by Ronald Malfi
It became difficult for her to breathe, and the inside of the Cadillac no longer seemed cold. Rather, she’d broken out in a sweat, could feel droplets of perspiration running from her armpits and down the sides of her ribs.
Rotley maneuvered the Cadillac around a dirt turnabout and passed through an open iron gate. Rocks popped and snapped beneath the crunch of the car’s tires. Slowly, as if the climb were too strenuous for the vehicle, Rotley urged the Cadillac up the face of the precipice.
Ahead in the darkness, and like an unavoidable illness, the compound grew closer.
Chapter Six
Jeffery Kildare looked like an eagle—all right angles and aquiline features, with a sloping brow and dark ink-spot eyes. When he spoke, he did so in a manner that communicated unquestionable superiority, as if each word was its own enigma spoken for the sole purpose of being solved. In a way, he was very much like the house itself, Kelly realized.
Walking up to the house with DeVonn Rotley leading the way, Kelly caught a glimpse of the ghostly man as he passed behind one of the sprawling first floor windows—a tall, gaunt figure that moved with a refined yet calculating determination. Mounting the series of stone steps to the front porch, she could hear the front door being unbolted from within. Nostalgia had yet to hit her, and she attributed its absence to the mere fact that she really could remember nothing at all about the place. About all of Spires, for that matter. And in a half-hearted attempt to recall some memory, any memory at all, she cast a glance over her shoulder and peered down into the steep, sloping valley below. The midnight fog was so great that she could not even make out the tiny houses at the foot of the precipice from such a height. The treetops, black in the night, pushed up through the fog like fingers through cloth.
The front door eased open, letting warm, yellow light pool out onto the porch. The tall, gaunt figure stood on the other side. Immediately, Kelly knew he was the man who’d left the message at her apartment.
“Mr. Kildare,” she said. Vapor blossomed in front of her face.
“The older daughter,” Kildare said, his face expressionless. He was dressed in a dark, modest suit with his hair combed meticulously to one side. Surprisingly, there was a slight southern air about him. “I trust your flight went well? Please come inside, it’s cold.”
“Ma’am,” Rotley said and took her bag from her, carried it into the house where he quickly disappeared among a maze of expansive corridors.
Kelly stepped inside, immediately warming up, and Kildare shut the door behind her. Without provocation, he placed his hands at the collar of her winter coat, initiating its removal. She pulled it off and allowed the eagle-like man to take it, shake the melting snow from it. Looking around, it was like slipping back into some barely remembered childhood dream. The foyer was tremendous, decorated with modest Navajo tapestries and countless oil paintings in gold frames. The floor was polished wood, so pristine that the vaulted ceiling and exposed beams reflected in its surface. To the left, a staircase clung to the wall and swept up to the second and third floors, the risers themselves marble, the banister polished brass and wood. She could hear an old phonograph playing a Duke Ellington number coming from one of the many first-floor rooms.
“I’ve been told that not much has changed since you’ve last been here,” Kildare said. He hung her coat on an immense sculptured coat rack and stepped up beside her. He straightened his modest suit and tie, adjusted the cuffs of his shirt; the clothes clung to him the way they might cling to a mannequin.
I don’t remember, she thought, but said, “Yes.” She stepped into the middle of the foyer, her gaze trailing up the winding staircase, her footfalls echoing throughout the room. Everything was beyond tremendous. Above her head hung an impressive crystal chandelier, which reminded her of The Phantom of the Opera, and the act where the glass chandelier comes crashing down to the stage below. “Where are my parents?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Kellow are asleep,” Kildare said. “They sent their apologies, but these past few days have been quite trying and they needed their rest. There is a bedroom made up for you on the second floor, and I’ve had Glenda prepare you some food in the kitchen, in case you showed up hungry—”
“Glenda’s still here?” She’d completely forgotten about Glenda, but now that the name had been spoken, a barrage of memory-fireworks went off inside her head. Glenda…
(let the baby out)
“Yes,” said Kildare. “I can show you to your room where you can freshen up before you eat.”
