House of Skin (34 page)

“A month,” she said.

“It felt like longer.”

She waited.

He said, “Emily showed up again.”

“Did she?”

“Yes.”
 

“Is she still with you?”
 

He met her gaze then. “No. She went back.”

“To Memphis?”

“I guess so. She never told me.”

“She just left?”

He shrugged. “Things didn’t exactly go well. I realized how different things are now.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Lots of things. Like the way she always talks to me. I never noticed it before, but it’s more like a parent scolding a child than a man and woman talking to each other.”
 

“So you broke it off?”

His expression was pained. “Yeah, I did, but that’s not what I need to tell you.”

“Go ahead.”

“While she was here,” he said, “last night…”
 

Though she knew what was coming, had seen it all through the windowpane, she had to fight to keep her voice even. “Yes?”

“We kissed,” he said.

She sank her nails into her fingers.

“You’re angry,” he said.

She said nothing, waiting for the rest.

“I’m sorry, Julia. I thought you and I were done.”

Her nails dug, the blood wet on her fingers.

He went on, “I know it’s hard for you to believe, but that’s all that happened.”
 

She stopped. “You didn’t sleep with her?”
 

He shook his head. “I don’t know if I’m in love with you or not, but what I feel for you is more than I ever felt for Emily. I don’t say that to be cruel to her. I only mean you’re the one I think about all the time, the one I wish would come over and enjoy the house with me.”

“The house,” Julia said.

“Not the house itself, but the experience of it. The spending time there. Making it beautiful the way it used to be.”

She felt her anger abating. “Close your eyes,” she said.

He did. It gave her a chance to wipe her bloody hands on the seat of her black shorts.

“Can I open them yet?”

“Sure.”

“Don’t I get a surprise or something?”

“That depends on what else you have to say.”

He said, “I screwed up and I’m sorry.”

She didn’t know whether to laugh or be furious with him, but she must have smiled because he was grinning and moving in to kiss her. She put a hand on his chest to stop him, and then regretted it when he stopped, stared at her hand.

“I cut it gardening,” she said.

He took her hands, examined them.

“There are cuts all over your palms.”

She pulled her hands away, angry at being scrutinized.

“You did that to yourself,” he said.

She turned. “No, you did it to me by kissing someone else.”

His eyes fell. “I know. I’m sorry. I’d take it back if I could, and if I’d thought there was still a chance to make things right between us I’d never have let her in my house.”

She thought of the long nights, the mid-summer days she’d spent wondering about him. “You didn’t do much to get me back.”
 

“When you left that night it seemed so final. I’ve never had anyone that mad at me.”

“Wouldn’t you have been?”

“I guess so, but it wasn’t like it was intentional. I didn’t realize you were related to Myles.”

“Which brings up the question of incest,” she said.

He smiled a little. “We haven’t had sex yet.”

“Yet?” She cocked an eyebrow.

“It can’t be incest if we haven’t consummated anything.”

“But what if we do?”

He shrugged. “Didn’t Poe marry his second cousin or something?”

“I hardly think we should use him as our model.”

“Hell of a writer though.”

She grinned despite herself.

“Look, I’m probably going to regret this,” he said, taking her hands, “but I’m tired of leaving things unsaid. You and I didn’t see each other that long, but the time we spent together was wonderful. I shouldn’t need someone else to help me find myself, but that’s exactly what happened. It was like there was this other version of me I’d always wanted to coax into existence but never could. When we were together, I began to figure out how to bring that person out, to become more like him.”

“You do look great.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s more a state of mind than anything, a way of looking at things. Before, I was so damned lazy, so weak. I hated myself because there was nothing about me I liked. I look back at the way I was and cringe. A self-pitying, do-nothing alcoholic.”

That raised her eyebrows. It was the first time he’d talked about it.

“It’s the truth. I had to lose you to realize how much you meant to me.”

“And how much is that?”

“A lot,” he said. “I know how lame that sounds, but it’s true.”
 

He averted his eyes. Then, he seemed to decide something.

“I was starting to fall in love with you,” he said.

She couldn’t stop her mouth from falling open.

“I don’t deserve another chance,” he said, “but I’d like one anyway.”

As she stared at him there on the sidewalk, she remembered the way he’d looked in April, standing on the veranda at Watermere, staring out at the forest in her direction but not seeing her where she crouched. She’d watched him that way every evening, to take her mind off Ted Brand, speculating about him and whether or not, like Brand, he was concerned only with himself. The manuscript she’d read seemed to confirm her worst fears, and yesterday, when she saw him kiss his ex-girlfriend, she hated him. It was all mixed up inside her now, the rage and the lust, and beneath it, the tender feelings she had, the thought of a future together.

“One more chance?” she asked.

“Just one.”

She pretended to deliberate. “And when were you thinking of seeing me?”
 

He leapt on it. “What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m reading a book.”

“Eat dinner with me instead.”

“Only if you get carry-out.”

“Chinese?”
 

“Extra fried rice.”

“Done,” he said. He gave her hands a squeeze, backed toward the forest. “Give me an hour,” he called out and was gone.

She stared after him, smiling. When she thought again of his Poe comment, her smile grew troubled. Poe had written a poem, “Annabel Lee,” that she didn’t like to think about. She’d read it first with her mother the summer of her death. Her mom had tried to skip over it, going from “The Raven” to “Ulalume,” but Julia persisted, and Barbara Merrow turned pale as her daughter spoke the name. After much arguing, they read it together, read about the jealous angels conspiring to murder the beautiful girl named Annabel.

