What Remains of Me (5 page)

“Where were you this morning, between the hours of midnight and three
A.M
.?”

“Here.”

“You mean, in this house?”

“Yes.”

“Can anyone verify your whereabouts? Your husband, maybe?”

She shut her eyes. Behind her lids she saw a fuse box—the same one she'd made up in her mind at seventeen when she'd stood outside the courthouse, surrounded by strangers, her whole future crashing in, turning to dust. Cameras flashing at her and men with mean voices shouting her name, but all she'd heard was the hum of that imaginary fuse box. All she'd seen were the two long rows of switches, shutting down one by one.

And she'd smiled.

“Mrs. Marshall,” he said. “Were you at your father-in-law's last night?”

“You need to leave,” she said. “You have no right to be here. You have no right to question me in my house, without a lawyer present.”

The detective took a long drag off his supersweet coffee, then placed the cup back onto the saucer. The clink hurt Kelly's ears. The whole time, he never took his eyes off of hers, the green of them glittering with something . . . knowledge or hate. Or maybe it was both. That's what all this technique was, wasn't it? A combination of knowledge and hate, cooked up and heaped on you like teaspoons of sugar.

“We'll be in touch, Ms. Lund,” he said.

AFTER HE LEFT, KELLY LOCKED THE DOOR. AND AS SHE TRANSFERRED
her clothes and shoes into the dryer, she thought of Sterling Marshall's letter again—the only letter he'd ever written her, outside of the holiday cards addressed and signed by Mary, his wife. A letter sent to a prison fifteen years ago, when Kelly was thirty-two but still seventeen inside because prison locks you up in other ways, not just physically. And so, before starting to read Sterling Marshall's words, Kelly had spent a good amount of time marveling at the creamy paper, the glossy ink. She'd run her fingertips over the gold-embossed name and felt, for a time, special. A letter from
the
Sterling Marshall. Written in his own hand. To her.

She remembered how beautiful Sterling Marshall's signature had looked, even after she'd read the letter—a letter asking her to get rid of her baby and not to tell her husband about the pregnancy, ever.

She remembered what Sterling Marshall had written, just before signing it:
Family means everything to me.

To this day, she still had no doubt he'd meant it.

SHOTGUN WEDDING! “MONA LISA” KILLER TIES THE KNOT WITH MOVIE STAR'S SON

I now pronounce you man . . . and murderer?

In a top-secret ceremony behind the barbed wire gates of Carpentia Women's State Correctional Facility, Shane Marshall, 25, wed Kelly Michelle Lund, 32—the dead-eyed former teen drug addict currently serving 25 years to life for the brutal slaying of Oscar-nominated director John McFadden.

The son of movie legend Sterling Marshall, boyishly handsome Shane wore a charcoal gray suit and dark glasses as he entered the prison on May 15, his mother, Mary, at his side. “Shane's been visiting Kelly at least once a week for years,” a prison insider tells the
Enquirer.
“To say they're an odd couple would be a pretty big understatement!”

Shane's mom was the only family member present at the wedding, which lasted 15 minutes and was performed by the prison chaplain. “My son is in love. I can't stand in the way of that,” Mary said in
a statement. But Shane's big sister Bellamy Marshall, 32, wasn't so accepting. “I wasn't invited to the wedding,” said the art world superstar, whose chilling piece
Mona Lisa
immortalized the coke-addled murderess at her sentencing. “I don't agree with or understand my brother's decision.”

Like it or not, though, the arty beauty may be an aunt soon! The
Enquirer
has learned that Carpentia allows conjugal visits. And according to our prison source, sexy Shane wasted no time shacking up with his killer bride!

                                                                                
National Enquirer

                                                                                
May 25, 1995

E
ach sound echoed. The slamming of the Trans Am's door, Kelly's ragged breath, her footsteps, too heavy as she climbed the stairs to her third-floor apartment, her key sliding into the lock, turning.