“Becky? Is she here?”
Kildare stepped back toward the front door where he turned a series of deadbolts. “Your sister is in her bedroom. She’s been unconscious since the accident. I’m afraid she’s in no condition for visitors.”
Something snapped inside her. “And when the hell is someone going to fill me in on this accident? No one’s told me a damn thing yet. I want to know what happened to my sister. I want to see her. If it’s so goddamn serious, why the hell isn’t she in some hospital?”
Her rise in temper did not ruffle Kildare in the least. He merely brushed lint from his slacks—or pretended to do so—and motioned for Kelly to follow him up the stairwell. Most cavalier, he said, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for you to peek in on her, once you’ve gotten situated. As for what happened to her, I’m afraid I really shouldn’t go into too much detail before you speak with the police tomorrow afternoon.”
Kelly paused halfway up the stairs. “The police? Why would the police want to speak with me?”
“Please,” Kildare said, continuing up the stairs. “This is not my matter. I can only tell you what I know.”
“Which isn’t much, apparently,” she said, angry.
Kildare either did not recognize her agitation or simply didn’t care. He led her down the second floor to a closed door at the end of the corridor. He opened the door and stepped inside the room, flicked on the light. Kelly stepped in behind him, immediately aghast.
It was her bedroom, exactly as she’d left it at age fifteen. The impact of the visual summoned her memory of the room—the canopied bed; the pink silk drapes; the hand-carved hope chest with the heart-shaped keyhole; the cavalcade of stuffed animals at the foot of her dresser, around her bed, around the perimeter of the room itself. Against the opposite wall hung a full-length mirror. Both Kildare and herself were reflected in it, and she nearly broke out into a strangled laugh when she saw the mismatched image: this dark, pierced young girl from the pit of New York City standing beside this double-breasted suit, this eagle-like man with narrow little eyes and deliberate speech.
I’m surprised he has a reflection at all, she thought, still fighting back a grin.
Her bag was already on the bed, the black canvas looking so out-of-place in this pink pastel wonderland, like a sour bruise on the face of a beautiful child.
“As I’m sure you remember,” Kildare the Eagle-Man said, motioning toward the closed door beside the bed, “there is the adjoining bathroom. You can freshen up there. You are familiar with the kitchen?”
“I can find my way,” she said.
Kildare did not offer any more information. He stepped out into the hallway and pulled the bedroom door closed behind him. Kelly listened to his footfalls recede down the corridor until they vanished.
This is the bedroom of Little Kelly Kellow, the sweet little thing. See how everything is so perfectly preserved? Nothing has been touched since the day the little dear went away to the nuthouse.
She went to the maple armoire, opened it. A small mirror hung on the back of one of the doors, and the interior of the armoire was stuffed with a selection of small dresses in a variety of muted colors. It felt odd staring at them, as if she’d somehow invaded some stranger’s room, some stranger’s life, and was here to take it away.
No—you can keep this life. I want nothing to do with it.
Before venturing back into the hallway, she washed her face and hands in the connecting bathroom and tied her hair bac
k with an elastic band. The upstairs hallway was silent and cloaked in shadows, each door to every room closed. Like secrets, she thought. Remembering correctly, Becky’s bedroom was the one opposite her own, and her parents would be asleep on the third floor. She went to Becky’s door, touched the brass knob, jiggled it. It was locked. Looking down, she could see a soft blue light pulsing beneath the door, as if someone had left a television on inside. Moonlight?
Lightly, she tapped her fingernails on the door. “Becky? Beck?”
My God, she realized, I don’t even know what to call you.
She watched as the blue light beneath the door slowly faded, but no one answered her.
In the kitchen, Glenda Banczyk was hunched over the stove boiling a pot of water. She was a meaty, compact woman who now must have been in her mid-sixties. Kelly barely recalled the days of her youth when Glenda had moved around the compound in a starched white uniform (per regulation), her graying hair tied up in a bun (also per regulation), her thick arms laden with laundry. In those days, Kelly had recognized an almost admirable attractiveness in the woman, as if she had been destined to be beautiful if only she’d followed a different path. But she had always been kind, and that was what Kelly remembered most of all.
