The Winter Girl (19 page)

“But she's gone now, right? She vanished. That's what Carmelita said.”

“I thought she vanished,” Elise said, biting her lip, as if she were keeping a very particular emotion in check. I wasn't sure if it was rage or laughter. “That's what they told me anyway. The girl was a mess. Suicidal. It just had to be teased out.”

There it was. The beginning of the end, if you really want to be blunt about it. But my wife didn't show the vaguest tinge of guilt. In fact, it was her face that was reddening as she stared at me.

“And now you just fucked her,” she said. “So much for the vanishing part.”

Elise watched me twist nervously again on the couch. I guess I'm one of those people who tend to rewind uncomfortable conversations, in the hope that everything eventually makes perfect sense.

“Can we back up a little bit?” I said. “The part where she follows you around like a puppy. How many years ago was this?”

“I was sixteen, maybe seventeen. She was a couple of years younger.”

“That girl is more than a couple of years younger than you.”

“She wasn't the only girl he made me soften up, Scott. You want to hear about the one who left her mother to get ice cream on a beach? The friend I brought home when I was in middle school? Why aren't they squatting next door?”

I stared out the window again. My favorite time of every lousy winter day, when the sun set over the marina, its unused yachts tightly shrouded for the winter. I didn't want to think about Elise, wearing a kid's pink sunglasses, waiting in the passenger seat of Victor's sedan as they watched a girl run toward an ice-cream stand to take her place in line. I can see Victor, handing Elise a couple of dollars, saying one or two words of final instruction before she is allowed to push open the heavy car door. A blue day. A perfect glassy sea. A thousand oblivious laughing children.

“You know what?” Elise said, standing up. “We're done.”

We were always done. We'd spat out those two words to each other multiple times. But this time, if she just happened to take three steps toward the fireplace, she could pick up the loaded shotgun and aim it at me and she'd never have to threaten me with those words again. I had helped murder her father, and now I was an accessory to all of his old crimes. By the look on Elise's face, I had the firm impression she wasn't going to try to find closure with the ice-cream girl. Or with Carmelita.

She must have seen the uncertainty clouding my face, because she expelled a short jet of air through her nostrils and bit her lower lip. And then it began, her mouth tightening up as she tried to hold back all her emotion. She pawed at her eyes with the back of her index finger, successfully wicking away the moisture, even though her jaw was trembling now.

I was surrendering to my own wife now, slowly raising my hands.

“I just want to understand you better,” I said.

“
Understand
me,” she said, sneering at me. She seemed grateful to be able to focus her anger outward again. The water in the corner of her eyes dried up. Her lips straightened ominously. I've always been more fearful of her mouth than her eyes in arguments. It always tells me where a situation is headed a few seconds ahead of time. This wasn't a half smile, or even a frown: it was just a dash that looked like it was chipped in stone.

I lowered my arms. I stopped surrendering and stood up. The burning newspaper under the fire had blossomed and burned out, leaving a scant flame on the edge of one of the logs. It needed attending. I got down on my knees, pushed back the grate, and grabbed the box of matches. I could hear Elise passing behind me, and I felt the muscles in my back stiffen. I ripped another sheet of newspaper in two, crumpled it up, and laid it under the blackened log. Elise was climbing the stairs slowly. I knew this because I could see her reflection in the glass of the painting that hung above the fireplace. For a moment, I could see the lower half of her body pause before the top of the steps, her hand gripping the banister, as if she didn't fully trust me alone either. But the shotgun was still leaning against the striped wallpaper, right where she had left it.

I had just struck another match when I heard her shout my name. I leaped up and ran down the entrance hall, took the stairs two at a time. Was there someone in the house? Had she already been taken hostage in Victor's study?

But she was alone, staring into his closet at the open safe.

“She's taken everything,” she said. “I don't know how she got the combination.”

I touched my wife's stiff arms, which were tightly held against her sides. I was thinking of Victor's last mumbled words to Carmelita. Maybe
Help me
hadn't been the last thing he had said to her. Maybe he'd given her the combination then. Maybe he'd whispered a few last instructions that would put us in more danger than we could even foresee.

“We have everything, Elise,” I said, wondering why she couldn't see how lucky we were. “Don't we?”

T
here was nothing left in the safe besides a manila envelope containing two of Victor's expired passports and a faded green box of Remington UFC handgun ammunition. It was empty.

