Dead of Night 5

“I only take it when I’m feeling anxious.” Which seemed to be a lot of the time these days.

“I’ve heard that before,” he muttered, his gaze on the road.

Sarah studied his profile as he drove. Even as a kid, he’d been attractive, but now in his early thirties, he was a strikingly handsome man. And a doctor, to boot.

“I bet you have women swarming all over you,” she said.

“What?”

She smiled. “You must be one of the most eligible bachelors in town.”

“I don’t have much time for a social life, I’m afraid.”

“You do know how proud you’ve made your grandmother, don’t you?”

“I hope I have. I owe her everything. I hate to think where I’d be if she hadn’t taken me in.”

“Is that why you came back here? So you could be near her?”

“Mostly. But I guess a part of me also had something to prove.”

“Well, you’ve certainly done that,” Sarah said.

“I’m not so sure.” His expression turned pensive. “Sometimes I wonder if we can ever really overcome the past. It’s what makes us who we are. One small thing done differently and we become someone else. It’s like the butterfly effect. One moment can change history. One decision can change everything.”

“Very philosophical,” Sarah said. “I suppose my life changed the night Rachel died.”

“Her death changed all our lives. We would all be different people if not for that one moment in our past.”

“I know you loved her,” Sarah said softly. “I’ve known it since we were kids.”

She saw his hands tighten on the steering wheel.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but I wish you would. I wish you’d tell me about her. I barely even knew her. We were sisters, and yet I don’t know the first thing about her.”

He was silent for a moment. “She wanted to be a doctor.”

“Really? She always talked about being a lawyer. I thought she planned on following in our father’s footsteps.”

“No, that was his plan.” His voice hardened. “It wasn’t what Rachel wanted.”

“Why didn’t she tell him?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw as he watched the road. “It was a complicated relationship.”

“What do you mean?”

He shot her a glance. “Maybe you shouldn’t ask questions if you don’t want the answers.”

Something coiled in the pit of Sarah’s stomach. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you telling me you really don’t know?” He sounded almost angry.

“Know what? You’re the second person today who’s beat around the bush about my father. If there’s something I should know, just tell me.”

He hesitated, his hands gripping the steering wheel, his lips pressed together in a hard line. “All I really know is that Rachel didn’t want to disappoint him. Her need to please him was almost a compulsion.”

“They were always close,” Sarah said.

“Close? Yeah.” He suddenly looked indescribably weary. “This may be small comfort to you, Sarah, but sometimes it’s just as hard being on that pedestal as it is being the one looking up.”

While they waited for Curtis’s ride, Sarah made a pot of coffee. She felt awkward from their previous conversation and was glad when Esme came in a little while later.

She planted her hands on her hips as she regarded Sarah from across the room. “Well, there you are. I’d about decided you hadn’t made it home after all. ’Cause otherwise, you would have already come to see me.”

“I’m sorry,” Sarah said. “I meant to come by earlier, but then I decided to go to the hospital to see Dad.” She got up from the table to give Esme a hug. “Believe me, I would much rather have been here with you.”

Esme’s scrawny arms held her tight for a moment. When she drew back, her gaze lit on Curtis. “What are you doing here?”

A horn sounded outside and he stood. “That’s my ride. I’ll let Sarah fill you in. I have to get back to the hospital, but you two ladies have a nice evening.” He came over and dropped a kiss on the top of Esme’s head. “Don’t work too hard.”

“I don’t need you telling me how hard I can and can’t work,” Esme fumed. “You worry about your own affairs.”

He winked at Sarah. “Take care. You need anything, give me a call.”

As soon as the door closed behind Curtis, Esme went over to the table and began gathering up their cups.

“Here,” Sarah said, as she tried to help Esme clean up. “Let me do that.”

She received a glower for her offer.

“I reckon I can still wash a few dishes,” Esme grumbled. “I’m not ready for the old folks’ home just yet, despite what some people around here seem to think.”

“I don’t think that at all,” Sarah said. “I just want to help.”

“If I need help I’ll ask for it,” Esme informed her.

Sarah threw her hands up. “Okay, you win. I give up. Will you at least come and sit with me a minute, so we can talk?”

Esme reluctantly came back over and pulled out a chair. Even though she’d worked in this kitchen for four decades, she was still hesitant to sit at the table with Sarah.

It was times like this that Sarah could feel a distance between them. She loved Esme more than anyone in the world, and she knew the older woman would lay down her life for her. But there was a wall between them, one that Esme chose to keep firmly in place. And as much as Sarah hated it, she knew that divider would always be there.

“What is it?” Esme demanded with no small amount of suspicion. “You ain’t got yourself in some kind of trouble, have you? Is that why Curtis was here?”

“What? No,” Sarah said. “He just brought me home from the hospital. I’m not in any trouble.”

“Well, that’s a relief. Way past time you stopped all that nonsense. You oughta be settled down having babies by now. First thing you know, you done wait too late.”

“I think I have a few good years left in me. Besides, I’m not the motherly type.”

