by Nina Laurin
As soon as I’m home, I’m going to run a bath, I think automatically, my mind on the oversize oval tub in our town house. Except I’m not going home and there will be no bath, not for a little bit.
“Can I have my phone now?” I pipe up.
“You don’t have a phone anymore,” Cynthia says flatly. My snappish retort dies when I see her eyes in the rearview mirror. Her regular Botox appointments maintain her face in a pleasing, smooth expression, but in spite of all that paralyzing toxin, her glare manages to convey murder. So I decide to keep quiet.
When we turn the corner onto the quiet street where the house sits at the very end, I sit up straight and look around. My adoptive parents used to live in an honest-to-God gated community, right up until the out-of-nowhere divorce that came as a surprise even to me. The ensuing move from the McMansion to the neat Victorian-style cottage in an upper-middle-class area was a comedown Cynthia never got over. That was when Cynthia’s own biological daughter began to hate her. I, for one, was glad to be out of that mansion. Maybe it’s all the memories of life right after the fire that I was glad to leave behind. Maybe I just liked the cottage that smelled like home—not my home, maybe, but a home.
Right now, there are cars—not our neighbors’ quaint Toyota SUVs and dated Jeeps, but other cars, vans splashed with logos. One or two have that telltale tower sticking out of them, like something from a cartoon.
“Milton,” Cynthia says in that reserved voice that nonetheless manages to be commanding. He nods, shrugs out of his jacket, and throws it over me. It’s big enough to cover me entirely, like a large, warm tent that smells like him. Except right now it’s anything but comforting.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask, peering out from under the collar.
He gives me a look so apologetic it borders on pity. “Come along, Addie.”
We make our way through the swarm of reporters, and all I can see are legs and feet: my own once-white work shoes, Milt’s brown leather boots, Cynthia’s maroon stocky heels and massive nylon-clad calves in front of me. And other shoes, crowding in from all sides: loafers, sneakers, pumps. Voices descend on us, overwhelming despite the coat that covers me from head to midthigh.
“Do you have any comment, Andrea? What can you tell us about what happened?”
Milton yells at them to get the fuck away from me, or something like that—I don’t make out the actual words. Cynthia’s shrill voice chimes in: Please disperse; she will not be talking to anyone right now. Finally, the front door opens, swallows us up, and shuts behind us. I throw the coat off me with all the violence my painkiller-weakened muscles can muster, just in time to see Cynthia turn the two locks and slide the latch into place too.
“I was afraid it would be worse,” Milt is saying.
“Worse?” Cynthia hisses. “How can it possibly be worse?”
That’s when I realize I’ve had enough. “One of you is going to tell me what the fuck is going on,” I snap. “Right fucking now.”
They turn to me as if on command, and their faces soften, expressions shifting.
“Addie,” Milt says in that pacifying tone, the same one he used when we had The Talk months ago about taking a break.
“You should go to your room and rest,” Cynthia cuts in. “You have a concussion, for goodness’ sake. You’re not thinking clearly.”
“I think I’m the only one here right now who’s thinking clearly.”
Cynthia looks at Milt, half-pleading, half-exasperated. He steps forward, tiny steps like he’s about to tame a wild horse, and tries to take my arm. I throw him off. He grabs it again, more insistent this time, and I’m reminded that he’s an athlete who still works out five days a week, and the heaviest thing I’ve lifted in years is a beer can. He leads me along to the staircase up to where my old room used to be, next to my sister’s.
“I hate to say this, Addie, but this time, you should listen to her,” he mutters into my ear.
“What happened? Don’t lie to me, Milt. Not you too. Please. What happened?”
“Nothing you need to worry about. Nothing that has anything to do with you.”
“Did I do something?”
“No.”
“Did I…did I run someone over? Did I kill someone?”
CHAPTER FIVE
The door of my old room closes behind Milt and me, and it’s like we’ve fallen through time nearly ten years back. I only lived here from about sixteen until I turned eighteen, and I was sure that the moment I moved out, Cynthia would tear everything down and turn the room into a nice, faceless, prim “guest room” for hypothetical guests who would never arrive. But she never touched it. Not that I had been very keen on decorating and personalizing. The wallpaper is the same as when we moved in, pale blue with tiny silver flowers. There’s a single bed with a gray bedspread, a vanity, a dresser with drawers, and one of those built-in wall closets nothing ever fits into, with a latticed door that doesn’t close all the way. And most importantly, the TV on the dresser, half facing the bed. A TV that Cynthia forgot about, thank God.
The remote has been lost years ago so I use the power button on the TV itself—it’s one of those boxy old ones you can only find on the curb nowadays. Once upon a time, when I came to live with the Boudreaux family when I was twelve, it was still considered something special to have a TV in your room. My sister even had a computer.
The TV flickers on with that satisfying hum, and the sound appears before the picture. It’s not like in the movies and TV shows when you fall on the news report you’re looking for right away—I have to browse through infomercials and before-school cartoons before I happen on a news channel.
