In Winter's Grip (23 page)

“You can't give in to it, Jonas. Promise me you'll never give in.” I knelt beside him and rested my head on his arm. “I don't want you to leave me, Jonas,” I whispered. “You can't check out on Gunnar and Claire. Not that way.”

“Sometimes I think they'd be better off without me.”

I closed my eyes. The tears seeped out from under my eyelids.

Jonas stood then, and I felt the sudden strength of his arms wrap around me and pull me to my feet. “It's okay, Maja. I'm not going anywhere. I promise.” His voice was penitent, the one he'd always used to keep the peace. I didn't trust it.

“You have to really promise.” I was crying now in big gulping sobs.

“I really promise.”

“You have to mean it.”

I could hear the smile in his voice.“It's like we're kids again, Maj. You tell me I have to mean it, and I say it's the meanest mean-it you've ever seen.”

I laughed through my hiccups. “A mean mean-it is binding.”

“Till the end of time.”

I stepped back. “I love you, little brother,” I said.

This time, Jonas looked me in the eyes. “And I love you back.”

We were middle-aged and we were young, forever joined by blood and the years we'd shared as children. His pain was my pain, and it was impossible to tell where his began and mine left off. This blood connection meant I would never be free of Jonas's torment nor he of mine. What joined us was as simple and as uncomplicated as the coupling of our parents' flesh, the randomness of birth. Yet, it was so much more. I could no sooner walk away from Jonas than I could walk away from myself, and God knew, I'd tried for over twenty years. My flight had led me back to where it all began—back to Duved Cove and this house where my mother had hanged herself and my father had lain dying in the snow—back to my brother who had been slowly dying inside from the moment he tried to breathe life into my mother's lifeless body.

Jonas wanted to skip Hadrian's and go home to rest. By the progressive paleness of his skin as the afternoon wore on, I didn't argue. He hadn't been out of the hospital long, and the packing had zapped his energy reserves. He sat at the kitchen table while I wrapped the last of Dad's coffee mugs in newspaper before placing them into a box on the counter.

“Does Dad still have that wine stored in the basement?” I asked. He'd had a wine rack built into the coolest part of the basement and had kept it well stocked when we were kids. If he had anything half-decent stored there, it would be a pleasant addition to my evening. It might help Claire relax and start talking to me.

“I think so. He was always talking about how much he paid for a bottle. He took wine courses a few years ago, so of course he became the expert.” Jonas snorted. “From alcoholic to sommelier. It's all in the way you market yourself, I guess.”

“It's the yuppie idea of class.” I thought of Sam and his pretentious palate. He wouldn't touch a glass of wine from a bottle worth less than some arbitrary price he'd set. Trouble was, if you only drank the expensive wine, you grew to tell the difference. Luckily, a wine's pedigree hadn't mattered all that much to me. I'd grown up on cheap wine and Minnesota beach parties.

Even from the time I was a little girl, I hadn't liked going into the basement by myself. It was nothing I could explain, except that it was the feeling of being below ground and trapped. I opened the basement door, clicked on the light and looked down the steep concrete steps. I realized I'd avoided going down there since I'd been in the house. The light bulb at the bottom of the stairs had burned out, and it crossed my mind to forget about the wine. I turned back to look at Jonas, who was putting on his parka.

“I'll just go start the car while you get the wine,” he said. “Where are your keys?”

“In my jacket on the back of the chair. God, Jonas. It smells like something is rotting in the basement. Was Dad keeping meat down there?”

“More mess to clean up,” Jonas sighed. “His freezer must be on the blink. I guess whatever has gone bad can wait one more day.”

I looked back into the shadowy depths of the basement then closed my eyes and pictured the layout. My father'd panelled half of it as a rec room in knotty pine years ago and framed off the unfinished half, which held the furnace, freezer, washing machine and clothes dryer with two clothes lines strung across the ceiling. The wine rack was in a small, cooler pantry at the far end of the unfinished section. I decided quickly. I'd hold my breath, make a dash for the wine rack and be back upstairs in seconds flat. Hopefully there wouldn't be too many cobwebs along the way. I had a real problem with the feel of them on my face. It was an irrational phobia that I should have outgrown but hadn't.

