The Fall of Never (11 page)

Her mother quickly waved her hand. “But no—don’t worry about your sister, she’ll be fine.”

“Then why did you call me? Or, should I say, request that Mr. Kildare call me? Who is he, anyway?”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed the slightest bit. Apparently, she was being frugal with her tinder as well. “Are you making some sort of statement by that?”

“By what?” But she knew.

“Why we didn’t call you ourselves. Or perhaps call you sooner. Or whatever it is you meant.”

“Yes and no,” she said coldly. “But it was an honest question. Why did you and Dad ask for me to come home?”

“Because of the police, dear,” her mother said and, as if rehearsed, three sharp knocks echoed down the corridor from the foyer.

The police had arrived.

Two officers stood in the living room, DeVonn Rotley beneath the doorway, his face expressionless. The officers themselves looked like a comic relief from some Sherlock Holmes paperback—one short, one tall; one mustachioed, one clean-shaven; one stout with an ample gut and short arms, the other slender with arms that practically allowed his fingertips to reach his knees when fully relaxed.

Kelly entered the room, her mother leading the way. Marlene Kellow greeted the officers in a way that made Kelly assume this was not the first visit these two had made to the Kellow compound.

“Thank you, Rotley,” Marlene Kellow said. Rotley nodded once and disappeared back into the hallway, closing the double-doors as he went.

“Kelly,” said the tall, clean-shaven officer. He removed his crumpled fedora and set it on a mahogany end table. “I’m Detective Raintree. This is my partner, Detective Sturgess.”

Sturgess, the pudgy, mustachioed cop nodded. “Ma’am.”

“Please have a seat,” Raintree said. He spoke with a velvet voice. “We just have a few questions to ask you.”

Kelly sat on the sofa. Raintree remained standing, but both Sturgess and Kelly’s mother sat down on either side of her.

“I’m a little confused,” Kelly said. “This has to do with Becky? With what happened to her?”

“Her diary,” Raintree said. “Were you aware Becky kept a diary? A journal?”

Kelly shrugged. “No, but it doesn’t surprise me. She’s a little girl.”

“Most young girls keep journals,” Raintree agreed. “Nothing unusual about that.” He slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “You kept one? As a little girl?”

“I might have. I don’t remember.”

“My daughter keeps one,” Sturgess added from nowhere.

“When was the last time you spoke with your sister, Miss Kellow?”

“It’s Rich,” she said and saw her mother glance at her, perplexed.

“Beg pardon?” Raintree too looked a bit confused.

“Kelly Rich. I was married.”

“Oh,” Raintree said, eyebrows arching.

Her mother’s features, on the other hand, did not change at all—she merely continued to stare at her daughter, almost to the point where Kelly was certain her eyeballs were going to roll right out of their sockets. “Married,” she said with cold absence. “Well, now…”

“Mrs.
Rich,”
Raintree continued. “Can you recall the last time you spoke with Becky?”

“Are you serious?”

“I’m sorry?”

“What makes you think I spoke with Becky?” She coughed up a dry laugh. “I regret it—really, I do—but I haven’t spoken with my sister since I moved away from home. Years ago. And she was really just a baby.”

The two detectives exchanged a look. Her mother was still looking at her; Kelly could see her stare from the corner of her eye, hard and pressing. It wasn’t a particularly angry stare, she noted; rather, it was the sort of look a circus clown might elicit from a small, mentally underdeveloped child: quizzical uncertainty. Almost a
dumb
look, a
stupid
look, a look that showed not even a single trace of comprehension.

“Years ago?” Raintree said.

“That’s correct.”

“We were under the impression…” Sturgess began.

“Yes,” Raintree interjected, “the impression…”

“Don’t lie to these men, Kelly,” her mother snapped. “Mrs.
Rich.”

“Why would I lie?” Then to Raintree: “I’m a bit confused here…”

Raintree chuckled nervously, like someone under intense interrogation. “Well, now, I guess we’re
all
a bit confused at this point. Understand that we’re in no way insinuating that you had anything to do with what happened to your sister, so there is really no need to hide any information—”

“Hide information?” She stood up. “Why would I hide anything? And why would I assume you’re here to interrogate me, anyway?”