They’re talking about something else, some economic crisis in some part of the world that’s important indeed, I’m sure, but right now it makes me want to smash the TV in frustration. Behind me, Milt clears his throat.
“Addie…”
“Don’t call me Addie.”
“Andrea. You sure you want to do this?”
I don’t bother answering him.
“Andrea, turn off the TV.”
“I’ll find out anyway,” I snarl. As if on command, the screen flickers and changes, and the next thing I know, my brother’s face splashes across it, life-size.
It’s a shock that makes my breath catch. The old TV screen distorts his features a little, turns clean lines blurry, bright colors murky. This is my brother as an adult, a sharp contrast to the image of him from fifteen years ago that’s still engraved on my memory: covered in soot, wild-eyed, clutching the lighter in his hand still, his knuckles stark white against the dirt and ash.
Everyone always said he’d grow up to be a heartbreaker. I don’t know if I’d describe what I’m seeing as a heartbreaker. His face that promised to be chiseled with cut-glass cheekbones like our mother’s has gone gaunt and angular instead, his nose aquiline and lips thin, pale, and pressed together so they almost disappear. His hair is too long, in need of a cut, but that only underlines the sharp M shape of a hairline that’s starting to recede before its time. Even its coppery-gold color, inherited from the birth father we never knew, seems to have faded, leeched out by time or lack of nutrients or a hard-luck lifestyle. The stubble on his cheeks and chin is patchy, unhealthy looking, and his eyes look dull and dark, like windows of an abandoned house long after the last lights have gone out.
My first thought is that it’s all been a mistake, that it’s not him. Not my beautiful brother whom everyone loved, the golden boy. Yet as soon as I met Milt’s gaze and saw that look in his eyes back at the hospital, I knew who this was about. Deep down, I’ve always known this would eventually happen.
What did you do, Eli? What the hell did you do?
My knees buckle, and I find myself sitting right on the floor at the foot of my old bed.
The face flickers out, and in its place appears a close-up of a ramshackle duplex-type building. Police tape is strewn about everywhere, like Halloween decorations.
“…cu
rrently wanted by police after a young woman’s body was found inside an apartment in northeast Denver. If you know anything about the suspect’s whereabouts, please call…” The image changes once again, to rows of information and a scrolling phone number in an urgent red font. And before I can release my breath, the newscast moves on, the image changing back to the anchor.
Numbly, I watch her frosty-pink glossed lips move. She could be talking about anything. I’m no longer listening.
So that’s it, then?
Milton groans, and I realize I spoke out loud. “What do you mean ‘that’s it’? He killed someone.”
“We don’t know that,” I say automatically.
“Yes, we do. At least the reporters on the front lawn sure do.”
“They creamed their pants the moment they heard the name,” I snap. My gaze is still riveted on the TV. Waiting for what I know is to come. “That’s all. It doesn’t mean it’s true.”
Milt sighs. “What I don’t understand is why you’re defending him right now.”
“I am not defending anyone. Maybe you think I should just jump to conclusions, like everyone else?”
As if on cue, the TV flickers back to my brother’s picture. Except this time, it’s a different picture, one I remember and recognize, and it makes my heart clench with raw pain, like taking a bullet. It’s the school picture the year we turned twelve—the hazy lilac-and-blue background they hung up in the gym blasted by two powerful lamps that brought out every single stray hair and adolescent blemish, that cruelly bounced off braces and glasses, sealing our fate onto glossy photo paper for all eternity. But Eli looks wonderful. He’s not facing the camera head-on like in that other, newer photo—a mug shot? His head is turned just barely to the right, and the corner of his mouth curls in a knowing smirk, a cute kid about to become a handsome man.
That photo did the rounds back then, the talk shows, the press. That awful true crime book used it as a cover image, cropped and altered with the colors changed to more sinister, foreboding red and black tones. Every time I looked at it, I wondered if he already knew in the back of his mind what he was going to do. Had he already planned it? He always had his secrets, even from me. Especially from me. They never found the lighter he used, not even after combing through every inch of the smoking pile of ashes, extracting charred “clues” to inspect and catalogue as irrevocable proof of my brother’s guilt. He never did tell anyone what happened to it, how he got rid of it.
“Eli Warren last came into the public eye in connection with a fire that consumed a suburban home in 2002. After believing the cause was electric, the investigation team soon discovered that—”
She drones on and on, repeating the story I know by heart. It seems to me that everybody knows it by heart. Every time someone looks at me oddly, or a stranger’s gaze lingers a millisecond too long, or a cashier takes a beat too long before she gives me my change, I think to myself, They know. But in truth, of course, to most people the story was just a morbid curiosity, something they read about in the paper. Maybe they even picked up that true crime paperback at the airport or at Walmart, skimmed it in a couple of hours, and left it on a bench.
But that was years ago, and they’ve long since moved on, turning to other crimes real and fictional to take them away from their humdrum lives for a few minutes at a time. Nobody remembers who we are. Especially who I am, the afterthought, the faint supporting character in the background. The silent sister.
