Lacy Eye (31 page)

“Where were you last night, anyway?” she said. “Shtupping Mr. Goldman?”

Her words—and the fact that they emerged from the mouth of the daughter I'd always felt so close to—made me feel physically ill. I took a breath and didn't answer. I didn't ask her whether she'd been waiting for Stew in the driveway, or where they had parked, away from the house, to make their getaway. I knew it was her voice I'd heard when I chased him out. But I couldn't bear to hear her admit it just then.

I didn't answer her question, instead asking one of my own. “So you
have
been in touch with Rud all this time?”

She shook her head vehemently. “Not until he won his appeal. I wrote him every single day before that, but he never got my letters, because the guards hated his guts.”

It was hard for me to believe that after all that had happened, she was still gullible enough to fall for what he'd told her. I wasn't sure I did believe it.

“When the appeal came through, he called me on a cell phone somebody gave him. I was so happy—I hadn't heard his voice since the end of the trial.” She smiled at the memory, and I felt another rise of nausea. When she spoke her next words, I couldn't tell whether it was with shame or pride. “He thought it would be a good idea for me to come home and test the waters.”

“Test the waters? As in, was I going to take the stand against him?”

“As in, did you remember anything.”

“You told me at Pepito's that night you believed Rud was guilty. So that was to trick me into thinking you'd turned on him?”

“I had to say that.” She shifted in the hard chair. “You wouldn't have wanted me home if I told the truth, which is that Emmett did it.” She began picking at her cuticles, not looking at me.

“Stop that,” I said, and immediately her hand jumped as if I had slapped it. “What are you talking about—
Emmett
? I just read the interview you did with Cecilia. You confessed to the whole thing.”

Her face drained—of color, expression, the appearance of life. “What?”

“What do you mean,
What?
It's on that website.
The Bloody Glove
.”

She seemed taken aback, and for a moment I tried to believe that there had been some mistake.

“She said she wouldn't put it out until the trial was over. She promised.” Her words came out slowly, as if she were speaking a language she wasn't sure of. “So she did trick me.”

“Why would you think she would do anything else?”

“I don't know. I keep thinking people are going to be different than they are.” Even now I find myself turning that line over and over in my head, particularly when I'm trying to fall asleep. “She kept saying this would be her big break, I was doing her a favor, she'd be forever grateful, all that bullshit.” At first I thought she spoke with anger, but then she gave another smile, this one more sinister, and my stomach lurched. “Well, it doesn't matter. I tricked her back.”

“Tricked her? How?”

“I made the whole thing up. Don't you get it, Mommy?” A different kind of energy entered her face and body, some creative force I'd never seen there before. She looked excited about something, for once, and I had to turn my head. “That's the beauty of it. They paid me all that money, and it was all a lie.”

I would have given everything I had to be able to believe her. Now, I am glad no one offered me that choice.

“Why would anybody believe you made up a story implicating yourself?”

“But I'm not doing that.” Her expression was smug, as if she'd just been waiting for my question. “I looked it up online, and it would be hearsay. They couldn't allow it in court, even if they did think it was true.”

“But why make up a story at all?”

The look she gave me made me think for a moment that she was going to say, ‘Duh'—the word she herself had been the victim of, so many times before. “What else? For the money. Cecilia said nothing sells better than kids killing their parents, except parents killing their kids.”

I felt my breath leave me, and shut my eyes. “How much money?”

“You'll never believe it. Guess. Okay, I'll tell you.” She paused for effect before adding, “Fifty thousand! Can you believe that?” She said it as if she'd just received a salary raise she knew would make me proud.

I remembered Dottie Wing's stolen credit card and the fraud warrant for Dawn in New Mexico. “You were going to give it to Rud for his defense, weren't you?”

“Yes.” She lifted her chin, daring me to defy her. “I still am. I want him to get a good lawyer, like Grandpa had.”
Grandpa.
She had never met the man, and my father had never been known by that name to anyone. What she knew of him was that he'd been able to pay a lawyer to get him the lightest sentence possible. Some of my father's victims had said he got away with murder, though of course he hadn't actually killed anyone. This was the legacy Dawn aspired to.

“When he gets out, we're moving to Alaska. He has some friend up there who helps people start over. We'll get new identities. Nobody will know who we are. Who we
were
.” She waited for me to challenge her, and when I didn't, she said, “He isn't guilty. Mommy, trust me on this.”

I almost laughed—a blast of misery at how absurd a request that was—but managed to contain it at the last moment.

“He dropped me off that night, after we all had that fight about the burglary, and then he went home to his own apartment,” she went on. “He called me from there. I was with Opal when you and Daddy were attacked—you know that.”

“No. I don't.” The words came out faint, because it hurt to say them, but I could tell she heard me loud and clear; her eyes darted in panic she tried to hide. I forced myself to raise my voice. “You weren't with her last night, either.”

On the table between us her hands closed in fists. “I was so.”

“Dawn, I called Opal's house.” The fists grew tighter, the knuckles white. “She killed herself.” I couldn't tell from her reaction, or lack of it, whether she had known this before I told her. And if it was news to her, I couldn't tell if she felt upset. “But not before her mother told me she lied for you on the stand.”

The look she gave me then was one of shocked indignation. “She said that? That bitch.”

I was still unaccustomed to hearing her curse. But then, everything about this scene felt unfamiliar and surreal.

At least she wasn't trying to tell me Opal's mother had lied, I told myself. At least she had sense enough not to do that.

“Daddy's jacket,” I said. I expected her to pretend she had no idea what I was talking about, but she was smart enough not to do that, either. “‘Puff Daddy.' That wasn't part of the trial, either. In fact, I never realized that jacket was missing, until I read the interview.”