But it was Barbara who died two months later, and it was no wind that took her.

April, 1990

A moment after they told him the news, Myles heard her laughing.

Doc Trask, the spineless weasel, had shown up at his door with Sheriff Hartman. They were asking him where he’d been that day, who could vouch for his whereabouts. In truth, he’d been boning the hooker he’d taken to a hotel in the city, but he wasn’t about to tell them that.

Then they told him about Barbara, and he’d come unglued.

Though it wasn’t for show, his breakdown helped convince Hartman and Trask of his innocence. Now that he knew the story of his little Asian prostitute would keep him out of jail, he told them everything, right down to the club where he met her. The sheriff vowed to check his story, said it in such a way as to get a rise out of him, but Myles was too sick with the loss to muster much heat.

He hadn’t really loved Barbara, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t miss her. She was an incredible lay, and she was the mother of his only child. Without her around, his plans for Julia would fall apart. Since he wasn’t her legal guardian, he might not be able to raise her, to groom her to take her mother’s place.

He had no idea how, but he was sure she’d murdered Barbara Merrow. And when Annabel began to laugh, he thought the crazy bitch had slipped up, had finally incriminated herself by gloating within earshot of the sheriff and the coroner.

The men asked if they could speak to his wife.

Myles welcomed them in.

On the way up to her stinking lair he wondered how she’d done it, how Annabel had finally rid herself of the one woman who had bested her. But when he opened the door to her room and saw her, he knew she would never be convicted of the crime.

She looked embalmed.

Seeing her lying there in the middle of the king-sized bed was like seeing an old wasp dying on a windowsill. Her emaciated limbs were waxen and bruised; her eyes were hollowed out cavities, the eyes of a skeleton. Her head lay on its side, facing them, and behind him Myles felt the sheriff and the coroner recoil, apologizing already for intruding on such a sickly creature.

Myles bade them enter. They did, hesitantly.

When Sheriff Hartman asked Annabel about the last time she saw Barbara Merrow, she only watched him with those filmy eyes, appeared not to understand. Hartman asked again, and Myles was surprised at his gentleness. Hartman had taken over for Sheriff Ledford decades ago and had inherited all of the man’s hatred toward the Carvers. He’d no doubt heard many things about Annabel, had even investigated Watermere a few times over the years, but he’d never found enough probable cause to arrest either of them. Twice, prostitutes had gone missing, and though Myles and Annabel had indeed used them and slaughtered them, they had always concealed the bodies well enough to remain free.

But all of that was history now. At least, judging from Hartman’s quiet questions. It was impossible that this dying husk of a woman could make it to the bathroom, much less traverse the distance from Watermere to Barbara Merrow’s house, where Barbara’s body had been found by her daughter.

Making matters more difficult, Myles later found out, was Julia Merrow’s shock. According to Trask the girl hadn’t spoken since she’d found her mom, scissors sticking out of her vagina like a lethal sex toy.

“What’s to happen to the girl?” Myles asked as they stood next to Annabel’s bed, both men studiously avoiding eye contact with the woman. And, he noticed, fighting off the gag reflexes the smell in the room had triggered.

“She’ll live with her grandmother until she’s eighteen,” Hartman answered, clearing his throat into his fist.

Myles swallowed. “And the house?”

“The house?”
 

Myles tilted his head. “Who’s to get it?”

“I don’t see where that’s relevant,” Trask said.

But Hartman overrode him. “Barbara Merrow left all her worldly possessions to her daughter. They’ll be held for her until she’s of legal age.”

Myles felt like strangling them both, Hartman and Trask, for coming here, for telling him such awful things, for ruining the delights Julia Merrow surely had in store for him. She already favored her mother, but the uncanny thing was she sometimes looked like Annabel too.

“Mrs. Carver is obviously not well today, and I think Doctor Trask would agree that she had nothing to do with this business,” said the sheriff. “We will need her statement eventually, Mr. Carver, to establish time of death and possible clues, but for now I think we should focus our efforts elsewhere.”

It was said innocently enough, but Myles could tell the guy thought he was guilty. Trask was staring at Annabel thoughtfully, as if he weren’t convinced of her condition. For once, Myles found himself hoping Trask would succeed. The guy had been trying to bring them down one way or the other since the late forties. Annabel was his white whale.

Still, he couldn’t reconcile the brutal slaying of Barbara Merrow with the motionless sack of bones before him. “Let’s go,” he said to Hartman.

They did.

And as Myles turned to leave he saw something that made his blood freeze.

Annabel’s mouth had fallen open, and between two shallow breaths, a black, forked tongue whispered out of her mouth, inviting him once again into her bed.

Her sly grin followed him down the stairs.

They were eating chicken lo mein in the middle of the ballroom floor when Julia stood and unbuttoned her blue jeans. The noodles dangling out of his mouth, Paul watched as she pushed the jeans down her smooth tanned legs and stepped out of them. She turned, leaving him sitting on the black and white tiles, the opened cartons of Chinese food surrounding him like solemn parishioners. As she walked away, he saw she wore a thong, white like her tight tank top, her perfect buttocks round and flexing as she moved up the curving staircase.