“It’s not that,” Sturgess said. He put a hand out to Kelly, touched her right wrist, beckoning her to sit back down.

“Cooperate, Kelly,” her mother said.

“Kelly,” continued Raintree, “your sister mentions speaking with you on practically a regular basis in her diary. For the past several months, really. Now, according to Mr. Kildare, Becky never made any phone calls from the house to your apartment. The phone records would show if she had, and they don’t. So she’d either been receiving calls from you to her direct phone line or, perhaps, through the mail. Through letters?”

“Are you serious? Her diary says this?”

Raintree shook his head. It was a perfunctory gesture, executed without thinking: a turn to the left, a turn to the right, return to center. “Not really, no.”

“She doesn’t come right out and say who called whom,” Sturgess clarified. He had folded his small hands in his lap, pressed against his large gut.

“But she makes mention of you several times. Mentions speaking with you, mentions discussing things with you.”

“It’s just my name? Couldn’t it be someone else named Kelly?”

“Stop it,” her mother nearly scolded. “You’re ashamed of this place, of your father and I, but don’t you start lying to the detriment of your sister.”

She shot her mother a poison stare. “You’ve got some nerve.”

“You know it’s true. And don’t think I don’t see it. You have your hang-ups, I don’t care. But don’t think for one second that I will allow your lies in—”

“I’m not
lying,”
she insisted. “Why the hell would I lie about that? If I’d been talking with Becky—and I wish I
had
kept in touch—then I’d say so. There’s nothing for me to lie about. That’s ridiculous.”

“There are several passages where your sister has not just mentioned your name, Kelly,” said Raintree, “but where she has mentioned you as her sister, too.”

Quietly, almost to herself, Marlene muttered, “Becky has no friends. Not here, not at school.”

“That can’t be. I haven’t spoken to her since I left Spires. She was just a little kid.”

“So you have no knowledge of any boys she might have been interested in?” Sturgess said. “You wouldn’t know if, say, she had a crush on some young fellow from town?”

“There
are
no young fellows from town,” Marlene said. “This was some stranger.”

“No,” Kelly said.

“Or no boy that might have had some interest in her?” Raintree added.

“No,” she repeated. “I’m not lying to you.”

“Of course not,” Raintree said. He pulled his hands from his pockets, rubbed them together quickly. “I suppose we’ll all have to wait for young Becky to come back around to us before we can clear up this little mystery then, yes?”

“Do you have any leads?” her mother said.

Raintree just shook his head. “Not of yet,” he said, “but we’ve got several men on it, Mrs. Kellow.”

“Confidentially speaking,” Sturgess began, “three hunters disappeared up in these woods about a month ago. Now, we don’t have any reason to believe these disappearances are in any way connected to your daughter’s attack, but it doesn’t hurt to make certain. We’re looking into it.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Raintree agreed. “But we don’t really think…”

“No, we don’t,” Sturgess said.

“Three hunters,” Marlene Kellow said to herself.

Sturgess stood, clapped his hands together. “And she’s doing all right?” he asked Kelly’s mother. “The poor thing…”

“Doctors have been keeping abreast of her condition,” Marlene said. “They suspect she should come around soon enough.”

“Well that’s good news,” Sturgess said.

“It is,” Raintree said, scooping up his fedora from the end table. He looked at Kelly. “I was hoping our conversation would have proved useful.” He pulled out a card and handed it to her. “Perhaps you’ll give me a call if…well, if you remember anything. I keep my cellular on twenty-four-seven. So…well, whatever.”

“Or if you just want to talk,” Sturgess interrupted.

“Yes,” Raintree said, “or just talk.”

