by Dinah McCall
“I told you. They were cobwebs. I got rid of the cobwebs.” Then her face momentarily crumpled. “It didn’t work on Phillip. I was trying to fix him, but I think I used the wrong tape.”
Emile thought of the tape recorder he’d found under Phillip’s bed and knew that somewhere in her meddling, she’d exacerbated whatever had been wrong with their son to the point that he’d slipped over the edge. As he stared at her, it occurred to him that he didn’t know—maybe had never known—the woman who was his wife. His voice was shaking as he confronted her.
“You killed those women?”
“They killed themselves,” she said matter-of-factly. “You left the button. I pushed it.”
“But why?”
Her expression shifted, and for a moment it was like talking to the old Lucy, before everything had gone bad.
“Because the principal forged the permission slips and I knew it. We’d borrowed all that money on our house so you could pay him to let you into his school, and if it all fell through, we would have given him the money for nothing.” She seemed angry, as if he had no right to question her. Then she added, “All those years went by and it didn’t matter, but then you won the prize, didn’t you, dear? After that, I was afraid someone would remember.”
Emile made it to the powder room just in time to throw up.
Outside in the hallway, Lucy began running in little circles.
“Emile’s ill. Where’s the aspirin?”
Dan got on his two-way, calling off all the agents who were still searching the house.
“Come on down,” he said. “Bring whatever you’ve got, although I doubt we’re going to need it.” Then he made another call. Lucy Karnoff was going to jail, but not by the regular route.
“It’s over,” Dan said.
“Not quite,” Sully said.
They turned, looking at Emile, who had emerged pale and shaken, mopping his face with a handkerchief.
“Where is my wife?” he asked.
Sully touched his arm. “They’re looking after her, sir. I believe she’s searching for aspirin.”
“What’s going to happen to her?” Emile asked.
“She’s going to be arrested. She will be evaluated by a panel of psychologists and then probably committed to a hospital for the criminally insane,” Dan answered.
“My God!” Emile cried. “I’ve been in those places. She won’t last. She’s too fragile. Please, you must have mercy.”
“Sir, if we asked the families of those women she killed, how much mercy do you think they would recommend?”
Emile stood silent beneath the condemnation of his wife’s actions until he could no longer bear it.
“Dear God…I would give back everything if this would all go away.”
“It’s too late to give anything back,” Sully said, and then took Ginny by the hand. “But it’s not too late to take away what you left in Ginny’s brain.”
Ginny held her breath, afraid to hope. And then the old man sighed and held out his hand.
“If it had not been for the fire, it would have already been done. Come, child, it’s time to let go of the past.”
She hesitated.
“I’ll be there with you,” Sully said.
She sighed and then let the old man lead her away, and in her mind, she saw herself at Montgomery Academy, walking hand in hand with Georgia toward the last door on the left.
Epilogue
The Realtor’s For Sale sign at the Karnoff residence had been up for months. So far, few lookers had availed themselves of the opportunity for a great buy. It would take time for the gossip and memories of the tragedy that had occurred inside to fade.
Karnoff himself had been besieged by the press to the point that he’d had to get a restraining order preventing anyone from setting foot on his property, and it had not been enough. The neighbors felt sorry for him, but they still whispered, trading gossip and lies. And then one day he was gone. No one had seen a moving van come. No one had seen him leave. An accumulation of newspapers had gathered on the lawn.
The day the For Sale sign went up on the property, it became apparent he was not coming back. In the course of everyday living, his tragedy became old news, and only now and then did someone chance a guess as to where he had gone.
Lucy Karnoff had died in jail on the tenth day of her incarceration, succumbing to a heart attack on the floor of her cell. When Emile buried her beside their son, he laid more than his wife to rest that day. It was his last tie to a burden that had become too great to bear.
“What do you think about this one?” Sully asked, watching the play of emotions on Ginny’s face as they walked about the rooms of the vacant D.C. apartment. Outside, the late morning sky was rapidly darkening, but they were so focused on finding a new home before the wedding that they didn’t notice.
“It has lots of windows, I like that,” she said. “But is it large enough? I don’t want to move in after we’re married only to discover that we need more room. Besides that, I’m not sure how I feel about raising a baby in an apartment. I had a yard to play in when I was a child.”
The mention of marriage and babies made Sully’s silly grin appear. He’d been having trouble with it for months, and the closer they came to their wedding day, the sillier it got.
“I still vote for the house in Virginia,” Sully said. “The commute is nothing compared to the privacy and space we would have.”
Ginny frowned. “I liked it best, too, but I still don’t think it’s fair for you to have to spend so much time on the road.”
He laughed. “Honey, think about what I do for a living. I’m always on the road.”
She grinned. “Yes, I guess.”
“Then it’s settled,” he said, and tugged on her coat until she relented and gave him a hug.
“Are you cold?” he asked. “This is unseasonably warm for November, but still, there’s a bite to the air.”
“I’m fine,” Ginny said.
“Then let’s go. I know a really great place for chili.”
“Do they have cornbread, too?” she asked.
“Oh yeah, big, thick, yellow slabs of the stuff.”
“I’m sold,” she said, and they walked arm in arm toward the elevator. “Do we have to stop back by the manager’s office?”
“No. He said to drop the key in his mailbox on the way out.”
She nodded, her mind already moving to the two-story, Cape-Cod-style cottage they’d looked at last week. Sully was right. Virginia wasn’t far at all, and she could plant flowers in the yards and—
As they exited the elevator, her thoughts were interrupted by a loud roll of thunder. Sully dropped the apartment key in the manager’s mailbox and then turned up the collar of his coat as they started out the door. He couldn’t help but watch Ginny’s face for lingering signs of Emile Karnoff’s handiwork, but he saw nothing to give him cause for concern.