She looked at me steadily. “You gave it away the other day when you were collecting things for Goodwill.”

For a moment, my heart stumbled.
Had
I put the jacket in with the other clothes?

But no; I knew better. I'd only brought one bag to the collection bin, and the jacket would not have fit in it along with everything else I discarded. Now my own daughter was gaslighting me, doing her best to make me think I was losing my mind and that my memory couldn't be trusted.

“You should understand something, Dawn.” Her fear emanated toward me as I said this; I could smell its tang, sour and hot, in the air between us. If I reached out, it might have been solid enough to touch. “I
do
remember. I was remembering all along, I think. But I didn't know it was real until I read what you said to Cecilia.” I waited, half-hoping she might have something to say that would divert me, even momentarily, from where I was headed. But she just let her head hang as she twirled her hair around her finger and slumped in the metal chair.

“The inhaler,” I said. The word caused her to look up, and for the first time since she'd come home, it almost seemed that both eyes focused on the same spot. “That was never part of the testimony. The police found it, but they assumed it just got broken in the struggle, and they didn't put any importance on it. It wasn't brought up at the trial.

“But when I read what you said about Daddy having trouble breathing, and reaching for it on the nightstand, it all came back to me.
You
were the one who stepped on it. And who pulled the phone out. I can see it, Dawn, in my head.” She looked away again. “You couldn't have known about any of that unless you were there.”

She mumbled something.

“What?” I said.

“That inhaler thing only happened because I remembered how he embarrassed me when I tried to use it on Abby. At Iris's wedding. I was so humiliated, and in front of Rud.”

“Are you trying to justify that as an excuse?”

“No.” She said it quietly, into her collar, and I wished I could believe her at least about this. “It's just that I felt like I could either crumble or get mad, and mad was safer. It just happened—I didn't plan it, but then all the pieces were on the floor.”

“What about cutting the phone off, when I was trying to call for help?”

She slid further down in her chair. “Part of me wanted you to get through. I swear to God, Mommy. I wanted the police to come and stop what was happening.”

“Then why—”

“Because I'm stupid, okay? Is that what you want from me?” She folded her arms on the table and threw her head down on top of them, giving the impression that she was crying, but I could tell there were no tears.

I was starting to get a headache, a monster one, and I wanted nothing more than to stop talking. But there were still things I needed to get out. “How you could just stand there and let him do what he did? You never tried to stop him.” I almost choked on my own words. “You let him
kill
Daddy. Kill both of us, really. You didn't know I wasn't dead until the next morning. Right?”

When she didn't answer or raise her head, I kept going. “The tree house,” I whispered, dropping my voice because this subject had always seemed sacred somehow. “That
was
you, wasn't it? Not Emmett.” When I'd read the
Bloody Glove
story, I realized I'd always known it, which was why I must have hidden the matches when the police came. And why I encouraged Joe not to press charges. But I hadn't realized that Emmett also knew Dawn was responsible, and for some reason—the same secret decency that caused him to offer me help, the day I saw his tattoo?—he kept it to himself, even knowing that Joe and others continued to suspect him. “I should have said something back then.”

Dawn's shoulders had stopped their fake shaking. She lifted her head from the table slowly. “Well,” she said, and a peculiar smile I'd never seen before played at her lips. I still see that smile in my mind, sometimes; it can wake me out of a sound sleep, and I find myself covered with sweat. “I guess you're not as out of it as I thought you were, Mom.” For a moment I tried to believe she felt as shocked by her own words as I felt hearing them. But I knew it wasn't the case.

“‘Out of it'?” The phrase ignited a rage inside me that made everything go white before my eyes. Though I never would have expected it of myself, I said, “
I'm
not the one they called Ding-Dong.”
I'm not the one who got duped by Rud Petty
, I could have added.
Who gave that interview. Who's lying right now, thinking there might be some way out of this.

Yet even as I spoke, I knew it went deeper than “out of it.” That part had always been there. She was in police custody because of some other part.

“Do I even know you, Dawn? Did I ever?” The dull hammer I recognized as fresh grief began tapping inside my chest. “What kind of a person
are
you?”

She let the air out of her mouth slowly, then leaned across the table. Through the window at the top of the door, I could see Kenneth Thornburgh's head turn slightly as he made sure she was not making a move he would have to interrupt. In a voice that let me know she'd been wanting to ask this question for a long time, Dawn said, “It was never just about my eye, was it?”

Of course it had never been just about her eye. But I wasn't about to give her this satisfaction. “I hope you're not telling me that you think being teased, or being a little different from other people, justifies killing someone,” I said. “Least of all your own parents. I hope you're not saying that, Dawn.”

She was so intent on her own vision of things that I don't think she registered my words. “If you and Daddy had just let it go that day and not made a federal case out of the burglary—if you had just let things be the way they were—none of this would have happened. Daddy dying, the trial, any of it.” The smile again, stronger; it twisted her face into a degree of asymmetry I had never seen there before. It would not have been a stretch to call it grotesque, and it had nothing to do with her amblyopia. “But you couldn't leave it alone, could you? You just couldn't let me be happy.”

The knocking inside my chest grew stronger, threatening to steal my breath. “Are you really going to sit there and tell me that what happened to us—what you did—was
our
fault?”

For a moment she looked sorry—looked, even, as if she might give in to grief. Or did she? It's another thing I can't be sure of. Maybe it was just the look of someone who was upset because she hadn't gotten her way. Abruptly she sat up straight, the way she would have if a puppeteer had snapped a string up sharply through her spine.

Though I sensed it was futile, I tried one last time to get through. “Don't you understand that if you really had the money he thought you had, he would have killed you, too? He would have married you, yes. But then he would have killed you.”