“He never told you the combo?” I asked Elise, reaching deep inside the safe and finding nothing else.

Elise chucked the worthless passports into the safe and stood there for a moment, looking at the squat iron box, which Victor had spray-painted white on one of his idle bachelor days.

“There was stuff in there no one should see. He liked to keep a record of the things he did,” she said.

“He's dead now,” I said. “Let the girl keep it if she wants it. Victor can't hurt us now.”

Elise squeezed between the desk and the wall, clutching one of the heavier curtains in Victor's room so she could get a clearer view of the house next door. It was early in the evening and it was impossible to make out any shape in the opaque windows.

“He can still hurt us,” Elise said. “Forget about the other stuff she's gotten her hands on. She's also armed. He kept a handgun in there. A nine-millimeter he bought from some alcoholic ex-cop who used to work for him.”

Elise's cell phone was ringing in the other room. Before she could make a move toward it, I'd already left the room. I was sure it was going to be Curt Page, but when I picked it up I didn't recognize the number.

“Who is this?” I said, staring at Elise in the doorway. She moved toward me and reached for the phone, but I shook my head and backed away from her.

Whoever it was wasn't speaking. All I could hear was the sound of some faint radio show playing in the background. The muffled voice of some rush-hour DJ discussing an upcoming charity auction in Lancaster. And then the call ended.

“It's probably Curt,” Elise said, picking up the phone and glancing halfheartedly at the number.

“That's not Curt's number,” I said. “I know, because I called him last night and warned him to stop stalking you.”

“You think I know who it is,” she said angrily, stuffing the phone into the pocket of her jeans as it began to ring again. “It's some asshole calling the wrong number.”

“Then answer it,” I said. “Because someone's driving through Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and they sound like they want to talk to you.”

She didn't touch the phone. She let it go silent in her side pocket, its blue light still visible through the fabric of her jeans.

“That girl next door could put me in jail for years,” she finally said. “And if she does that, I'll take you with me.”

“You know what I just realized,” I said, though realizing it didn't improve anything one bit. “This is not a healthy relationship.”

My wife turned without answering me and I followed her, grudgingly, down the stairs. She paused at the landing, squinting into the sunlight that poured through the front windows of the house.

“What are you waiting for?” I said.

“You need to get the shotgun,” she said. “Be careful. I forget if I left the safety on.”

We were pretty drunk, I have to admit, when we walked through the pines early that evening, watching the light in the upstairs bedroom of Swain's home extinguish itself. Since we had been using it as a beacon to guide us through the gully on a moonless night, Elise and I had to pause right where we were standing.

“I can't see anything,” she said, moving closer to me.

“Upstairs light will come on any second now.”

I was carrying the shotgun, but I had been careful to unload it, stuffing the two shells in a pocket of my jeans. The muzzle had quickly turned cold in my left hand, so I blew on it for a moment, then clutched the waxy blue steel.

I hadn't remembered it taking so long for the lights on the timer to complete their nightly circuit. At least thirty seconds had gone by and Swain's house was still completely dark.

“Maybe we should do this early in the morning,” I said, shifting my feet and listening to a tiny branch split under my foot.

“So she can see us coming?”

I was going to tell her it was no use when I saw the upstairs light finally switch on. From our vantage point, I could see only the dim outline of Swain's kitchen windows and a hazy whiteness around the sliding glass door. A shadow passed in front of it, temporarily dimming its brightness.

I hadn't even caught a glimpse of Carmelita yet, and I already knew there wasn't a chance I could go through with this. Only an hour ago, I'd sat next to the fire with Elise, watching Victor's newspapers go up in smoke. I'd listened to Elise softly tell me, as if Victor were still breathing in the other room, that we had both made a very serious choice. I did protest at that point, stammering about the spiked Ensure and the fact that the whole fucking thing was supposed to be a fucking rehearsal and that I'd probably never have gone through with it anyway.

Elise had listened to my spluttering cursing fit, her head tilted to one side as if I were one of her speech-therapy clients. And then she stood up, grabbed the shotgun, and told me she was going to take care of it herself. She was about to climb over the fence when I caught up to her and took the gun back.

Now I was just staring at the light in Swain's house, unable to move.

“Scott,” Elise whispered. “We can't just stand here.”

“I need to run through this one more time,” I hissed back.

