Page 78 of The Family Plot
“Why?” Mom persists. “Why would he do it, Charlie?”
When Charlie answers this time, his eyes are twin torches burning into Mom. “Fuck his reasons!” he shouts. “It’s never about the killer’s reasons, right? Because it can never be justified.Youtaught us that. And now you want me to rationalize a psychopath’s behavior?Youmarried him, Mom. Why don’tyouknow?”
He pauses, features pinching together. “Why didn’t youknow?” he screams.
The question reverberates once, and then it’s gone. Still, it spears us all, pinning us into place with the real questions behind it:Why didn’t you see what was happening? Why didn’t you save me?
In my head, I hear them in Andy’s voice.
“I don’t know,” Mom whispers. “I still can’t believe—”
“You never paid attention to what was really going on. You focused on films and newspapers and your shrine of portraits, all to hold on toyour pathetic lie about your parents. You made me say their names!” he explodes. “In all those Honorings, I had to say the names of women I’d… And I had to hear Dad say them too! All because, what? You think there’s comfort in darkness? In other people’s suffering? You spent years steeping us in murder, but you don’t know the first thing about it. You have no idea how hideous it looks, how disgusting it smells. You thought Dad was okay with living in the darkness you created here—but you had it all wrong; hewasthe darkness. Why the fuck didn’t you know that?”
Mom’s face is slack with shame. “I don’t know,” she says again. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s not enough,” Charlie huffs. “You were the adult. You loved him, and you refused to see what he was hiding right in front of you.”
Mom searches Charlie’s eyes, but he refuses to look at her.
“Charlie, you… you have to understand.” Her words break as she cries. “I had no one when I came here. I’d lost everyone who meant something to me. Couldn’t even keep up with friends because of the lie I was telling.”
“The lie was your choice,” Charlie seethes. “You could have corrected it.”
“And Daniel,” Mom continues, “he wanted me. He gave me a family again. He gave me you.”
As Charlie scowls, face turned from her, tears creep into his eyes.
Mom stretches toward him, even as he inches away. Tate envelops him tighter now, rocking him slightly, her chin resting on top of his head. And just like that, he goes limp in her arms, like the fire he was spewing only moments ago has been extinguished.
“But you’re right,” Mom whispers. “I didn’t know. And I’m so sorry.”
Her palm hovers above Charlie’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she repeats. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.” She touches him, and though he flinches, he doesn’t lurch away. “I’m so sorry.”
She buries her head in his shoulder as Charlie stares ahead, nose wrinkled, eyes brimming. The sheen of tears looks strange on him; I’ve never seen him cry.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know.”
The words are stifled against Charlie’s shirt, but to me, they’re louder than ever.
I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t know, Andy. I’m sorry.
Tate reaches across Charlie to put her hand on Mom’s arm. She grips her tight, locking Charlie between them, holding him in a cage of what she thinks is comfort. Tears spill over onto Charlie’s cheeks the same second they slide onto mine. Tate looks up at me, blue eyes big and imploring, ringed with red from tears of her own. Silently, she begs me to join them on the floor, to be a part of their misery, their circle of solace—but how can I? How can I possibly hug these people, each of whom kept such horrifying secrets?
“We have to tell the police,” I say. “Let them know they’re right about Dad.”
Tate sucks in a breath as Charlie snaps his gaze up at me.
“Dahlia, no,” Tate says.
“We have to. What if they arrest someone else for the murders? Like Fritz!”
“They won’t arrest Fritz,” she argues. “They have nothing on him because he wasn’t involved.”
“So someone else then. Either way, they need to know everything Charlie told us.”
Charlie’s reply is stony. “You’d throw me to the wolves like that? Andy, too?”
“The police will understand. Dad forced you to do it. You were only kids.”
