The Good Neighbor

by Cathryn Grant

  My heart broke for Moira, in a subtle way. A fine crack that I barely felt. It was more like a snapping twig than the deep fissure of an enormous tree split by lightning. I’d believed we were friends, but she betrayed me in such a profound way. Duncan had accused me of using her and Alan to draw our community more tightly together. Instead, they’d used me. They’d manipulated my view of what happened, they’d deceived me, they’d turned me into their stooge with the police, our neighbors, and on social media.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Moira had returned to the living room. I imagined she was looking for how she might split apart the embracing mother and child, looking for a way to reclaim Brittany, and looking for a way to make sure her lies remained rooted at the foundation of Brittany’s life.

  I wasn’t sure how she thought that was possible. Between Brittany’s story that would be told to Nicole and, more importantly, to the police, and Crystal’s report of a missing child, their world was going to fracture and disintegrate, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.

  Moira leaped forward like a mountain lion lunging at prey it had been stalking for hours. As Moira’s body came at Crystal, her right arm rose. In her hand was a butcher knife. The blade flashed and disappeared as Moira plunged it into the center of Crystal’s back.

  I screamed.

  Brittany fell away from her mother, screaming at the shock of the impact, not yet seeing the blade embedded in her mother’s yellow shirt that was quickly turning red as blood poured out of the wound. In a moment her back was drenched.

  I rushed around the chair, tripping on a light cord, yanking a lamp off the side table. It crashed to the floor and I scrambled to untangle myself. Finally I wrenched it hard, and the plug came out of the socket. I flung myself at Brittany, trying to drag her away from Crystal.

  Moira pulled the knife out of Crystal’s back. It didn’t come easily and she struggled to get it free. Crystal slumped against the floor-to-ceiling window. Her shoulder thudded against the glass, and as her body slid lower, blood smeared across the clean surface. She groaned, gasping hard, struggling to breathe.

  Moira raised the knife again and plunged it into Crystal’s side. As she drove the knife into solid flesh, she was silent, her expression determined and completely lacking emotion. Blood poured out of the second wound, soaking the shirt and the top edge of her white jeans, which were already smeared with mud and grass stains. Blood began to pool on the tile and seep toward the area rug that covered most of the floor.

  I tried to reach Moira to pull her away, but I slipped on the pool of blood, sitting down hard on the arm of the couch. Pain shot up my spine and I fell sideways, catching myself on the cushion.

  I half lay there, stunned. Brittany shoved herself between me and the two women, pulling Crystal’s upper body against her chest. “Mommy.” The word was soft, her voice thin and lost as if she were that little girl trying to rouse her mother deep under the influence of oxycodone.

  “She’s not your mommy,” Moira said. Her voice was as flat as the expression on her face. “I’m your mother. I’ve always been your mother. I kept you safe. I loved you.”

  Brittany whimpered. Crystal’s head moved slightly. Her eyes were closed. She sighed and became a lifeless weight in Brittany’s arms.

  Moira backed up toward the corner of the room. She held the knife with the blade directed out in front of her, as if she was considering using it again. She stared across the room, her face blank, focused on nothing that I could identify. A strange sound came out of her lips, somewhere between a moan and an unbroken whimper of pain.

  I regained my footing and started toward her, instinct driving me forward.

  50

  Brittany: After

  That afternoon there were more people in my house than there had been during the entire two months we’d lived in California. I heard their voices as I waited, seated on the family room couch facing the vacant TV screen. The computer sat on its desk in the corner, its screen also dark. Beside it stood our globe. I thought about all the information delivered through that computer screen, information that rocketed around the globe twenty-four seven, information that had come into my life and changed everything.

  Two police officers were in the kitchen. I knew they were talking about me. I couldn’t make out what words they were speaking, but I heard the rise and fall of their voices, muted so I wouldn’t know what they said. Taylor and her husband stood on the patio. Their heads and hands moved as they talked, their voices forced down to a volume that kept me from hearing. Ashling, Luke, and his mom were in the entryway, barred from going into the living room, where official-looking people were collecting evidence.

  The paramedics who had come to take away both of my mothers’ bodies were gone. When they arrived, I’d been shuffled off into the family room so I couldn’t watch while the bodies were zipped into bags and lifted onto gurneys.

  I wasn’t sure why I thought of both of them as my mother. Moira wasn’t, and I hardly remembered my real mother. Still, I’d recognized something about her the minute I saw her. Maybe from a dream I’d forgotten until that moment. Her arms felt familiar around me, and something about the way she smelled made me feel like a tiny girl again. Maybe the body remembers even if the mind forgets. I wasn’t sure what Moira was. There were no words to describe her. Maybe after I got used to it all, I’d figure it out.

  Taylor and Nicole had said it was too traumatic for me to watch their bodies taken out of the house. The police agreed. It didn’t seem to occur to any of them what kind of trauma passed over the screen of my memory while I sat alone in front of the silent television.

  As if a show were being projected from my mind, I relived it all.