I only remember that Milt is still there when his shape blocks the TV screen. He reaches out and turns it off.
“No!” I protest.
“Yes. It’s enough. Why do you even care what happens to him? He already killed your parents.”
The words, spat out like an accusation, paralyze me. I open my mouth to answer but no sound comes out. We face each other, me sitting on the floor, him towering over me, glaring down from the height of his six feet two inches. It’s unfair.
“Let him be,” Milt says. “He got himself into some shit that’s nobody’s fault but his own and that of the people dumb enough to let him out of prison. He’s not your problem anymore.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why? He wouldn’t have done the same for you.”
The door flies open and bangs against the wall, like a gunshot. We both turn around. Cynthia is in the doorway. Doesn’t she ever fucking knock?
“Andrea, there’s a detective downstairs. She wants to talk to you.”
CHAPTER SIX
Dating Sergio Bianchi was an undeniable step up for Cassandra. You could almost call it a Cinderella story. Born in Denver to Italian immigrant parents, he was fifteen years Cassie’s senior. After graduating with honors with a degree in business management, he opened a furniture store in suburban Denver. Sergio offered great working conditions and was beloved by all his employees. “He would never, ever leave anyone in trouble,” one of his employees, who wished to remain anonymous, told me. “And he would even help with money if he could. He was a generous soul.” So when a chestnut-haired beauty came in for a job interview with two kids in tow because her sitter cancelled at the last second, he was moved. He hired her on the spot. The rest, as they say, is history.
—Into Ashes: The Shocking Double Murder in the Suburbs by Jonathan Lamb, Eclipse Paperbacks, 2004, 1st ed.
Fifteen years earlier: before the fire
Eli brings home a complaint from one of his teachers, written on yellow notepaper. Upstairs, in the room they share, Andrea asks him to show her the paper, and when he tosses the folded yellow square onto her lap, she freezes up a little. Gingerly she unfolds it and reads the lines of text in a teacher’s loopy scrawl, in red ink: Unacceptable, dirty attire, unsuitable for a learning environment. Her lips move silently as she makes sense of the cursive letters, and when she looks up, she meets her brother’s gaze—he’s been watching her the whole time, an amused look on his face. She gets up to hand the paper back to him.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
“Do? Absolutely nothing.” With a shrug, he crumples the paper in his fist and tosses it into the wastebasket with a flourish.
She barely holds back a terrified exclamation. “But—you have to show it to Mom!”
“No, I don’t. Don’t be such a dork, Addie. No wonder no one at school likes you.”
She tries not to show how much the remark hurt her. She has known what her brother is like from a young age, and she has learned how this works. He hadn’t even meant to get to her—he simply said what he was thinking, with no regard for the consequences. He’s not like that with other people, only with her. Because they’re twins, he says. They’re like two sides of the same coin. They can’t have secrets from each other and they can’t lie to each other, he says, not even white lies.
And while what he said may be true, she does wonder, sometimes, why that is. She had a friend once, when she first came to this school. Almost. A girl was friendly to her—hardly the most popular girl in class, but Andrea didn’t care. It was nice to talk to someone. Then, overnight, the girl started to act like Andrea was invisible. She felt hurt and confused. Then, a few weeks later, she realized everyone in class gave her the same peculiar look.
Eli, in the meantime, casually made friends with everyone. She knew, on a subconscious level, that he said something to the girl, and to the others, told some crazy story that made her seem like a freak or loser. But she never had proof. She never even learned what the story was.
Eli stretches his arms over his head. When it was time to leave after the last bell, he’d managed to get changed—the dirty sweater had vanished, and instead he wore another, clean one, with a little brand logo over his heart. Borrowed from someone? Nabbed from an open locker after gym class? Andrea doesn’t dare ask.
“Leeanne and the other bitches bothering you again?” Eli bounces a little on his narrow bed. Andrea flinches at the b word.
“What? It’s true. That’s what she is. Do you know what the guys sa
y about her?”
Andrea has no idea why “the guys” would say anything about Leeanne. The thought makes her nervous somehow, uneasy, the same way she feels when she catches other girls from her class doing things she hasn’t even thought about yet, rolling up their skirts, plucking their eyebrows. Her chest constricts, and there’s an uncomfortable, pulling sensation in her stomach. It’s not fear, exactly. More like foreboding and dread. She knows she’s about to enter a whole different game, very different but also very much the same as the elementary school version where the one with the coolest stuff and the most friends wins. And she knows that, just like the old version, she’ll lose this game the same way, maybe worse. Except now there’s going to be a lot more at stake.
“What do they say?” she asks cautiously.
Her brother gives her a look that borders on exasperation. Like she’s supposed to know.
“Theo said she blew him behind the bleachers,” Eli starts, and she presses her hands over her ears, which makes him huff with laughter. “Okay, okay. No more icky stuff,” he mouths exaggeratedly. She drops her hands by her side, feeling defeated.
