Page 95 of The Family Plot
“Come on,” she insisted. “Let’s be sisters.”
I searched her expression for mockery, for meanness, for acknowledgment that the comment was absurd—we’ve always been sisters, even if just in name—but her face was wide open, hopeful as a child’s. Her eyes sparkled in the overhead light, bright as the ocean from movies, blue waves glittering with sun. Turns out, it’s hard to resist the pull of a look like that, one meant to draw you in instead of keep you out.
So I agreed. Against the itch on my skin, the sickness swimminginside me, I agreed to leave with them. And it’s true, there’s still time; I could tell Elijah everything. He could read Charlie his rights, haul him out to his car. But I don’t want Charlie—or any of us—to leave like that. Not in handcuffs. Not in a police cruiser with the lights flashing like there’s a criminal inside. I want us all to walk out the door of this house on our own, to look back if we have to, and know that whatever we did to each other inside, we made it out of there together. Alive.
Now, Charlie’s mask begins to slip. He glares at Elijah, working hard to seem defiant, but it’s clear he can’t hold it much longer. Already his eyes are darkening, tears seeping forward, ready to trickle down his cheeks. Before Elijah can catch it—the shame, the agony, the secrets my brothers both had to carry—I distract him with a question. I commit to the fiction, too.
“Do you think my father killed Andy? Do you think that Andy found out who he was, and then my dad killed him to protect his secret?”
It’s the same theory I’ve been throwing at him for days—that the Blackburn Killer murdered my twin—but knowing now that it isn’t true makes it so much harder to say.
I think the lie will always be a thorn in my throat. I think I’ll have to choose to swallow it again and again.
When Elijah responds, there’s a hint of sympathy in his voice, maybe even a clot of his own pain. Dad and Edmond don’t compare, of course, but Elijah, too, has been hurt by his father, a man whose behavior he never understood.
“We don’t have proof of that at this time,” he answers. “But it’s possible.”
It’s what I was fishing for him to tell me. Still, I avoid his eyes.
I know this fiction won’t fix us, won’t heal what’s broken and lost. But right now, glancing at Charlie, I find him looking the same as yesterday, when he held my hand to his face, when we saw in eachother the same desire to undo our brother’s wounds. And it makes me sure—as sure as I’ll ever be, at least—that keeping his secret is the best thing to do.
Not the right thing. I will never believe it’s right. But I can believe in doing what’s best for my family, and I can wish that right and best weren’t at such terrible odds.
In the end, Elijah doesn’t question us for long. I think he senses our exhaustion, our devastation, hanging like fog in the air. He promises, though, to follow up soon.
I walk him to the door, an uneasy quiet stretching between us.
“One more thing,” he says as I reach for the knob. “Did you ever ask Charlie about the crime scene photo?”
I keep my expression steady—no twitch or blink that he can read.
“I did,” I say.
He watches me expectantly.
“And I think I was wrong,” I add, resisting the urge to clear my throat, “about it being him.”
“Really,” Elijah says, and now he reaches inside his jacket to pull out a copy of the photograph. He unfolds it carefully, like he’s setting up a trap. “This isn’t him?”
He points to that skinny figure tucked within the woods.
All I can see this time is how small Charlie looks. How vulnerable. How alone. He leans to the left like a tree about to fall, and I wish I could reach inside the photo, help to hold him up.
Bending closer, I pretend to scrutinize the image. Then I straighten and shake my head.
“It was cloudy and dark the day you showed me. But in this light”—I gesture to the chandelier—“I can see it better. It isn’t him.”
Elijah opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. I rush to fill his silence.
“Anything else? I’d like to get back to my family.” I open the door for him to leave, and a cold breeze shoves into the house. “As I’m sure you can imagine, we have a lot to process.”
Elijah searches my face before turning his attention toward the back hall. He waits a moment, as if hoping Charlie will hurry out to tell him the truth, then returns his gaze to me.
“That’s it,” he says, “for now,” and he tucks the photo back into his coat, where I hope I never see it again.
Greta is quick to forgive me. I call her in the afternoon, but as soon as I apologize, she heaps the blame onto herself.
“You were right,” she says. “My obsession with the Blackburn Killer gave me tunnel vision, and I lost sight of how deeply this affects you. It was insensitive, acting all excited to talk to suspects.”