“There's nothing to run through. You just walk into the house. You keep the gun pointed at her chest.”

I cracked open the gun and then I reached into my pocket and fished out the two shells. The shaking had started again. My legs were quivering, my hands, my arms. The jaw again, and I knew it was all fear despite the cold. I couldn't even drop the shells into the barrel of the Browning.

“You've got to help me,” I said to Elise, handing them to her. “It's just the cold.”

I watched her take them out of my hand and drop them in, each one landing with a faint click. I snapped the gun shut.

It was only about twenty yards to the pool gate, and when we got there we huddled again because we heard a man's voice. It took me a moment to realize that Carmelita must be standing in the kitchen, right above us, playing the old message on the answering machine.

“Swainy,” that familiar voice on the machine said. “It's Bill again. You better be dead. Because it's almost September and I still haven't heard from you. This is your last chance to meet us at the Peconic Grill. The oysters are on me.”

I couldn't imagine why she was replaying that message, but if she was in the kitchen, I had to move fast.

“Stay here,” I told Elise. “I'll shout your name when it's safe.”

I reached over, unlatched the pool gate, and ran across the rotting deck, praying I wouldn't fall through and accidentally shoot myself. I made it to the patio, then the sliding glass door, and there was no sign of her. I pulled it open and swung the gun to the right, marching into the kitchen and calling her name.

“Carmelita,” I said, bursting into the kitchen just in time to see a figure dash out. The answering machine was rewinding itself, one gray button pushed down. I ran through the same door I had just seen her vanish through, reentering the living room.

I ran after her, but I stopped as soon as I saw what was happening. Carmelita was pointing a black handgun at the sliding glass door, where Elise was standing.

“She never panics,” Carmelita said, talking sideways to me as she kept the gun, a nine-millimeter, trained on my wife. For the first time, instead of waiting for the timer, she simply reached over and turned on the lamp in the living room. I kept the shotgun pointed at Carmelita and let her hear me flick the lever of the safety off. The shotgun's polished stock felt too old-fashioned, as if I were holding an antique that would quaintly implode. There was some crosshatching on the grip I rubbed the back of my thumb against. At least the weight felt good.

“We've all got to settle down,” I said. But the words sounded strange and small because my throat had become very dry.

I turned my head quickly to look at my wife, who didn't seem fazed at all that Carmelita was aiming a gun in the general direction of her heart. Elise slowly took a step inside.

“It's freezing out there,” she calmly said to the two of us, as if both of us weren't holding weapons. “Do you mind if I close this?”

Neither one of us protested as my wife turned her back and pulled the door shut. Now we were all hermetically sealed in that dusty living room again. I listened to Elise's boot crush one of the fake ficus leaves as she confidently made her way to the fireplace and grabbed one of the iron pokers hanging there. Without warning, she cocked it behind her shoulder and swung as hard as she could, sending crushed bits of glazed tile flying.

“Don't you hate this place, Carm?” she said tauntingly. “Why didn't you leave?”

“Why didn't you?” Carmelita said.

“Victor's dead,” Elise said. “He's not going to come back and lock you up anymore. Who's going to treat you like a dog? My submissive husband?”

“He has potential,” Carmelita said, carefully keeping the gun pointed at my wife's chest as Elise took two steps toward her. She was wearing Victor's Gore-Tex jacket, its stiff gray fabric rustling in the museum quiet of the room.

“Where's the key?” my wife said. “Give it to me and I'll lock you up right now. We won't feed you for days. You'll never know if we'll even come back.”

Something had changed in Carmelita's determined expression. I could see that her hand was trembling, and then her whole arm, to the point where the handgun began to visibly vibrate, as if a train were barreling just underneath the warped floorboards.

Elise took a step closer and had the audacity to touch a black strand of Carmelita's hair, letting it fall through her fingers.

“I know what you like,” Elise said. “Don't I?”

“She tied me to a tree,” Carmelita said. “When I was a kid.”

“Are you going to shoot her right now, Scott?” Elise said. “Or listen to this campfire story?”

“I'm listening.”

“Victor drove up with Elise and said he had to drop her off,” Carmelita said. “My mom begged him to stay a few nights before he left.”

“Her mom was a real loser,” Elise said. “Real low-wattage.”

Carmelita lifted up the gun again and pressed the muzzle to my wife's temple.

