by A. L. Jambor
Mari fought it and moved away from Josh, her hands shaking, and her heart pounding. Charlotte got up and Josh fell upon her, sending her to the floor, and knocking over the coffee table and one of the end tables. The oil lamp fell, its glass chimney broke, and the oil spilled onto the rug. Josh straddled Charlotte and was trying to get his hands around her neck, but she fought hard.
"Get off me," Charlotte said. "You're hurting me."
"You ruined my life!"
She tried to wriggle out from under him as she hit him with her fists, but he got the upper hand by pushing her arms aside and finally getting his hands around her throat. As her arms flailed, she felt the base of the oil lamp, grabbed it around the center, and then she hit Josh on the side of his head as hard as she could.
He let go of her throat as blood ran from the wound on his head, spilling onto her blouse. She crawled backward, but her stomach got in the way. He wasn't moving and she was pinned under his body. She pushed him off and he rolled onto his back. Blood poured from his wound onto the Oriental rug.
"Josh," she whispered. "Josh."
He didn't respond, and she got on her hands and knees and used the sofa to get on her feet.
"Josh," she said louder. "Josh, please say something."
Charlotte looked at Mari as if she could see her. Mari shuddered, and then sensed someone standing behind her.
It was thirteen-year-old Charlie Jackson, his face contorted. He was breathing hard, and then he ran to his brother.
"Josh! Josh, Josh, wake up. Josh please, wake up." He shook Josh's body, and then he glared at Charlotte. "I saw what you did!" He stood and came toward her. "I saw what you did!"
Charlotte turned to run but he was young, and she was too pregnant to out maneuver him. He knocked her down and stood over her. She got on her side and tried to crawl away.
"He was choking me, Charlie. I didn't mean to hurt him. I just wanted him to stop."
Charlie shook his head. "She's gonna go crazy." He kept shaking his head and Mari heard the emotion in his voice as he cried. "She's gonna blame me. She's gonna say I should have stopped it. It will be my fault."
Charlie wrung his hands and paced the floor. He stopped in front of the kitchen table where he saw a serrated knife lying next to a dirty dish. He shoved a dining chair out of the way so he could grab it, and then held it toward her. Charlotte was halfway into the bedroom when he jumped on her.
"Stop, Charlie. Please, listen. It was an accident. Please."
Charlotte moved backward until she was near the bed, but Charlie was coming, holding the knife out in front of him.
"She won't listen," he said. "She'll blame me. She always blames me. But if I kill you, she'll be happy. She hates you."
"It was an accident, Charlie!" she cried. "I never meant to hurt him, I swear. I'll tell her I did it. She won't blame you. Charlie, she won't."
Charlie kept moving toward her as she crawled up the side of the bed.
"She will blame me, but if I kill you, it will make her happy."
Charlie fell on her. Mari moved toward the bedroom and saw him slashing Charlotte's face. The valiant young woman was flailing her arms again as she tried to protect her unborn child. That's when Charlie began stabbing her in the neck. She had been begging him to stop, pleading with him to think of the baby, but now, there was no sound other than Charlie's grunts and the sound of the knife hitting her flesh. He was possessed and continued to slash at her as blood flew everywhere.
Then, as if Charlie suddenly realized what he was doing, he stopped. He was breathing hard. He stood and dropped the knife. He saw the necklace Josh had given Charlotte for her birthday, ripped it off her neck, and put it in his pocket. As he backed away, he fell over Josh's body, and stared at it in disbelief. He began crying again, and then ran from the house.
Mari was breathing hard, too. This was real; this is what had happened. This is what Charlie had tried to hide from her. She looked at Josh's body, and then at Charlotte's, and she then closed her eyes.
Someone ran past her. Mari opened her eyes and saw the prostrate figure of Joan Jackson lying over Josh's body.
"No, no, no," she said. "Oh, God, no."
She shook him, stroked his face, wept into his chest, and shook her head.