Kelly entered the kitchen and paused by the table, watching the old housekeeper work with her back toward her. Glenda went to the refrigerator, grabbed several eggs, and dipped them one by one into the pot of boiling water. Still wearing the white uniform, the woman seemed to be caught in an inescapable time warp. She caught Kelly out of the corner of her eye and turned around, beaming.
“Kelly!” She moved to her, hugged her warmly, then held her out at arm’s length for a full examination. “Oh, honey, you’ve grown up!”
“Hello.”
“Yes!”
“You look good. How’ve you been?”
“Good-good-good, healthy as a horse,” the woman said. Her face was fuller than Kelly remembered, and creased with faint wrinkles like the dog-eared pages of a paperback novel. “Sit down, sit, I’ve prepared food.” She moved to the refrigerator again as Kelly sat, and fished out a turkey sandwich and potato salad on a plate, covered in Saran Wrap. “So good to see you, dear,” Glenda said. “It’s just unfortunate it has to be under such horrible circumstances.”
“What exactly are the circumstances?” she asked. “No one’s told me anything.”
Glenda set the plate of food down in front of her, brushed a string of gray hair from her face, and gently caressed the side of Kelly’s face. Her hands were like mother-hands, tender and loving. “You got so pretty,” she said. “I knew that you would. You were such a pretty little girl…”
“Glenda, please…”
Resigned, the housekeeper sat at the table. “No one knows for certain what happened to your sister,” she said, “except for Becky herself, the poor darling, and she’s been asleep since it happened.”
Becky wasn’t just asleep, Kelly knew; Becky was unconscious.
Glenda said, “Four nights ago, for whatever reason, your sister crept out of the house and started wandering through the woods out back. She apparently walked out pretty far, and we assume she might have gotten a bit lost too. Mr. Kildare—I don’t like that man, dear—he found her the next day while searching the compound. Someone had hurt her badly.” It was obvious that this part was difficult for Glenda to say. “Her body was covered in bruises and she was unconscious, with a large gash at the back of her head. There was…she had blood everywhere, and her clothes were practically torn to shreds. The police said she was definitely attacked and, from her appearance, they think the attacker might have intended to…” She struggled with the words, “Well, to rape her, dear.”
Suddenly not hungry, Kelly rested her face in her hands, staring down at the floral-printed tablecloth while her head cultivated a throbbing headache. “Oh, Christ, Glenda…”
“The doctors said she’s all right physically. It’s just a question of when she’ll wake up again. She will wake up again, dear. She’s just slipped into herself pretty deep, but she’ll be back. I know she will. I feel it. But for now, there’s nothing we can do. The hospital let us take her home after your father insisted. Mr. Kellow’s had a doctor come in every day, just to make certain everything is okay, that she’s doing fine. And she is.” The woman smiled wearily. “She just doesn’t want to wake up yet.”
“What do the police think?”
“They don’t understand why she would have left the house, unless it was to meet someone.”
“The attacker?”
“No one knows, not until Becky wakes up.”
“Do they know when that will be? Do they have any idea?”
Glenda shook her head. “No one knows anything for certain, dear.”
“Kildare said something about the police wanting to talk with me tomorrow. Do you have any idea why?”
Glenda ran her palms along the tablecloth, as if to iron out wrinkles. “I don’t know, dear.”
“Who is this Jeffery Kildare guy anyway?”
Standing up and moving to the stove, Glenda was silent for a few moments before speaking. “I don’t like that man,” she said again. She took a spoon and began to lightly tap the eggs in the boiling water. “I don’t know where your father found him, but he thinks his word is gold and he’s been staying in this house for the past few months. He’s got a room on the third floor, keeps the door locked all the time, won’t even let me in to clean. Not that I mind. I prefer to steer clear of that one.”
