Light from a Distant Star (32 page)

“The routine. You know, work, and then coming home and doing more work.” She made her life sound so miserable.

“Dad does all the dishes. And the laundry, he even does that now. And I keep things picked up, plus I have to mind Henry all the time. He’s the one, he never does a thing, and Ruth, she just leaves her dirty dishes in the sink and food all over the place. And nobody ever says a word to her. The minute you leave for work she turns on her air conditioner and all she does is talk on the phone the whole time.”

Her mother had turned from the mirror. “Nellie?”

“What?” she stared back.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She didn’t dare blink for fear she’d cry.

“Are you … your period, is it—”

“No!”

“Well, something’s wrong. Is it because I’m going out? It is, isn’t it? Oh, hon, c’mere.” She held out her arms, but Nellie wouldn’t budge, so she sat down next to her. “I know, I’m gone all day, so when I come home you just want your mom here, right?” She hugged Nellie. “That’s okay. I understand, especially with everything that’s happened.” She smelled of lilies.

She laid her head against Nellie’s, which made her feel worse—selfish and mean. “Torrie Blaine, she’s pregnant,” she sputtered, and wasn’t sure why, except maybe for needing some anchor to keep her mother in place as belonging to them instead of being her girlfriends’ girlfriend. “And she wants Ruth to help her get rid of it, and Ruth doesn’t know what to do because it’s like what happened to you. The same thing.”

She sighed, and Nellie was relieved to see the light gone from her eyes under their pale blue lids. Nellie had snatched her midflight from her carefree verve. She was Nellie’s again, but now she was ashamed.

“Oh God,” she sighed, getting up from the bed, and Nellie felt terrible. It had nothing to do with Torrie or Ruth or even her mother’s going out. It was this growing knot of dread like the twins’ robotic voice in her head.
Warning, warning
. Something bad was near, darkness gathering, and nothing could stop it.

A
FEW DAYS
later she was loading the dishwasher after dinner when the doorbell rang. Her father was scrubbing the spaghetti sauce pan, so he told her to see who it was.

“Your mom or dad home?” Detective Des La Forges asked through the front door screen. Instead of a shirt and tie, he wore a black T-shirt and baseball cap.

“They both are,” she said, reaching for the latch.

“Whoa!” he said. “You shouldn’t be opening the door like that.”

“Why? Don’t you want to come in?”

“What if I was a stranger or something?”

“But you’re not.”

“Well … technically, no.” He had that overly stern look adults get when they suspect you’re on to them. “But what you should do is go tell one of your parents I’m here.”

“Okay.” She paused, to see if he really meant it. Or if he was kidding.

“Go ahead. I’ll wait,” he said through the screen, then lifted his eyes, scanning the overhead clapboards, as if for danger.

“You didn’t let him in? He’s still out there?” her father said, shutting off the water.

“He wanted to,” she tried to explain as he hurried out of the kitchen, drying his soapy hands on a dish towel. Her mother was already in the front hall, apologizing for his wait. No problem, that was fine, he told her as Nellie watched from the alcove into the study.

The trial was scheduled for the first week in October. He’d wanted them to hear it from him first even though official notification would be coming from Finn Cowie, the assistant DA in charge of the case. Cowie would fill them in on all the details. No one spoke. It seemed that until that moment her parents had been living an existence parallel to the reality of all that lay ahead. So what did this mean? Was there something they should be doing? These were her father’s nebulous questions. Her mother’s were more precise. Who in the family would have to testify? Would they all have to attend every day of the trial? How much time would she have to take off from work? She’d need to
know because some of her clients booked monthly. When would the jury come to look at the apartment? Their old tenant wanted to move back in and if he had to wait because of that, he might change his mind. Just last night Lazlo had called to say he wanted the apartment.

“Lazlo’s easy,” her father said with a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry about him. We’ll work it out, one way or another.”

“Really? And how do we do that?” Her mother’s voice bristled.

“He can … stay with us! Up in one of the spare rooms,” her father said, adding for the detective’s benefit, “we’ve got enough of them. In fact, maybe that’s what we should do, rent them all out, Pecks’ boardinghouse. Little notoriety might help.” He laughed. Her mother kept looking at him. “That’s what happens,” he continued on his faltering course. “Like the Biladoux house? In 1897, the niece, first she poisons the two cats and the dog, then she slips the same brew into her aunt and uncle’s favorite stew—”

“Ben!” her mother gasped.

“But they never did prove it,” Des La Forges said. “A gas leak, that’s what they think happened.”

“Gas leak! There was an empty arsenic bottle under her buggy seat,” her father said, persisting in his details, his thin face flushed with the pleasure of these old tales he knew so well. “Millie Boden. Yes, that was her name, the niece. Six feet tall, and strong as a man. She’d walk down to—”

“Well, anyway,” her mother interrupted, putting her hand on his arm. “We’ve taken up enough of your time,” she said to the detective, her most gracious smile frozen in place. “We’ll let you get on your way.”

“Good seeing you,” Des La Forges said, adding that he was on his way to a softball game. He was the pitcher and they were in the finals, which reminded Nellie’s father of a team the hardware store used to sponsor. Won the league championship. Must have been ’68 or ’69. He’d been a kid, but he remembered how delighted his father had been. There was a picture of it somewhere, his father and the team with Johnny Hale holding the trophy.

She felt sorry for her father. Couldn’t he tell Des La Forges wasn’t interested? That he was just trying to be polite?

“Remember Johnny?” her father persisted, grinning. “The old barber?”