I took tentative steps down the dark stairwell, picking up speed as my eyes adjusted to the gloom. The smell got worse as I got closer to the bottom, and I put a hand over my mouth. By the time I reached the bottom step, dread had begun stealing up my legs and into my arms. It was all I could do to keep moving forward. I felt along the wall until my hand landed on the wall switch. The room jumped into light, and I looked left toward the finished section. The seating area looked much as I remembered it, two couches and a few recliners arranged around a flat screen television, which had to be new, and beige carpeting that I was certain was new, marking off the space. I turned my head right toward the doorway to the laundry room, and the smell got stronger and more putrid. I wanted to race back up the stairs, as far away from the disgusting air as I could get. Instead, I forced myself to cross the threshold into the laundry area, swallowing the bile that rose hot in my throat.

I saw her body almost immediately, shoved between the freezer and washing machine like a pile of dirty laundry. Becky Wilders lying on her stomach, arms stiff at her sides, head turned to one side with a trickle of blood dried on her chin, her eyes wide open and staring into death. Her hair was matted and stained through with dark dried blood. I was a doctor, but this was the first time I had stumbled upon a murdered friend, and the shock of it was too much to take in. I crossed the short distance as if in a dream and kneeled beside her, reaching out a hand to feel for a pulse. The smell of rotting flesh was overwhelming, and I knew it was a futile gesture, but part of my mind could not accept that she was so brutally gone.

She was wearing her winter coat, a navy knee length parka with a hood lined in fake fur, and black knee-high boots that looked oddly childlike on her tiny feet and slender legs, a red skirt visible where the coat twisted around her waist. I could imagine Becky picking out these clothes and trying them on, turning to study herself in front of a full length mirror, liking what she saw. The sadness of what had happened to her struck me like a blow to my heart, and I struggled to keep from sobbing. Becky would never be trying on clothes again or feeding Timmy Cheerios or breathing another breath. My stomach rolled then, and I stood to heave into the laundry sink, retching up my lunch until nothing more was left. I raised my head, swallowing the burning in my throat. I could hear Jonas walking across the kitchen floor overhead. He stopped at the head of the stairs and called down to me.

“Maja! You coming?”

I couldn't let him see her this way. I swiped at my face with the back of my. “I'll be right there!” I called and turned on the tap to rinse out my mouth and clean out the sink. I stumbled out of the laundry room, but I wasn't quick enough. Jonas met me halfway down the stairs.

“You look like you've seen a rat,” he said. “Phew! It does smell pretty bad down here. Did you find anything?”

That's when I should have lied. Instead, I remained silent, not trusting myself to speak. Jonas stared at me, and his face turned whiter than it was already. He tried to push past me, but I held my ground.

“We have to call the police,” I said at last. “We shouldn't go back down there. It's not good, Jonas.”

“What's happened? Somebody's dead, aren't they?” His voice dropped to little more than a rasp. “Not Claire. . .?”

“Becky,” I said, and the word was enough. Jonas loosened his grasp on my arm.

“I should go see her,” he said, but I could tell he didn't want to go any further into the cellar.

“I don't think we should disturb the scene. There's nothing to be done for her. She's been there...for quite some time.”

Jonas nodded. He turned and climbed like an old man back up the stairs. I followed him, unable to erase the image of Becky's lifeless eyes from my mind, wondering why my brother thought his wife was the one lying dead in our basement.

Tobias was the first to arrive, quickly followed by David Keating and Chief Anders, paramedics from the hospital and lastly, the coroner, each greeting us quickly before descending into the basement. All the while, Jonas and I sat close to each other in the kitchen without talking. Jonas's hands trembled whenever he ran them through his hair. Devastation lined his pale face. I made tea and forced a cup into his hand. He took a few sips before setting the cup down and letting the tea go cold.