"Joshua, please," she whispered. "Please."
She lay on him for a long time, unaware that Charlie was standing behind her, and then she saw Charlotte. Joan's face was contorted in anger, an anger so terrible that Mari felt its power from across the room.
"Whore! You did this." Joan went to Charlotte. "You wouldn't listen. You kept on at him. You just wouldn't stop, and then you got pregnant. You got pregnant, you bitch, you horrible whore bitch."
Mari saw Joan put her hand on Charlotte's stomach -- Josh's baby. Her grandchild. It might still be alive.
Joan looked around wildly and saw Charlie.
"Where's the knife?" she asked.
He bent over and picked it up. She held out her hand and he brought it to her. Mari couldn't watch her take the baby from Charlotte's womb. She turned away, closed her eyes, and then she heard a baby cry.
"There, there, little one," Joan said. "Hush now. Grandma has you." She got up from the floor as she held the baby and then walked toward the front door. "Charlie!"
The boy's face wore a mask of pain.
"Look around for a sewing box. I need some thread."
He wandered around the room in a daze, and then Joan spied a basket near the sofa with a knitting needle stuck in a skein of wool.
"Give me that wool."
It was yellow, and when he pulled it out of the basket, Mari saw a half-finished baby bootie on the knitting needle attached to the skein. His hand shook as he handed her the yarn and she bit off a piece to tie the baby's cord.
"Get the knife." She glared at Charlie. "Throw it in the ocean and go get your father."
Charlie did as he was told. He left the cottage while Joan went into the bedroom. Mari could hear drawers being opened and closed. When Joan emerged, she threw a white sheet on the sofa.
Joe and Charlie returned, and the look of shock on Joe's face told Mari that Charlie hadn't told him what had occurred in that cottage. Joe turned pale and almost passed out.
"You and Charlie have to take Josh," Joan said. "Wrap him in that sheet and bring him to the truck."
Joe looked at Josh but he didn't speak. He laid the sheet on the floor and rolled Josh's body onto it, and then he and Charlie carried him out the door, leaving Mari alone with Charlotte.
Mari was leaning against the wall near the front door. The only sounds she heard were the roar of the ocean and the wind blowing through the open windows. The stains on the floor were blood, human blood, real blood shed by two people, and a testament to the fact that Charlie Jackson had gotten away with murder.
When Mari went outside, Celia was standing on the walkway. Mari nodded, and Celia smiled wanly before fading away.
Mari
Mari got to the end of the walkway and kept her eyes on the ground. She thought Charlie might appear and she didn't want to see him. The memory of him slashing Charlotte lingered, and she wished she could erase it from her mind.
Josh had died. That's why she couldn't find anything about him on the internet, but what had they done with his body?
"Take him to the truck."
They took him back to Wisconsin.
She made it to the end of the walkway without seeing him. Tourists were still lined up to go inside the lighthouse and the rain was drizzling. Everything was as it should be, except that now, Mari knew the truth.
In the past, whenever she discovered something that ripped a case wide open, she had celebrated by going out with her co-workers and getting drunk. It made her feel good. Now, she felt awful.
What would Phil say? I told you so, that's what he'd say, so maybe she should just keep this to herself. What about Cassie? She would chastise her for doing something foolish and putting herself in danger. If she ha
dn't, though, she would never have found out who killed Charlotte, and to Mari, the payoff was worth the cost.
As she walked toward town, Mari remembered she was supposed to go to Charlie's funeral that evening, and she stopped as the hairs on the back of her neck rose and chills went up her spine.
"You were protecting Ginger," she said softly.
Ginger was Charlotte's daughter. She had no doubts about it now. It explained why Charlie had been so keen on keeping her away. The family had kept their secret for sixty years, and Charlie wasn't going to let some woman reporter expose his baby sister to the truth.
She was glowing with excitement as she sat on the hardware store steps, but she grew somber as she thought of Ginger. How would Mari ever keep this terrible secret from her?
