Tell No Lies Page 22

  A small smile formed on her lips. "It might be a disappointment to you."

  "I don't think you could do anything right now that would disappoint me."

  They stared at each other, paying respect to the gravity of what they were doing.

  "Tell me," he said.

  "I was home-schooled." The smile widened; she was pleased with herself for having fooled him for so long.

  He stopped at the mole again, leaning closer to inspect it.

  "What are you doing?" she asked.

  "Just looking. Memorizing." When she laughed, he asked, "What's so funny, Jen?"

  "You. You're funny." He knew this time she didn't mean "ha-ha" funny.

  He brought his hand to her face and turned it slightly toward him. "You always say that to me. You said that to me the night we met, do you remember?"

  "Yeah, the infamous night. The second worst night of my life."

  The comment stung. He frowned and pulled his hand away. "Why do you say that?"

  She shook her head. "Never mind. I didn't mean it like it sounded." Her tone of voice told him she wasn't going to say more.

  "I want to know."

  "No. Never mind."

  He waited. "What was the first, then?" he asked instead.

  She sat up, her back to him, and poured herself another glass of wine. Her skin glowed brown in the light of the stereo.

  He touched her back lightly. "Jenny."

  "Jack, did you come here to talk or to fuck?"

  He gasped. She suddenly reminded him of the teenage girls he sometimes interviewed, the ones who tried to act as if nothing mattered. "If I have to choose, I'll choose talk."

  Jenny whipped around and narrowed her eyes at him. "Okay, fine. When I was nine, my parents and my sister were murdered while my brother and I hid in a closet and watched the whole thing." She said it evenly, without emotion, without pause, without taking a breath. When she'd finished the sentence, she turned away from him.

  He stared at her smooth back in shock. His mind first raced to the picture on her dresser. Her sister. He didn't know what to say or what to do. Or what she'd want him to say or do. The facts themselves were not that shocking to him; he'd worked on enough cases that not much really shocked him anymore. But this was different. This was Jenny. Why hadn't she told him before?

  "Jenny, I—"

  "You wanted to know. I told you. You don't have to do the whole 'I'm sorry' routine."

  He grabbed his shirt from the end of the bed and draped it on her shoulders. He took the glass from her and set it on the nightstand and then held her hands. "But I am sorry. I'm sorry for you, but at the risk of sounding selfish" —he paused, knowing she would remember calling him that— "I'm also sorry that you never felt close enough to me to tell me."

  She shook her head contemptuously. "Sometimes you are so dense. I've always felt—" She stopped. "It would have been selfish of me to get that close to you. I'm being selfish right now for allowing you to be here. This is so wrong. If I weren't so buzzed, I'd probably ask you to leave. But I guess it's a little late for that now." She fell back onto the bed, and a haunting, bitter laugh erupted from her throat. "I mean, look at me, I've already got my clothes off." She lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. "We might as well take advantage of it."

  He lay down by her side and opened his arms to her. She moved closer and curled up next to him. She started to shake and then quietly sob. He reached for the edge of the comforter and covered her with it. They lay there like that for a while; he stared at the sheers blowing in the wind while she cried softly. Neither spoke. When she quieted down and he was certain she had fallen asleep, he allowed himself to join her.

  He woke to find her straddling of him. She had his hands pinned on each side of his face, and she was nibbling one of his earlobes. She smelled of fall, of burning leaves, and the hair brushing his cheek was cold, almost damp. He inhaled it all and became intoxicated.

  She'd changed the music. Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon played. He looked over at the clock on her nightstand; it was ten to two. She must have opened the windows all the way because the sheers billowed with abandon and the room was colder. He shivered.

  "Jack." Her voice was eerily intense, different than he'd ever heard it before. He didn't move, didn't say anything. "I want you to fuck me until I scream, understand?"

  His throat constricted and he felt a hard-on growing from her words alone. But at the same time he knew he'd made a grave mistake in coming there. He knew then that he couldn't keep his promise to her, the one about not hurting her, about not being different around her the next time they met. He knew he should leave. But he also knew that what she'd said earlier was right; it was a little late for that now.

  "Understand?" she asked again, more insistently. Her breath was hot in his ear.

