Chapter 65
Caroline cried pretty much all night, pausing only to scream, blotchy-faced, at Anna, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, before storming to bed and leaving Anna to take Mom’s disappointed, devastating anger.
How could you? What is wrong with you? Why do you have to wreck everything?
Anna was numb but calm, the house a whirlwind around her.
Grandma had been no help. After putting her toothbrush in the fridge, she got confused trying to find the bathroom and wouldn’t even let Anna help her to bed, instead closing her door, talking to herself about gardening.
Anna went to her room and stayed there, curled up on her side, her head and heart both a mess.
Later, Mom came and stood in the doorway, talking about psychiatrists and residential places, and Anna had put her earbuds in without even looking up, drowning her out with old Nine Inch Nails tracks.
Mom gave up soon enough. Anna was pretty sure Mom was close to giving up on her completely.
By the next day, it was the quiet after the storm.
Caroline wasn’t talking to her, which didn’t come as any surprise.
In the full light of morning, what Anna had done to Caroline’s beautiful hair was stark in its ugliness.
Big chunks were hacked out from the back and sides, other sections cut close to her skull.
Mom didn’t speak to Anna as she fussed around her golden child, getting them ready to leave and promising they would fix her hair at an expensive salon in the city.
Anna watched the car drive away down past the cemetery.
No school for Caroline this morning. Hopefully no party this weekend for Caroline either.
Just trying to protect you, Callie. Empty words against Caroline’s tears, and Anna felt sick at what she’d done even though she knew she’d do it again if she had to.
As she lit up on the porch, the pack she’d found in the diner now down to ten smokes, she spotted a car out at the cemetery.
It was too far for her to see who it was, but she knew it would be Bonnie’s parents, standing by their daughter’s grave and wondering what they could have done differently to have changed what happened to her that night.
It was Thursday. It was no longer Lila’s anniversary, but Bonnie’s.
Staring out through the gray muggy heat—Jesus, it had to rain soon—Anna once again second-guessed her own mad mind.
Did she really believe the girls had been murdered here?
That ghosts were talking through Grandma?
Compared with the stark reality of Caroline’s tears and the scissor cuts she hadn’t been able to stop herself from making, all of that was ephemeral.
She and Grandma quietly losing their minds together.
Maybe Mom was right. Maybe she did need to check into the psych unit for a while.
When her coffee and cigarette had woken her up, or at least gotten rid of her heavy bleariness, she went back inside, seeking out slightly cooler air. The first thing she noticed was that there was no loud TV on anymore, and the second was that the basement door was open.
“Grandma?” The stairs were uneven and her heart was in her mouth, her head filled with an image of Grandma splayed dead at the bottom, but instead, as she stepped into the dirty yellow gloom, coming down the first few steps, she saw Grandma sitting on a chair by a pile of boxes at the back.
“Anna.” It was a statement of fact as she looked over, but her eyes had that almost-empty glaze to them.
“Come back upstairs. You’re missing your shows.” Anna had been hoping for a quiet morning until Mom and Caroline got back and she could escape to the diner. Maybe even some more sleep. Grandma clearly had other plans.
“Lucas put a lock on the door,” she muttered. “On the inside. It’s not there now. Things keep being different.”
Anna sat on a packing crate and gently wiped the cobwebs from the cuff of Grandma’s blouse. What had she been rooting around in? She took her hand. The crazies of the family together. “I don’t remember Lucas doing that. You shouldn’t come down here, Grandma. Those stairs aren’t safe.”
“I have to help.” Grandma straightened up. “I have to help you.”
“Okay. Well, thank you, I guess.” She glanced around. The dusty floor was still clean. No blood splatter. She looked at Grandma. Maybe Anna had more chance of an honest answer when she was like this. “Did you clean up the stains, Grandma?”
“No.” Grandma shook her head. Her hand tightened in Anna’s and Anna looked up to see Grandma staring right at her. Intent. “But sometimes I see it too. Never in the same place.”
Anna frowned. “What do you see, Grandma?”
“The blood.”
Anna sat up straighter. “Please try to make sense, Grandma. I want to understand.”
Grandma sighed and her whole body trembled.
“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.
” She got up suddenly, keeping Anna’s hand in such a viselike grip she pulled her to her feet too. “I need my book. You need my book.”