Through the Heart (34 page)

“Aren’t you supposed to be able to figure it out from evidence?” I asked the detective

The day before she had demonstrated her willingness to explain the philosophy behind separating witnesses before talking to them, and now she explained to me the problem with the evidence in this situation. She said that the scene had been compromised by so many people entering the room. Tammy and I had gone in. Then Nora’s mother had gone in, and apparently Neil had gone in to get Nora’s mother out. Not only that, the trace evidence was complicated by the fact that it was a hotel room: so many people had passed through it.

I went back over to the table and sat down. “How can I help?” I asked.

And she told me how. She told me about victimology and how the best help they could get would be from the clearest and most detailed picture of the victim’s life. That was the only way they could get insight into possible motives. For that, they had to rely on the people close to the victim. And I had pieces of the story that no one else had.

I said I had given them everything I knew.

The detective told me I had given them facts, but they needed more than just facts. They needed feelings, my impressions. She said that no thought was too insignificant.

I thought about what she said. And I knew she was right. So I sent my lawyer home. And I told them my story. This story.

But the story I told them wasn’t complete. First of all, it was missing Nora’s side. I wished more than anything I had that. It really was only half a story without it.

And, for my half, there was one more piece of the story yet to come.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t hide anything when I talked to the detectives; I told them the whole truth.

It’s a powerful thing to tell the truth. To truly tell everything. I don’t know if they believed me, but when it was finally time for me to go, they all stood and shook my hand. The woman detective thanked me for my help and asked me if there was anything they could do for me.

I said yes.

Even though things had gone well when I had seen my family the night before, I didn’t want to test my luck. So I asked them to help me get back into my room without seeing anyone. And they did. They took me out of the station the back way, and they got an officer to take me in an unmarked car. He went inside the bed-and-breakfast and came back out to let me know the coast was clear.

I managed to get inside and up the stairs, and I was just opening the door to my room and about to slip in when I got caught.

It was Nora’s sister. She must have been sitting in her room with the door cracked open, watching for me.

She said urgently, “I need to talk to you.”

“Now’s not a good time.” And I stepped into my room and tried to close the door, but she put her foot in the gap.

“Timothy, I have something to tell you.”

I could have managed to shut the door on her, but something in her voice stopped me. “Come in then.”

She came in. I shut the door behind her and locked it.

She crossed to the chair by the window—the chair where two nights ago Nora had sat when she told me she loved me.

I took a seat on the edge of the bed.

Deirdre glanced at me once, quickly; then she looked away. And she didn’t look at me again.

She stared down at her lap, her fingers so tightly twined they were white and bloodless at the knuckles and bright red at the tips.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you. I wanted to tell you . . . I haven’t said anything to the police yet . . . I’m supposed to go for an interview tomorrow, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t have anyone else to talk to. Tammy always hated me, and I think that Neil, Nora’s boss, does too . . .”

She was disjointed, not making any sense. I said, “Okay, slow down. What haven’t you told the police?”

“I think it might be my fault. I don’t know for sure, but I think if I’d told Nora the truth this wouldn’t have happened.”

My heart sped up, but everything else seemed to slow down. I heard my own voice say calmly, “What do you mean, the truth? What truth?”

Deirdre took a deep breath, and I saw her clasp her fingers even tighter.

She said, very slowly and deliberately, “My sister gave up her life, and I let her do it.”

“Gave up her life? What do you mean, she gave up her life? Are you saying she wasn’t killed? That
she
did it?”

“No, I’m not talking about that. I didn’t mean her
life
. I meant three years ago . . . three years ago when she moved home to take care of my mother.”

“That didn’t have anything to do with you,” I said. “That was her choice.”

“I’d love it if that were true,” Deirdre replied quietly. “But how can you make a real choice when you don’t know the truth?”

“What was the truth?” I asked.

Deirdre’s lips were trembling.

“The truth . . . the truth is my mother isn’t sick. My mother was never sick.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, even though her words were very clear.

She tried again. “My mother lied about being sick to get my sister to come home.”

“Are you sure? How do you know?”

She made a little movement with her head. “I just knew. I don’t know how Nora didn’t see it. It was so obvious to me.”

“How could something like that be obvious?” I asked. “If someone tells you they’re sick, tells you they have cancer, you believe them.”

“I know. I can see how you’d think that. But you’d have to know our mother. I don’t believe anything she says. And there were other things. The timing of it was one. She got sick right after Dan, Nora’s fiancé, broke up with her. Before they broke up, Nora came home all the time. And it looked pretty certain she would move back to town after she graduated. But then Dan broke up with her, and she not only didn’t have a reason to come back, she had a reason to stay away. And then, suddenly, our mother gets sick? It didn’t feel right. And then after Nora moved home, our mother wouldn’t let her go with her into the hospital. She made her wait in the parking lot. Nora never met her doctors. She wasn’t allowed. Who does something like that?”

