Light from a Distant Star (27 page)

She was stunned. She didn’t know what she’d done wrong. She really didn’t. “I was just trying to answer the questions.”

“You could’ve done it in a lot nicer way. And the next time an adult speaks to you, I expect you to be respectful, do you hear me?” He started driving again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, though only sorry to have him upset with her. Because she knew that for him that was hardest, not her disrespect but that he’d had to sink to that sorry level, of scolding her. And so she felt bad for him.

“I hope so.” Well, he never should have said
that
.

“He didn’t do it. He’s not guilty.”

“You don’t know that. No one does. Not for sure, anyway.”

“Yes, I do. Because someone else was there. Before Max even came. And I saw him, too. In the side yard, by Dolly’s back door. It was Mr. Cooper. He said he had some papers for you. But he wasn’t acting right. It was like I scared him or something.” Her brain was a jumble of moving parts, flashing, squealing into place. Just saying it was an enormous relief.

“Nellie.” He could only look at her. “That’s a terrible thing you just said. I mean, Mr. Cooper, he’s—”

“He used to go there. I know he did. He’d, like, sneak in, late when nobody was around. He was her boyfriend. That’s what she called him.”

“Who? Dolly? She said that? She called Mr. Cooper her boyfriend?”

“Something like that.” No. But now Nellie knew that’s exactly who she’d meant.

“Nellie, do you have any idea what you’re saying? Do you understand what could happen? The damage to an innocent man’s reputation? His family? Once something like this is spoken, its mere utterance becomes a kind of reality. It takes on a life of its own. And no matter how hard you might try to change it later on, it keeps growing, giving off energy. Negative, vicious energy.”

Well, it’s true, she wanted to interrupt, but didn’t. Trees, houses,
cars blurred past, everything speeding up and strange—even the way he was driving, racing up to the stop light then sitting there until a horn sounded behind them.

“And as a matter of fact,” he continued, almost breathlessly. “He
was
looking for me that day. Because that’s when he made the offer. And a very generous offer, at that. We must’ve been on the phone for an hour anyway. I remember I came home and told your mother. Even with that nightmare going on, it was the one bright moment for her. Relief after a long, hard struggle. She hasn’t had an easy time of it lately,” he added, and Nellie couldn’t help feeling he was trying to convince himself more than her.

“I know, but still … it was weird. It was like he was trying to hide behind the bushes. And his face!” She suddenly remembered. “He had these, like, scratches.”

“Nellie, please. You mustn’t do this. I’m begging you. One word and it’ll turn into a witch hunt. Think of the fallout from this, the lives you could destroy. An entire family.”

Unnerved by the way he kept blinking, she had to look away. Whose family was he begging her not to destroy? The Coopers’? Theirs? Or both?

S
O THERE IT
was. She thought she knew but wasn’t sure. And the one person she needed to believe her could not.

M
ONEY WAS TIGHTER THAN EVER
. W
ITH WORD AROUND
town that Peck Hardware was as good as closed, a good day might mean ten or fifteen dollars in sales. Some days there were none. Business was also slow at the beauty shop. Many of her mother’s clients were away on vacation. Or maybe, she worried, they’d gone elsewhere. And now without rent from the apartment, things were going from bad to worse. Yesterday her mother had had to borrow money from Ruth for the electric and telephone bills. Her father had spent the previous weekend painting the apartment, and at her mother’s insistence, he’d even put down new vinyl tiles in the kitchen. Not that there was anything wrong with the old floor other than its violation by death. The apartment was ready, her father said, so now they could put an ad in the paper. They were eating dinner as the conversation went back and forth across the table. As soon as Ruth finished eating, she ran up to her room. Her friends were picking her up soon for a pool party. Every time Henry wiped his mouth, he spit more broccoli into the napkin, but Nellie was the only one who’d noticed. She envied her little brother’s invisibility in the family. With all the turmoil, he could do pretty much what he wanted.

“But what about all that yellow tape?” Her mother pointed toward the window. She’d called Detective Des La Forges about it last week, and he said he’d come by as soon as he could.