Now, Mari heard Cassie's voice in her head.
"Don't say a word. You don't know this woman. She's old and you don't know how she'll take finding out how her mother died."
It was close to three and time for Phil to get off work. As she was thinking about him, Phil sat down next to her.
"Well," he said.
"I did it."
"You crossed the line?"
"Yes."
He smiled and put his arm around her.
"Now, don't you feel proud of yourself?"
"My leg hurts," she said.
"But other than that, don't you feel good about yourself?"
"I guess so. You hungry?"
"Starving."
"How about an ice cream, my treat?"
Phil sighed. He'd been looking forward to a hamburger all afternoon.
"I need real food."
"Ice cream is real food," she said, taking his hand, and dragging him toward the ice cream stand.
The line for ice cream was long, and she kept looking around to avoid his eyes.
"You're mad at me, aren't you?" he asked.
"No, why would you think that?"
"Because you won't look at me."
She looked at him now, and he saw the dark circles under her eyes. She hesitated a few seconds and then decided he'd find out eventually so why not just tell him now.
"Something happened earlier." She lowered her eyes and came close to him. "I went to the cottage."
He exhaled in exasperation. "I told you to wait for me."
"I know." She rocked on her feet. "I need ice cream first, then I'll tell you about it."
She got her ice cream, and then Phil went in the direction of the McDonald's so he could have a hamburger. They nixed the idea of sitting on a wet bench, and Phil didn't offer his room, so Mari invited him to her apartment.
"You're sure Cassie won't mind?" he said.
"Oh, my God, Phil, Cassie doesn't care if you come to my place or not. Besides, she's working."
They waited in line for his burger and then walked to Cassie's house. Their clothes were damp from the drizzle, and Mari went into the bathroom to change. Phil sat on one of her kitchen chairs so he wouldn't dampen the loveseat.
When Mari emerged from the bathroom, she saw him sitting at the table and she grabbed two beers from the fridge.
"I bought these weeks ago," she said. "I kept thinking I'd want one, but I really don't like drinking alone."
She set his down on the table, and then sat on the bed cradling her beer and looking at her hands.
"So, you went to the cottage," Phil said.
"I had nothing to do and you weren't gonna be out of work for an hour." She wiggled her feet. "I know, I should have waited, and now I wish I had."
Phil looked at her and then got up and moved his chair so he could see her. She sighed, clenched her teeth, bit her lower lip, and rubbed her leg where the muscles hurt.
"My leg hurts from walking today." She thought about Ginger. "I got a ride back from a nice woman named Ginger." She rolled the bottle in her hands. "She's Charlie Jackson's sister."
He waited for her to say more, but she was quiet while Phil ate his food. When he wiped his mouth and put the wrappers in the bag, he sat back and waited for her to talk, but she had drifted off and was looking out the window.
"So you went to the cottage," he said.
"Charlie was there. I was feeling good because I crossed the line, so when he stood in my way, I just walked right through him."
Phil raised his eyebrows. "What did that feel like?"
"Nothing, no hot or cold, but the cottage smelled awful."
"It's pretty foul."
She twisted a piece of thread on her blouse as she recalled what happened. She told Phil everything, every gory detail, and by the time she was done he was feeling as bad as she. She cried when she described the events, and grew angry when she told him about the baby.
"So as I was walking back to town, I realized that Ginger is Charlotte's baby."
"The lady who drove you back to town. How did you come to that conclusion?"
"She's the right age, and she said something I thought was strange at the time. She said she was the fifth child of Joe and Joan Jackson." She leaned forward. "Their fifth child. Her hair was red with gray streaks, and she was tall, much taller than Charlie, and she didn't mention Josh when she told me about her siblings."
"How could they keep that a secret? They went back to Wisconsin. People there must have known about Joshua."
"She said her father died in the war. What if they told everyone that Josh had died that way, too?"
"It would have been too early. Pearl Harbor was in December of that year."
