Killer's Cousin (2 page)

And met the green eyes of a prepubescent girl who was sitting alone on the front steps, hugging her bare knees. Lily.

I took a deep breath. There was no choice; I got out of the car. Stretched my cramped shoulder and leg muscles; felt the bones crackle. “Hey, Lily,” I croaked. I
hadn't spoken since ordering at the drive-through McDonald's in New Jersey at noon. I cleared my throat. “How are you?”

She didn't move. She was small, pasty-faced, and slightly chubby, with thick shaggy brown hair almost hiding her eyes. Her chin stuck out; her elbows defended her body. I had a sudden memory of the last time I'd seen her, on a chair at the funeral home, her feet dangling. Old and middle-aged people filling the room, crowding around the closed coffin, around Vic and Julia. No friends of Kathy's. No kids at all, except Lily. And me.

I had been having trouble breathing in the stuffy funeral home. I'd kept staring at the polished mahogany coffin lid, imagining Kathy beneath it; recalling horror movies I'd seen in which people were buried alive.

I had wanted, powerfully, to get out of there. I had certainly not thought to spend any time with Lily. Lily, who had stared at everything from her chair. Who got paler and paler as the day of the funeral wore on, but who did not cry, even during the eulogy.

But that was then. I drew a breath. Awkwardly, I approached Lily and sat down beside her on the steps. “It was a long drive,” I said.

Her arms tightened around her knees. She looked steadily at me. It was difficult to look back at her, but I had learned how to meet people's gazes, and I did it.

“Hi,” she said grudgingly. One last, long stare, and then she got up. “I'll tell them you're here.” Before I could move, the screen door slammed behind her as she pounded up the inside stairs to the second floor.

I got up from the stoop, not knowing if I should follow
Lily, and waited, shifting from foot to foot. The noise from the street hockey paused for a split second before exploding into an uproar of excitement as one kid—ten million years younger than me—made a spectacular goal. In that instant of silence, somewhere above my head I heard a woman say, “Tell your father, not me.” Julia?

But before I had time to think anything, Vic came bursting out of the front door and without warning enveloped me in an enormous hug. “David! I was starting to get worried—come in!”

He released me, but I could still feel the shocking imprint of his arms. I backed up a half step. When was the last time my father had touched me?

We went upstairs, Vic exploding with words as if he hadn't talked to anyone for a month. “… We rent the first floor to a girl, a college student. She's an artist but always pays the rent on time. We live on the second … You'll want something to drink? … You should call Eileen and Stuart to tell them you arrived safely … You're sure you're not hungry? … You'll be on the third floor; I'll show you after you've had a chance to relax … Sit down, sit down …” He forced me into a kitchen chair and bustled around, getting a Coke for me and a lemonade for Lily, who had perched on the edge of the counter and was watching my every move.

Vic had put on weight in the four years since I'd seen him. He'd been gaunt then, unhealthy, but the new weight wasn't right either. His flesh hung from his cheeks like a basset hound's, and his eyes were anxious
and tired. I accepted the Coke. I looked around for Julia.

“You'll be very comfortable, David,” Vic was saying. “It's really a little apartment, not a spare bedroom. But we can't rent it because it has only one entrance, and fire codes require two. Plus, the entrance is through our apartment, so, well, we wouldn't be comfortable with just anyone. But you're family, of course.”

He sounded somehow uneasy. More so, even, than I had expected. Or maybe I thought that because I caught Lily's face just then, squinched up in scorn. And because there was no sign of Julia. But I followed Vic's lead.

“It's a big help,” I said. “Your having me.” I paused and then said it. “Thank you.” I looked right into his eyes, as my mother would want me to do. “Thank you, Uncle Vic.”

“Well,” said Vic. His shoulders moved awkwardly, but he did look straight back at me. “Well …”

The pause lengthened. I finished my drink, put down the can, and said, “Could I have a look at my room … at the apartment now?”

“Sure,” said Vic. He took me on a tour, Lily trailing behind.

