The Good Sister

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Maybe they heard about those heinous liver and onion casseroles Mrs. Schneider used to make,” suggested Sandra, who had been treated to the volunteer circle’s offerings one summer when her own mother had bunion surgery and was laid up for two weeks.

  Al chuckled. “That’s probably it. Anyway, my mother always said, ‘If people want to help you, you should let them do it, because sometimes they need to for themselves, as much as for your own sake.’ But I guess some people would just rather grieve in private.”

  Yes. And some people—like the skittish man she met today—leave home and never look back, all but estranging themselves from elderly parents.

  Perhaps with good reason. Sometimes a parent doesn’t agree with an adult child’s choices or lifestyle—an ugly divorce, a child born out of wedlock, a same-sex lover . . .

  Sandra prides herself on being open-minded; she would never condemn her own children for any of those so-called sins. But she’s met plenty of people who would. So when her client deflected her questions about whether he had a wife or children back home on Long Island, Sandra sensed that he had something to hide, and that his God-fearing mother probably didn’t approve of whatever it is.

  She mentioned that to Al Witkowski, whose bushy eyebrows nearly disappeared beneath his graying comb-over. “Yeah, I’ll bet. The mother homeschooled him, so no one ever really knew him, but from what we could tell, he was a real weirdo. Remember the rumors that went around about him?”

  “Which rumors?” She wondered whether Mrs. Witkowski had a hand in spreading them.

  What Al told her fueled her suspicion and sparked sympathy for the misfit kid her client had once been, and for his widowed mother living out her years in gloomy solitude. No one even discovered the body in the rocking chair until the power was shut off after the electric bill went unpaid. Finally, a neighbor noticed that the windows had been dark—behind the perpetually drawn curtains and shades—for weeks.

  Such a shame.

  Ugly rumors and past differences aside, you’d think a person’s own flesh and blood would show a bit of remorse about that harsh, lonely death. But no. Talk about a cold fish.

  However, a client is a client; a commission is—

  Suddenly, the house goes dark.

  What in the . . . ?

  Oh. The power grid must be overloaded by all the air conditioners running tonight.

  The window fan slowly winds down and falls still, its whir giving way to the steady chirp of crickets beyond the screen.

  Sandra puts the carton of sorbet back into the freezer, then tugs open a stuck drawer and fumbles around looking for a pack of matches. Wrong drawer. She tries another, and then, growing more anxious by the second, a third—bingo! Matchbook in hand, she feels her way into the living room to light the fat three-wick lavender spa candle on the coffee table.

  What are you afraid of? Ghosts? She can almost hear her ex-husband’s voice mocking her jitteriness. There’s no such thing.

  Most of the time, Sandra would be in complete agreement. But once in a while, when she shows an old house—or now that she lives in one—she gets that creepy feeling that she isn’t quite alone.

  She’s probably just imagining things, not yet used to living solo for the first time in her life.

  Again, her thoughts drift to the old woman who died alone in her rocking chair in the Addams House.

  This time, along with pity, she feels a shiver of trepidation.

  That’s just because you’re alone in the dark. Hurry up and light the candle.

  She does; it takes her a moment to realize that a faint glow is falling through the sheer curtains.

  Moonlight?

  No, it can’t be. There was just a slender white sliver in the sky when she stepped out of her Mercedes on the driveway a little while ago.

  Walking over to look out the window, she’s startled to find it closed and locked. So, she realizes, is the one across the room.

  That’s strange. She hasn’t been in the living room since she fell asleep in front of the television last evening, but she could have sworn that she left the windows open overnight to ventilate the house.

  Who knows? Maybe she groggily closed them all when she woke up and dragged herself to bed in the wee hours.

  Maybe? She must have. There’s no other logical explanation.

  Peering through the glass, she sees that the light spilling into the room is coming from the streetlights out front. They’re still ablaze up and down Wayside Avenue, as are her neighbors’ porch lights, their windows bright with lamplight.

  So this isn’t a blackout. It’s some kind of power failure affecting only Sandra’s house.

  Okay. Old homes do have their drawbacks—like old wiring.

  And the inspector did warn her that the electrical system is not in good shape. A fire hazard, he called it.

  She sniffs the lavender-scented air. No hint of smoke. That’s a good sign.

  It’s probably just a blown circuit breaker. Too many fans plugged in or something.

  Realizing she’s going to have to inspect the ancient fuse panel in the basement, Sandra misses her ex-husband for the first time in months. It would be nice to have a man around the house, even if he is a complete SOB.

  There’s always Al Witkowski. He personally oversaw her move a few months ago and said to call him if she ever needs anything.

  “Remember, I’m just a few blocks away,” he reminded her, lingering long after the job was done. “Even if you just get sick of being alone and want some company some night . . . I know how that is.”

  A teddy bear of a man with a beer gut, the recently divorced Al is definitely not Sandra’s type, and she isn’t in the mood for company tonight. But when she thinks about the damp, still-unfamiliar basement and the spiderweb-draped electrical panel—and the fact that she isn’t sure whether she even has a flashlight in the house, let alone one with working batteries . . .

