Page 24 of The Family Plot
“What’s the LMM?” she asks, following behind me, but when I turn to answer her, I see she’s already forgotten the question. She’s studying the photographs along the staircase, mouth ajar.
“Andy told me about these,” she says, so reverentially, like she’s finally seeing a masterpiece in person she’d previously only read about in a textbook. She leans toward one in particular, where Mom’s parents smile in front of a wall of mounted guns, arms stretched wide as if in awe of their company’s success:all of this is ours.
It’s a photo I’ve often wondered about, given that Mom hates to even think of her parents’ work. After she told us the most chilling detail of their murder—that the gun that killed them had been one they’d manufactured—she never let us ask about it again.I don’t wantanyone to think, she said firmly whenever we tried,that because they created something that killed so many people, it was karma that they were killed by that thing in return.
But wasn’t this picture just a reminder of that, with the guns lurking behind them, almost taunting their proud, carefree smiles? Sometimes I think Mom overcompensates, that maybe she’s the one who believes their deaths were karma, and the guilt about that is what keeps her insisting that victims of murder must be honored.
At the bottom of the stairs, Charlie watches us, interest and irritation battling on his face. A few moments pass before he plods off toward the living room. “Well, hello there!” he says to one of the boxes.
“Come on,” I tell Ruby, and she trails me reluctantly to the second floor.
“Which one is Andy’s room?” she asks, following me down the hall.
I nod toward a closed door near mine. Ever since I arrived, I’ve tried not to look at it, and now, even just gesturing to it sends a jolt of pain ricocheting through me. What ghosts are trapped inside that room? What dust of Andy and me? I stop abruptly, causing Ruby to crash into me from behind.
“Whoa,” she says. “Are you okay?”
My lungs are hot and tight. “Sorry,” I manage, and I lead her toward my room, turning my face from Andy’s.
After we enter, I close the door behind us and make my way to the bed. The old mattress groans as I sit, and if Ruby’s notices the tissues littered across my blankets, she doesn’t mention them. Instead, she walks toward the window near the corner of the room, hunches down, and rubs her hand along the wall.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
Without answering, she approaches the window closest to me,mere feet from the bed, and repeats the hunching and rubbing until her fingers find the grooves Andy carved into the wall.
“Here it is,” she says, smiling at me. “I’ve always wanted to see it.”
And for a moment, it feels like I’m breathing through a straw, like I’m only allowed a sip of air.
“He told you he carved his name here?” I ask.
She nods, tracing the letters of his name, letters I stared at for years while I waited for him to come home.
“Why?” I say.
She looks at me, lifts one shoulder and drops it. “He told me lots of stories about you.”
It’s not the answer I was expecting. My eyes sting with a warning, and I reach for one of the tissues on my bed.
Ruby stands from her crouching position, scanning the rest of the room. There isn’t much here. My bed. An old dresser. A desk with a drawer that’s always jammed. The beanbag chair that’s identical to Andy’s. He’d often drag his into my room, and we’d flop onto the chairs in sync, waving our arms and legs to make “bean angels.” With Andy right next door, spending as much time in my room as he did in his, I never felt the need to adorn my walls with pictures or to pretty the hardwood floor with a rug. For years, Andy and I filled the room with laughter, with stories, with silence we sometimes wrapped ourselves in like a blanket—and afterward, when he was gone, the emptiness felt like a promise: he’d come back for me; he’d never leave me so unfinished.
“You and I could be friends, you know,” Ruby says. “Like Andy and I were. I’d really like that. It gets so lonely here, up on this island.”
She stares at me so intensely I have to look away.
“I don’t live here anymore,” I say toward the wall. “I’m leaving as soon as I know what happened to Andy. You said you remembered something. What was it?”
“I could visit you,” she pushes. “Wherever you live. Grandpa will be dead soon anyway.”
My eyes slingshot back toward her face. “Whoa. That’s—”
“It’s just the truth. He’s been sick for so long—basically as long as Andy’s been gone—and that’s felt like forever to me. Haven’t the last ten years felt like forever to you?”
When I don’t respond, she takes a step forward.
“So I’ve been thinking: when Grandpa does die, it’s time for me to move on. Leave the island like I always wanted. I’ll sell the house, and… maybe I could stay with you for a while.”
She moves even closer, her thigh touching the edge of the bed.
