Chapter 15
Petula wasn’t sure exactly how to start. It was nice simply sitting here, looking into Julian’s compassionate face, drowning in the warmth of his brown eyes. But she knew, in order to make him fully understand what he was getting if he stuck with her, she needed to tell him everything.
“Let me start with Jefferson,” she finally managed, her voice sounding oddly firm for what she was about to disclose.
Starting with her brother, however, would be the easy part.
“Jefferson was always…different.” She and Statler had gone over what he’d done, ad nauseum, and still, to this day, neither could wrap their heads around their quiet, scholarly brother killing their parents.
“He’d never showed any signs of violence,” she told Julian.
“He was simply a loner who enjoyed his classes, and spent most of his free time in his room.” Her voice softened.
“He pretty much ignored Statler, who was sixteen at the time and busy with sports and social activities, but he was always nice to me.”
Yeah. She’d had a much harder time squaring Jefferson with her parents’ murder than Stat. Statler still beat himself up that he’d been too self-absorbed back then to see the signs, and continued to berate himself that he should have known.
“I was pretty young; six years old when things all started to fall apart with Jefferson. I remember my parents being really hard on him. They were always pointing out his shortcomings, as opposed to Statler’s successes.
They nagged him constantly to ‘just be normal’.
If only we’d known then, that Jefferson had underlying problems.” A tear slid down her cheek, and Julian lifted a finger to catch and swipe it away.
“You don’t have to say any more about it if you don’t want. I get the picture,” Julian told her gently.
“No. I need you to hear it all.” She snapped her spine straight.
“Jefferson was fifteen when he had his first break with reality,” she informed him.
“Of course, we didn’t know anything about that until Statler looked into his arrest records, long after the fact.
We know now that it was schizophrenia. A lot of personality disorders like that begin around that age, but our parents never dug into it.
According to psychiatric court documents, Jeff had been having…
delusions for a while. Seeing things. Hearing people who weren’t there.
Statler says that our parents should have recognized the signs, but maybe they just didn’t care.
” She shrugged. “Jefferson, I remember, retreated to his room even more right before the…
incident. He refused to eat dinner with us.
He missed a lot of school, which would have been unthinkable, just months before, because he loved it so much.
“My parents, oblivious or not, continued to come down on him. There was a lot of yelling.” She sighed.
“As I understand it now, the final straw was them taking away his computer as punishment until he ‘straightened up’. He…” She knew her voice dropped to a whisper. “…he killed them because of that.”
Julian’s support was palpable as she forged on.
“That horrible day, Jeff waited for me and Statler to be out of the house. I went to school, as per normal, then Stat picked me up afterward, and we actually went to watch a baseball game down in Portland.” She laughed ruefully.
“Sometime during the day while we were gone, Jefferson…lured our parents into his closet. He locked and barricaded the door so they couldn’t get out.
He was smart, so who knows how long he’d prepared for this, but he had everything ready.
He’d made a blower set-up. A fan inside a pipe.
He attached it to a container he’d filled with bleach and ammonia, and fit the end of it under the door.
He filled the space with chlorine gas, leaving them there. ”
“Oh, Petula,” Julian commiserated, squeezing her hands. “I’m so sorry.”
She swallowed, struggling to get the rest out. “He was waiting at the door for us when we came home, and immediately told us what he’d done. We thought he was joking, because he showed no emotion at all. So Statler went upstairs. Stat was the one who found them.”
She shivered, remembering Stat’s howls of disbelief.
“Jefferson didn’t stop Stat from calling the police. As a matter of fact, he confessed outright to the authorities when they arrived, without exhibiting any signs of remorse.
“I…we…never saw him again. The police took him away, Statler and I were remanded into state custody, and before the month was out, we were living with the Bothwin’s.”
Those first few months following their parents’ deaths had gone by in a daze for Petula.
“Statler, because he’d found our parents, had to be deposed before a judge. The whole incident…hardened him, and I think the Bothwin’s were a little afraid of him, because while he was in the house, they didn’t…do anything.” She dropped her eyes.
“Petula,” Julian interrupted. “Look at me.” He clutched her hands comfortingly.