  Yes. She’s calling Al.

  Sandra reaches for the cordless phone on the end table before remembering: It’s useless without electricity.

  As usual, her cell phone was down to one battery bar at the end of the workday; she plugged it in upstairs when she got home. Opting to conserve what little charge it might have picked up since, she makes her way back to the old wall telephone in the kitchen. A landline comes in handy when the power goes out.

  She lifts the clunky-by-today’s-standards receiver to her ear, feeling as though she should be dialing the number of one of her childhood girlfriends. The same phone, but in a burnt orange shade that matched the flower-power wallpaper, hung in her own childhood kitchen. She spent many an hour stomach-down on the speckle-patterned beige linoleum beneath the curly cord, chatting and swinging her legs around in the air.

  Sandra’s happy burst of nostalgia vanishes when she realizes that there’s no dial tone on this phone.

  Frowning, she presses the metal cradle and lifts it again. Still nothing. She jiggles it up and down. Nope.

  That’s strange, because it was in perfect working order when she first moved in. She used it to order takeout Chinese before she dug the cordless phones out of the moving boxes, and she marveled at how long it took the dial to circle back to its original position after each digit. People must have had a lot more patience back in the old days, before the whole world evolved into an instant gratification electronic extravaganza.

  Now the old phone is offering zero gratification.

  Which doesn’t make sense, because a landline should work even with the power out. A blown fuse wouldn’t have impacted the telephone line inside the house, and it’s not as if there’s a storm raging outside, toppling trees and taking down wires.

  Perplexed, Sandra stands holding the receiver, wondering how it stopped functioning.

  Then she sees it, out of the corner of her eye: the slightest movement
in the shadowy corner of the kitchen, where two steps lead down to a small, windowed mudroom and back door.

  Her instinct is to cry out, to turn and stare at the spot, or to bolt from the room.

  She doesn’t do any of those things.

  Instead, just in case someone really is there, watching her, she pushes back the panic rushing up from her gut, forcing herself to stand absolutely still.

  Her mind races through possibilities.

  One, she’s imagining things . . .

  Two, it’s a ghost . . .

  Three, it’s a human prowler.

  Seeing another flicker of movement, she rules out the first option and decides that the second is much more appealing than the third.

  More appealing, but perhaps less likely, especially when she considers the abrupt power outage.

  Someone could have cut the telephone and electric lines, instantly isolating her in the dark.

  The house is locked, of course, with the fancy new dead bolts Bob Witkowski installed for her after she moved in. A hell of a lot of good they do now, with all the windows open.

  Sandra’s own words about the broken screen, spoken so glibly just this morning, come back to haunt her now.

  Anyone could push through it and hop in.

  But it’s such a safe neighborhood . . .

  That doesn’t matter. Someone—some, some night predator—could have easily found his way here.

  Someone could have been watching from the shrub border as she walked from her car to the back door a little while ago. He could have climbed in the window while she was upstairs changing her clothes, lying in wait down here the whole time . . .

  Oh dear God.

  What do I do?

  He’s positioned between Sandra and the back door. If she goes in the opposite direction and makes a run for the front door, he’ll surely catch her before she reaches it.

  There’s a drawer full of knives a few feet away, but she can’t remember which one it is.

  All right. All right. Neither flight nor fight is a reliable option.

  She can scream for help, but chances are no one will hear her above the hum of air-conditioning or window fans.

  What do I do?

  What do I do?

  In the still, dark room, she can feel the predator poised, getting ready to pounce.

  She has to take a chance.

  With a silent prayer—Please, God, please, God—Sandra bursts into motion, running with all her might toward the front of the house, certain she’s going to hear footsteps chasing her, and yet . . .

  Yet there’s nothing, not a hint of movement behind her.

  But he’s there; I know he’s there, and he’s coming.

  I have to get out.

  Cursing the fact that she doesn’t keep the dead bolt key inside the lock, she frantically reaches for the strip of molding above the door, knowing now that the extra second it takes to grab it could very well cost her her life.

  Her straining fingertips settle at the center of the door frame, where she always places the key after locking herself in.

  It isn’t there.

  She fumbles along the shallow ledge a couple of inches to the right, and then to the left.

  No key.

  Biting her trembling lip to keep from crying out in frustration, she swipes her hand across the ledge again, trying to control her movement so that she doesn’t knock the key off and have to dive for it. The ledge is empty.

  How can that be?

  Her mind races. She rarely uses the front door. But whenever she opens it, she puts the key back where it belongs.

  So what happened? Where is it?

  It doesn’t matter. She’s trapped.

  Any second now, he’s going to grab her from behind . . .

  She spins around.

  He isn’t there.

  Was her mind playing tricks on her after all?

  Of course. It makes sense.

  Who doesn’t start imagining scary things when the lights go out?

  Relieved, Sandra presses a hand against her pounding heart.

  Okay. Okay. I’m okay. It was a false alarm.

