Chapter Thirty-Eight
thirty-eight
AUGUST 2024
DAY 7 IN THE HOUSE
LUCILLE ate dinner by herself. Madeline got some food at some point and slipped back upstairs without speaking to her. Rennie didn’t come down at all. Bloated wine corks lay in the sink. Mud bubbled up through the drain. A green tendril had emerged.
Now plants were growing inside the pipes? Lucille hosed it with brown water that spurted erratically through the tap. She reached to yank it out, but when she blinked it was gone. All that remained was the mud.
Was this what happened to old houses? She had never lived in one. Come to think of it, the house felt strangely hot and damp today. It had begun to truly stink with mold and mildew, though there hadn’t been a weather change outside.
Lucille was on her way upstairs to change into something lighter when she saw Elaine at the top of the staircase facing Lucille’s bedroom door. Elaine turned. Dark circles ringed her eyes. Limp, stringy hair hung around her face. Her nostrils were crusted with dried blood.
“ Jesus .” Lucille switched on the hallway light and it flickered above them. The harsh light made Elaine look even more ghastly. Why was she up here? “What do you want?”
“Your week is up.” Elaine approached and flapped a sheet of paper. The one they’d both signed a week ago. “You leave tomorrow morning.”
Lucille frantically flipped through the days in her head. She had lost track of time. How could she let herself do that? “Only if we found no evidence of wrongdoing.”
One of the doors upstairs opened. Madeline drifted into Lucille’s periphery.
“And what have you found?” Elaine tilted her head in mock interest. “Anything besides the security footage?”
How did Elaine find out? If it was out in the open, so be it. “That’s sufficient.” Lucille’s voice rose. She wanted to claw that deranged smile off Elaine’s face. “You were here in this house on the day she died.”
Elaine didn’t even flinch. “Your mother invited me. We had a conversation.”
“About what?”
“She told me she was giving me the house.”
“Why?”
Elaine hesitated. Just then there were footsteps in the foyer below. Nora looked up at them from the foot of the stairs.
Lucille stepped toward Elaine. “Stop lying. Mā was drugged. That’s what the toxicology report said. You were the last person to see her alive.”
“I had nothing to do with that.”
“Is that what a jury is going to think?”
Elaine’s eyes widened. Finally, she was rattled. “You promised —”
“Let’s settle, then.” Lucille said. “You get half the monetary inheritance. We keep the home. And we never take this to court.”
The clock ticked.
“I would think very carefully about this. This is the first and last offer I’ll make. The evidence is not on your side.”
Elaine’s bloodshot eyes darted around the hallway. Nora ascended a few more stairs, inching closer to Lucille. “I’ll get my own lawyer. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Lucille narrowed her eyes. Elaine should have settled— she would have, in this case. It was the smart thing to do. But Elaine didn’t look rational right now. “We’ll see you prove it in court, then.”
“Do it. Spend your mother’s precious inheritance on this case. You can drive yourself into the ground over this, just because you can’t accept that your mother gave it to me. In the end, it will still be mine.”
“You don’t deserve it!” Lucille roared.
Nora startled. Elaine’s cheeks flushed with color. Even Rennie had emerged from her room.
“You’ve always leeched off us, haven’t you?” A vicious charge ran through her. “That’s all you have ever done. Your whole family. A bunch of freeloaders, living in our house. Taking advantage of Mā’s generosity.”
Elaine trembled with rage. “Fuck you.”
“She let you be raised here. Because we’re all Chinese, right? And now look at you. You’re lying about this house. You’re lying about everything. Even in Mā’s death you’re still sucking her dry.”
“Generous,” Elaine seethed. “You think your mother was so virtuous, don’t you? You don’t even know half the truth.” She moved toward Lucille. “She was selfish, manipulative, calculating—”
“ Don’t say that about her.” Rennie came forward, her eyes sparking with fury.
Elaine looked between them. “You two are so desperate to defend her. You don’t even know what she did, do you?”
Neither sister spoke.
“Your father and sister died because of her. Don’t you know that?”
Lucille heard her daughter’s sharp intake of breath. Nora gaped at her mother in shock.
Madeline whispered, “ What? ”
Elaine drew her phone out from her pocket and tapped a button on the screen.
“ You killed Mr. Lowell. ” Elaine’s voice warbled through the speakers. “ Didn’t you? ”
“Yes.”
Lucille and Rennie locked eyes at the sound of their mother’s voice.
“I knew you did. I knew it all along.”
“He abused me. He was going to kill me.”
Lucille staggered; she reached out for the railing. Everything was going in and out now: the sound. Her vision contracted. Her body went numb.
“—How?”
“ With the— ” Here, Lucille couldn’t catch the phrase Mā had just said in Chinese. “ The flowers I grew in the garden. They use them in traditional medicine. I knew the roots would kill, so I put it in his sleeping pills. ”
“So you poisoned him, and my sister found out?”
“She grew it with me.”
“I don’t believe you. Sophie would never hurt anyone.”
“She didn’t know it was poison. She found me planting it. I couldn’t tell her why I was doing it, so I just said I wanted to grow something next to the roses and she offered to help me. She took care of the plants.”
“So she helped you. Or you forced her to?”
“I didn’t force anything. I’d known about her… and Ada. So I let her confide in me. Trust me. She had no one else to go to. And I thought I could trust her with this in return.”
