Killing Cousins (21 page)

“I just think you should say something to Rachel, other than ‘Good shot, honey!'” I said to Rudy.

Rudy, my ever lovable and generous-hearted husband, was leaning up against the countertop in our kitchen. He was eating an Oreo, the inside first, and teasing our dog Fritz with any possible crumbs. He wore his long-sleeved blue oxford shirt and khakis for work, but he hadn't put his shoes on yet, so our wiener dog kept licking his toes, trying to find crumbs.

“And why are you eating Oreos for breakfast?” I asked, irritated in general.

“I'm not eating Oreos for breakfast. I had eggs and waffles for breakfast. I'm just eating the Oreos because I want to and I can eat them anytime,” he said. “Lighten up.”

“You know…our daughter broke another kid's nose.”

“I know,” he said, glowing.

“You're seriously missing something here, Rudy.”

“What? Davie got too friendly with her and she put him in his place,” he said.

“Look, I agree that I want our girls to be able to defend themselves in case they are ever attacked,” I said. “But we shouldn't condone Rachel's actions because a kid flipped her bra strap. I mean, self-defense is one thing, but if we condone this, then who's to stop her when the next kid just
looks
at her breasts?”

Rudy stood up straight. “Hey, that is my daughter you're talking about. And I don't want to think about any kid
looking
at anything but her face.”

Rudy was having a difficult time dealing with the fact that Rachel
has
breasts, much less that they are growing. He had equal difficulty with the fact that she was no longer that little girl who used to wear ribbons in her hair and big pleated dresses with gigantic bows. Now, she wears bell-bottom jeans with yin/yang symbols on the rear-end pockets, and her straight hair is parted in the middle—a
crooked
part, for that's the in thing—and hangs shaggily around her shoulders. She is still a kid in many ways. She still loves boy bands and Harry Potter, and on occasion, if nobody is looking, she'll still play Barbies with her sister. But in another year, she'll be a full-fledged teenager, complete with pimples and boys. Rudy was in denial.

“Boys are going to look at her, Rudy. And someday they'll—”

“Don't go there!” he said, and held a hand up and shut his eyes. “I can't deal with this.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was one of those sweaty, hormone-driven teenagers once, and I know what I used to…She's not dating until she's thirty. That's that. Can I just enjoy my cookies, for crying out loud?”

“Look, we don't have to worry about her dating, not just yet anyway. We've got a few years. My point is, she'll be leaving broken bones in a path from here to Arkansas if we don't do something about this now.”

“And there's a problem with that?”

“Rudy!”

“All right, all right,” he said. “You're right.”

“I'm just saying that she should have gone to the teacher or the principal first, and then if he did it again, she could have taken more drastic actions, but we can't just condone the violence. Because if we condone it enough, someday she'll be the aggressor and we'll be getting phone calls from the school telling us to come get our bully. Not to mention we'll have to deal with the parents of all the wounded children. As it is, I'm not looking forward to seeing Davie's parents anytime soon.”

“I think you're overreacting,” he said.

“Probably. But, I just—” I took a deep breath. “One of my New Year's resolutions was to be more tolerant and accepting. And to be kinder, more forgiving. In this world where people shoot other people for having a soda bottle in their hands, we need to practice and teach tolerance and forgiveness.”

“Okay, I hear you,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender. “Did
you
talk to her?”

“Yes,” I said. “I let her know that I was happy she could take care of herself and that Davie was a jerk. But I also told her that if she ever busted a kid's nose again for something like this, I would ground her until her wedding day. I mean really, Rudy, was his behavior that bad?”

Rudy shrugged. “I used to do the same thing.” He blushed. “Sometimes worse.”

“Exactly. Davie's parents need to teach him to keep his hands to himself, and we need to teach Rachel not to take any crap. But not to go beating people up over every little thing. We're lucky she didn't get suspended. If it hadn't been for the fact that she's never been in trouble a day in her life, they probably would have suspended her.”

“I know,” he said. “But I was just so proud of her.”

I couldn't help myself. The thought of my waiflike daughter hauling off and slugging Davie Roberts was just too surreal for me not to laugh. “Me, too,” I said. We laughed together a minute and then I straightened up. “But only for a moment.”

My son, Matthew, came toddling into the kitchen with his sippy cup in one hand, a plastic velociraptor in the other. He wore his Batman pajamas, but the cape had come off somewhere in his bed. Rudy picked him up and gave him a big hug. “No flicking bra straps when you get older,” he said to him with a stern face.

Right, like that was going to work.

“I gotta go,” he said, giving me a kiss and handing off Matthew. “I'll talk to her tonight.”

“Okay,” I said.

I was late getting to my office. First, I had taken Matthew to my mother's house for the day, then dropped Rachel and Mary off at school, where I'd had a talk with the principal about yesterday. I'd asked him to please stress to Davie's parents that their son's behavior wasn't entirely acceptable, either.

I had barely sat down, when there was a knock at my door. “Come in,” I said.

“Hi,” a woman said. I stared at her for the longest time and then realized that she was the woman who had been on the tour yesterday. Stephanie…Connelly. Surely she didn't think that I had her family tree finished already.

“Ms. Connelly,” I said, and stood.

“I was just wondering if you had a chance to look over the form I filled out.”

