Chapter 21
When Sasha gets out of his truck, my first thought is that he must have heard about Bec, before I realize how little sense that makes.
For one thing, I’m not sure he was ever aware Bec was (supposedly) Dad and Aunty Vinka’s half sister.
For another, everyone who knows about the Situation is here, with no way of communicating with the outside world, short of semaphore, and I think I would have noticed someone up on the roof, thrashing about with flags.
Nobody looks happy to see Sasha, but I’m the only one who’s actively rude about it: I bolt inside before he’s even slammed the door of his truck.
“Go away,” Dylan says when I bang on his door.
“Sasha’s here!”
“What?”
“Sasha’s here!”
“Why?”
“I don’t know! Come on!”
Another pause. “I don’t care.”
Dylan’s room doesn’t have a lock, so I slide the door open, forgetting in the moment that I might not want to see what a teenage boy is up to alone in his bedroom.
Fortunately for all concerned, what he’s up to is scowling into his phone, which—in case you’ve forgotten—doesn’t even have internet access. This is too tragic.
“Come on.”
“I’m not coming.”
“Are you going to sit here stewing about your mum lying to you and your girlfriend cheating on you, or are you going to find out why Sasha is here?”
That sounded better in my head.
But it works, because Dylan rolls off his bed and follows me back to the kitchen, although he makes a big deal of not sitting next to me.
“Ruth,” Dad says, “do we think it’s your bedtime?”
“We do not,” I say. Then I add: “Please?”
Sasha is wearing the same clothes as this morning, but he’s added an ugly sheepskin coat over the top of it.
“Thanks,” he says, accepting a glass of water from Aunty Vinka, who is sporting a bathrobe and wet hair. “I can’t stay long. I’ve just been struggling with something all day.”
“Long division,” Dad says, right into my ear so only I can hear it.
I would laugh, but, as I keep telling Dad, nobody needs to know how to do long division anymore: That’s why we have calculators.
(He tried to show me using paper and pen once and it was like watching someone experience a psychotic break in real time.)
“What is it?”
“There’s something I probably should have told you all about Gertie.”
I know what you’re thinking because it’s what I’m thinking too: Is Sasha about to confess to killing GG?
Unfortunately not, although wouldn’t that be handy?
For one thing, we’ve got a hundred or so pages to go here, so a murderer reveal would be a little premature.
For another, Sasha’s demeanor is all wrong for a mea culpa: He’s a little apologetic, but not in a sorry I murdered your relative kind of way.
Finally, while I’ve been keen to suspect the mysterious neighbor from the start, it’s hard to see what he might gain from GG’s death, unless he secretly seduced her in order to get name-checked in the will.
It’s a possibility, I guess, but ew, no.
“How much do you know about her condition?”
“Her illness, you mean?” Aunty Vinka asks.
“Yeah.”
“Not much. She had medicine.” Aunty Vinka waves one hand in the direction of the fridge, which, since Sasha can’t possibly have any idea what she’s flapping her wrist at, is probably more confusing than enlightening.
“It was serious,” Sasha says, and his tone matches the words. “She was very sick.”
“Oh.”
“I told her she should tell you, but you know what Gertie was like: She never liked to bother anyone.”
Dad and Aunty Vinka look at each other. I can see the word seriously? in a speech bubble over their heads.
“Are you saying Gertie was dying?” Bec asks.
“I think so, yes,” Sasha says—apologetically, like GG’s not already dead and his words might finish her off.
“Did you tell the police about Gertie being ill?”
“The police didn’t really interview me.” (I’ll tell you right now, they should have.)
“What difference could it make?” Shippy asks. “Unless her illness involved a bad case of bashius brainius, Gertie didn’t exactly die of natural causes.”
“Shippy.”
“The police will find out when they do an autopsy anyway,” Dad says.
“Why would they do that?” Aunty Vinka asks. She sounds genuinely shocked.
“I think it’s pretty standard in cases of violent death. Although, in fairness, most of my medical knowledge comes from CSI and Patricia Cornwell novels.”
“But it’s obvious how she died,” Aunty Vinka says. “Why would they do an autopsy?”
Bec either doesn’t hear Aunty Vinka or doesn’t care for her question because she asks another one, more loudly. “Do you know how long she had?”
“Gertie?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know.” Sasha looks down at his hands, which are big but look smoother than you’d expect from someone who presumably has to handle machinery and…
till the field, or whatever it is farmers do now that they have automated tractors and drones.
“The impression I had was that she was trying to tie up loose ends, get her affairs in order.”
We all sit with that for a bit, wondering how (and why) GG got through the weekend without telling us any of this. Nobody would have called GG an oversharer, but concealing a terminal condition is next-level undersharing.
“There’s another thing,” Sasha says.
