Chapter 28 Now
Now
If I floated into Dimple’s office on a summer breeze, I leave with the howling of a storm cloud.
Words have been said. I can’t recall what exactly, but the words were fast and loud and vicious.
I think I toppled the coffee table over on the way out.
Doors were slammed, expletives hollered, sound ricocheting into the lobby as waiting patients averted their gazes.
I’ve left before my time is up, already drafting scathing emails to Dimple in my mind, in which I demand my money back for time wasted.
My sister!
My sister…
There’s a gnawing sensation in the back of my brain that I can’t ignore.
It’s not even quite an idea, just a feeling.
The gnarled bud of something waiting to blossom into something hideous.
Its fingers are pressing on the inside of my skull, slippery against it.
I can feel the pressure of them pushing, pushing, pushing.
I need an ibuprofen. I need some wine. I need an umbrella, because Jesus fuck is this weather awful.
The heavens have cracked open, and I have to think this is some kind of sick joke.
If the universe can transform itself into something wonderful for you, it can conspire to become your own personal hell, too.
Before long, I’m in the car, rain-drenched shoulders trying not to shiver.
My sister.
It’s ludicrous to even consider it. And yet…And yet that Feeling is still lurking.
I tap out a quick message:
You around later for a chat? x
Of course, Natty! I go on break in 2 hrs—that not too late for you?
Does it really have to wait two hours?
Do you really want your sister to get fired?
No, 8 is good. Will call.
When I eventually get home, James is not yet back from work, always in the office, whereas I opt for an increasing number of days working from home.
And today he’s texted to say he’ll be back late.
I’m not sure how to sit with this, alone, for the next half hour.
And I’m not yet sure if talking to Claire is going to make this better or worse.
Ibuprofen. Wine. An easy first step, and swiftly arranged. When I check the time, I see I still have twenty-two minutes left to wait. Great.
By the time eight o’clock rolls around, my nerves are shot, and I’m mildly tipsy.
I’m sitting on the sofa, thumb hovering over the dial button, Claire’s number up on my screen.
There’s something very final about making the call, about having the conversation.
Whatever the outcome, I know something between us will be irreversibly changed.
She’s the only family I have left. I don’t know that I can afford to lose her.
“Hi, Care.”
“Natty! What’s up? God, you won’t believe who I served in the café today.”
“Oh.” My voice is flat. Somehow, I’m already getting this wrong. “Is now a good time to talk?”
The spark in her voice fizzes out. “Yeah, I can— What is it, Natty?”
“Are you alone? Can you find somewhere quiet?”
“One sec, I’m just heading to the break room and then I’m all yours.”
As Claire describes it, the “break room” is really a glorified storage cupboard, just about big enough for a table and chair to be pushed up against a towering stack of boxes.
Claire says she’s never minded it, though.
Says it’s one of the few places in LA where she feels truly at peace.
There’s something nice about being shut off from the rest of the world.
“I’m in,” she says. “Just getting comfortable. What is it? Is it James? Has something happened?”
The words stick in my throat. And when, for a moment, it feels as if I’ve found them, they’re fuzzy, strange, and misshapen. I don’t know how to say this.
“It’s not James,” I say. “Not really.”
“Oh. Then what is it?”
I force the headlines out of my mouth. The latest therapy sessions; the man in the bar; Dimple’s theory. “I couldn’t sit there and keep listening to her, Care. But it—it sounded like she thought maybe what happened to Marc and Luca and George had something to do with you.”
“She did?”
I wish I could see her face.
“She did. And I was so mad—you have to believe me, I was so mad—I couldn’t listen anymore and I stormed out. I mean, it’s crazy, right?”
The other end of the line is quiet. It shocks me how quickly my blood is up. Because why isn’t there the immediate outrage, the shock? Why am I not hearing my baby sister curse down the phone at me? Keeping her temper has never been her strong suit.
“Claire?” I ask, and there are teeth in the question this time. I wonder if she can feel them biting into her.
“Claire!”
I pull the phone away from my mouth and watch the screen as it goes dark. She’s gone. I try to focus on one thought at a time, but there are too many, and they’re all so loud.
The house suddenly feels too big and too empty.
There’s too much room for my thoughts to roam free, colliding with one another, colliding with me.
I glug down some more wine in the hopes that it will quieten the noise, and it does, in a fashion.
Or perhaps it’s the simple passing of time.
Either way, the thoughts begin to come through to me in an organized line.
I have never clearly recalled the moment of any of my exes’ deaths.
