Light from a Distant Star (48 page)

She went back to rubbing each fork tine and knife blade and spoon hollow until they shone. Ruth had made the mistake of coming downstairs looking for a snack and now she’d been pressed into apple-slicing duty. The three pies—apple, pumpkin, and mincemeat—that were being assembled tonight wouldn’t be baked until tomorrow night.

They hadn’t changed, not really, but she had, Nellie realized, listening to them in the kitchen. They were the same as they’d always been. She loved her father but with a forgiveness that tinged everything he said and did, diminishing him with her pity. Ruth had been right all along. As had her mother. Now there was just Henry, only Henry left to admire him. Only Henry who didn’t hear the fear in his father’s voice, or see in his intensity the desperate need to keep everyone at bay, them and all their petty problems.

W
EDNESDAY, THE DAY
before Thanksgiving, when school ended at noon, so no danger of running into Jessica at lunchtime recess. She had been absent all week, to Nellie’s great relief. She had told herself Jessica must be sick, even though she knew from Ruth that Louie hadn’t been in school either.

The headline in yesterday’s paper had been
LOCAL BUSINESSMAN QUESTIONED IN HOMICIDE
, with Mr. Cooper’s picture on the front page, a smiling file photo. Most of the story was a rehash of Dolly’s murder and the trial. But it did report that because new information had come to light, police were questioning Mr. Cooper about his relationship with Dolly Bedelia and his whereabouts immediately prior to the murder. After initially speaking with Mr. Cooper in his office last week, the police had contacted him again requesting DNA samples, and he’d refused. Mr. Cooper’s attorney described his client as not only “incredulous” but seriously considering a defamation of character lawsuit against any number of people, Assistant District Attorney Finn Cowie, chief among them, and Eggleston Jay Wright, Max’s lawyer, who was demanding the investigation be reopened.

Almost home, Nellie was stunned to see Jessica coming down Oak Street. Her first impulse was to run by her, but she kept walking. The drumbeat in her head kept time to each of Jessica’s plodding footsteps. Closer, closer, now inches apart.

“Bitch,” Jessica growled, hands on her hips. “You’re so gonna pay for this. You have no idea what’s coming, do you, bitch?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, speaking as fast as she could. “It’s not like I was trying to cause trouble for anyone, especially you, Jess. I mean, we’ve been friends ever since first grade. I just had to tell the truth, that’s all. It’s not like I was trying to hurt you or anything.” Nellie cringed, a feeble ending.

“Oh no, not me, just my whole fucking family, that’s all!” Jessica said, adding with an eerie laugh, “Everyone’s, like, going nuts. Thank God Patrice is home from college. At least someone’s cooking. My mother’s, like, locked up in her room twenty-four/seven, and my father, all he does is drink vodka and cry. You ever hear a man cry? It’s really, really weird, like this high eeee-ew! eeee-ew! Like some kind of sick animal.”

They stood in Nellie’s driveway as Jessica’s dispassionate report continued. Things had gotten so bad with her father throwing and breaking things, even punching his fist through the study wall, that Patrice had to call a doctor, who came in the middle of the night with medicine to calm him down. He’d been sleeping all morning.

“I better go in,” Nellie said, her arms prickled with goose bumps.

“Yeah, me, too,” Jessica said, and Nellie told her no. Her mother was too busy cooking, which wasn’t true. She was at work. “Please, please!” Jessica begged. “I just wanna be in some normal place, that’s all!”

All right, but not inside, Nellie conceded, swayed by guilt and sympathy. They’d have to sit on the steps, though, because the porch furniture had already been put in the barn for the winter. Even with a jacket, Nellie was soon shivering, but not Jessica, who wore only a thin, tight sweater. She looked heavier, Nellie thought, with all the turmoil she was probably eating constantly. As if reading her mind, Jessica said she was starving. Could they just get some food and eat it out here? Nellie said they couldn’t go in. But she had pretzels somewhere in here, she said, finding them in her backpack. Jessica ripped open the bag.

“Guess what happened to Bucky,” Jessica said through a mouthful of pretzels.

“Like I care,” Nellie said, though it was better than hearing about all the misery she’d caused the Coopers.

“His grandmother caught him stealing some money from her closet. He knew where the key was, so he’d just go take, like, ten or twenty, whenever he wanted.”