“Say something else about her,” Carmelita said. “You'll be dead before you get to the end of the sentence.”

Elise thought about this carefully. Her skin had turned whiter and I could see that she was breathing faster.

“I was jealous, C,” Elise finally said. “At least your mom was still alive.”

Carmelita lowered the gun again and took a step back from my wife.

“She pretended it was a game,” Carmelita said. “There was a ball of twine and she tied me to an oak tree and when I couldn't move an inch she told me she was going to set me on fire. That's one of the hundred secrets I was going to tell you.”

“Maybe you could just email us a list,” Elise said. “Save us a little time.”

“I could hear everyone laughing when it got dark. And then I saw them walking toward me along the pasture fence. She was guiding her father by the hand. And then she stood there and watched.”

“Watched what?” I said, turning toward Elise. Hadn't they both been there?

“It was pathetic,” Elise said, her neck turning red. “The little sounds she made, before he even touched her.”

The shot was fired so suddenly, I didn't immediately know what it was. It sounded more like a large book had fallen to the floor than something fatal. But Carmelita had missed by a yard. A dime-sized hole winked at me from the sliding glass door and she seemed just as transfixed by it as I was.
Thank God for her trembling hand,
I thought, watching her shakily raise the gun to Elise's face.

My wife brought the iron poker down toward her skull without mercy. At the last instant, Carmelita moved toward me and the heavy iron hook slammed against her shoulder. I could hear the sound of her collarbone breaking and then saw it protrude from, but not break, the surface of her skin. I had the insane urge to touch it and try to push it back, make everything okay.

“Christ, Elise,” I said, but my wife was already swinging the iron through the air again, catching all of Carmelita's wrist and sending the handgun flying through the air. It landed underneath the liquor cabinet, but Carmelita made no attempt to retrieve it. She was crouched near the foot of the staircase, touching her jutting collarbone. It seemed to move away from her fingers underneath her skin, and then it popped up again underneath the collar of her sweatshirt.

“It's broken,” she said to Elise, as if her assailant had nothing to do with the awful situation.

I kept the gun pointed at my wife. I felt it was the only thing keeping her from again attacking Carmelita, whose hands were now gripping the wooden rungs of the banister. I could hear the squeak her hands made as she made a tighter fist. It was as if the whole house was about to spin into space and she was grabbing hold of something before it all disintegrated.

“We're going to work this out,” I said, growing a little more confident. “Like grown adults. The bad guy is gone. The asshole. There's plenty of money to go around.”

Happiness dead ahead. Share a little bit of the wealth. Let's be friends.
I was jumping at each cliché, almost giddy now. For the first time in a year, a tangible moment of grace and forgiveness seemed possible, and I would lead us to that place. I could see it, like a sun-struck clearing in some woods. All I had to do was get two victimized women to believe that there was a way out of this. We didn't even have to wind up being wonderful additions to planet earth, but just willing to realize that a dead man had set a terrible chain of events into motion, long ago. There, it was right there on the tip of my tongue.

“Point of no return,” I said, taken aback by how hard it was to give the most important speech of my life. I had become oddly stiff and formal again. The man who grimaces as the guests clink their glasses and wait for his speech. “This night has a good ending. You know, for once, I can feel it in my bones. We're going to surprise ourselves tonight.”

“Shoot her,” a voice said. I was so tied up in my own thoughts that I thought I had just imagined it. But then Carmelita quietly said it again, looking at me imploringly. She must have realized this wouldn't be enough, so she took a deep breath and skipped all the secrets I'd never hear until she got to the best one.

“You want to hear the ugliest secret,” Carmelita said. She wasn't trembling at all. This was a better weapon. Lighter than air, one always kept in the chamber.

I was turning toward her, eager to hear what she would say, when I saw Elise leap. She brought the black iron down toward Carmelita's skull again. At the last instant, Carmelita covered her head with her hand and screamed. A tiny wooden chip found my left eye, and I stepped back as the two women went out of focus. My eyes were slathered with their own stinging water now. I wiped them with the back of my hand, and when I could see again, I saw that Carmelita had pushed my wife to the floor and was stabbing at her face with a key she'd pulled from her pocket. She held it as tightly as she could in her hand and went after my wife's eyes, even as Elise violently twisted her head from side to side. I pulled Carmelita backward by her hair and she scrambled to her feet again.