Kelly hoped her mom was asleep, but that was a stupid thing to hope, especially once she'd opened the door and felt the blaze of the kitchen lights and heard the oldies station blasting and inhaled that piney, chemical smell.

Mom was cleaning.

“Is that you?” Mom's voice came from behind the high kitchen counter, singsongy like the voice on the tinny transistor radio.
In the jungle, the mighty jungle . . .

“Hi, Mom.” Kelly stepped around the counter. Mom was on her hands and knees, scrubbing. She leaned into it, working harder than was necessary, her whole body surging with each scrub-stroke like waves slapping the shore. “Where were you?” Mom said.

“Out?”

“Come on now, Kelly,” Mom grunted, “be specific.” Her breathing was sharp. Her fingers gripped the brush handle and Kelly couldn't help but stare at the knuckles, so
white it looked like the bones were pushing through. “Who were you out with?”

Kelly's heart pounded. She'd worked this out in her mind when Len was driving her home, but back then she'd been higher than she was now.

“I was with a friend”—Kelly tried anyway—“from math class. We have a test coming up and we were studying late. I lost track of time.”

“What's your friend's name?”

She swallowed. “Susie.”

“Susie what?”

“Susie . . . Mitchell.” Kelly gazed at the counter—Mom had bought a bunch of new bananas. They were splayed out in a bowl, nearly ripe but not quite, their skins that pretty pale green. Kelly liked them best that way. She liked that slight tartness, the whiteness of the fruit. Her stomach growled, and she wanted to take one, but she was afraid that if she did, Mom might make a fuss about her eating so late or worse yet, she'd know what she'd been doing. “
Do you have the munchies?
” Mom would say. She knew enough to say that, to use those words.

Scrub, scrub, scrub . . .
“What do Susie's parents do?”

“Her dad is a doctor and her mom . . .” Kelly cleared her throat. “She's a nurse.” Next to the bananas was a tin ashtray mounded with cigarettes. There had to be at least a pack's worth in there, and it had been empty this morning. It was hypocritical, Mom's habit displayed on the kitchen counter like a bouquet of flowers, Kelly using everything she had to hide one night.

One life-changing night . . .

“So if I called the school and asked for Susie Mitchell, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Mitchell, they'd know who I was talking about?”

Kelly drew in a shaky breath. “You shouldn't smoke so much.”

Scrub, scrub, scrub . . .

Kelly listened to the song.
Hush my darling
.
Don't fear my darling
. The antenna gleamed at her. She desperately wanted to go to her room.

“You didn't answer my question,” Mom said.

Kelly looked down. Her skirt was inside out. Quickly, she shifted it so that the tag was in the back, crossed her arms over the waistband. “Sure,” she tried, though she couldn't quite remember the question now.

The radio said,
a weem a woppa weem a woppa.
Mom's shoulders surged to the beat, her hair flopping. She wore faded jeans, an oversize, pale blue men's shirt that must've come from her most recent ex-boyfriend—a banker who, as it turned out, had both a wife and little kids. Kelly spotted a long sweat stain, running down the back.

Mom said, “I got a call from your school.”

“Huh?”

Mom stopped scrubbing. She sat back on her heels and looked up at Kelly, a shiny lock of hair falling across her forehead. Her natural color was the same as Kelly's—“ash blond” she called it—but she dyed it a brighter shade to look good under the lights at I. Magnin. It reminded Kelly of a goldfish. It was the same color Catherine's had been. “It was the principal's office, Kelly. You had detention today and never showed up for it.”

“Oh . . .”

Mom stared into her eyes, so sharp a stare that Kelly could feel it—as though she were trying to bash into her brain, read her thoughts . . .
Can she tell I've been smoking? Does she know about what I did with Len?

“That's all you're going to say, Kelly?
Oh
?”

Kelly took a breath, wrapped her arms tighter around her waist.
Just sound normal.
“It was my science teacher.” She said the words very carefully. “I didn't know the answer to a question. He got mad at me. He told me I was on detention but I thought . . . I thought he was just
saying
it. He's mean. He doesn't like me and . . .”