“Just take it down.” Her father sounded impatient. Andy Cooper wasn’t returning his calls. And when he’d dropped by his office on Monday, the secretary had said he wasn’t in, even though his car was in the parking lot.

“The police have to do that,” she said.

“Who said?”

“Detective Des La Forges.”

“That’s ridiculous. The police haven’t been here in two weeks.”

“But they will, you know they will,” her mother said.

“The investigation’s over,” he said with rare, thin-lipped finality.

“Maybe not,” Nellie piped up. “Maybe they’re just waiting for more clues. Maybe there’s some new evidence.”

With both hands gripping the table, her father stared at her. “They’ve got the man they want.”

“Well, they’re wrong then.” She stared back.

“Don’t say that,” her mother gasped with a shudder. “Oh, my God, just the thought of it.”

Her father stood up then and marched outside. He started ripping off the barricade of yellow tape strung from the trees and bushes to the porch railing.

“Don’t, Ben. Please, please, don’t, her mother pleaded on his heels around the back of the house. “We don’t have permission yet. Why?” she said as he continued rolling up the tape. “Why’re you doing this?”

“Because this is our home. It’s not a crime scene,” he declared, tossing the balled up tape into the trash barrel.

N
ELLIE HAD BEEN
sent up to the third floor because the downstairs lights kept flickering.

She waited a moment on the landing, then knocked on Ruth’s door again.

“Just a minute!” Ruth shouted over the music. She held on to the opening door so Nellie couldn’t come in. “What?” she demanded, holding her fuzzy green bathrobe closed. Half her hair was set with heated pink rollers. The rest of the house was hot, and it was freezing in there.

“Turn something off!” Nellie shouted. “Mom’s afraid the fuse’ll blow again!”

“Yeah, and, like, it’s my fault, right?”

She shrugged, always best with her sister, that and a blank stare. After a long, pained sigh, Ruth stomped back in, with Nellie close behind. Racing around the room, she turned down the iPod speakers and
yanked out the plug for the electric curlers. She climbed onto a purple milk crate, and pulled out the extension cord to the string of Chinese lantern patio lights tacked along the highest peak of her gabled ceiling, a touch that hadn’t been here during Nellie’s last ransacking, which hadn’t happened in a while. Not since …—she still had a hard time saying it—the murder. Next, Ruth turned off two lamps, but not the air conditioner.

“Okay?” she snapped, snatching an electric roller from the set on her dresser. “I hafta finish before they cool off.”

“Just don’t shoot the messenger,” Nellie said under her breath, and Ruth scowled at her through the mirror.

“Do you mind?” she growled. “I’m tryna get ready.”

“Okay.” Nellie nodded, perfectly willing to endure her annoyance. At least it was attention, more than she’d gotten lately from her. Or from anyone else for that matter. They’d all closed themselves off, not just from prying outsiders but from one another.

“Like I need an audience, right?” Ruth grumbled.

Not wanting to look too ensconced, she half sat, half leaned against the bed. “She said to turn off the air conditioner. It’s not even hot out,” she added to soften the command. Just being here was contentment enough. Watching her sister’s nimble fingers twist and turn her blond hair onto the rollers was almost as hypnotic as when she used to set Nellie’s hair like that and polish her nails—when Ruth used to like her, before she realized what a loser she’d become.

“Can you? I’m late. I’m so wicked late.”

Nellie turned off the air conditioner, then crept back to the edge of the bed, motionless in the sudden silence, expecting imminent eviction. With her long hair away from her face, Nellie saw how pretty Ruth really was. Looking into the mirror was like watching someone from a long time ago. Their mother, Nellie realized, her eyes the same bright blue. A party, she said, when Nellie asked what she was late for. A pool party, Ruth continued, surprising her. It had been a long time since she’d shared anything with her, air space or information. Catherine Larson was having it. Of the four girls invited, Ruth was the only junior. Catherine’s sister was Linda, who also worked at Rollie’s.