“What a jerk.”

“Yeah, well, but they’re rich,” Jessica said, devouring the last pretzel. She kept wetting her fingers and dipping them into the salt at the bottom of the bag.

“No, they’re not!”

“Well, anyway,” Jessica said between smacking sounds as she sucked salt from each fingertip, “they never gave him any money for anything. So, I mean, poor Buck.” She shrugged. “Now he has to go live with some aunt and uncle in Albany.”

“Poor aunt and uncle,” Nellie said.

“Poor Albany,” Jessica laughed. She folded the bag into a tiny square and stuffed it into her pocket, along with all the other empty bags and wrappers she would be sure to dispose of before she got home.

“Now, I’m like, wicked thirsty,” Jessica said, biting the side of her thumbnail.

“I told you, we can’t go in.”

“You can, and I’ll just wait.”

Nellie ran inside, then hurried back out with a glass of water.

“Jesus, this the best you can do?” Jessica scoffed, then guzzled it down. “Anyway,” she said with a bitter laugh. “I don’t think my Mom’ll be buying any more Cherry Coke for you.”

Nellie could only nod.

“Guess I’ll be coming over here from now on,” Jessica sighed. “I mean, if we’re still gonna be hanging out, that is.”

With a score of horrible scenarios crashing through her thoughts, Nellie continued nodding.

“And
I’ll
buy the fucking Cherry Coke!” Jessica said, then burst into heart-breaking, blubbery tears.

“Don’t cry, Jess. It’ll be okay. It’s probably just—”

“He did that to
me
!” she sobbed. “When he gets mad … it’s like he goes crazy. He puts his hands on your neck, and you don’t dare move, and the whole time he’s yelling right in your face, like, ‘Yah! Yah! Yah!’ spit getting all over you, and you just have to stand there, because you know if you move or say one single word back, something bad’s gonna happen.” Suddenly, she grabbed Nellie’s wrist and squeezed hard. “But don’t you tell anyone! That’s a secret, Nellie. That’s just between you and me, and if you do, if you tell anyone, if you tell one single person, like that bitch, Brianna Hall, I’ll kill you, I swear I will!”

“Okay.”

“Say it! Promise you won’t.”

“I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

Shoulders touching, they sat staring down at the steps. Poor Jessica, she kept thinking, even in this, so disconnected, whether happy or sad, never really in quite the right place. What an awful life. No wonder she was so strange. Strange enough even to still want to be friends. Or maybe that’s exactly what kept her going. Her persistence.

“Hey, Jess, I just thought. I’ve got this book, you want to see it? It’s got all these holds and things, like ways to protect yourself in case of attack, or like, if all of a sudden someone comes up from behind and grabs you, you do this kind of spin-around thing,” she said, on pivoting feet now, arms and hands flying in demonstration.

“Are you fucking serious?” Jesssica said, squinting up at her.

“Yeah. It’s called
Get Tough!
It’s by Major Fairbairn. He’s, like, this really cool English guy.”

“Yeah, well, not right now, okay?” Jessica said with a disbelieving sneer.

“Okay.” Nellie knew enough to drop it, even though it was probably the very thing Jessica had needed all along. Empowerment.

N
ELLIE WOKE UP
in the morning to the smell of turkey roasting in the oven. Her first thought was of Max waking up to the holiday in a prison cell. She wondered if he was feeling just a little bit thankful today. Attorney Wright had told her father that even if the police did reopen the case and arrest Mr. Cooper, there’d still have to be another
trial. The only way Max could be released from jail before a trial would be if Mr. Cooper confessed to the murder, which probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, so Max was just going to have to be patient. But at least now there was hope. Sitting up in bed, she put on her glasses and reached for the notepad containing her long letter to Max.

Today is Thanksgiving
, she wrote,
and when my father asks us at dinner to name something we’re thankful for, I’m going to say I’m thankful that I told the truth. I hope you won’t be mad at me for not telling the police right away about Mr. Cooper. I wanted to, but I was afraid. It really is true what Mark Twain said—physical courage is great, but it’s moral courage that really counts, but I’m sure you probably already know that
.

Anyway, I’ll finish this later. My mother is calling me. We have to eat breakfast early so we can get the kitchen ready for the big feast ahead
. She scratched out
big feast
and just wrote
day
. No point in making him feel worse than he already did.