“They said he'd marked down that you were insubordinate.”

“I wasn't, Mom,” Kelly said. “I swear. He just . . . he doesn't like me.”

Mom let out a heavy, rattling breath. “Go on to bed,” she said quietly. “It's late.” Kelly left the room, relief flooding all over her, through her.
I'm free
. She let her thoughts wander now because she could. She recalled what had happened in Len's Trans Am, all of it. She imagined herself on the phone with Bellamy, receiver pressed to her ear, her voice a thin whisper.

Guess what? I have another secret
.

She wished she could call her. But it was 2:00
A.M
., and she had school tomorrow and besides, the phone was in the kitchen. Right next to the bananas. Man, Kelly was hungry. Her stomach gnawed at her.

Kelly couldn't think of food anymore and so she made herself think of other things, of Len again, his bucket seats that reclined all the way back and how he'd said, “
Sorry,
” afterward. How he'd handed her a Kleenex, which was sort of gentlemanly in a way . . .

“Kelly,” Mom called out. “Stop dawdling!”

“I'm not!”

Dawdling. What an old-lady word. Mom had an old-lady name too—Rose Lund. It didn't match her looks at all, but it suited her personality, especially in the past two years. She never laughed, hardly ever smiled when she wasn't with a boyfriend. And even with her boyfriends, Mom's smiles looked fake, like someone posing for a picture. She said things like “stop dawdling” and “don't you sass me, young lady” and spent her whole life working and cleaning and smoking, not enjoying any of it, dating boring men with boring jobs she thought could “get us out of Hollywood once and for all.”

Mom hadn't always been this way. Kelly had dim memories from back when their dad still lived with them—one in particular, a chicken fight in some fancy pool, Catherine on Mom's shoulders, Kelly on their
dad's. They must have been about six years old. Mom had been wearing a hot pink bikini and was laughing so hard, tears streamed down her cheeks. She may have been drunk, now that Kelly thought about it, but seeing her laugh like that . . . Mom had such a great laugh. They'd been at the home of a B movie producer—Kelly's dad was a stuntman, and Mom had worked as a makeup artist, so they used to get invited to a lot of these low-level Hollywood parties, their little family . . .

“Kelly Michelle Lund!”

“I'm getting ready for bed!”

“It doesn't sound like it!”

Kelly rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay.” Passing Mom's room, Kelly noticed a big heart-shaped box on the nightstand.
Who's that from?
Her stomach gaped, begged. She could practically smell it.
Chocolate. Just one piece
.

Kelly heard the
weem a woppa
song ending, Casey Kasem's voice, murmuring something about a classic. Casey's voice reminded Kelly of her dad's, the gentleness of it. Outside of Catherine's funeral, where all he'd done was sob, Kelly hadn't heard Dad's voice since she was little, but still she remembered. At least she thought she did.

“We'll be right back,” said Casey, and then some used-car ad came on, about fifty decibels louder than the show had been. Kelly slipped off her shoes, timed her footsteps on the soft carpet to land with each shouted word.

Catherine's framed picture sat on Mom's nightstand next to the chocolates. It wasn't normally there, the picture. It was usually on the TV in the den, and seeing it here, in Mom's room, made Kelly think back more than she wanted to.

Kelly looked into her sister's bottle green eyes as she slipped the lid off the box, took a piece from the edge—coconut, which her mom wouldn't miss.
Those eyes. They still laugh at you.

Catherine had left them on Valentine's Day. Weird, that hadn't occurred to Kelly until now. The picture next to the bed. The chocolates. It had taken all that, just to remind her. But the truth was, it hadn't felt sudden. Years before she died, Catherine had begun leaving Kelly and Mom, a little at a time.

With Mom, it had started earlier, and it had been a lot more dramatic. Catherine yelled at her, called her a bitch. She slammed doors in Mom's face, mocked her “no Hollywood” rules, and made a big, spectacular show of pushing her away.