She brought her gaze back to his, immediately feeling more grounded.
“Would it help you with the rest if I…held you?” he asked tentatively.
Petula wanted Julian’s arms around her for the next part. His presence was already making her feel more grounded than normal while thinking about the past.
“Yes, please,” she whispered.
He arose, tugged her upright, and led her over to a settee where he sat down first, then eased her down beside him, still holding one hand.
“Is this okay?” he questioned.
Petula couldn’t give him a verbal answer. Her throat suddenly filled with a strange yearning that had her almost gasping for air. She was so drawn to Julian. His strength. His goodness. He was…
Damn, he smelled good. That was the only thing her brain was registering right now as she leaned against him; his cinnamon and pine needles scent.
“Petula?” Julian followed up, sounding worried.
She shook her head and the one word that came out was a non sequitur. “No.”
Immediately Julian let her go, but she grabbed for his hand. With a tug, she wound it up and over her shoulders this time. She found her voice, raspy though it was. “I mean, no, it’s not enough,” she corrected him, gratingly. “I…need to feel you here with me.”
Julian’s grip around her tightened, and very slowly, with his free hand, he cupped the back of her head and brought her face down to press against his chest. She could hear his steady heartbeat beneath her ear, and it calmed her like nothing else could.
Statler’s embraces always went a long way toward soothing her, but none of them made her want to stay in his protective arms forever. If time stopped right now, Petula knew she’d be right where she wanted to be for the rest of eternity.
A new fear filled her as she acknowledged those unexpected feelings. She stiffened. What if—?
“Hey,” Julian asked, tipping her face up to his with one finger under her chin. “Where did you go?”
“I…”
Should she be honest? Yes. Julian had been completely open with her, and she felt like she could do no less. “This feels good,” she told him. “Really good. And it surprised me, because other than with Statler—and his crew because I’ve been around them so much—I don’t enjoy most people’s touch.”
“And you’re okay with mine?”
She heard the undercurrent of joy in his voice, and wanted him to know what a big deal this was for her.
“More than okay. There’s something about you that calms me down.”
He smoothed the hair away from her face, and smiled at her with unabashed reverence in his eyes, nodding reassuringly. That’s when Petula knew that she could tell Julian everything, and he wouldn’t turn her away.
“Do you think you can continue?” he asked, practically reading her mind.
“I can.” This time she didn’t look at him, but focused on his shirt, fiddling with a button that was inches from her nose.
“The Bothwin’s were…odd. They took me and Stat in as fosters, but decided almost immediately that they would move for adoption.
At the time, my brother and I were still in shock, but Stat, even then, thought it was very strange.
In retrospect, we understand now that there was less oversight on an adoption, once completed, than there was on foster care. ”
Petula thought back. “Other than Mrs. Bothwin being tepidly welcoming, it didn’t seem like they really wanted us there.
Or at least, they weren’t even close to being warm with Statler.
But being on the cusp of seventeen, he thought they were adopting him so they could have me, especially since he was aging out, and wouldn’t be their problem once he reached eighteen. ”
“And Bradly Junior?” Julian asked, stroking her hair gently.
“He was only three when we came into the house, and…weird, even then, which is almost unimaginable for someone that young. I remember Statler telling me to watch out for Bradly; not to be alone with him. I thought, with me being only six and completely na?ve at the time, that Statler was saying Bradly might be like Jefferson, so I tried to keep my distance.”
This is where things would begin to get tough. Petula had never had to go over all this with anybody but Statler, her therapist, and one other individual who she’d yet to name.
“Things were pretty much…status quo for a while,” she persevered.
“I went to school. Statler graduated, then almost immediately turned eighteen. With only the small amount of money we’d inherited from our parents that was in a trust, Statler decided that rather than spend it on college, he’d join the Army. Which he did.”
“And that left you alone with the Bothwins.”
“Yes.” She shivered, and Julian tightened his hold.
“When did you first know that things were…going wrong? ”
“Within the year,” she managed. “Mrs. Bothwin was gone a lot, and Mr. Bothwin worked mostly from home, so he was the main caregiver.”
Caregiver. What a joke that word turned out to be.