Elaine tapped the phone and the recording stopped. She looked directly at Lucille. “You want to know why I was here July 20? Your mother wanted to confess.”
Lucille looked down the dizzying height through the railing balusters to the foyer. All the pieces were coming together in her mind.
How had it come to—murder? Why couldn’t they just divorce? Lucille had been reeling all her life from that summer. Trying to reach her mother, trying desperately to put her family back together. And now, here was the answer to the puzzle—and in the end she had offered it to Elaine.
Lucille looked to Rennie, but it was obvious she hadn’t known, either.
“You had a sister ?” Nora interjected.
“Sophie,” Elaine said through gritted teeth. “She died in that car with Ada.”
“And you never told me?”
Elaine didn’t look at Nora. “I think she was being poisoned too. And then she got in that car with Ada…” Lucille watched her take a deep breath. “Now you know the truth about your mother. She could have left your father, but she chose to kill him instead.” She swept her gaze around. “And look at what she did to all of us.”
The grandfather clock clashed into the hour.
“So,” Elaine said. “You’re going to leave this house tomorrow. And if you bring a case against me, I will make sure the whole world knows what she did.”
MADELINE watched her mother let out a bloodcurdling shriek and leap up the stairs, hurling herself at Elaine as if in slow motion.
Together they fell into the railing, cracking the posts under their weight. The phone spun out of Elaine’s hands and tipped over the edge, crashing onto the foyer floor below.
Madeline ran to the edge of the stairs. Nora rushed up, pushing Mā off Elaine. Mā reared and struck Nora across the face. Nora yelped. Madeline grabbed Mā’s arm, and Mā tried to wrench it away, but then Aunt Rennie was pulling her too. “Lucille!” Madeline heard her aunt scream. “ Stop it. ”
Together Madeline and Aunt Rennie hauled her mother off Elaine and away from the railing, onto the second floor.
Elaine pushed herself up, Nora supporting her. Her chest heaved. She looked over the railing at the smashed phone. “You don’t think I’d have this saved everywhere I could? I thought you were the smart one,” Elaine scoffed. “You’re insane. All of you.”
Mā lunged again, and this time Aunt Rennie held her back. “Stop. Stop! We can’t fight like this.”
Elaine clutched the wall, safely away from the broken railing. And Nora was on the other side of her mother, cradling her cheek. Without a thought, Madeline stepped down to where Nora was.
“Are you okay?”
Madeline pulled Nora’s hand away. Nora was scratched, badly. A small bit of blood welled up on her jaw. She’d kissed Nora there gently only two nights ago. An eternity, it felt like. Back before—all this— had come to light. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “Hold on. I can get something.”
“No, you won’t.” Elaine pointed a shaking finger at her. “Get away from my daughter.”
Nora turned. “Mā, it’s fine.”
“Nora—”
“I said I’m fine,” Nora said steadily. Her eyes met Madeline’s.
“Madeline!”
Madeline whirled around at her mother’s voice. Madeline rounded on Mā, brimming with rage. “ You hurt her .”
Mā faltered. Aunt Rennie blanched. Madeline had never raised her voice to either of them. Now she approached them. “Stay away from them,” she said, her voice trembling. “Nora had nothing to do with this.”
Aunt Rennie gaped. “Madeline, what?”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “What is going on between you two?”
Madeline and Nora looked at each other, but then Elaine grabbed Nora by the arm. “We’re going.”
“What have you done?”
Madeline was backed up against a wall in the room her mother occupied. They were all gathered there. Mā gripped her shoulder and Madeline could feel her sharp nails. Through the window the sky had darkened. Mā’s wrinkles looked harsher in the fading light. “Is something going on between the two of you? Is this what I think it is?”
“It probably is,” Madeline said, and then went silent. They’d never talked about it, between the two of them. Madeline had brought girls over to her house when Mā was at work, and the things that had happened at school… Mā had never known.
“ 天啊 ,” her mother said. Her expression slacked. “You’re—” She swallowed. “Why her ?”
Because she healed me. Because she saved me from the garden. Because she was the only person who was honest with me. Madeline tilted her head stubbornly. Her heart thudded in her chest and her cheeks felt hot. “Why not?”
Mā burst out, “It’s Elaine’s daughter.”
“It’s happening again,” Aunt Rennie said faintly, rocking herself on the bed. “A daughter from our family, a daughter from theirs. It’s repeating. This place is cursed.”
Mā said sharply, “Stop trying to curse your niece.” She stepped back and crossed her arms. “Ada and Sophie’s relationship ruined them. Don’t you see?”
“Are we actually being serious right now?” Madeline spread her palms out. “This didn’t all happen because two girls were in love. It was because Wài Pó killed her abusive husband.”
The room fell silent. Madeline remembered flashes of Wài Pó throughout her childhood. She had helped Madeline eat cake at her fourth birthday. She’d taken her to the park and let her feed the ducks with her gentle hand. And yet Madeline never knew any of this about her. She never was aware of Wài Pó’s brutal history and the things she went through. About the choices she’d had to make. And, it seemed, neither did her mother and aunt.
“Will we talk about that? Or do you still want to come after me for what I have with someone who had no part in any of this?”
She stared down her mother.
“You don’t know that,” her mother said finally. “About Nora.”
Madeline looked at her mother in disbelief—for a moment, for a brief eternity—before she marched out the door.