But she was sweeter about leaving Kelly. Instead of screaming at her, she eased out of her life in such a way, Kelly barely noticed it happening. First, she stopped watching
Happy Days
with Kelly at night, excusing herself to take phone calls in the kitchen and later heading out to, as Catherine put it, “destinations unknown.” Instead of dragging Kelly along like she used to do when they were little and it was sleepovers and birthday parties she was going to, Catherine would leave on her own to meet her new and mysterious circle of friends, reporting back to Kelly when she returned and Mom was out of earshot. “
So this girl I met at the party? Her dad used to play drums for Jimi Hendrix!
”

“I kissed the most adorable guy. He's done commercials! You know that Tide one, where those kids roll down the hill and get grass stains . . .”

“Kelly, I can't believe you don't know who Jimi Hendrix was . . .”

“I'm going all the way. Don't tell Mom.”

“I lost it, Kelly. For real. I bled and everything.”

“The Whisky is amazing. You have to go there sometime. All these girls were doing poppers in the bathroom.”

“I can't believe you don't know what poppers are . . .”

“I can't tell you who he is. He's . . . he's kind of famous. We haven't done it yet but we will. I can feel it.”

Kelly loved these late-night talks, looked forward to them so much, she barely noticed that they were happening less and less, that Catherine was becoming weird and remote, claiming tiredness, slipping off to sleep, saying “tell you later. I promise.” Later never came. Catherine was shedding Kelly, the same way you'd shed any bad habit, bit by bit by bit.

By the last few months of her life, Catherine had become a stranger. She'd grown lean and leggy and hard-eyed, while Kelly stayed a chubby kid. She started wearing lipstick you could only get in Europe that came in an elegant silver tube and was called
Rouge de la Bohème
. She took it with her everywhere, made a big show of applying it.

Mom didn't know what to make of her. “
Who are you, anyway?
” She said that to Catherine more and more.

Catherine hardly ever said a word to Kelly, sneaking in late without waking her, ditching her at the school bus with a quick wave good-bye. She would disappear for days at a time and return wearing brand-new clothes and once, a new necklace with a delicate, shimmering chain and gold, heart-shaped pendant that had two small diamonds at the bottom. “
Where did you get that?
” Mom had asked, between her teeth, eyes narrowing as Catherine just stood there, smirking at her. “
Answer me. Who gave that to you?
”

“
I think it's pretty,
” Kelly had tried. Neither one of them had paid any attention.

Kelly pined for Catherine. She started spying on her, following her down the street at a safe distance as she walked with her beautiful friends, strawberry blond hair swinging and gleaming. She strained to overhear Catherine's phone conversations, marveling at her coy laugh, her cagy, clever way with words.

She stayed up late, listening for Catherine's rides to drop her off outside their apartment. Sometimes it would be groups of girls, their
laughter floating in the night air. Other times, Kelly would hear rustling and heavy breathing outside their front door and she'd know it was a boy.

Once, when Kelly was home from school sick and Mom was at work, she'd heard tires screech outside their window. Kelly had peeked around the curtains to see her sister hurrying away from the most beautiful car she'd ever seen—a shiny black Porsche, with tinted windows and mirrored hubcaps. Kelly had been so enthralled with the car that she hadn't even bothered to think about who Catherine had been storming away from until he got out of the driver's-side door and followed her a few steps. As Kelly watched, the Porsche's driver grabbed her sister's swinging arm, then spun her around, pushed her up against one of the palms that lined their street, and kissed her, hard. It looked strange and mean, as she'd never imagined a kiss could be.

As he headed back to his car, Kelly had been able to take a good, long look at him—mirrored aviator glasses to match the hubcaps, black T-shirt and sports jacket and slacks, not jeans. Very short hair, receding hairline. He wasn't a boy. He was a grown man, much older than Len. He was probably older than their father.

Kelly had hurried back into her bedroom and gotten into bed, closing her eyes and seeing it all again behind her lids—the beautiful car, the man with the aviator glasses. The way he'd grabbed at her sister.

“
You're here
,” Catherine had said. “
What are you doing here?
”