It was late, and I hesitated in the doorway.
You hear something. Someone tells you a story. Words spoken in a low-voiced whisper. And it suddenly seems as if there are far many more questions than there are ever answers. She must have sensed this, because she said, “Do you begin to see now where their reluctance to speak with you comes from?”
“Yes,” I said. “Of course. They want to avoid prosecution. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
She snorted. “That’s obvious. That’s been obvious from the beginning. Try to look beyond that decidedly practical aspect of all this.”
“All right, because they are frightened of the betrayals involved in the story.”
She inhaled sharply, almost as if afraid of something. “And what, pray tell, were those betrayals, as you so elegantly put it?”
I thought for a moment. “Sally had been educated in the law, and she should have had more respect for its powers.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, nodding. “An officer of the court. She saw only the flaws in the law, not its strengths. Go on.”
“And Scott, well, a professor of history. Perhaps more than any of the others, he should have had an appreciation of the dangers in acting unilaterally. He was the one with the sense of social justice.”
“A man who disdained violence suddenly embracing it?” she asked.
“Yes. Even when he was young and went into the service, that was more a political act, or maybe, you might say, an act of conscience, than it was some sort of gung ho patriotism. That kept his hands if not exactly clean, at least not exactly dirty, either. But Hope…”
“What about Hope?” she asked abruptly.
“It seems that she was the least likely of them all to be, I don’t know, wrapped up in criminality. After all, her connection was the least profound.”
“Was it? Had she not risked the most of all of them? A woman who loved another woman, with all the societal baggage that carries, who took the biggest chance on love and who had, it would appear, given up on the desire to have her own family, to present a normal face to the world, and so had adopted Ashley as her own. And what did she see when she looked at Ashley? Did she see a part of herself? Did she see a life she might have chosen? Did she envy her, love her, feel some sort of immense internal connection that is different from what we ordinarily expect from a mother or father? And, as the athlete that she was, did she not prize a direct take-charge sort of approach?”
Her sudden volley of questions encapsulated me as swiftly as the dark of night.
“Yes,” I said. “I can see all that.”
“All of Hope’s life was about taking chances and following her instincts. It was what made her so beautiful.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Do you not think Hope was, in some regards, the key to all this?”
I shook my head, but just slightly. “Yes and no.”
“How so?” she demanded.
“Ashley remained the key.”
40
Ashley pushed against the headboard of her bed, placing her feet against the wood, so that she was back to front, feeling the muscles in her legs tighten until they began to shake with exertion. It was what she had done when she was young, when her body seemed to outdistance itself, and she was afflicted with “growing pains,” feeling as if her bones no longer fit into her skin. Sports, running hard in the afternoons, while Hope watched, had helped, but many nights she had tossed and turned in her bed, waiting for her body to grow into whoever it was she was going to become.
It was early, and the house was still filled with the occasional sounds of sleep. Catherine in the next room snored loudly. There wasn’t any stirring from either Sally or Hope, although late the night before, she had heard them talking. The words had been too distant for her to make out, but she presumed they had something to do with her. She hadn’t heard any muffled, hidden noises of affection in some time, and this troubled her. She very much wanted her mother to stay with Hope, but Sally had grown so distant in the past years, she was unsure what would happen. Sometimes she didn’t believe she could handle the emotional briars of another divorce, even one that was gentle. From experience she knew the “amicable divorce” doesn’t really make the internal pain any less.
For a moment, Ashley listened, then slowly let a few tears well up in the corners of her eyes. Nameless had always slept at the end of the hallway on a tattered dog bed just outside the master bedroom, so that he could be close to Hope. But often, when Ashley was young, he had sensed in that magical dog way when something was troubling her, and he would come down, uncalled, nose open the door to her room, and without any fuss take up a position on the carpet by her bureau. He would watch her until she would tell him whatever was bothering her. It was as if by reassuring the dog, she could reassure herself.
Ashley bit down on her lip. I’d shoot him myself, just for what he did to Nameless.
She kicked her feet off the bed and rose. For a moment, she let her eyes meander slowly over all the familiar items of her childhood. On one wall, surrounding a poster board, were dozens of her own drawings. There were snapshots of her friends, of herself dressed up for Halloween, on the soccer field, and ready for the prom. There was a large, multihued flag with the word PEACE in its center above an embroidered white dove. An empty bottle of champagne with two paper flowers in it signified the night her freshman year in college when she’d lost her virginity, an event she had secretly shared with Hope, but not her mother and father. She slowly let out her breath and thought to herself that all the things she could see in front of her were signs of who she had been, but what she needed to imagine was what she was going to become. She went to the shoulder bag hanging from the doorknob to her closet, reached in, and removed the revolver.
Ashley hefted it in her hand, then turned and assumed a firing position, aiming first at the bed. Slowly, one eye closed, she rotated, bringing the weapon to bear on the window. Fire all six shots, she reminded herself. Aim for the chest. Don’t jerk on the trigger. Keep the weapon as steady as possible.
She was a little afraid that she looked ridiculous.
He won’t be standing still, she thought. He might be rushing forward, trying to close the distance between himself and death. She reassumed her stance, widening her bare feet on the floor, lowering herself a couple of inches. She did measurements in her memory: How tall was O’Connell? How strong was he? How fast would he move? Would he plead for his life? Would he promise to leave her alone?
Shoot him in the goddamn heart, she told herself, if he has one.
“Bang,” she whispered out loud. “Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.”
She lowered the revolver to her side.
“You’re dead and I’m alive. And my life gets to go on,” she said softly, to make certain that no matter how troubled the sleep of the others was, they wouldn’t hear her. “No matter how damn bad it might seem, it will be better than this.”
Still gripping the gun, she sidled to the edge of the window. Concealing herself behind the curtains, she peered up and down the street. It was only a little past dawn, a weak half-light slowly bringing out shapes up and down the block of houses. It would be cold, she thought. There would be damp frost on the lawns. Too cold for O’Connell to have spent the night outside, keeping watch.
She nodded and replaced the gun in her satchel. Then she rapidly pulled tights, a black turtleneck, and a hooded sweatshirt from her drawers and grabbed her running shoes. She did not think that she would have many moments over the next few days when she could be alone, but this seemed to her to be one of them. As she tiptoed from the room, she had a twinge of regret, leaving the pistol behind. But she couldn’t really run with it, she thought. Too heavy. Too crazy.