Claire has always been there, in some capacity.
I didn’t invite her to Luca’s party, but she was in town to see me, and she knew where I was.
And what he’d done. She’s always been more reactive than me, always had a stronger sense of justice.
The truth of these things does not sit comfortably in my body.
It’s a donated organ that I don’t want, that doesn’t match the story of the relationship I have with my sister.
Every part of me wants to reject it. Because there’s no way Claire would have allowed me to struggle like this, to believe I had this blood on my hands, to be driven mad by it.
That’s a kind of cruelty we’d never deliver to each other. Or, at least, I didn’t think it was.
When the sound of the front door opening and closing finally echoes through the house, I still haven’t moved from my spot on the sofa. I feel strangely without feeling.
“Hi, babe.” James’s voice.
He wanders into the living room, eyes taking in my deflated form on the sofa, a balloon animal with the air let out. His body goes immediately stiff with caution as he approaches me, eyeing the wine.
“Everything okay?”
Hey, babe, so it turns out I’m probably not a violent psychopath at all. In fact, it looks like maybe it’s my sister who’s been doing all the maiming. Surprise!
He sits next to me on the sofa, arm around my back, my head in the crook of his neck. Tears are soaking into his shirt.
“It’s not just about George,” I say quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“My therapist, she got me to unpack Marc’s and Luca’s deaths, too, and…I don’t think they were accidents, James. I think she killed them. Claire.”
The blood seems to drain from his face and he goes so still that, for a moment, I’m worried he’s stopped breathing.
“James?”
“Are you sure?”
I don’t answer. Something in my gut feels certain. Of course it made me sick to think of murdering that guy in the bar. I’m simply not a murderer. “I think it’s true, though, James. It…it would explain a lot.”
“Well, I guess the good news is you’re not a monster,” he ventures.
To his credit, I do actually laugh. Properly laugh. “Fat lot of good it’s done us, though…. We’ve already lost all our savings.”
“Doing that to your own sibling…” He looses a heavy sigh, voice darkening. “I don’t wish to speak ill of her, but I don’t think I could ever forgive what she did if I were you.” He pins me with a tense look. “Do you think we could speak to her together? She owes us answers. Answers and apologies.”
The corner of a cushion is pushing painfully against my spine. I shift. “I don’t think that’s…I mean, you’ve only been in touch over text…” I leave the sentence unfinished.
His eyes track away from me, toward the French doors. At first, I think something’s caught his eye, but nothing’s there.
“James?”
He comes to, looks back in my direction.
Doesn’t quite meet my eye. A hand rakes through his hair, balling into a fist and tugging at the roots.
It hurts him to do this a little, I know, but he also considers it stress relief.
I take his fist in my hand, gently pull it away from his hair, which is now sticking up at wild angles.
“I know it’s a lot to take in.”
“No, I…I just don’t get it. You said you reached for a knife with George. That was you. I don’t understand how that could have been anyone but you.”
There’s a little space created between us as he leans back to take me in.
I don’t see any other option other than to admit, “I did. I did grab a knife. But he punched me as soon as I grabbed it. Knocked me out. When I woke…” Deep breath.
“When I woke, he’d been stabbed. I thought it was me, that the knock to the head made me forget or I just blacked it out. ”
The room is too silent, and my husband is too still. Even though I feel it coming, I’m still wounded when James removes his hand from mine.
“And you…” His jaw is clenching and unclenching. He takes a small shuffle away from me. It feels like a mile. “And you thought you killed him, didn’t you? You lied to me.”
I’ve made my bed and now I have to lie in its soiled sheets. My chin eventually offers James an acquiescent nod. Our marriage has been burdened with more secrets than I know if it can bear.
“But remember, I didn’t do it,” I say.
He won’t look at me. “You think. And you lied. It’s not a small lie, Nat.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But this—my innocence—that’s all that really matters.
My therapist knows I didn’t do it, and I know that, too, now.
I’m not a killer. It means Will has nothing to hold over our heads anymore.
We’re free.” Which is a blessing. My plan to remove Will from the equation was born of false confidence.
If I’d tried, who knows how catastrophically I might have failed?
James’s eyes meet mine and although the skin around them folds, smile lines engaged, the distinct emotion that reads from them is wary. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s great news.”
The reassurance in his voice rings false. He’s a good actor, always has been, which is why he’s such a good boss; we never see him sweat. But not everyone is as observant as I am, and I can see the gentle sheen covering his brow.