  I felt my mother’s arms holding onto me so tightly I wondered whether she wanted to pull me back inside her body. My mind was scrambling to sort out what was happening. I heard her voice whispering that she’d almost died without me, and then, without any warning, I felt the force of Moira’s full weight as she stabbed her knife into my mother’s ribs. The damp spread quickly, thick blood oozing beneath my hands. My mother became heavy in my arms, as if I had to hold her up. Another blow came, the knife penetrating her side this time. So much more blood, soaking my clothes, covering my skin.

  Before I could completely grasp that I’d had only two or three minutes with her and now she was gone, Moira was in the corner, trying to prop herself up, staring at the knife as if she wondered where it should go next.

  Just as quickly, like in a dream where someone is suddenly in a different place without taking the time to move there, Taylor was beside her. She took the knife from Moira’s hand. It slid out of her fingers so easily, I wondered if my mother’s blood had made the handle slick and difficult to hold onto.

  Taylor raised her arm and plunged the knife into Moira’s throat. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. The room was silent, nothing but the sound of the blade slicing through flesh and tendon and muscle and hitting bone as she stabbed her two more times.

  The knife clattered as it hit the tile floor. Taylor looked at me, and we stared at each other for a long time.

  After a while, Taylor called the police. Ashling, Luke, and his mother showed up, and then the sounds and movement of so many people filled my head.

  A police officer named Morgan Carter asked me questions about what happened. She sat across from me for nearly half an hour, writing down everything I said. Nicole sat on one side of me and Taylor on the other. They told Officer Carter they were my advocates. I liked how that made me feel. Safe. Until then, I’d been numb, so it was nice to feel something.

  I liked that Officer Carter didn’t ask a lot of questions, only a few to get me talking about what happened. I told her that my mother didn’t speak once the knife went into her body and blood started pouring out. I stopped talking, feeling as if my throat had closed up. Officer Carter told me to breathe, to take my time, that it was okay to cry.

  I told her how Taylor thought M
oira might stab me next, furious that I’d wanted my mother more than her. I explained how Taylor grabbed her without being afraid at all that Moira was pointing that huge knife, coated with my mother’s blood, right at Taylor’s heart. How Taylor managed to grab Moira’s wrist, and how the knife went right into Moira’s throat while they struggled to get control of it.

  They’d wanted to know why Taylor stabbed her. That made me laugh, which sounded terrible, like there was something wrong with me, something crazy, but I couldn’t help it. The echo of it sounded like the voice of a maniac in a horror movie. What was she supposed to do? Moira had just murdered my mother; she was holding the knife in the air, ready to use it again.

  I didn’t want to stare at that screen for another second.

  I stood up and went into the kitchen. Officer Mae stopped talking the minute he saw me. Officer Carter turned. “Is everything okay, Brittany? Do you need a glass of water? Something to eat?”

  “I’m tired of sitting there.”

  She nodded.

  “I’d rather go into my bedroom. Is that okay?”

  Officer Carter glanced toward the living room. “I don’t see why not.” She walked with me. I felt like a prisoner, and I wondered if she thought I might run out the front door.

  As we passed through the entryway, Luke and Ashling asked if they could leave.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “Thank you for your cooperation. We’ll be speaking with you further, but it’s unlikely there will be any charges.”

  Nicole said she’d wait for Child Protective Services to arrive. My fate, for now.

  When we reached my doorway, I stepped inside. For a moment, I felt like I was in a stranger’s bedroom.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” Officer Carter said. She pulled the door closed, but it didn’t latch. I wondered if she’d done that on purpose.

  Once I shook off the feeling of being a stranger, I saw that my bedroom was exactly the same. There were even a few long hairs wrapped in the bristles of my hairbrush sitting on the desk where I’d left it the night I went out and asked Ashling if I could stay with her for a while.

  When I was five years old, I’d loved the white princess furniture and the pink bedding Moira and I had chosen together. I thought I was the luckiest little girl in the world for having such magical furniture. It made me feel like I lived in a castle. When I was older, it started to look silly. For my tenth birthday, I asked for new furniture, different colors. I wanted a bed and dresser for an older girl, not a little kid who believed in fairy tales. Moira reminded me how much I’d loved the magical feeling of pretending I was a princess. She said she’d bought that furniture to make me happy. She said I shouldn’t try to grow up so fast. There was plenty of time.

  I didn’t say anything more. If I had, she would have asked whether I was going out of my way to hurt her. She asked that a lot.

  After a moment, I didn’t want to be in my room anymore. I moved away from the bed and pulled the door open. The hallway was empty. I stepped out and walked past the bathroom and around the corner to my parents’ room.

  Their bedroom looked as beautiful as always. The carpet was white, and a white duvet covered the bed. I closed my eyes and thought of all the blood in the living room and imagined it seeping into all that white. I opened my eyes again. Four large pillows covered with white shams stood along the headboard. In front of those were five smaller round white pillows, making the bed look like a huge cloud. All the wood was white ash. An oval mirror with an ornate silver frame stood in one corner. It was an artful contrast to the modern lines of the dressers and nightstands.