"He could have enlisted anyway. Hitler had invaded Poland, and don't forget that Jack Womack had gone to Europe in 1939."
"It still would have been hard to keep a secret like that," he said.
"I think Charlie has been trying to protect Ginger. He doesn't want her to find out what happened."
Phil nodded. Her reasoning was sound. It was the only thing that made any sense.
"Now that I've met Ginger, he might not stop trying to protect her," she said.
"So stay away from her."
"That won't be easy." She smiled sheepishly. "I told her I would come to the funeral."
"Why do you do things like that?" he said. "Now I have to worry about this."
"When I agreed to go, I didn't know the whole story."
Mari drank her beer, got up, stretched her legs, and took Phil's bag to the small trash can in the kitchen. She folded her arms across her chest and looked out the window.
"Cassie's home. She must be tired." She looked at him. "She worked a double."
"I'm worried about you," Phil said.
She looked at her clothes. "I should have put something else on."
"Why?" he asked.
"The funeral is tonight."
Phil tried to think of something comforting to say, the kind of thing a friend would say, but all he could think of was how much he loved her. How was he going to live without her?
"Do you feel like going with me?" she asked.
"I'll have to stop by my place and change."
"I'd like it if you did."
She looked like she did when she wanted ice cream.
"When does it start?" he asked.
"She told me to be there at seven. It's at McGinty's."
She looked out the window at the drizzle.
"Can we use your car?" she asked.
Phil agreed to pick her up at six-forty-five. She stood at the top of the stairs watched him go down the steps. She knew he had feelings for her and it would have been easy to fall into a relationship with him, but she liked Phil and she didn't want to hurt him. She wanted to keep him in her life, to go to him when she needed a shoulder, to keep that human connection she so desperately needed but was loathe to admit. The selfish side of her was urging her to keep their relationship platonic, and as it patted itself on the back, a sliver of light passed through its dark core, and guilt, the harbinger of misdeeds gone unpunished, touched her for a second.
She watched him drive away and felt sad, and that led to longing. W
ere her feelings strictly platonic? She shook her head. Phil was nothing like the guys she'd fallen for. He was stable and kind and he seemed to care about her feelings more than his own. The idea that someone like Phil should care about her led to another thought that she nurtured more often than not -- that she wasn't good enough for him.
She wrapped her arms around herself and went inside as tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Stop that shit!" she cried. "Enough with the crying already."
But the more she cried, the more she realized that she did have feelings for Phil, and that she could use them to manipulate him into staying in Cape Alden. That's what Mari would have done before the accident. Was she that person anymore?
Living around Cassie had shown her what unselfish love was like, and she admired her friend's ability to put others first, but could Mari really change that much?
It was then she realized she had changed so much that the idea of sharing things with Phil didn't cause her to shut down. Then she asked herself what an unselfish person would do.
"She would let Phil go without making him feel guilty."
Mari sighed. She looked at the clock and saw that it was almost six. She changed into her funeral clothes -- a simple dress she kept for such occasions and a pair of low heels. She fluffed her hair and put on lipstick. As she did, she thought of Phil and her heart leapt.
"Stop it," she said to her reflection.
When Mari came out of the bathroom, she wondered if Constance was going to the funeral and called her to find out.
"I wouldn't miss the chance to look down on Charlie Jackson," she said.
Constance offered to take her to the funeral home, and Mari, still feeling raw where thoughts of Phil were concerned, agreed, and then called Phil and told him to meet them at McGinty's.
Mari
McGinty's Funeral Home was on the corner of Elm and Main. It was Walter McGinty's residence, too. He had worked for his father, also Walter, until he died, at which point Junior became the sole proprietor.
In 1969 when he was just a boy, Junior's father had created a petition to stop the installation of parking meters in the public parking lot across the street from the sedate Victorian, but he'd failed to get the necessary signatures. The meters were Charlie Jackson's idea, and Walter, Sr. had cursed him the day the meters were installed.