“That’s all just suppositions,” I said. “How can you know for sure? ”

“I checked. Of course I checked. I called the hospital where my mother was supposedly getting chemo, and they didn’t have any record of her. They told me that no one by that name had ever gotten treatment at their hospital.”

“So you knew all this, and you didn’t tell Nora?”

Deirdre didn’t exactly answer my question. She said, “I thought for sure that she would start to suspect something.”

“But she didn’t,” I said.

“No. She didn’t.”

“And you didn’t say anything.”

“No.” Deirdre still didn’t look up. She seemed to be staring at my feet, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing anything—she was looking inside, and as I watched, I saw her face twist with disgust. She didn’t like the view. I felt a flash of pity. I knew that landscape. I had traversed it the night before.

Her voice dropped so low I had to strain to hear her when she said, “There was a part of me that was happy about it when she moved back. I was jealous of her. I was jealous of how well she was doing. I hadn’t even finished college, and she was in grad school at Chicago. I was happy that finally she seemed to be having a hard time. Finally. I was the one who had the hard time growing up. I was the older one. I took the brunt of everything. My mother took it all out on me. I was the one who got punished, even when it was Nora who’d been the one to do something wrong.”

I had a flash of memory: a story Nora had told me about her mother locking Deirdre in the closet to punish Nora.

Deirdre went on: “It felt good that Nora should suffer like I had. I know it sounds awful. But that’s how I felt. I felt like it was a kind of justice. But then it went on so long . . . and I knew it wasn’t fair. I was going to say something, I really was . . . but then my husband left, and I was in a bad way with the kids. I needed some money to keep my apartment. I swear, I needed it. Without it we would have been out on the street. I asked Nora, but she didn’t have it because she was supporting mom. So I confronted my mother. I said if she gave me the money, I promised I wouldn’t tell Nora the truth. She gave me the money—and more when I needed it. But then you came along . . .”

“And Nora came with me to New York,” I said.

“It was okay for a while. My mother was sure you’d leave Nora, and then Nora would come back home . . . but then you proposed.”

I said, “I would think your mother would have been happy for Nora.”

“How can you be happy for someone else if you’re miserable? If you’ve been that miserable for so long? When you’re that unhappy, that’s all there is for you. Seeing other people happy . . . it just makes your unhappiness worse. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, but it’s the way that it is.”

She paused, then asked me, “Did Nora tell you what happened at the rehearsal dinner?”

“No, she didn’t say anything. Something happened?”

“Our mother ambushed Nora in the bathroom and told Nora she was dying. She said Nora had to come home and take care of her. I thought she might pull a stunt like that, so I warned her that if she tried anything, I was going to tell Nora the truth. But she did it anyway. I don’t know what she was thinking. I don’t know how she thought it was going to work out. Obviously, she
wasn’t
thinking. I had no idea how far gone she was.”

“What did Nora say when your mother told her that?” I asked. I didn’t realize until I spoke that the anxiety would come through in my voice.

“Nora told her no. Nora chose you.”

It should have made me feel good. But it was a pleasure that was intense anguish at the same time. What else could I feel when I discovered all over again how much I had lost?

Deirdre went on. “I was trying to talk to Nora. I was trying to tell her . . . but I didn’t get a chance, and I figured there was time. I thought there was plenty of time . . .” She started to cry. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know if my mother did . . . did this thing. I tried to talk to her, but . . .” Deirdre wiped her nose on her sleeve, took a shuddering breath, and went on, “I don’t know if my mother is pretending or if she’s really crazy. She says that it’s your fault. That you did it. She says that Nora changed her mind and told you she was moving back to Kansas and that you couldn’t take it. I don’t know what to believe. I think I know, but there’s still a part of me . . . She’s my mother. But I know . . . I don’t think . . . I wanted to ask you . . . Did you do it?”

“No,” I said.

She lifted a hand to her face and covered her eyes, as if by covering her eyes she could take away sight and knowledge.

“I don’t know. I don’t know who to believe . . .” She stopped talking then because she was crying so hard.

I knew Nora would have tried to comfort her. But Nora wasn’t there.

We sat there for a long time. I listened to Deirdre cry, but all I could think about was my own pain. I wondered how it could hurt so much. How long could I sit there and take it?

The answer was, not very long. I couldn’t just sit there and take it. I had to do something.

I stood up and asked Deirdre, “What room is your mother in?”

She looked up at me. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to ask her myself.”