Page 13 of The Family Plot
“You still live here?” I ask.
She puts the ax blade-down on the ground, holding the handle in place with a flattened palm. “Of course I do,” she replies.
Her voice is huskier than I imagined it would be. With her black, doll-like curls and pouty mouth, I always thought she’d speak in a whine.
“I assume you’re back because of your father,” she says.
I tip my chin in half a nod.
She looks into the distance, through the woods, toward the place where our mansion would be, if she could see it from here. Her eyes are still so big, cartoonishly round, and she blinks them, hard, as she stands up straighter.
“Is the rest of your family back?” she asks, and I feel it in my stomach, the absence of Andy, cold and machete-sharp.
“Some of them,” I say.
“What about Andy?”
There’s something hopeful in her gaze, like she thinks that if hehadcome back, he’d be coming straight to her, a girl he hardly knew.
“Andy is dead,” I tell her. “He was murdered ten years ago. With his own ax.”
I could have been kinder about it. Gentler. Or, actually—no, I couldn’t, because there’s nothing gentle about losing Andy. The wordmurder, once so simple to say, now stings my tongue, a thing that must be spit more than spoken.
For a few moments, her face is blank. Then there’s a shiver of movement, rippling her expression into one of confusion. Seconds pass in which we only stare, each of us watching, each of us watched, until her features crumple into raw devastation. Her eyes shove out tears, ones so fat I could probably see my reflection in them.
She bends over, leaning her forehead against the butt of her ax. Then she bangs her head against it. Once, twice—a beat beneath her sobs.
“Hey, don’t—” I start, but she snaps into a standing position again.
“Murdered by who?” she demands.
“We… we don’t know. Someone buried him in our woods.”
Her face freezes in horror. Her mouth gapes, dark and twisted, until she covers it with one hand. “I thought he just left!” she wails. “I had no idea he was killed.”
I take a step away from her. She’s shaking now, fingers and shoulders trembling. Her reaction is alarming in its intensity. Suspicious, too. Even though her words could be my own—I thought he just left; I had no idea he was killed—I don’t believe that one conversation withAndy would make her feel his loss this acutely, more than ten years later.
“You didn’t even know him,” I say. “So what is this? What are you doing?”
I try to channel Charlie, inject my tone with superiority, haughty disdain—but as the words come out, I find it’s a hand-me-down that doesn’t fit.
“I knew him better than I’ve ever known anyone,” she cries.
I can’t stop myself from scoffing. “You spoke to him one time.”
Her tears pause for a second as she glares at me. Then she wipes her cheeks, crying even harder. “We hung outallthe time.”
“You…” I squint at her. “What?”
“We’d meet up in the woods,” Ruby continues, “mostly at night.”
“At night?” I shake my head. At night, Andy and I lay in beds that were pressed against the shared wall between our rooms, and we both slept easier, deeper, knowing that even when we were separated, we were only inches apart.
“We’d write these notes to each other,” Ruby says, sniffling. “He brought the snacks, and I brought the flashlights—so we could see our paper.”
“Notes?” I can’t stop echoing her words. “What kind of notes?”
She hiccups, or maybe sobs. It’s hard to tell with all the noise she’s making.