  Later he would remember—at the last possible moment, when there was still time to turn back, when he still could have done the right thing—he would remember looking into her eyes and thinking: What have you done to me?

  "I'm starving," she said afterward. They lay side by side on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

  "Me too," he said. He was also freezing.

  She sprang from the bed, grabbed his hand, and pulled him up. He searched for his shorts. She used a fork to poke the cold food, turning up her nose at their prospects.

  "I don't think we should eat this." She headed for the doorway. "Come on."

  He followed her, watching as she strode naked down the steps, head held high, shoulders back. It was warmer in the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and peered inside.

  "There's not a lot in here, I'm sorry to say." She handed him a piece of Swiss cheese, folded another piece for herself, and took a huge bite out of it. "You like fried bologna?" she asked then.

  "I can't say I've ever had it." He was taken aback by her rapidly changing moods. Was this the same woman who just hours ago had confessed that her family had been murdered in front of her?

  "Ah, then you don't know what you're missing." She threw a pack of bologna on the counter, retrieved a jar of mayonnaise from the door of the refrigerator, and then bent down for a small frying pan under the stove. "Can you hand me the bread?" she asked, pointing to a breadbox behind him.

  "Gosh, it's like being in the kitchen of a five-star chef." He couldn't help but tease her.

  "It's usually best to wait until after your belly's full before making fun of the food," she retorted. "Otherwise, you might go hungry."

  He stood behind her at the stove as she assembled the sandwiches right in the pan, resting his chin on her shoulder as he watched.

  "I bet you were one of those girls who slept naked at slumber parties, shocking all the other girls with your brazen lack of modesty."

  "I've never been to a slumber party."

  "Hmm." He let his hand wander down between her legs. As he touched her, she stopped what she was doing and braced her hands on the edge of the counter. Her wetness surprised him, and then he realized why. He removed his hand quickly.

  "Jenny?" How could he have been so stupid? It'd been so long since he'd had to worry about such things. "Are you taking . . . ? I mean, we didn't use anything . . ."

  "Don't you think you should have asked me this earlier?" She turned around to face him. "I trust you, Jack. Can't you trust me?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  She directed her attention back to the stove. "Well, there's a lot more to worry about nowadays than just making a baby." She flipped the sandwiches. "You're here, and you're not supposed to be. I really don't know where else you've been, now do I?" she added.

  He backed away from her and leaned against the counter on the opposite side. He wasn't going to legitimize her comment with a response. But she looked over her shoulder with a sad smile on her face, and he realized she'd just been playing with him. She moved the pan off the heat and went to stand with him.

  "Well, do I?" She pecked him on the lips.

 
"Tell me you didn't mean that. Tell me you already know the answer to that question."

  "No, I didn't mean that. Yes, I already know the answer to that question."

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer. "Tell me you already know you drive me absolutely wild. That you know as you walk around here without a stitch of clothing on that you're making me crazy, and that I've lost my appetite, because when I'm with you I don't care about food, and I want to make love to you again, right here, right now. Tell me you already know I want to stop the clock, because I don't want tomorrow to come, because I don't know what I'm going to do—what we're going to do. Tell me you already know all this, Jen."

  "I already know all this."

  "So what are we gonna do?"

  "I don't know." She paused, as if she really was considering what they could do, that they had options. "How's the song go? 'Humor me and tell me lies.'"

  She was trying to make light of their situation but it wasn't working. He wanted a better answer.

  "I don't know," she said again, more seriously this time. "But I do know that right now you're going to sit down and try my sandwiches, because if you don't, I'm going to be upset that I made them for you and you didn't eat them."

  So they sat across from each other at her table and ate the sandwiches. She'd made three for him, anticipating his ravenous hunger. Neither spoke, but he felt her eyes on him at all times.

  "Do you want to know what happened?" she asked, finally breaking the silence. He'd wondered since waking when, if ever, she'd come back to it. He nodded.

  Perhaps she thought he'd say no, tell her that she didn't have to tell him if she didn't want to. Perhaps that was the kind, gentlemanly response she'd come to expect from him, but things had changed so much between them in the last six hours. She breathed in heavily and then let out a long sigh, as if she needed the extra oxygen to sustain her through the story she was about to tell.

