Page 77 of The Family Plot
Andy telling Ruby, “Who knows what I’d do to a kid? Who knows what’s in my blood?”
Now, Mom moans so loudly on the floor, it sounds like it’s happening in my head. But as I watch her crawl closer to Charlie, chugging out sobs, I realize the moan is mine this time, gushing from between my lips.
I clamp my hand over my mouth, as if I could hold back the truth: Andy’s role in Jessie Stanton’s murder, in the murders of Alexis Shea and Amy Ragan before her.
I think of their Honoring dates, scrambling to do the math as my stomach curdles. Andy would have been eleven when Dad killed Alexis. Only seven with Amy.Just a boy, like Mom said.
But with Jessie, he was days from sixteen, tipping toward adulthood, transitioning from boy to man.
“He was so disturbed that week,” I say, thinking out loud. “After Jessie Stanton, he was so on edge. He wasn’t even sleeping.”
Now, I focus on Charlie, aiming my words at him. “He was old enough, at that point, to really understand it. So do you think… do you think he threatened to tell someone? And maybe Dad—”
A sob punches out of me, sudden and searing.
“Did Dad kill Andy?” I finish. “To keep him quiet?”
“No,” Mom cries. “No. No. No, no.”
But then Tate hangs her head. And that’s when I know. She’s already come to this conclusion. For ten years, she’s known what Dad was. And when she learned that Andy had been killed, she didn’t cry or scream or stay in bed all day. She got to work on a diorama—exactly as she did for all the other victims of the Blackburn Killer.
I swing my gaze—slowly, heavily—between her and Charlie. “All week,” I say, voice low, breath shallow, “you’ve watched me suffer, trying to figure this out. You told me to trust the family, Charlie. To trust you. And Tate. But the whole time, the two of you knew Dad killed Andy. And you said nothing.”
“No!” Mom howls. “Daniel did not kill Andy! He was sick that night. He was very ill!”
Hunched on the floor, she balls up her hands like she wants to punch the tile.
“He was sick!” she repeats. “Your father was very sick! We were up all night.”
The first time she mentioned this, I felt such relief that she could prove Elijah wrong. Now, I almost pity her, how hard she’s working to hold this conviction, one she should already see crumbling.
“You must have fallen asleep,” I suggest.
“No.” Mom stamps her denial into the air. “And even if I did, I would have woken up if he left. Or… or when he came back.”
“Like you woke up all the other nights?” Charlie snarls. An old anger, scraped up from somewhere deep, shadows his words.
Mom gapes at him, aghast. “I… I didn’t…” She closes her mouth, swallowing.
“You’ve always been a very deep sleeper,” Tate tries gently. “It has to have been Dad. Who else would have reason to hurt Andy? Who else could be so violent?”
“I wasn’t asleep!” Mom yells. “Daniel was sick!”
Still on her knees, she slouches forward, digging her head into her flattened hands like somebody deep in prayer. Or, I consider instead, like somebody begging.
“Oh Charlie, why did he…” she starts. Sitting up, she reaches for Charlie’s foot, but his leg jerks away so suddenly her palm slaps againstthe tile. She doesn’t seem to notice. “Why did Daniel mur-murder all those women?”
Charlie chokes out a scoff. “How the fuck should I know? You think we chatted about it?”
“Please,” Mom pleads. “He didn’t… He didn’t say anything?”
In Mom’s question, I hear the echo of my own—You didn’t say anything to each other?—when I asked Charlie what he and Dad spoke about while hunting.
The beauty of nature, he answered. Appreciating nature.
Now, at the memory of that response, I tremble. My insides hum with horror.
Dad killed deer, Charlie told me, to preserve their beauty before time destroyed it. And now I see the photographs—those women who will never change, never age, will only lie broken but beautiful in their ice-blue gowns—mounted on the wall like the head of a deer.
