“So awful,” she finally says. “Really awful.”
Another few minutes pass in silence. Then my sister shivers, as if she’s trying to clear all the images out of her mind. She looks up and our eyes meet.
“It wasn’t your fault, Elena.”
“I went into her home,” I say roughly. “Something about the way I looked or the way I was acting frightened her. When I realized she was dead, I didn’t call for help. I didn’t notify the police or call an ambulance. I hightailed it out of there.”
My sister doesn’t respond right away, and I look off, staring at one of the tea-light flames until my field of vision warps and fills with strange colors.
For several days, I’d waited for the police to come storming in at any moment. I was sure they would have formed suspicions and detected evidence or fingerprints, or that someone in the neighborhood had seen a strange woman running from the house. But nothing happened. Then I saw the death announcement in the newspaper, and it said that Anna had been torn away from friends and family, shockingly and tragically. Nothing in the short obituary even hinted that there was anyone to blame for what happened. To the contrary. Days turned into weeks without anything happening. And then Peter got in touch.
“It wasn’t your fault,” my sister repeats. “You had a shock and you… But it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. Peter said the same thing, didn’t he? Of all people, he certainly ought to know.”
I blink. His words are still ringing in my ears: She died, Elena. She’s dead. That’s what’s happened. It was an accident, a sheer accident.
The truth is that it wasn’t up to me, my sister, or Peter to decide whether it was my mistake or not, my fault or not. But I don’t say that out loud.
Not long after that, we call it a night. We’re both exhausted, but my sister insists on spending the night, offering to sleep on the floor next to my bed. I protest weakly, saying that I’m used to being alone and that she doesn’t need to stay for my sake. She strokes my cheek.
“Did you hear what I said before? From now on, you don’t need to be alone anymore.”
While I’m in the bathroom brushing my teeth, I hear her through the wall, talking to Walter and saying that she won’t be home until the morning. Her voice is mild, and before they hang up, I hear her say, “I love you, too.” Apparently love that lasts does exist; long-term relationships can work. It’s nice to know. When I got it into my head that something wasn’t right between my sister and her husband, I was probably just projecting my own experiences, just like with Philip and Veronica. I see that now.
I set down my toothbrush and look at myself in the bathroom mirror. Even though I see the part I played in what happened, some pieces of the story are still missing. There is only one person who can help me put them into place. I’ll talk to him tomorrow.
50
When my sister wakes me, it’s already late morning.
“I have to go,” she says. “I have an appointment for a massage with a ruthless physical therapist. I would cancel it, but it would be hell trying to get a new appointment and…”
I wave her on her way. Of course she should go. I can handle things.
“But I’ll call you afterward, OK?”
Even though I nod, she doesn’t budge. I thwack her with my pillow.
“Get going, then.”
“Hey, sleepyhead,” she laughs, heading for the door.
I throw the pillow after her but miss. She sticks her tongue out at me before disappearing down the stairs and, a few minutes later, out the front door. I stretch and realize that I’d slept straight through the whole night for the first time in a long time.
When I make it down to the kitchen, I see that my sister made a pot of tea. I drink a cup and eat some leftovers while I run through what the day might hold in store for me.
At regular intervals, I glance out the window. On one of those occasions, Leo is suddenly just there in the yard. He’s sitting on that blue bench in front of the rhododendron bushes, not doing anything. From what I can see, he doesn’t even have a book with him. He’s just sitting there and drawing patterns on the ground with the tips of his shoes, as if he’s waiting for someone.
A while later, I step out the door and walk over there.
“Can I have a seat?”
He nods and scoots over to make room.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
He says that things are OK and gestures toward my forehead.
“What happened to you?”
I shrug and sit down beside him. The morning sun is shining right on us, and my cheeks feel warm. A minute or maybe two pass.
“Leo,” I say then. “There are a few things I’d like to ask you about. Your mom and I talked for a long time yesterday when we got to the cabin and—”
“I was worried about her. For real! I actually was.”
His voice breaks, and I lightly brush his one knee with my hand.
“No one thinks otherwise, Leo.”
I turn my face to him, but he is still staring straight ahead.
“I want you to know that I didn’t pass on any of what you told me. Neither about her nor—”
“That stuff about the purse,” Leo interrupts heatedly, turning to face me. “That actually happened. She threw it in the water, on purpose. Maybe she thinks I was too little—that I don’t remember. But I do. And she has been acting super weird lately.”
I nod.
“OK. I have a feeling that she’s going to want to talk all that over with you when she comes home. We’ll make sure that happens, pure and simple. You shouldn’t need to go around worrying about your parents. You’re going to have your hands full being…”
I furrow my brow.
“How old are you, anyway?”
“Almost fourteen.”
“OK. You’re going to have your hands full being a hip cat.”
One corner of his mouth curls into a smile, almost unnoticeably.
“Ha! I made you smile.”
I give him a playful shove, and he shoves me back.
“No one says ‘hip cat’ anymore. No one under the age of fifty anyway.”
Then he grows serious again.
“So what exactly did you guys talk about? You and my mom.”
“Well, about you, about the benefits of having an active imagination among other things.”
Leo blushes. Then it comes out. OK, maybe he did exaggerate a little bit, make insinuations, and fictionalize certain events. Like that stuff about the book Getting Away with Murder. He’d only seen that at my place, not at home.
“I really want to understand,” I say. “How did it even occur to you to come up with something like that?”
Leo brushes his bangs off his face.
“I thought you would think it was exciting—more exciting than real life.”
“And why was that important? What does it matter what I think?”
“Well, hello! Don’t you get anything?”
We stare at each other for a few seconds. Then Leo says that he saw me even on my first day, the day my sister helped me move in. He recognized me but hardly dared to believe it was true. A real, live author on the same street, in the house right across from his!
He decided to meet me somehow and try to get to know me, but it took several weeks before he finally got up the courage to ring the doorbell. By then he’d found the interview where I described how I got my ideas and explained that my writing was often based on observations of the people around me.
Leo stops talking and gives me a knowing look.
“Do you mean…,” I begin. But I lose my train of thought and have to start over.
“Do you mean that you exaggerated and made up things about your mother because you… because you thought I would use it as material in a book?”