Ruth had finished breakfast and was washing her dishes in the sink. She was meeting her friends in a half hour, even though the football game didn’t start until eleven. Socially, it was the biggest game of the year, but a very lopsided rivalry. In the last ten years Springvale High had beaten Mountcliff Academy eight times. Ruth started for the stairs, saying she might be stopping by Quinn’s house after the game. “They’re having this, like, brunch. But I won’t eat anything, I promise. I’ll be starving for dinner.”

“Who’s Quinn?” her mother called after her.

Probably another phantom friend
, Nellie thought.

“MacFarland,” her father said, bending over the oven door as he basted the turkey. “His great-grandfather was Lucky Quinn. He was the fire chief when the station caught fire and burned to the ground. In 1928, I’m pretty sure. Never lived it down, remember?”

Her mother didn’t answer, but her eyes caught Nellie’s, then held for a second, a painful second, a look neither could acknowledge without undermining his dignity. Meanwhile, in his constant hunger for irony, Henry was begging for details, the whole story, which as his father told it was obviously the funniest thing Henry had ever heard. Just then the phone rang. Her mother hesitated before she answered. Charlie had called from the hospital last night, demanding to be picked up. He
wanted to come home. Her mother called his doctor, who said it was out of the question. He was too weak. Even though it had been after ten, Nellie’s father drove to the hospital and managed to talk Charlie into staying. At least through the weekend. Truth was, that’s when he was probably going to go into hospice care, if a bed became available.

“Don’t worry about it,” her mother was saying. Her father shut the oven door quietly and came near, looking concerned. Her mother rolled her eyes.
Betsy
, she mouthed.
The rolls
. “I’m sure they’re fine, Betts. The shape doesn’t matter—they’ll still taste great. No. Don’t even think of it.” She hung up, then had to hold onto the counter she was laughing so hard. “Phil. He sat on one of the bags of rolls!”

“No!” her father cried, laughing.

“Yes!” her mother gasped, “and she thinks they should get in the car and try and find a bakery that’s open.”

“Yeah, can you just see Uncle Phil yelling, ‘Bakery! Bakery!’ at his dashboard,” Nellie said, putting her cereal bowl into the sink when the phone rang again.

Everyone froze in their giddiness as her mother answered, but it was only Lazlo needing to borrow some cinnamon. Her mother sent Henry over with it, then told Nellie to go upstairs and shower. But she’d just taken one on Saturday, Nellie protested, raising an arm and sniffing.

“Weekly’s not good enough,” her mother said on her tiptoes, reaching high into the cupboard for a box of cornstarch. “You should be taking one at least every two days. It’s very important for girls, especially now that you’re a teenager.”

That word alone was enough to send Nellie heading for the bathroom before another discussion of female personal issues could take place, especially in her father’s presence. She let the water run a long time before she finally stepped in. Groping through the lineup of bottles, she knocked half of them over as she tried to find the shampoo. Without glasses, she was practically blind in here, another reason to avoid showering. What if there were an emergency, a fire or something, she’d be a goner in here. Sometimes she’d just run the water in the shower stall while she washed up at the sink. But her mother was right across the hall now, making her bed, so she didn’t dare.

The soap slipped from her hand onto the stall floor, white soap on the white tile, so she had to kneel down to find it. She reached out past the shower curtain and took her glasses from the vanity. They steamed up even more when she put them on, but at least she could see a little as she worked the shampoo into her hair. She couldn’t have contacts until she was seventeen, another of her mother’s arbitrary rules, like not getting her ears pierced until she was sixteen. Not that she even wanted to. But if she ever did, she’d only get one in each lobe, not three like Ruth had. She’d gotten in trouble for it, but like everything else with her sister, it hadn’t lasted very long, and no one had ever dragged Ruth to a therapist. Apparently, having two fathers absolved her of a great many sins. She wasn’t about to admit it to anyone, but she liked her sessions with Mrs. Fouquet. But now that she thought about it, maybe Jessica had liked her therapy sessions, too, in the beginning. Maybe that’s how it started, getting so into yourself you didn’t even notice people looking at you funny every time you said anything they didn’t understand.

“Nellie?”

She peered around the curtain. The shape in the doorway seemed to be her mother, holding out her bathrobe.