Vic and Julia's second-floor apartment followed a plan that I later learned was standard in Cambridge multifamily houses. Stairs from the ground floor ended in a hallway that ran the length of the house. On one side of the hall were a bath and two bedrooms. On the other sat the kitchen, a dining room, and at the front of the house, the living room.

In the living room, Vic unlocked and pulled open a door that I would have guessed concealed a closet. “Up here,” he said. Behind him, I saw a narrow wooden staircase. It climbed steeply upward between walls of frayed and darkened yellow wallpaper. At the top was another door.

They were putting me in the attic.

“One day, I'll need to rebuild these stairs,” Vic said as we climbed. Silently, I agreed; I could hear the creak, feel the give, of the old wood under me. Lily crowded me closely from behind. For a moment we all stood on the narrow steps in the dark. Then Vic opened the door to the attic, and sunlight burst in around us.

A living room and bedroom lay snugly under the eaves, with a counter separating a modern kitchenette from the living room. The furniture was spare but sufficient—bed and nightstand, small sofa, table and chairs. Fresh white paint dressed the walls; the wooden floor gleamed with polish. The bathroom was compact but complete, its one flaw the tininess of the tub. But who cared? I took showers anyway.

“Wow,” I said to Vic. “It's a great place.”

“I just installed the kitchenette a couple of years ago,” Vic said, “and put the skylights in the roof. Divided the space.” He smiled shyly at me. “It used to be just one big room, with a bathroom that I added when …” He stopped and bit his lip.

“It's great,” I said again, sincerely. “I'm—”

“I should live here,” said Lily. She had seated herself cross-legged in the very center of the living room floor. Her face was expressionless. “Why can't I move up
here? Why should we give it to
him
?” She didn't look at me.

“You're too young, Lily,” Vic said. “You're best downstairs with us.”

“
She
lived here,” Lily said. Vic turned away abruptly.
Kathy
, I thought. “
She
wasn't that much older than I am now when
she
moved up here,” Lily said. The words had the whiny singsong quality of frequent repetition. “I don't see why I can't—”

Vic cut her off. “That's enough, Lily.”

A silence. Then, barely audible: “It's all wrong,” Lily whispered.

“Well,” I said. I found myself struggling with the desire to tell Lily she could visit me, and an equally strong—no, a stronger—desire to keep my mouth shut, to preserve the privacy I had only just realized I would have. Real gratitude to Vic and Julia filled me, for the first time. I turned to Vic. “I'd like to say hello to Julia,” I said. “I thought I heard her before.”

Vic's mouth tightened. “She'll say hello later, probably.”

Probably
. “Oh,” I said.

Lily chortled obnoxiously, and then clapped a hand over her mouth.

I looked around again at the perfect little apartment. At Vic as he scraped away some bit of grit he'd suddenly noticed on the kitchen counter. At Lily, who had sprung up from the floor and gone to insinuate herself against Vic, who gave her an absentminded hug. At a stray slender shadow that flitted for the barest instant past the corner of my vision.

I was tired, okay, but I wasn't stupid. I didn't need a high-school diploma to figure out that Julia didn't want me there. Or Lily. But I had no choice. I was not welcome in Baltimore either. Davey had died when Emily did.

Now I was David, and I lived in Cambridge with strangers.

And shadows.

N
o doubt partly because of the separateness of my living quarters, but also, I was sure, because it was her preference, I did not see my aunt Julia for two full days. She didn't even come to dinner my first evening, when Vic took Lily and me out to Harvard Square for burgers.

During those two days, Vic was away much of the time as well—he's an electrical contractor—and yet it was Julia's absence that I noticed as I unpacked and tried to settle in. To my knowledge, she didn't work. On the evening of my arrival, as I trudged upstairs with my boom box and CDs, I thought I heard her voice. But by the time I reached the landing, she'd retreated toward the back of the house. I kept listening after that, as with Vic's help I brought up the pieces of my computer, my TV and VCR, and armloads of clothes and videotapes, but I didn't hear her again. I certainly didn't go looking for her.