David emerged from the basement. He sat down across from Jonas next to me and pulled out a notebook. “Who found her?” he asked.

I raised my head. “I did. Jonas was waiting for me outside while I went to get wine from the basement. I felt for a pulse, but that was all. I knew she was gone.”

David's eyes fixed on mine. “Blunt trauma to the head was likely the cause of death.”

“Just like Dad,” Jonas said.

“Looks much the same,” David agreed. He shifted his gaze to Jonas. “I know this must be hard for both of you, but if there's anything you can tell us that would help..”

“She must have been killed that night she never made it home. Did she die in our basement?” I asked. The thought that she'd been lying in the basement the whole time I was working upstairs was an awful thought.

“I can't say anything, Maja. It's too early.”

“Whoever broke in didn't do any damage in the basement. If they had, we might have gone into the laundry room and found her when we were cleaning up.” I shuddered.

“Don't think about that now.”

We gave the rest of our statements, which didn't amount to much. David snapped his notebook shut and told us we could go home.

“Who will tell Kevin?” I asked as I stood to put on my coat.

Chief Anders entered the kitchen from the basement steps. He walked heavily towards us, his eyes rimmed in red as if he'd been crying. “Tobias will be heading over there now to break the news. This is an awful thing. An awful thing.” His head shook from side to side.

I heard someone else climbing the stairs. If it was Tobias, I didn't want to talk to him. I stood and grabbed my coat. “Coming, Jonas?” I asked. I nodded at Tobias, who'd made it into the kitchen as I opened the back door, and stepped outside into the fading afternoon light. He'd looked as devastated as Jonas. I could hear my brother saying goodbye as I fled down the steps toward the car.

When Jonas slid in next to me, the car's heater was blasting cold air, and I was shaking. He looked across at me and huddled deeper into his parka. “Let's go to Hadrian's. We could both do with a drink,” he said.

“Are you sure you're up for it?”

“I won't be able to rest now.

“Okay. I could do with something stronger than tea.”

I navigated my car past the police cars and an ambulance with two paramedics in the act of lifting out a gurney as we put space between us and my father's house. It would take some time before I could put the same space between us and the deaths that had happened there—three deaths counting my mother— three violent deaths in my parents' house that could not be explained.

TWENTY-THREE

E
ntering Hadrian's was like stepping into another world, one of music and laughter, colour and warmth. It seemed a lot of others had come in out of the cold to search out pre-dinner drinks, because there wasn't a spare table to be found. Jonas and I snagged the last two stools at the bar. Hadrian had enlisted the help of a girl who looked too young to be serving alcohol. She had a cascade of black curls and a morose face that looked a lot like Hadrian's.

“Hi, Sarah,” Jonas said. “Two double Scotch on the rocks.”

Sarah shifted the gum in her mouth to the opposite cheek and nodded as she chewed. Before long, she slid two tumblers in front of us and took Jonas's money without comment. The first swallow hurt my raw throat, but it was a welcome pain. It beat the numbness that had stolen over my other senses. Hadrian was talking to Wayne Okwari at the other end of the bar. They both looked over at us, so I turned my head toward Jonas.

“How long do you think before the town knows?”

“They probably know already.”

I nodded. Duved Cove's grapevine had tendrils everywhere. I looked over Jonas's shoulder and pointed. “Look. A table's open.”

“Let's go.”

Jonas grabbed both our drinks, and we made our way through the crowded room to the table near the gas fireplace, which was not turned on. The table was the same one we'd sat at the night before. We took seats elbow to elbow.

“So how are you doing?” I asked. “You know, mixing alcohol and your medication probably isn't the best idea.”

“I'll just have this one and then head home. Claire will be wondering where I am.”

“Is everything all right between you and Claire?”

“Is everything all right between you and Sam?”

We looked at each other and smiled.

“Okay. I see where this is heading,” I said. “Mutual confession time.”

“Only if forced.”

“Sam and I have seen better days. He's been having an affair with someone at work. He doesn't know that I know, and I've never let on.”

“Are you sure?”