Page 5 of The Family Plot
“No,” I say. “I haven’t spoken to him.”
I’ve learned that outsiders don’t understand the link between Andy and me. I tried explaining it to Greta once, but even she just scrunchedup her nose.You mean, like, telepathy?she asked. And I stopped right there, didn’t bother to describe the time I was lying in bed, something like two a.m., rereading a book on the Black Dahlia. I had a flashlight under the covers, hand over my mouth as I got to the part about the cuts across her face, and I heard my door squeak open. I popped my head out from under the blankets to find Andy, who’d felt my horror in his sleep and had been wakened by it like an alarm. He whispered at me then to put the book away, allow my namesake to rest for once.
We knew things about each other, Andy and I, without ever having to utter a word. So if my brother were dead, I would feel it. I would know.
“What makes you think he ran away?” the detective asks.
I tap my fingernail against the mug. “He left a note. My mom told you that already.”
He nods, flipping back a few pages in his notebook. “The only way out is to never come back,” he reads. “What did he mean by that?”
I tap some more, and he looks at my finger, which instantly stops me.
“What did my family say it meant?” I ask.
“Your sister said to ask you. That you were closest with Andy.”
“Iamclosest with Andy,” I correct him—because, really, past tense? It’s just bones in a hole in the ground, and Andy’s out there, in Vegas maybe, where people spend thousands each night on the hope for a brighter tomorrow, where any shadows are chased away by flashing, exuberant lights. I bet no one talks about murder out there. I bet he loves it.
“He wanted something different,” I tell the detective, “from the way we were raised.”
“And how were you raised, exactly?”
I stare at him. “I think you know.”
With all the commotion before—the people in white jumpsuits; Fritz tracking dirt into the house, throwing condolences around as if he had any way of knowing it was Andy in that grave—I didn’t recognize the detective at first. He seemed a few years older than me, and he looked like anybody: thin, average height, dark hair that swooped at the top, like a cat had been licking him. But when we started this “interview,” he introduced himself to me again—Elijah Kraft—and I almost laughed.You’re Chief Kraft’s son, I said, and he had the decency, at least, to look a little sheepish.He’s not the chief anymore, he told me.My father’s in a nursing home. For dementia.I think I was supposed to feel sorry for him. But was Edmond Kraft sorry? Did he ever think of it all—his obsession with us back then; his slinking around our property, always with the intention to catch us in some dark, criminal act—and feel even a tinge of remorse? I doubt it. Chief Kraft was like everyone else: suspicious of us, monitoring us, believing himself entitled to his intrusions.
“I know the rumors,” Elijah says.
“Ones your father probably started.”
“I know they call this place Murder Mansion.”
“They’re idiots,” I say.
“I know your family worships the dead.”
And at this, I actually do laugh.
“No?” Elijah asks, jotting something down. “Is that incorrect?”
“Wehonorthe dead,” I tell him. “Specifically, victims of murder.”
Which Andy isn’t. He isn’t.
“And what does that mean exactly?” Elijah asks. “To honor them?”
I glance at the living room doors, slid together, shut tight. It feels so odd, to talk about this with a stranger, especially Chief Kraft’s son. I can picture Mom, listening at the door, bristling as I speak. But this man is a detective, he’s seen bones in our backyard, and I know what he’s thinking.
“On the anniversaries of their murders,” I say, “we would light candles for them. Say their name, say a prayer. The idea was to meditate on their death—but more important, their life.”
“A prayer to whom?” he asks, eyes stuck to whatever he’s writing. “You said you didn’t worship them, but prayer is a means of worship, right?”
His pen races across the page, moving too much for the little I’ve said. “A prayer on their behalf,” I reply.
“To God?”
“No, not to God. To… I don’t know.”
