her shoulder-length auburn hair is streaked with wiry silver strands.

Ordinarily, she’s a flashy dresser, layering on the jewelry and favoring bright colors like turquoise, coral, and her daughter’s favorite hot pink. Today, she’s subdued and frail in a simple black crepe dress that envelops her slender figure and renders her neck, wrists, and ankles inordinately spindly.

Seeing Jen and Carley, Debbie steps toward them and falls onto them, weeping uncontrollably. Jen can’t find her voice and quickly stops trying, sobbing along with her heartbroken friend and her daughter until Nicki’s father steps in.

“Deb,” he says quietly, “pull yourself together.”

Jen immediately resents the words.

But when she looks up and sees the stark pain in Andrew Olivera’s eyes, she reconsiders.

You don’t judge a grieving parent. Ever.

“I’m so sorry,” she says thickly to Andrew, and to Debbie and her mother, Rosemary, before the trio is enveloped by a fresh cluster of mourners.

Jen looks at Carley. Her daughter appears shaken.

“Let’s say a prayer,” she suggests, and together, they walk over to wait their turn at the kneeler beside the flower-covered casket.