Isn’t there always?
“Did she ever talk to you about her son?”
“A bit,” Dad says. “He died before Gertie met our dad.”
“Her son is still alive,” Sasha says, delivering this knockout line with the gravity it deserves, by which I mean Darth Vader breaking the news to Luke Skywalker.
Dad, Aunty Vinka, and Bec all sputter out versions of “What?” and “Sorry?” and “Are you kidding me?”
“Her son is alive. That’s what she told me.”
“I thought Gertie’s son was dead,” Shippy says, two beats behind as usual.
“That’s what she told everyone,” Sasha says. “She was ashamed of him. He went to prison years ago, and she pretty much disowned him.”
“That’s so sad,” Aunty Vinka says. She’s right, but sad is not the word I’d have used. Not when a new suspect has entered the field.
“It was a long time ago. I think she regretted it, but she didn’t know how to undo it.”
“She never canceled the life-insurance policy,” Aunty Vinka says. “She must have still cared about him, deep down. Don’t you think?” I’m more tolerant of Aunty Vinka’s tendencies than Dad, but even I feel like this might not be the time for a group-therapy session.
“Gertie’s lawyer said they had no death certificate for her son and that she was still paying the premiums on her life insurance,” Dad says. “I assumed it was a living-in-denial thing and maybe some slack filing by the insurer.”
“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Shippy says, understating reality significantly.
“Why did Gertie tell you all this stuff? No offense, mate, but it seems odd to be going around confiding in some random neighbor and not in her own family.” Everyone is too distracted by this surprisingly valid question to mention that at no point has Shippy himself legitimately been part of GG’s “own family.”
Sasha shrugs, and he looks, in that moment, like exactly the kind of guy in whom you’d confide your secrets.
He’s not smiling, but somehow his dimples are popping and he exudes the judgment-free vibe of a school psychologist who has seen it all and no longer has the ability to be shocked.
Is it possible he’s even making that stupid sheepskin coat work?
“Maybe it’s easier to confide in someone who isn’t family,” Aunty Vinka suggests.
“That,” Sasha says, “but also, something happened.”
“What?”
“Gertie’s son was getting out of prison. She asked my opinion on what she should do if he came here.”
“Oh.” Dad’s mouth is a perfect circle. “Do you mean…was she worried about it?”
“She was nervous.”
“Have you told this to the cops?”
“Like I said, the police never interviewed me. Plus, I wasn’t sure Gertie would have wanted me to. The police haven’t asked you about any of this?”
“Did the son ever show up here?”
“Not as far as I know.” Sasha stands up. “I’m sorry for the interruption but thought you should know. Look, I have to go, but do you mind if I use the bathroom quickly?”
“What does this mean?” Aunty Vinka asks when Sasha’s gone, lowering her voice in case he can hear from all the way down the hall and behind a closed door.
“Gertie knows how to keep a secret,” Dad says grimly.
“I can’t believe she never told us,” Aunty Vinka says.
“Do you think Dad knew?”
“She must have told him.”
“What do you think the son was in prison for?” Shippy asks. “If it’s murdering someone with a typewriter, surely this is case closed.”
“Shippy.”
“I’m just saying, if it’s a choice between us and some hardened criminal—probably an addict—the cops aren’t going to be looking at us, are they?
” When nobody answers, he gives a smug I’ve made my point look.
“I’m going to the upstairs bathroom for a slash,” he says, offering information no one asked for.
He leaves the room and we all hear his yelp as he runs into Sasha.
“Sorry, mate.”
“My fault. Just having a—”
Sasha comes into the room, pink-cheeked after his collision with Shippy.
“I don’t know if the police know about Gertie’s son,” Sasha says, having quite obviously overheard our conversation (so maybe Aunty Vinka was right to worry). “But I wanted you to know.”
Dad walks Sasha to his truck. When he comes back in, it’s to send me to my room.
“We’re not going to talk about this?”
“It’s late,” he says. “So, no. You too, Dylan.”
My protestations are mostly knee-jerk at this point, because I want to be alone with my thoughts to consider everything we’ve learned: Bec is no longer my aunt!
I have a criminal for a step-uncle! (Is that a thing?) Both of them had a motive to kill GG!
Then there’s the fact that GG was dying, which means there was no real reason for anyone to kill her, since she was going to die soon anyway.
I try to think this all through logically, scared that I’ll drop the threads if I leave it till the morning.
But exhaustion is all over me the moment I pull the blanket up, dragging me into mushy unconsciousness and what I hope is a dreamless sleep.
It’s just as I’m about to go under that a couple of rebel synapses fire off to remind me of the most important point: Nobody in my family seemed to know that GG was dying.
Which means that everyone’s collective motive remains intact and someone might simply have made a terrible miscalculation.