The next night, Vic gave me something that served as an explanation. He rapped on my door and came in, asked how the unpacking was going. Then he said, “Uh, in general, we all make do for ourselves around here. Even Lily. As you've got your own kitchen, Julia thought perhaps … she's quite busy, you see, and we've never been ones for formal family meals. And you are pretty much grown-up. I told her you'd want to take care of yourself, you'd appreciate your privacy …”

It took me a minute to understand what he was really saying. Then I said, “Of course. It's very considerate of you.”

Vic avoided my eyes. He reached out tentatively and touched my shoulder. I knew—and he knew—that this was not what my mother had had in mind when she sent me to her brother's.

I was beginning to wonder if this really had been Vic's idea. Would my mother have lied about that to me? To my father? Or just to me?

“About money for food,” Vic began.

I cut him off. “I have a credit card,” I said. “And a bank account. My parents didn't want me to be a burden to you. It's no problem.”

“But I'd like to give you—”

“No.” I looked him straight in the eye. “Thank you, but no. You've been quite generous as it is.” I busied myself arranging some stuff. After a few minutes Vic left, closing the door gently behind him. I thought he said something about seeing me later, but I couldn't be sure. There was a buzzing in my ears.

Emily
, I thought.
Emily
.

I wondered, did Julia believe the tabloids were right about me, and the jury wrong? I wondered, had my parents pressured them to invite me? If so, how? But it sickened me to try to think about it. Did it matter? It was done. And it was only for a year. An academic year. Nine months. I would not look beyond that.

That night, I heard the oddest sound. It was a kind of … low
humming
—only just audible, somehow filled with urgency and … frustration? Whatever it was, it was definitely
not
tuneful. At first I was barely aware of it, and then, for one bare second, it swelled and seemed to fill my ears. I sat up in bed and turned on the light, briefly imagining—I don't know—a giant fly from a horror film? Something stupid, anyway; something nightmarish. But of course the room was empty in the harsh glare of electric light. And the sound, too, was suddenly gone: in fact my ears rang with silence. After a moment, I shrugged. I'd imagined quite a few strange things this last year. What was one more? And so I sank back into the semistupor that, these days, I called sleep.

Though I didn't see Julia, Lily was around. She parked herself on my sofa the next day and sullenly watched me unpack. Once, when I came back from transferring a pile of T-shirts to the bedroom bureau, I found her freely rooting around in a box of my books and papers.

“Lily,” I said.

She looked up briefly, and then bent over the box again.

I said, “It's rude to go through other people's stuff.”

Lily didn't change her position or look up. She
reached into the box and pulled out a large paperback. “Why is it rude?” she asked. She turned the book over and began to examine the back, and then I realized which one it was, and I panicked a little. I should have been more careful when I packed, but I hadn't thought anybody would be in my stuff. And I'd wanted to bring all my books. They'd become friends, that lonely year.

And that particular book, Emily had given me.

“Because everybody needs privacy,” I said. I took the book from her. “And time alone. Do you understand?”

“No.” Lily's eyes fixed on my face and scoured it inch by inch. It unnerved me.

“Look,” I said, “you'd better leave. I want to unpack by myself.” And, as she continued to kneel there on the floor, I walked to the open door and stood by it.

She waited just past the point at which I was sure she wasn't going to move. Then she got up, elaborately dusting off her knees. “Tell me something,” she said, as if casually. “How did you feel when she went down?”

All the air left the room.

Lily was leaning forward, her gaze avid, sucking at mine. “Tell me. Did you feel …
powerful?
Were you glad? Even … just for a minute?”

I had words, somewhere inside me, but for a long moment they were formless. I thought,
She's a kid, she's just a kid
, but that didn't help. Greg and Emily and I had been kids too. Being under eighteen didn't mean you were innocent. Or harmless.

“Get out,” I said.

Again she waited. Staring; challenging. And as I began to think that I would have to pick her up and remove
her bodily—and I was abruptly prepared to do it—she lifted her chin and moved past me like a diva. Her feet thunked as she descended the stairs. I closed the door behind her. I leaned against it.