“Their pool’s all curvy, like some kind of lagoon, black stone with
this, like, waterfall at one end. All lit up and ripply,” she said, spearing the last roller with a long silver pick.

“How come you’re setting your hair then? It’s just gonna get all wet and ruined,” Nellie warned, sitting on the bed now, cross-legged.

“That’s
so
not the point,” she sighed opening the door to her closet, which was crammed with clothes. She yanked out a yellow sundress and the hanger spun onto the floor on top of others. “What do you think?” She held it under her chin.

“It’s nice, but what about a bathing suit?”

“Ta da!” she laughed, flashing open her robe to reveal the skimpy blue-and-white striped two-piece she was wearing. Nellie asked if it was new. Borrowed, she said. Jill had lent it to her.

“That’s disgusting!” Nellie blurted, clearly, by Ruth’s annoyed expression, endangering this rare sisterly moment. “I mean the bottom part, like somebody’s underwear,” she tried to explain as Ruth squatted down, rummaging through the closet jumble of dusty boots, slippers, shoes, sandals.

“Not if you use a panty liner,” she said, which turned Nellie’s stomach all queasy for a second. Ruth glanced back. “Have you even started?”

“Started what?” Nellie knew exactly what she meant. Her face burned.

“Your menarche.”

Relieved, Nellie asked what that was.

“Your period. That’s what the first one’s called.” Ruth stood up. She’d found her tan sandals.

Nellie’s half nod half shrug came with a grunt.

“When?” Ruth sounded surprised. “When’d you start?”

“I don’t know.” Hadn’t, and hoped she never would. Every storm in their lives seemed to erupt during her mother’s or sister’s time of the month. Especially Ruth’s, with her zits, tears, and slammed doors.

“Jeez. You can tell me. I’m your sister.” She sat on the milk crate, intently buckling the intricate web of skinny straps. “I mean, it’s natural. And girls, they don’t get, like, all weird about it. They just, well, like … it’s just part of life.” Pausing, she gave Nellie one of those squinty-eyed oh-my-God-you-poor-clueless-thing faces she and her friends always made. Nellie stared back. Ruth came over and sat on the bed. “Look at you, you’re, like, all embarrassed. Why?”

Nellie shrugged. “So is Linda the one with the unibrow?” she asked, subject changing often the easiest ploy with Ruth—but not this time. Her voice had been too thin.

“Oh, Nellie!” Leaning close, Ruth put her arm around her. “I feel awful. It’s like, all this stuff’s going on, and all of a sudden you’re, like, this whole other person, and me, I’m just, well, tryna be all, like, okay, I’m okay, nothing’s wrong here, you know what I mean?”

It seemed best to shrug, nod, grunt again. Pulling her closer, Ruth smelled like the sweet, white flowers in bloom a few days every May on the tall shrub outside their kitchen window. By Memorial Day their drifting petals covered the lawn like fragrant snow.

Her voice was different, whispery. Close to Nellie’s ear yet from a distance, someone Nellie used to know was saying she could always trust her. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t tell her. No matter what it was, she should always come to her because she was her big sister, and Nellie probably didn’t know this, but when she was little all she’d ever wanted was a baby sister, so when she woke up the morning Nellie was born and found out her prayers had been answered, she promised God she’d never let anything happen to her. Ever.

Mock orange. Those were the flowers, the sweet drift from her hair, even her armpit so near Nellie’s chin. It was true, Nellie realized with a surge of relief over something she didn’t even know she’d lost. She did love Nellie, and Nellie loved her. Until only a year or two or three ago, she had been her beloved older sister. And now that she had the old Ruthie back, she wasn’t about to lose her again. Or at least that’s what she would tell herself days later, standing on the front porch, foreign-posted letter in hand, but right then, at that moment when Ruth was asking if she ever got cramps or anything, she could honestly answer, “No. Never.”

“You will,” Ruth declared of Nellie’s bleak future. “Same as me and Mom.” With every roller plucked from her head, she confided another misery of her menses. Headaches, nausea, clots and heavy flows, stained clothing, tender breasts and sore nipples, swollen feet, greasy hair, the grim list endless.