As they began the half-block trek to where he had parked, the first drops of rain began to fall. Ginny laughed and turned her face up to the sky, catching a drop on the end of her tongue.
“Needs salt,” she said. “And maybe a little spice.”
“You and your cooking expertise,” Sully laughed, and then took her by the hand and started running to the car.
They got inside just as the sky unloaded.
“Let me get the heater warmed up before we take off,” he said. “I don’t want you getting chilled.”
“The cornbread and chili will warm me up just fine. All of a sudden I’m starving. Let’s go.”
Sully’s grin was still in place as he pulled out into traffic. A few blocks later they passed a newsstand, and Ginny’s gaze instinctively scanned what she could see of the selection through the downpour.
“Do you miss the job?” Sully asked.
She shrugged. “Sometimes.” And then she grinned. “I know Harry Redford was sorry to see me go. Especially after the piece I turned in. We scooped the entire nation. It was the bi
ggest coup of his life, and he will love me forever because of it,” she said.
“Yeah, but he won’t love you as much as I do,” Sully said. “As for resuming your career as a journalist, you could pretty much pick any paper around here and they’d hire you on the spot.”
“I know.”
“I think I hear a ‘but’ in there. Am I right?”
She nodded. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d rather stay home for a while after we’re married. I really want to work on that cooking thing a little more.”
“You’re getting better,” Sully said. “The spaghetti last night was really good.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sully, it was out of a can.”
He grinned. “I know.”
She hit him lightly on the arm and then settled back, comfortable with the idea that for now, this big, wonderful man beside her wanted to be in charge and she wanted to let him.
“I want to have babies right away,” she said.
“I’m ready, willing and able to do my part,” he said, eliciting a chuckle from her.
Although they’d talked about it a lot between them, it was the first time Sully had heard her say anything that specific. He pulled to a stop at an intersection and then glanced at her. He thought he could see tears in her eyes. He reached over and took her by the hand, giving it a gentle tug.
“Ginny?”
She sighed.
“If we have a girl, I want to name her—”
“Georgia,” Sully said, finishing her sentence for her.
Her eyes widened with surprise. “How did you know that?”
The light turned green and they moved on. It was a moment before Sully answered.
“Sully,” Ginny persisted. “I asked you a question.”
“Because you told me last night in your sleep.”
“I didn’t.”
“Actually, honey, you did. You woke me up, talking, and at first I thought you were talking to me. Then I realized you were just talking in your sleep. You said, ‘When we have a baby, I’ll name her after you.’ I figured you were dreaming about Georgia.”
The tears that had been hovering finally spilled as Ginny turned and stared out the window, looking past the rain into the city beyond.
“I dream about her a lot,” she said. “Sometimes she’s so real I think I could reach out and touch her.”
“Maybe it’s just Georgia’s way of telling you she’s okay.”
Ginny looked at him through a blur. “Do you really believe that?”
Although the urge to cry with her was strong within him, he managed to grin instead.
“I don’t just believe it, I know it. Besides, if we name our daughter after a nun, just think of the guardian angels she’s going to have.”
Ginny laughed through her tears.
“Here,” Sully said, handing her his handkerchief. “Wipe and blow. We’re almost at the restaurant.”
Ginny did as she’d been told, then stuffed the handkerchief in her coat pocket. As she watched the wipers swiping back and forth across the windshield, it occurred to her that sometimes people needed to cry, just like the earth needed rain. Both were renewing affirmations that life still went on.
A half a world away, on a small dirt road in the countryside of Ireland, an old man rode his bicycle along the path with nothing more on his mind than getting back to his cottage and making himself a cup of tea. He was in need of a haircut; the white, wispy strands lay upon the collar of his coat like feathers, fluttering lightly in the breeze as he pedaled along. His corduroy pants were a soft dove gray; his shoes were worn at the heels and scuffed at the toes, evidence of how many miles he’d walked through the boulder-strewn hills.
His eyes were constantly on the land, looking with the curiosity of a child at all that lay before him. As he came around a corner, he saw two children in the road ahead. One, a little girl of no more than six or seven, was sitting on the ground weeping, while a larger boy, most likely her brother, was kneeling at her side. A small red wagon was lying in the dirt.
He pedaled up to them and then parked his bike.
“What have we here?” he said gently, as he got out his handkerchief and knelt at the little girl’s feet.
“She fell out of the wagon, she did,” the boy said, the lilt of the Celt deep in his voice.
“It’s bleedin’, it is,” the little girl said, and then sniffled again on a sob.
“Yes, I can see that,” he said, and handed the boy his handkerchief. “You can tie this around her knee until you get home.”
“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” the little boy said, and proceeded to make a clumsy bandage around his little sister’s knee.
The old man rocked back on his heels and started to stand, then looked at the tear tracks on her cheek and stopped.
He hesitated but a moment, and then touched the little girl’s cheek.
“Would you like for me to show you a way to take away the pain?”
She snuffled and then looked to her brother. He nodded an okay.
“Yes, please,” she said. “’Tis a hurtin’ somethin’ fierce.”
“I know…but you’ll have to close your eyes.”
As she did, he touched the top of her head, leaving the pressure of his hand light but firm so she could feel, as well as hear, his presence.
And then it began.
“Listen to the sound of my voice….”
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6208-2
STORM WARNING
Copyright © 2001 by Sharon Sala.
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