I don’t think about it too much. That’s been my whole MO here since I came back, hasn’t it? Don’t think too much. No reason to start now. My ankle be damned, I leap toward my crutch, which had been leaning on the kitchen counter. I have a split second, if that. I grab the crutch and swing it at the back of Frank’s head and hit him as hard as I can.
The split second, it turns out, wasn’t quite enough. He’d already begun to turn back, and so instead of the back of his head, I catch the side of his face. It doesn’t knock him out like I hoped, but it knocks him over onto the floor. I struggle to my feet and raise the crutch to hit him again, but my balance fails me. I barely have time to catch myself on the table, and the crutch misses its mark by a mile. The table topples over, sending everything on it crashing to the floor.
Frank regains his grip on the gun. I see him raise it but don’t have time to do anything.
The door to one of the bedrooms flies open, and Laura appears on the threshold. Her nose is bloody, and more dried blood is smeared across her forehead.
Frank turns around, cursing, and then—I don’t know how because I can’t see anything from my angle—the gun goes off.
I have time to squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t see it, but I hear the heavy thud of a body collapsing onto the floor.
I scream and cover my face with my hands, convinced that this is it. He shot her, and she’s dead. Laura is gone. The story she never told is now gone forever too—the truth I’d been searching for, which had been right under my nose the whole time.
If only I’d been smart enough to see it. If only I’d been observant enough and attentive enough and empathetic enough to see the clues and clever enough to put them all together, none of this would have happened. And maybe Frank wouldn’t have shot my mother, my only living family, in front of me.
But because I wasn’t any of these things, because I was arrogant and judgmental and willfully blind, it’s all over. Michelle will never get justice, and neither will Laura.
It all depended on me, and I blew it.
Something shatters so loudly that I’m momentarily deafened. When I open my eyes, I don’t dare believe them at first. Laura struggles to get back on her knees. She’s panting, still clutching the lampshade in her hands—all that’s left of the lamp that had been on the floor.
Frank is unconscious in the middle of the kitchen, shards of ceramic all around him, blood seeping from a wound on the back of his head.
Without wasting time, I crawl over and start trying to pry the gun out of his hand.
“No,” Laura says, breathless. “Don’t touch that. Let me.”
I obey. She takes the gun from Frank’s limp hand.
“We should call for help,” I say.
“Yes,” she agrees. Her voice is trembling, as do her hands in which she gingerly holds Frank’s gun. “We definitely should call someone. It’s time to tell the truth.”
THIRTY-THREE
1979
Michelle had gone to bed some time ago, and the night stretches ahead of Laura, interminable. Ever since the incident in her room, you’d think Michelle had been switched for some other child. No more strange pronouncements or insinuations, just a typical kid. She was all right, actually, for a spoiled brat. She ate what Laura made without arguing, then disappeared into her room for a while, and then, at nine, she went obediently to brush her teeth, wash her face, and put on her nightgown—frilly, like everything else Michelle owned.
For the first little while, Laura sat downstairs, her eyes riveted on the staircase. Then, once she couldn’t possibly stare at the same spot for another minute, she began to relax in spite of herself. No sounds came from upstairs, not even a rustle of bedding, which suggested that Michelle had fallen asleep.
Now Laura truly notices the silence that reigns in this place. She’s used to the noises of the mobile home and the mobile park outside the walls: loud radios, people arguing, beer bottles smashing. Her own parents snoring behind the thin wall. Here, it’s dead quiet. A clock ticks somewhere in the distance. Every once in a while, the fridge shudders to life. Outside, she hears only the strongest gusts of wind. It’s eerie, and she wonders if she should turn on the television set but doesn’t dare.
That’s why she hears him coming long before his car pulls up to the front door. She hears the tires on the pavement. Did the Fortiers decide to come back early? A part of her knows it’s not likely the case, and dread sends her running to the window. She pushes aside the heavy velvet curtains and peers out into the dark.
And it’s dark all right. So much darker than the mobile home park. Laura struggles to make out anything past the bewildered reflection of her own face in the clean glass until the beams of headlights slice through all that darkness.
It doesn’t take her long to recognize the car. Pierre-Francois, Pierre Bergmann’s oldest son, who followed his father into the police force.
Her heart skips. She must wipe her sweaty palms on her pants. He shouldn’t be here. What could he possibly be doing here at this time of night? Whatever answers she can come up with spell out bad news for her.
He stops the car. The engine idles then stops, and the silence smothers everything again. In that silence, the sound of him closing the car door is thunderously loud, or maybe it just seems that way to her. Then his steps on the pavement all the way to the front door. He knocks three times.
Laura debates just not opening the door. He can’t know for sure that she’s here, right? Then she mentally kicks herself: Of course he knows she’s here. That’s why he showed up. Tony woke up at the hospital and told everyone all about her. His older brother is here to arrest her.
She wants to crawl under the couch, press her hands over her ears, and just ignore everything in the hope it goes away.
“Open up!” calls out Pierre-Francois’s eerily cheerful voice on the other side of the door. “It’s the police. In the name of the law.”
Laura checks her reflection in the window one more time. She looks guilty—it’s not humanly possible to look guiltier than she does right now. At least that’s what she sees. She tries to look at herself as if through a stranger’s eyes and sees only a frightened young girl with chaotic, frizzy hair and wide eyes that look dark in the reflection. She smooths the worst of the frizz down with her damp palms. She straightens her clothes as much as she can.
Ignoring the tremors in her hands, she unlocks the door.
“Hi, Laura.” He’s grinning. He’s quite handsome, so sophisticated, almost twenty-four years old—half the girls in town have a crush on him. “Surprised to see me?”
“Yes. I kind of am.”
“Did you really think I didn’t know you were here?” he asks. “I know everything that goes on in this town, remember?”
She feels the blood rushing away from her face. Seeing her serious expression, he grins wider. “I’m just messing with you. Marie mentioned something to my father about leaving you to babysit. I thought I’d stop by and make sure everything was going all right.”
“It really wasn’t necessary,” she stammers.
“Well? Are you going to make me stand on the porch like a beggar or are you going to invite me in?”
“It’s not my house,” she murmurs, her gaze fleeing his.
He grips her by the chin with his fingertips. “Come on now, Laura. The Fortiers are friends of my father. I’ve been in here a million times.”