“Oh yeah, sure,” Des La Forges said, quickly opening the door.

“As a matter of fact,” her father said, “now that I think of it, Johnny’s father, old Charlie Hale—you’re too young, you wouldn’t know him—but he did all the Biladoux yard work, and I remember my father talking about it, too, the arsenic, and how it was—”

“Ben,” her mother implored. “Bob has to go, he just told us.”

“Oh sure, sorry. All this talk about trials …” His voice trailed off.

“Puts us a little on edge, I guess,” her mother said with a nervous laugh.

“Ah, who knows,” Des La Forges said through the screen. “Maybe there won’t even be a trial. Last I heard there was talk of a plea bargain. Pretty tight case they got.”

After he left, her mother started to go upstairs, where she’d been mending sheets on her sewing machine.

“I didn’t want to say anything, but I’m afraid the detective’s facts are a little, shall we say, shaky? I know for a fact it was poison,” Benjamin called after her, and she turned, looking down with an iciness that sent a long shiver through Nellie. “I’ll send it to him tomorrow, a copy of the article. The old
Ledger
—they followed the trial every single day.” His brow furrowed over a pensive smile. “I’ll track it down. I know it’s in there.” He meant his files, musty records of all the obscure events of which he was the most devoted chronicler. “Take me a while, but I’ll find it.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious,” he said with a cocky nod.

“Tell me something,” she said, chewing her lip. “With everything that’s happening, how on earth could this possibly matter?”

“It’s a fact, and facts matter. The truth. That’s all.”

Maybe he was distracted. Maybe he was mentally riffling through files, but to Nellie his voice sounded distant, unconvincing, and she felt it again, that thing, like dampness underfoot, wanting to rise.

L
AZLO HAD PUT
up with all the snide remarks about his “hokey paintings and dead-end job,” but it was James’s deceit, the constant lies about his whereabouts and phone calls and strange e-mails that he couldn’t take anymore. If James couldn’t be in a monogamous relationship, then he wanted his old life back—peace of mind and self-respect. (
Monogamous
—it was obviously about being gay, and as Nellie ran around the side of house to her mother’s herb garden, she made a mental note to look it up.)

It was early Saturday afternoon and Lazlo didn’t have to be at the restaurant until 3:30. He and her mother were sitting in the rickety green rockers on the front porch sipping the peach ice tea he’d brought in a cooler. Hoping she hadn’t missed anything, Nellie raced back up the steps with the warm sprigs of pineapple mint she’d been sent to get. She looked on smiling as her mother pinched off the stems and dropped the crinkly green-and-white striped leaves into each goblet of the cloudy brew. There was a glow about Lazlo, a motionless blur of dazzling energy that made her feel lighter and life seem easier in this perfect moment with her mother’s gleaming Waterford, the fragrance of mint in the steamy air, and Lazlo in his bright, patch-plaid Bermuda shorts and polo shirt a shade of eggplant, and his wavy hair trimmed close. Even his narrow bracelet of woven leather was exactly right. No gaudy gold or jewels. It was just like the old days, having Lazlo here.

Benjamin was still at the store, her mother was telling Lazlo. This was the second day of the Springvale Merchants’ Summer’s End Bazaar. She hoped sales were good because they’d been trying to reduce inventory. She leaned forward, and he did, too, in their easy way of sharing confidences. Things were looking up: someone was very interested in buying the store, but please don’t say anything, she added, already regretting telling him. No, no, of course he wouldn’t, he assured her, and if only he’d known it was Bazaar Days, he would’ve gone down and bought some things for the apartment. Nellie couldn’t imagine what. The sale items displayed on folding tables in front of the hardware store had looked pretty bleak, even to her. She’d worked there yesterday and this morning, and all she’d seen sold were a gray plastic funnel, two car mats, a dusty roll of bubble wrap, and a wooden window screen.

“I know Ben’s just painted everything,” Lazlo was saying. “But you know me, I like color. A little more zing maybe than moonbeam cream.” He drew back his head and laughed. “Oh, oh, I know that look. I know what you’re thinking. Lazlo’s going to go way over the top here.”

“No, I wasn’t thinking that,” her mother said.

“Actually, I’m thinking of yellow, kind of mangoey and warm but not orangey. Like that,” he said, pointing to Nellie’s shirt. “Nellie, we’ll go to the paint store, and you’ll wear that shirt. And after, we’ll go down by the depot and get a lime fizz.”

“Okay!” She jumped up from the step. Lazlo always had time for the things most adults didn’t. Like charades and crazy eights and bicycling through the Harness Falls woods with lunch in their backpacks.

“Next week.” He checked his cell phone. “I’m off Monday.”

“Okay! Great!” she said. Finally, something to look forward to.

“The thing is, Lazlo,” her mother began slowly. “I can’t have you changing your mind again. I mean, if you and James patch things up, then where does that leave me?”

“That’s not going to happen. Believe me!” Lazlo said, but with a long sigh that even Nellie recognized as wistful.

“You left us in kind of a lurch, you know that, don’t you?” she said.

Don’t!
Nellie wanted to shout.
Don’t spoil this! Please!

“It was impulsive. Believe me, I’ve learned my lesson,” he said.

“I never would’ve rented to … to Dolly, you know, to someone like that, but things were getting really tight and, oh God, what a mess that’s turned into.”

“Sandy!” Lazlo set his glass onto the round wicker table. “You’re not blaming me for that, are you? Because I moved out?” His jaw clenched.