Slice (12 page)

T
WENTY-ONE

J
ust a few yards away, Jessie sat at her own MacBook trying to coax the words out of her head and onto her computer screen. She'd been doing her best over the last few days to get back to her book. But writing wasn't easy when at any moment she might suddenly, without warning, find herself in tears, remembering Inga. She had decided to try using that raw emotion to write—since, after all, her book was about finding the strength and power within one's self to survive anything. She had made some progress, but it was hard. It was very,
very
hard.

“Jessie?”

She looked up. It was Monica, tapping lightly at the screen door. It had been a while since Monica had walked up the hill to see her. Jessie jumped from her seat and hurried to the door.

“Monica! Come on in!”

“I just have a package for you,” her sister replied. “It was left down at my house by mistake. I don't need to come in. I can just give it to you. . . .”

“No, please, come in. I'd like to speak with you for a moment.”

She could see the reluctance in her sister's face as she opened the screen door. “I have a basket class later this afternoon, and I need to get a shipment over to the general store. . . .”

“It'll just take a moment. Please, Monica. Just come in for a moment.”

Monica sighed and stepped inside. She handed Jessie the package from UPS. It was from Jessie's publisher. Jessie put the package aside and gestured to Monica to sit. But her sister shook her head.

“Really, Jessie, I can only stay a second,” she said.

“Okay.” Jessie let out a breath, trying to find the right words. “Look, Monica, it's felt a little weird between us this past week. . . .”

“Weird? What are you talking about?”

“Well, I hardly ever see you. Todd comes up all the time. . . .”

She noticed the tightening of her sister's lips at that point and the way she looked away from her. “Yes,” Monica said. “Todd sure has been coming up here a lot.”

Jessie realized her sister wasn't happy about that.

“I haven't asked him to, Monica. He's just been very sweet, coming up and helping me finish the painting and the tiling.” Her voice cracked a little. “You know, all the stuff Inga was doing before she . . . before she died.”

“I'm glad he's been a help to you, Jessie,” Monica said.

“But I sense that ever since Inga's death, you've . . . I don't know. I sense you've wanted to avoid me.”

Monica leveled her eyes at her. “It's been a difficult time for everybody.”

“But why—?”

“Look, Jessie, it was not good for my business that all the people who buy my baskets, either wholesale or retail, had to pick up the newspaper and read that I was called down to police headquarters to be questioned about a murder!”

“The papers were clear that you—all of us—were just being questioned as witnesses. There's been no suggestion any of us were guilty.”

Monica sighed. “That doesn't matter. Our names were in the paper. A girl was killed on the border of our property. I've had a number of people cancel out on basket classes because they don't feel comfortable coming here.”

Jessie was looking at her. “I'm sorry about that, Monica. Really I am. But you speak as if I'm somehow at fault. That somehow I caused Inga's death and all this inconvenience to you.”

Monica closed her eyes and seemed to count to ten. When she reopened her eyes, she was already speaking. “It just brought back bad memories,” she said, “of when you lived here before.”

“Monica,” Jessie said, reaching out and trying to take her sister's hand. But Monica avoided her, walking over to the window. “Monica, this has been a horrible experience for everyone. I've been getting phone calls from Germany in the middle of the night from Inga's grief-stricken parents. They keep wanting to know if their daughter's killer has been found. We're not the only ones impacted by this.”

Monica just stared out the window, not saying anything.

“Monica,” Jessie said, approaching her but not attempting to touch her. “I want us to be close again, like we used to be.”

Her sister spun around to look at her. “We were never close, Jessie.”

“Yes, we were,” Jessie insisted. “When we were girls . . .”

“No.” Monica's voice was calm and steady. “You were Mom's favorite, and I always felt that. I always felt left out by the two of you.”

“We never meant to make you feel that way,” Jessie said. “Mom loved you! She called you her beautiful porcelain doll!”

“But you were the one she took with her everywhere.”

“That's because you didn't like going to those New Age shops. You complained you couldn't abide the smell of Nag Champa. Besides, for every outing Mom took me on, Dad took you on your own adventures.”

Monica snarled. “Going into the office with him while he went over his accounts hardly counts as an adventure. He only took me because otherwise I'd have been left home alone, since you and Mom were out mushroom picking someplace, or fording some goddamn river.”

“You could always have come with us,” Jessie replied. “We always asked you. And you always said no, because you didn't want to get dirty.”

Monica said nothing.

“Monica, I never knew this troubled you so deeply. I always thought you were okay being Dad's girl and I was Mom's girl.”

“You know, let's put to rest right here the fallacy that I was Dad's girl.” Monica took a couple of steps toward Jessie so that she was only a few inches from her sister's face. Jessie could see years of rage and resentment shining in her eyes. “Sure, Dad liked to talk about business with me. But I was always keenly aware that he wished he were talking with you instead.”

“That's your own imagination,” Jessie said quietly.

“You were the one Dad really admired! You were the one who he wanted to impress. Because you were like Mom.”

Jessie looked away. Mr. Thayer's words came back to her.

“I'm sorry you've felt this way,” Jessie whispered. “I never knew.”

“Well, now you do. So please stop with the nonsense about us being close. We weren't even close in school, the way the teachers all favored you, and the boys . . .”

Jessie's eyes darted over to her sister. “I recall one boy who didn't favor me,” she said, sharper than she expected.

Todd.

Sooner or later, all their problems returned to Todd.

Monica actually smiled. “Todd was the one person who ever preferred me to you,” she said. But Jessie thought her sister's words sounded hollow somehow, as if she didn't really believe what she was saying. Jessie remembered Monica's pique at how much time Todd had been spending up here lately, helping fix up the house.

