Page 69 of The Family Plot
I’m breathing heavily as Elijah looks on. I feel his eyes, soft as a breeze, skimming across my face. Our shared silence fills the space between us until I finally meet his gaze.
“I kind of used to hate you,” he says quietly. “When I was a kid.”
I startle at the subject change. “What?”
“I thought you had something I didn’t: a family so close you’d shut out everyone else.”
I toss out a brief and bitter laugh.
“And I was mad,” he adds, “that my dad paid so much attention to you all, instead of paying attention to me. But now, talking to the rest of your family, then talking to you… I think maybe you’ve always been like me. On the outskirts of it all.”
He shifts almost nervously, a different man from the smug, withholding detective who baited me into this walk. “Am I right?” he asks.
I gape at him, surprised by his openness. My instinct is to tell him he’s wrong, that I only felt like an outsider in my own family once Andy was gone. But then I think of Charlie and Tate, laughing behind closed doors. I think of Mom, haunting the staircase, studying the faces of her parents whose story she’d rewritten. And I think of Dad, whose stiff body language and gruff voice kept me from knowing him at all.
My entire life, I thought that Andy and I saved each other from loneliness, when really, we just built a different kind, one that felt like comfort, like safety, but in the end, was only a cocoon. And that seemed normal to me; it was just like Charlie and Tate.
But what I didn’t understand, never paused for a moment to consider, is that cocoons are inherently temporary, too tight a space in which to grow.
Andy knew that; that’s why he urged me to leave with him, get away from our family, ourunnaturallife. And it kills me now, wondering what might have happened if I hadn’t constantly pulled himback, hadn’t held down the wings that were itching to sprout from his spine.
The ocean thuds against the sand, wrenching me away from a past I can’t remake.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Elijah says, voice stiffer now. “That was incredibly inappropriate.”
He stands straighter, clearing his throat. “To clarify, though: I didn’t actually hate you, I hated my dad’s obsession.”
At the mention of Edmond, the hiss ofobsession, I stand straighter, too.
“Back then, it seemed kind of… pathological. Almost malicious. Like he couldn’t stop himself from returning to your house. Like he got off on taunting you all.”
My pulse flickers. I see Edmond circling our mansion, memorizing our property, our patterns.
“And I guess I’m just saying—it’s clear you’re not exactly close with your family. That you’re put off by what your mom did, what your siblings are doing. And I relate to that. I was definitely put off by my dad. Especially since his obsessions left little time for me.”
He starts walking again, and I hurry forward to fall in step beside him.
“But I’ve had to make peace with a lot of that,” Elijah adds, “since he’s been sick and all.”
“How long has he been sick?” I ask, spurred on by Greta’s theory, by the image of Edmond drawn back and back and back to our yard.
“It’s been a while,” Elijah says. “Started seven, eight years ago, I think.”
Seven or eight years. Only two or three after Jessie Stanton.
“And that’s when he went to the nursing home?”
Elijah’s eyebrow twitches. “No. That’s just when his memorystarted to ‘turn on him.’ That’s how he referred to it. It only became unmanageable the last couple years or so.”
Still. Even the smallest change to Edmond’s mind could have been enough to disrupt him, to distract from whatever sick desire sends someone hunting for women at night.
“Was he ever violent with you?” I ask, and I see, as soon as Elijah whips his head my way, that it’s a question too far.
“No,” he spits. Then he stops, scrutinizing me. “Did your dad get violent with you?”
My head jerks back, whiplashed by his pivot. “Of course not.”
A wave crashes onto us, soaking our shoes, the bottoms of our pants. I register my socks growing damp, suctioning to my skin, but something keeps me from moving.
