Confessions of a Murder Suspect (16 page)

We all stared at one another. That had been the furthest thing from our minds.

“Well, obviously not me,” Harry piped up. “You know I’ll self-destruct.”

“Of course, Harry,” I reassured him. “We wouldn’t put you through that. You’ll play a beautiful piece in their honor.”

“Well, it’s not going to be me, either,” Matthew announced. “Sorry, I know you guys might think it’s the role of the oldest, but I just had to put it out there that it’s not an option, okay? I’m dealing with… some
stuff
right now.”

I gave him a quizzical look. “Stuff?” Stuff, as in
guilt
?

“I’m sorry to hear it, bro,” Harry said with a sarcastic look. “I thought we were all dealing with some
stuff
right now.”

Matthew ignored him. “Hugo would be great,” he continued. “Hugo, you’re so upbeat and positive. Everyone
loves kids. Especially when they get all poetic in a kidlike way…”

“About their dead parents,” Harry finished. “Brilliant, Matty.” Harry is so much better at sarcasm than I am.

“Are you nuts?” Hugo asked. “I’m ten. I’m officially
not responsible
for
anything
.”

“Of course not,” I reassured Hugo. “We wouldn’t put you through that. You’ll be a pallbearer. The best, strongest pallbearer ever.”

“Tandy’s the obvious choice,” Harry said with an encouraging nod at me. “You’d be in complete control. You’d say all the right things, and you wouldn’t spill a tear.”

That was a compliment, right? Yes, I reasoned. It was.

So why was I feeling a little… offended?

Matthew dug in. “No offense, Tan, but that’s the problem. No emotion. Screw Dr. Keyes, man. Who wants a robot up there speaking at a funeral?”

34

I left the living room
without saying anything to anyone. Harry called after me, but I just kept walking—yes,
robotically
—down the hallway to my room.

I entered the space that had been my safe place ever since I could remember and closed the door before someone saw me do something I would never live down.

I sat cross-legged on my bed and looked through the window at my grand view of Central Park. The fluffy treetops were like a green reflection of the clouds above, and there was a wide band of blue between the canopy and the sky.

I hardly understood what was going on as my throat tightened up and my gut began to heave. I started to break
down. Before I knew it, I was shaking and croaking and gasping for air. And that quickly turned into sobbing, which wracked my body with convulsions that threw me facedown on the bed in a big wet mess.

I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t turn off the cascade of feelings that I didn’t fully understand.

I am not a robot.

When I was finally able to take a few breaths without shuddering, I wiped my face with my sleeves and sat very still. I had no previous experience with all-out grief, but I had to admit the obvious:

I missed my parents, and I was scared. About what this would do to each of my siblings, and about what my siblings would do to one another. And about what would happen if one of them really was guilty. Would I protect him as fiercely, and without conscience, as my parents had protected me?

But there was more. I realized I’d lost something that until that moment I hadn’t appreciated. My parents were supposed to live until they were so old that they
wanted
to die. I was supposed to learn from them, and fight them to the wall every time we disagreed, and eventually go into the world on my own.

Now I understood that an unspoken promise had been broken. As unreasonable as it may seem to you, friend, I
was furious at them for abandoning me and Harry and Hugo and even Matthew, who hated them. I felt betrayed.

For one thing, I had never forgiven them for Katherine’s death.

It was a hard kernel of anger that I could barely stand to examine.

And there was another thing I’d never forgiven them for.

CONFESSION

The kiss.
Destroyed. Forever. Malcolm and Maud ruined it.

It was my first kiss. It was once the most precious moment in my life, an experience I could relive and savor and examine from new angles, like a piece of fine art. Now it was like a worthless forgery. I couldn’t see it in my mind’s eye, couldn’t feel it, couldn’t even truly remember it.

I only believe it actually happened—almost as if in another life—because I wrote it down. And honestly, friend? I wonder sometimes if I just
made it up
, like a silly little fairy tale hastily scrawled by a pathetic, caged child.

When I stopped sobbing, I pulled my diary from its hiding place under my bed and found the page where it is written. The
book fell open to the page immediately, since I’ve reread the words so many times:

I slammed the book shut. Even after all this time, it reads as nonsense.

35

A knock at my door
interrupted my thoughts.

I called out to whoever it was, “I’m not here. Go away, please.”

But there was another, more insistent knock. “Tandy, may I come in?” Samantha asked.

I didn’t want to see Samantha, or anyone else, but the knob turned and she came in anyway. She sat next to me on my bed.

“I miss them, too, Tandy. I’m sure your mother always wanted the best for you. But you know, she was complicated. A woman of many secrets.”

“What do you mean?” I searched Samantha’s face.

She seemed more shocked by what she’d said than I was. Whatever she had meant, she now choked it back.

“What secrets?” I asked.

“Oh, you know,” Samantha said. “Her past. Her mother and father… weren’t good to her. She never told you kids much about all that.”

“You can tell me now, Samantha,” I said. “She’s dead.” I gulped. It was harder to say that than I’d expected.

Samantha just shook her head. It was as if she still didn’t believe it yet, still felt she couldn’t ever tell Maud’s business to anyone. “We have to accept them as they were, with all their faults.” And then she was sniffling, too.

Samantha was the last person to see my parents alive, but I hadn’t thought for a moment that she could have killed them. She had no motive to kill Malcolm and Maud, because she had absolutely nothing to gain. She no longer had a
job
. And soon, she wouldn’t have a place to live, either.

I looked into her pink-rimmed eyes.

“Do you know who killed them?”

She shook her head.

I said, “I
do
accept them, Samantha, whoever they really were. I’m going to give the eulogy at their funeral. I wonder what I’m going to say.”

36