“Look, Jessie,” Monica said, her hand on the doorknob as she prepared to leave, “I've tried to be supportive of you. I really have. But it seems every time I do, something terrible happens. And I just need a little space.”

“Fine,” her sister said, not looking at her.

“Helloooo!”

The sudden interruption of Aunt Paulette's voice, lilting through the windows, startled both of them. They heard car doors slam, and footsteps crunching on the gravel driveway. Through the window Jessie could see their aunt heading up the hill, holding Abby's hand. Jessie had lost track of the time. She'd asked Aunt Paulette to pick Abby up from school today.

“Monica?” Aunt Paulette was calling in her singsong voice. “Are you up there, too? We can see you! And we have something to show you!”

Jessie saw Monica resist rolling her eyes.

Aunt Paulette and Abby were coming up the stairs into the house now. Abby was carrying a big sheet of white paper.

“Wait until you girls see this!” Aunt Paulette sang out as they came through the door. “Show them, Abby!”

The child held up the sheet of paper. In shaky printing she had written
MY FAMILY
across the top. The “F” was printed backwards. Below this there was a rough drawing of a house with a lot of green scribbles for grass and trees, and in front of the house were six stick figures, one smaller than the rest.

“Tell them who everybody is, sweetheart,” Aunt Paulette instructed.

Abby pointed to the first of the stick figures, which had yellow hair atop its head. “This is Mommy,” the little girl declared. Next she pointed to a nearly identical stick figure, although this one had brown hair. “This is Aunt Monica.” A stick figure with no hair at all was Uncle Todd, and one with a bright red smile was Aunt Paulette. The last figure, standing alongside the rest, was Inga. “And the little one is me,” Abby said.

Jessie could see that Monica was touched. She bent down and kissed Abby on the head, then pleaded she was late and rushed off, the screen door banging behind her.

“I'm going to hang this beautiful family portrait up right away,” Jessie announced. With magnets, she carefully affixed the drawing to the front of the refrigerator, and they all stood back to admire it.

“I think we have a budding artist in our family,” said Aunt Paulette.

“Mommy, can I go play on the swings?” Abby asked.

“Okay, honey,” Jessie told her, and the little girl scurried out the door into the backyard.

“Did her teachers say how things went today?” Jessie asked Aunt Paulette as she returned to sit in front of her computer.

“The same.”

The two women exchanged looks. Once word of the murder had gotten around the Independent Day School, teachers noted that many of the children seemed leery of playing with Abby. They were apparently acting on orders from their parents. Even the little girl who had befriended Abby on the first day of school had drifted away from her on the second day. It was as if parents believed that associating with a child whose nanny had been murdered might place their children in a similar kind of danger. Or maybe, Jessie speculated, there was still some reserve hostility toward Abby's mother— who, after all, had been witness to another murder not that long ago. Whatever the reasons, Abby's teachers had noticed that the little girl ate her snacks alone and was often the last chosen by her classmates in games and other events. They were doing their best to disrupt this pattern and to fully integrate Abby into classroom activities, but they had put Jessie on alert to what was happening.

“Breaks my heart to think of her sitting all by herself in class,” Jessie said, shutting her computer. She realized she'd get no more work done today.

“But she hasn't complained,” Aunt Paulette said. “She's never mentioned anything. When you ask her how school was, she always says it was good.”

“That's Abby,” Jessie said. “She never complains. She rarely even cried as a baby.”

Jessie glanced out the window at her daughter, swinging on the swings. Abby was talking to herself. She'd seen the little girl do that yesterday as well when she came home from school.

“An imaginary playmate,” Aunt Paulette said, observing the same thing.

“Because she has no friends in school,” Jessie said, and she felt as if she'd cry.

“Maybe we ought to ask Bryan and Heather's little ones back up to play with Abby,” Aunt Paulette suggested.

“Those two brats?” Jessie sighed. She was still peeved at Bryan for what he'd said to her at the picnic, but if his kids could give Abby some company, she shouldn't stand in the way. “Maybe. I don't know. Abby didn't really enjoy their company. But I'll ask her.”

Abby had gotten off the swings now and was engaged in an animated conversation with her invisible playmate. She was talking intensely, and moving her hands, and pointing across the yard, and then laughing uproariously to herself.

Both Jessie and Aunt Paulette watched.

“Gosh,” Jessie said. “She's really into this. . . .”

“I know. Isn't she cute?”

“But is it okay? I mean, it's not a . . . a problem, is it?”

Aunt Paulette looked over at her. “To have an imaginary friend? Oh, no! All kids have imaginary friends. You did.”

“I did?”

“Oh, yes. His name was Billy. It was so cute!”

Jessie smiled.

Outside, Abby was moving around behind the swing, still talking to herself. Jessie watched as she began to push the swing, as if she were giving her imaginary friend a ride.

“Okay, sweetie,” Aunt Paulette announced, “I'm going back to my cottage. Call me if you need anything.”

“I will,” said Jessie. “Thank you for picking Abby up today.”

“Anytime!”

Her aunt left, humming as she crossed the yard back to her little cottage.

Jessie kept her eyes on Abby. The little girl was still pushing the swing out in front of her, carrying on a conversation with the imaginary playmate. Jessie couldn't hear what she was saying, but it was clear she was enjoying herself. Over and over again she pushed the swing. It would fly outward then drift gently back to her, and then she'd push it again.

But as she watched, Jessie saw something very peculiar.

Each time Abby pushed, the swing sailed higher and higher into the air, and each time it did so, it came back toward Abby a little more swiftly, a little more dangerously. Abby had to move back a few steps each time to avoid being hit. Jessie was perplexed. Either her daughter was far stronger than she imagined—being able to send that swing farther and farther into the sky—or there really
was
an invisible playmate on that seat.