“That’s true,” Esme said bluntly.

“Maybe I’m more like my father than I want to admit,” Sarah said. “I’d hardly call him the paternal type.”

“Lord have mercy, girl, what a thing to say about your own daddy.”

“It’s true, isn’t it?”

Esme said nothing.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Sarah said. “Don’t pretend you don’t.”

Esme shook her head with mournful reproach. “Mr. James on his deathbed, and here you are talking about him like that.”

“You mean even now we still have to worry about his feelings?”

She heaved a weary sigh. “Let it go, child.”

“I can’t let it go. If anyone knows what went on around here, it was you,” Sarah said. “You know why he hates me, don’t you?”

“I’ve done told you I don’t know how many times before. He don’t hate you. He’s just got a way about him.”

“It’s more than that. He blames me for Rachel’s death.”

“Blames you? Why would he do a thing like that?”

“He’s never said anything to you about it?”

“He says a lot of things these days, but you can’t pay attention to half of it. The medicine they got him on makes him talk out of his head. You can’t take it to heart.”

Sarah leaned across table. “He thinks I killed her, Esme.”

Her eyes widened. “No, he don’t.”

“That’s what he said. He said Mama thought so, too. That’s why she washed the blood off me that night. That’s why she stopped taking me to see a therapist. She was too afraid of what she might find out. And now I’m thinking...maybe that’s why she died. Maybe that’s why her heart gave out. Because of me.”

“Your mama may have died of a broken heart, but it didn’t have anything to do with you, Sarah June.”

“Mama had a broken heart?”

Esme hesitated. “One of her babies was murdered. ’Course she had a broken heart.”

“Do you think I killed her, Esme?”

Esme reached across the table and grabbed Sarah’s hand, clutching it in both of hers. “Now you listen to me. You didn’t have nothing to do with your sister’s death. I don’t know who killed that poor child, but it wasn’t you.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because nobody in the world knows you better than me. You didn’t do it. It’s not in you. I want you to put that notion clean out of your head, and I never want to hear another word about it.”

“Esme, did you know about Curtis and Rachel?”

Her eyes flashed again with unexpected fire. “We don’t need to be talking about that, neither.”

“Why not?”

“Child, please.”

“Did my father cause problems for Curtis?”

“If there was trouble, it was Curtis’s own making. That boy knew better than to do what he did.”

“What did he do besides love my sister?”

“She wasn’t his to love.”

“She wasn’t a possession. She had a mind of her own. And I know she loved Curtis, too. I could tell by the way they looked at each other. What did Dad do to break them up?”

“I don’t know,” she said stubbornly.

“Esme...”

The dark eyes begged Sarah to drop the subject, but it was too late. She couldn’t let it rest now.

“Did my father hurt Rachel?”

“Hurt her? He loved that child.”

Sarah clung to her hand. “You know what I mean.”

Esme’s lips pursed. “What I know is this. You need to stop wallowing around in the past. No good ever comes of it.”

“I can’t stop. I have to know if he hurt her. It would... It changes everything, don’t you see?”

Esme just went right on shaking her head.

“Did you ever see anything that made you suspicious?”

“No, child. It weren’t my job to be suspicious.”

Sarah walked out to the back porch and watched until Esme got all the way to the cottage. Then she turned and went back inside, that terrible question still churning inside her, making her sick and shaky. Making her wish she’d never come back here.

Maybe Esme was right. Maybe no good could come from digging up the past. Rachel was dead, her father was dying. How could the truth help any of them now? Especially when that truth might be harder to live with than the questions. When that truth might include Sarah’s unwitting complicity.

Her bedroom had been next to Rachel’s. If something had gone on behind that common wall, how could she not have known? How could she not have told?

Weighted down by the condemning silence of the house, Sarah wandered upstairs to try and find something to occupy her mind. Turning on the bedside lamp, she picked up the glass case that still rested on her nightstand. It was empty now. She’d taken her grandmother’s little yellow bird to the funeral and placed it in her sister’s casket. In her cold hands.

All these years, she’d thought of Rachel as the perfect daughter, the favored sister, someone she could never live up to. But Rachel had been more than that. She’d had hopes and dreams just like everyone else. And she’d had secrets, too. Terrible secrets.

Sarah wished she’d somehow found a way to bridge the distance between them before it was too late. Because now, she and Rachel were never going to be anything more than what they’d been before the murder...strangers living in the same house.

Maybe that was why she’d put the bird in Rachel’s hands. Because she hadn’t known how to give her sister the love and comfort that she must have so desperately needed.

A tremor coursed through Sarah as she walked over to the window and stared out at the gathering twilight. She’d always been afraid of the dark, although there was a time when she would never have admitted it to anyone. Not even to herself. Back then, she’d looked for ways to prove just how fearless she was. Like going to the Duncan farmhouse alone.

But in this well-lit room, the darkness was already closing in on her. Sarah had always felt alone here. Alone and isolated from the rest of the world.

How must Rachel have felt?

Why her and not me? Sarah wondered.