  But . . .

  What about the missing key?

  And why did the lights go out?

  And how did the living room windows wind up closed and locked?

  Even as the questions flit into her mind, even as her pulse slows to a slightly less frantic rhythm, she hears it . . .

  The unmistakable sound of a floorboard creaking in the kitchen.

  Someone is there.

  Someone is coming.

  Steady footfalls approach.

  Sandra looks around wildly for something to throw through the window.

  Before she can make a move, a voice—eerily calm, jarringly familiar—says from the shadows, “Don’t, Sandra.”

  It’s him.

  What is he doing here?

  “I have a gun, and I’ll use it.”

  A whimper escapes her as she shrinks back against the locked door like a cowering doe helplessly waiting for the hunter’s kill.

  Entry from the marble notebook

  Wednesday, September 4, 1985

  He came to my room again last night.

  I wasn’t feeling good so I had gone to bed early, but he woke me up. As usual, after he left I was so upset that I got no sleep, and I was exhausted today for the first day of school.

  I’m a sophomore now. At Mass on Sunday, I prayed that this year will be better than last, and that I might find a friend. But so far, it’s the same as last year. The other girls either look right through me like I’m not even there, or they stare at me like they feel sorry for me, or worse, like they hate me.

  I don’t know how I’m going to get through another whole year of this, let alone two more after that. If I complain, Mother will threaten to homeschool me again—that’s what she’s going to do with Adrian, poor baby.

  I would never survive that. Never. School might be miserable, but it’s my only escape. But I don’t think she’d really go through with it for me. She doesn’t want me at home all day, every day, where he could get to me while she’s out working. It’s not that she’s trying to protect me from him, because God knows she doesn’t do that. When I was little and it first started happening, I used to go crying to her, begging her to make him stop. I would get beaten and locked in my room, and I learned to keep my mouth shut. So she doesn’t try to keep me from him for my own sake. It’s for hers. I think that in some weird, warped way, she’s jealous. She’d be thrilled if I walked out the door one day and never came back. I would, too, if it weren’t for Adrian. I would never leave him here alone with them, ever.

  If I stay in school I can get a good job someday and then I’ll take him to live with me. We’ll move away and make a fresh start someplace—in a big city where no one will know us, or on a peaceful ocean beach—someplace where we can be safe and sound and far away from the two of them, and we’ll never look back. That’s the only thing that keeps me going.

  Chapter 3

  February might be the shortest month of the year, but it feels exactly the opposite, Carley Archer decides as she strips off her wet parka on a dark winter Monday morning.

  February seems to drag on endlessly here in Buffalo, where regardless of what the calendar and the groundhog say, there are still at least two more months of depressing weather ahead—usually more.

  Carley drapes the hood over a hook in her locker, crams the rest of the puffy nylon coat into the narrow space, and slams the door, knowing that when she opens it later, it’s going to smell like mildew again. That’s what happens, she’s discovered this winter, when you hang a wet coat in a closed-in, dark place all day, every day. There are no open cloakroom hooks here at Sacred Sisters High School like there were at the paro
chial school where Carley spent the first nine years of her education.

  She takes a deep breath, air that smells of pencil sharpener shavings, old books, and, still lingering faintly, the fish casserole the cafeteria served for lunch on Friday. Time to get through another week.

  Backpack over her shoulder, she heads down the hall toward homeroom, keeping an eye out for Johnny, the part-time janitor.

  The first time she saw him, not long after she started school here last fall, he was outside at the edge of the parking lot, leaning on the rusty bike rack no one ever uses, simultaneously reading a book and peeling an apple. He was using a pocket knife and peeling carefully so that the skin dangled in a continuous red coil.

  He wasn’t great-looking—tall and wiry with black hair cut stubbly short—but there was something appealing about him. Carley assumed he must be someone’s boyfriend from Cardinal Ruffini, the neighboring all-boys Catholic school.

  He saw her looking at him and instead of glancing away, said hello.

  “Hi,” she said, expecting him to go back to his book, but he was still looking at her, as though he expected her to say something else.

  So she gestured at the apple. “How do you do that without even looking at it?”

  “Practice.”

  “Really? Aren’t you afraid you’re going to cut your fingers?”

  He shrugged. “Nah. I’ve peeled a million apples and I’ve never cut my fingers once.”

  “Still . . . that must be a really good book,” she said. “What is it?”

  He held up the cover, and she recognized the Ray Bradbury novel she’d been assigned to read for freshman English.

  “Do you like it?” she asked.

  “I love it.”

  “Really?” Carley, who loves so many books, didn’t like that one at all. Too shy to tell him that, much less find out what he thought made the book so great, she hurried away.

  She occasionally spotted him out there after that, always with a book and an apple and a perfectly unfurled peel. As the weather grew more frequently inclement, she started to notice him inside the school, too. She can’t quite remember how she found out his name, or that he’s not someone’s boyfriend after all—rather, part of the custodial staff—but she does recall feeling an odd little spark of pleasure at the news.