Without word, Kelly took the card. Beside her, her mother stood stiffly from the couch, smoothing out her blouse, and clasped both hands together between her breasts. She was still staring at her—Kelly could feel her eyes pushing against the back of her head, the side of her face when she turned. Was it possible for her mother to be as bitter as she herself was about sending her to an institution when she was only fifteen years old? Maybe bitter about the years since, years that had surrendered to silence, to no communication? And, if she
was
bitter, did she have any real right to be?

I don’t care,
Kelly thought.
Bitter or not, it doesn’t change the past, doesn’t change anything at all.

“Thank you for coming out,” her mother said to the detectives. “I’m just sorry for…”

“No,” Raintree said with a wave of his hand. Then he smiled at Kelly. “Really, it’s all okay.”

“Never hurts to try,” Sturgess said.

His partner smiled even wider. “No,” he said, “it doesn’t.”

“Excuse me,” Kelly said as they turned to leave. “Could I see Becky’s diary?”

“That’s up to your mother, dear,” Sturgess said.

“You still have the diary, Mrs. Kellow?” Raintree asked.

“I do,” Marlene said, and shot her daughter a sideways glance. “I’m not sure I like the idea of strange people continuing to flip through it, however.”

Strange people,
Kelly thought.
As much as it hurts to admit it, I really can’t argue with her there. After all these years, I really am a stranger—to Becky, to my parents, to this house, to all of Spires. An unwelcome stranger.

“Well, now,” Raintree said, “that’s up to you.” He smiled at both Kelly and her mother. “Ladies,” he said.

“Ladies,” Sturgess said.

Five minutes later, Becky’s bedroom door was unlocked and Kelly stepped inside. It was gloomy and stank of unwashed sheets. Yet someone had been in here since last night to straighten up: the bed sheets looked pressed, and that peculiar collection of broken plastic forks was on longer strewn about the floor. Also, someone had opened the window beside Becky’s bed again, allowing the curtains to blow across the foot of the bed. If it was Glenda opening the window, Kelly made a mental note to mention to the woman that it probably wasn’t a good idea and that Becky could catch a cold.

Beneath the blankets, unmoved from last night’s position, her little sister slept a dreamless sleep. Kelly crept up to the foot of the bed, brushed the curtains away.

What do you really think of me, Becky? What do you really think of your older sister, the sister you never got to know because she was afraid and embarrassed and downright chicken shit and split when you were very young? And forgot about you too—let’s not forget that, Becky, darling. Your big sister—me, the one standing here right now—left and never looked back. No sense bothering to sugar-coat any of it. All cards on the table, all aces facing up. What do you think of me, Becky? Even now in your sleep, what do you think of your sorry big sister?

For a brief moment, she thought the girl stirred beneath the bedclothes. She watched her like a pupil, followed the trail of the IV tube from her arm to the bag of fluid hanging from the rack beside the bed. Here, in the daylight, it was easy to see what her attacker had done. Becky’s face was a mottled patchwork of hues, the skin of soured fruit and ruptured vessels. The left side of her mouth was puffed out and split vertically; a mossy growth of scabs clung to her lower lip and chin. And her eyelids looked blue, and as thin as tissue.

What do you think of me, Becky?

“God,” she muttered. “Little Baby Roundabout.”

She went to the window to pull it closed and saw someone down below, standing half-hidden beneath the edge of the woods: there and then gone, too quick for her to make out any detail. But
someone.

It was cold outside. The second Kelly stepped from the house, the frigid air attacked her, slammed into her like a speeding car into a brick wall. At this rate, the winter was going to be brutal, even worse than in the city. Up here, a brutal winter was practically a death sentence—families jailed up for what could potentially be months while the snow outside accumulated with no apparent end in sight. Sometimes three, four, five feet. And not just against the doors and windows and siding, but heavy on the roof, on skylights and chimneys and spires and porches. A snapping sound in the night could be a section of roof giving up the fight. Skylights splintered and cracked, and that was a problem, particularly when the weather started to warm up and the snow would start melting. The sleet and hail that had attacked the airport was nothing; Spires understood the power of winter, understood that it was something to be respected and feared. And it would be a fearful winter this year, Kelly knew.