  I crossed the room and opened Alan’s top dresser drawer.

  The box was still there. I lifted it out and placed it on the bed. I picked up the container filled with coins and keys. I tried each key until I found the one that fit.

  Inside were a few more photographs. One I’d seen on the computer showed Alan holding a baby, kissing the top of her head. Beneath the photographs was a newspaper article and a chocolate brown notebook the size of my hand. I sat on the bed and unfolded the newspaper clipping. At the top was a photograph of the same girl. She had flowers woven into her braids and wore a dress with a lace collar.

  The headline read Grace Cushing, Age 13

  In medium-sized print, it said Now an angel.

  I stared, my brain a puddle of liquid that was barely able to turn the black lines of type into words that I understood the meaning of. After a few minutes, my head cleared and I read the obituary.

  Grace Cushing, beloved daughter and only child of Moira and Alan Cushing, died October 19, 2007.

  A beautiful and accomplished girl, Grace studied ballet and piano. She wrote poetry and loved to craft small animals out of modeling clay.

  She was a remarkable girl with a big heart. She adored animals, especially horses. She’d recently begun riding lessons and dreamed of having a horse of her own one day. She made friends easily and will be missed terribly by her friends, classmates, and—

  The article had been scissored off. Beneath it was another small clipping, also cut so that only the opening paragraph was left.

  Girl Struck By Train

  At eleven thirty Friday, October 19, a 13-year-old girl attempted to cross the train tracks half a mile south of the Montgomery station. The train was traveling at fifty-seven miles per hour. The girl was killed instantly.

  I placed both articles in the lid of the box and lifted out the notebook.

  Grace Cushing was written in blue ink on the inside of the cover. Also written in blue ink at the top of each page was the day of the week and the date. I wondered if it was wrong to read the diary of a girl who was dead. I didn’t think so. Would I mind someone reading my diary if I died? I didn’t see why. I might actually like it, knowing that another person who was still alive understood my thoughts and feelings, even the embarrassing ones. After I was dead, I didn’t think the embarrassing ones would matter so much. I’d like it that someone remembered me and knew my thoughts.

  Most of the words could have been written by me. She wrote about friends and boys and experiences she’d had at school. Some dates had nothing but lists of questions about the world, about life, about why people do what they do. Among the other entries were complaints about her parents. She wrote about arguments and about not being allowed to do anything fun with her friends. She wrote about Moira not wanting her to grow up and not letting her go to parties if boys had been invited.

  Even though I imagined I would write about the same things, I could tell that her life was different, and her thoughts were her own. No two people have exactly the same thoughts, even if they write about the same experiences.

  The last page, dated Friday, October 19, was different. It was much longer than the other entries, and she’d used the next five pages to write down everything.

  There was so much blood. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected.

  I thought it would flow smoothly, not emerge with thick clumps, stopping suddenly. Then, just when I thought it was finished, starting to ooze again.

  I cleaned it up as best I could.

  But when I looked at my hands, my fingers had absorbed it. Red lines snaked along my cuticles, and blood was lodged beneath my fingernails. I scrubbed my hands, watching the water and liquid soap run red and pink down the drain. Faint stains clung to the porcelain. It required rinsing with several jars of water before it gleamed white again.

  My mother was going to be upset by all the blood. Every day she says she isn’t ready for me to grow up. She doesn’t like that I argue with her. She says I’m getting a nasty temper.

  And now that my period has started, she’s going to be furious. As if I could stop it. Even thinking about that makes me laugh. But she would think stopping it was possible. I think she’s insane. I honestly do. She looks normal, she talks like a normal mother to my teacher and my friends’ parents, but at home, she acts like she thinks I’m still seven. Most of the time, maybe all
of the time, I think she looks at me and sees a little girl. She hears a little girl when I talk. There’s something wrong in her head.

  The first time I asked her about starting my period, she cried. She said teenage girls hate their mothers and she couldn’t live with that. All they care about is boys. They turn on the person who loves them the most.

  The things she said made me scared of her, although I’m not sure why.

  I feel like I need to get out of the house, I need to breathe and think for myself. She won’t let me go out alone, even for a walk. When she finds out about the blood, I’ll have to run out the front door. I’ll have to keep running, not really knowing where I’m headed.

  That was the last line. Words I might have written. I closed my eyes and pictured her running across the train tracks, her braids flying out behind her.

  I put everything back in the box, locked it, and placed it in the drawer. I took the key with me. I wasn’t sure why.

  51

  Taylor

  Attending Crystal’s funeral was the right thing to do. Having a formal event to remember her, even though none of us knew her personally, brought the neighbors together in a much deeper and more significant way. We did it for Brittany, a girl we’d only just met. If anyone ever needed a supportive community around her, it was Brittany.

  Duncan wore navy blue slacks and a pale blue shirt. I chose a black dress and medium-high black leather heels. He said no one wore black to funerals anymore, that I was being too dramatic. I disagreed and was pleased to see that easily half the women were dressed in black when we arrived at the small Methodist church.