Well, she was certainly a tenacious one, I'd give her that. She wore jeans and a pink sweater, no jewelry except a wedding band, very little makeup. “No,” I said. “I just got in. Ms. Connelly, I won't be able to have anything for you to see for at least a week.”

Her expression fell. “Oh, well, I know that. I just thought you'd at least have looked at the paperwork.”

“No, not yet.”

The phone rang then. I held a finger up to her as I answered it. It was my mother. “Hi, Mom,” I said. Mom's voice was pleasant on the other end of the phone, asking me if we'd come to dinner later that evening. “Sure. I don't think we have anything else going on. We'll see you about six. Look, I have to go. There's somebody in my office. Love you, too. Bye.”

Stephanie Connelly just stood there, picking at her thumbnail with her fingernail and biting her lower lip. What was her problem? Her gaze fell to the photograph of my children that I had sitting on my desk. It was one I had taken just two weeks ago—all three of them out in the snow with the lopsided snowman they'd spent the whole day making. Rosy cheeks, red noses, glistening eyes. They looked the picture of happy, healthy children.

“Are those your children?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She just smiled and leaned a little closer to get a better look.

“Ms. Connelly—”

“Could you just look at my paperwork?” she asked. “It took a lot for me to come here and actually do this, and…I want—no, I
need
for you to at least look at it.”

I fished out the Advil from the top drawer in my desk and put two in the palm of my hand. It was going to be a long day. “Just a minute,” I said. I went to the soda machine and got a Dr Pepper, then chased down the Advil with one swallow. Back in the office, I seated myself, cleared my throat, and made a big production of retrieving her file from the top of my desk and opening it.

I read that last line again. Dwight Keith. I looked up at her sharply, and she flinched. Then I looked back at the paper and read her daughter's name again. Julia
Victory
Connelly. My name. Victory is my real name; Torie is my nickname. Dwight Keith is my father's name. A chill settled in my chest as I looked up at her once more.

“Is this some kind of joke?” I asked. “I…don't understand.”

The phone rang again. I picked it up. It was Eleanore Murdoch. “Not now,” I said. “No, no, Eleanore, I'll talk to you later. Bye.”

Tears welled in Ms. Connelly's eyes as she shoved her hands as deep in her pockets as they could possibly go. “I shouldn't have come,” she said, and turned to leave, but I didn't let her go.

“What is this all about? What's the meaning of this?” I asked. What was she trying to say? What was she trying to accomplish by filling out her forms falsely?

Taking a deep breath, she just blurted it out. “I'm your sister.”

I took another two Advil.

I didn't know what to say to her. I mean, it was preposterous. My father…

My father.

No, it was silly. I would have known if I had a sister, for crying out loud. I just sat there, blinking, not really sure what to say to her. She obviously expected something from me, but I didn't know what. And I'm sure my silence was not at all welcome.

“I…I think there's been a mistake,” I said finally.

“No,” she said. “There is no mistake. I am Dwight's daughter.”

I am Dwight's daughter.

Her words echoed around in my head. My mind reeled and spun. A roaring in my ears blocked out all sound, so that I found myself in a vacuum, silent except for her words bouncing around. It was my turn to fight back tears. The familiarity in her eyes…They were my father's eyes. She was looking at me with my father's eyes.
My
eyes. But then, that could only mean…

My parents hadn't divorced until I was twelve. She was only five years younger than I was. The betrayal was like a bitter pill, too big for me to swallow. I felt as if a knife had been shoved in my heart.

“You can call him and ask him,” she said.

Call him and ask him?
Then that would mean that he knew about her. The fact that he would know about her and not ever have told me hurt me even more. How could he keep this from me for thirty years? Knowing how I felt about family, knowing I hated being an only child. When I was a kid, I would ask Santa for a sibling. Every single year. Wasn't it just like him to keep something to himself that I had always wanted? It was as if somebody had just twisted the imaginary blade that had penetrated my flesh moments ago. Just call him and ask him. That simple. With one phone call, shatter my whole world.

“I don't think so,” I said.

Call him and ask him.
Did she know his phone number?

“But…” she began, unsure of what to say. “I…”

“You what? What do you want exactly?” I asked, trying hard not to be too angry.

“I want a relationship with my sister.” She shrugged.

“Right,” I said, pushing my chair away from my desk and then standing. “Well…I'm not your sister.”

Before I could ask her to leave my office, Elmer Kolbe came bursting through the door. He's our fire chief, way past retirement age, and all-around good guy. “Torie, you gotta come see this.”

“See what?”

“You know how the river's been down so low?”

“Yeah?”

“You can see the wreck.”

“The wreck.”

“The Phantom,”
he said. “The steamboat that sank back in 1919.”

“You're kidding,” I said. But I found myself at odds with how I wanted to feel. Any other time, I would have jumped over my desk and taken off to the river like Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. The legend of
The Phantom
is something told on every bar stool of every pub and diner in New Kassel. I'd grown up with the legend. I'd grown up, like everybody else, wondering if there would ever be a time that Old Man River would be low enough that we could actually view the wreckage. And it had finally happened. But now, with Ms. Connelly standing there with her news so fresh in the air, I was just sort of numb.

I was happy for Elmer's interruption, I decided. Because it saved me from any further discussion with Ms. Connelly. It saved me from having to kick her out of my office.

“Come on,” he said, waving a hand at me. “Come and look.”