Funny, Kelly thought, I don’t trust him, either. There’s just something about the man…
“Mr. Kellow doesn’t say much about him, either,” Glenda went on. “I asked him how they were introduced and your father just brushed the question. You know how he does when he doesn’t feel like answering any questions.”
“How is he?”
“Your father?” Glenda said. “He’s heartbroken over your sister, same as your mother. They both are. But they’re confused and angry too and I’ve hardly seen your father since the incident. He just sits in his study and reads, or goes for walks in the garden for hours on end. I suppose every person has their own way of dealing with things, and your father has every right to brood alone if he chooses, although I do worry about him.”
“I haven’t spoken with them since I left the hospital and moved to New Hampshire,” she said. “That was about six or so years ago. How did they even know where to find me?”
“Oh, honey, your father has his ways.” It was meant to sound lighthearted but instead, it made Kelly feel cold inside. Like her father was some sort of preternatural being, capable of keeping a mental lock on those he chose, no matter how far they strayed.
“He found me, even under a different name.” She muttered this more to herself than to Glenda. Then, for the woman’s sake, added, “I was married in New Hampshire.”
“You’re married?” Glenda turned away from the stove again, her face suddenly beautiful and radiant. For an instant, she appeared maybe twenty years younger. “Oh, Kelly, that’s wonderful! You must be so happy! I always knew you’d be such a success, honey. I’m so happy for you.”
“We’re not married anymore,” she quickly added, then thought, Oh hell, she didn’t need to know that. “It lasted only a few years. It was mutual.”
“Oh, dear…”
“Really, it’s okay. I’m happy now. It’s better this way. New era—these things happen. It’s more common than car wrecks nowadays.”
“Well, as long as you’re happy, I suppose that’s all that matters.” Glenda smiled at her and again the old woman’s motherly nature was clearly visible, as was that resurgence of youthfulness and beauty. In truth, Glenda Banczyk had been more of a mother to her than her own mother had been, and just as quickly as she thought that Kelly’s mind opened up to an image of carving Halloween pumpkins with Glenda so many years ago, the two of them sitting around the kitchen table (which they covered in newspapers), pulling the gu
ts out of the giant orange vegetables. It was a good memory, and one that her brain hadn’t insisted she block out. Thinking of it now, it made her smile.
“I don’t remember much about this place, you know,” she said, not really expecting any sort of answer from Glenda. “In the time before I went away to the hospital, I don’t really remember anything about what happened—”
“Shhh,” Glenda said. Her face grew somber, perhaps a bit saddened. “Don’t think about those times. You’ve moved on.”
“Maybe…”
“Those were bad times for you, dear.”
“I can remember having…well, I guess what would amount to a nervous breakdown when I was fifteen…but I don’t remember the details of it, don’t remember exactly what happened.”
“You needed medical attention and your parents felt the hospital was the best thing for you at the time,” Glenda said. “They were worried about you, dear. You were becoming frazzled, too much anxiety. Your parents love you, Kelly. They only did what they thought was best.”
But Glenda misunderstood—this wasn’t about her parents’ reasons for putting her in the institution, this was about the events that had caused her to require institutionalization. Strange thing was, she couldn’t remember. But how could she expect Glenda the housekeeper to understand such things? How in the world would Glenda know what had been going on inside her head if she herself couldn’t properly recall any of it? It was unfair. She wanted answers to questions that were, essentially, unanswerable. She couldn’t expect Glenda to know anything about that any more than she could expect herself to suddenly figure it all out on her own.
Changing the subject, Glenda asked her how long she’d be staying.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’d like to see that Becky fully recovers.”
“I’m sure she’ll be all right,” said the woman. “I’ve been keeping her in my prayers.” Then, as an afterthought: “The both of you.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Kelly ate while Glenda scooped the hardboiled eggs from the pot and set them on the counter to cool. (It was a ritual of Gordon Kellow to have fresh hardboiled eggs for both breakfast and lunch every day. There were some things Kelly felt she’d never forget. Her father’s hardboiled eggs were one of them.)
