Page 83 of The Family Plot
I’m surprised by Charlie’s face as I speak; his mouth is ajar, hisbrows are furrowed, and his expression is filled with something I can’t name—disgust, I think; maybe distress. When I finish, he squeezes his eyes shut, cheeks bunching with the effort, and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Moments pass, swollen with his silence. Outside, there’s a burst of laughter, the shriek of a child, a woman saying, “Soon, I think.” That seems to jolt him back to life. He releases his nose, puts the card onto the table, and lets out a sigh.
“Nothing,” he says.
But as a tear creeps out of the corner of his eye, one he slaps away with a furious hand, it’s clear that it’s something. He has that look again, that same anxiety I saw when the police searched his room.
Before I can push the issue, Tate and Mom appear in the living room. Tate has an arm around Mom’s shoulder, steering her forward like she needs help just to walk, and it strikes me as strange, how quickly Tate seems to have forgiven Mom’s lie. How quickly she’s managed to trust her again.
I look at Charlie. He’s chewing his lip, gaze lost out the window as he stares at the crowd on the lawn.
“Well,” he says after a moment. “It’s time, isn’t it? Let’s give the people what they want.”
twenty-one
Thirty minutes in, I’mperched on the bottom of the stairs, watching people drift in and out. Some cock their heads to consider me, as if I’m another exhibit, while others ignore me, talking over my head about the pictures of Mom’s parents.
“Get this: she tells people they were murdered,” one woman says to her friend, “but actually, they died of leukemia.”
I don’t correct them about the type of cancer.
“That’s so creepy,” the friend replies.
For a while, I don’t recognize anyone. There are more college students than I would have expected—mostly women—with their ponytails and timid giggles and school sweatshirts. They flock to the diorama.
My chin is propped on the heel of my hand, eyes willfully glazing over, when I hear a familiar voice.
“Hey.”
I stare up at Greta—here, in my house, despite my turned-off phone, my attempt to keep her away. Her mouth is tilted into the suggestion of a smile, but her face is somber, brows knitted together.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
She sits beside me on the stair, then folds me into a hug. My chin falls onto her shoulder, the rest of me stiff. We’ve never done thisbefore, lingered in each other’s arms. I want it to feel safe, feel warm, but she carries the November cold on her clothes.
“Your phone goes straight to voice mail,” she says when she pulls away.
Greta gestures to the visitors milling around, some with their arms tucked tight to their sides, like they’re afraid to even brush against a wall, get the dust of Murder Mansion on their skin.
“This is pretty crazy,” she says. Her eyes rove the exhibits until they skid to a stop on one of the paintings. “Whoa. Is that Kitty Genovese?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh my god, I love that case. Did you know that Winston Moseley, the guy who murdered her, was married with three kids? He told police he just got up in the middle of the night, left his sleeping wife in bed, and drove around trying to find a woman to kill. How fucked up is that?”
I focus on the floor so my thoughts can’t flick to Dad. Still, my breath is shallow. All my muscles are clenched.
“Oh! There’s Linda Cook. I’m obsessed with the name for that case: the Cinderella murder.”
There’s a hint of giddiness in her voice, and I’m grateful that, from here, she can’t see Tate’s diorama—only the people who hunch over it, scrutinizing every detail.
“He could be here, you know,” Greta says after a while. She leans in, speaking softly toward my ear. “The Blackburn Killer.”
Beneath the foyer’s chandelier, her eyes seem to shimmer, same as they do when she looks at her laptop, gaze glowing from its artificial light.
“If he did kill Andy,” she continues, squeezing closer, “he’d probably get off on coming to the memorial. Really, he could be anyone here.”