  "It was early summer. School had just let out a few weeks before. It was hot. Very hot already for that time of year. Our house wasn't air-conditioned. It was a Friday evening. To stay cool, Andrea and I were playing on the front porch while we waited for my dad to come home. He'd promised to take us for ice cream at a little stand down the street from our house."

  She stared out the window that faced the rear courtyard, although all she could possibly have seen was the black, wet night. He had the distinct sense that she was no longer in the same room with him.

  "It wasn't like now. Back then, going to get an ice cream was a treat. A special night." She paused, as if more memories were developing, as if the picture was becoming clearer the more she thought about it. "It was almost eight thirty when he got home; he'd been working long hours that week. But it was still light out. There was still about a half hour of daylight left."

  Jenny turned to him as if she just remembered that he was there. "You know that strange quality of light you get some nights, close to sunset? When the sky glows pink and gold on the horizon? When it looks so achingly beautiful that it's hard to believe it's real? It's from the pollution. Did you know that? The most beautiful sunsets are caused by pollution."

  He mumbled "Yes," but stopped short of saying the rest of what was on his mind: He wasn't sure if he wanted to hear what she was about to tell him. The sorrow growing inside him was different than hers, he knew, yet he felt that somehow they were related.

  "I remember when he finally got home, he seemed distracted. But who knows? Maybe I just think I remember he was distracted. Maybe I've made it up to somehow convince myself that there were signs of what was to come, that maybe if someone had seen the signs, they'd all still be alive." She paused again, perhaps realizing she'd gotten slightly off track. "We walked the six blocks to the ice cream stand; it was just us three. I don't know where my brother Brian was—probably in the park playing ball or something. My mom stayed home. She never came. She didn't like the attention she and my dad attracted when they went out together."

  She said it as if he would know what she was talking about. He didn't, but he didn't feel it was the time to remind her of that.

  "The entire time we were at the ice cream stand, he seemed nervous, you know? It's like he knew what was coming but didn't know how to prevent it. I remember Andrea and I kept vying for his attention. We both kept trying to be the silliest, the cutest, the loudest. But he really didn't notice either of us that night, not really." She was silent for a moment, her face betraying doubt about what she'd just said. "Or maybe it was me doing the vying."

  He understood what she was trying to say—as the youngest, Andrea didn't need to. Yet, it was hard for him to imagine Jenny ever having to compete for attention. In the years he'd known her, she'd always been the most magnetic force in any group.

  "I wonder if my memories are skewed by what I learned later," she continued, "by what they claimed happened." He started to ask, "Who's they?" but she kept talking. "But I don't believe it. He was so . . ." She stopped, searching for the right word, and then looked straight at Jack as if he was the clue. "He was so . . . honorable." Her expression scared him. "Do you know what I mean? He was such an honorable man. I just can't believe what they said was true.

  "By the time we got home, it was dark. My mom was waiting for us on the front porch. I remember that in the stillness of the night I could hear the creak of her rocker from a block away. I couldn't see her, though, until we were almost at the base of the porch steps because she had all the lights out. She used to do that in the summer. She'd turn the inside lights off to keep the house cool and she'd turn off the porch lights to keep the bugs away.

  "When we approached and my dad saw her there, he flew off the handle. He was very upset. He yelled at her and told her to get inside. He said that he didn't like her sitting there alone in the dark when he wasn't home. I remember she was so wounded by his tone. And surprised. All of us were. He never spoke to her like that. He never spoke to any of us like that, even Brian. He was always so gentle, so soft-spoken, even when he was disciplining us. It just wasn't his nature to speak harshly to anyone."

  She stood up and moved to the window. She crossed her arms to cover her breasts; for the first time that night, she seemed self-conscious about her nudity. "I'm cold," she said.

  He jumped up from his chair. "I'll get you something."

  He first grabbed his suit coat from the living room, but as he started back for the kitchen he noticed an afghan folded over the back of the sofa. She smiled slightly as he draped it over her shoulders. He tried to pull her to him, to tell her she didn't need to say more if she didn't want to, but she rebuffed his attempts to comfort her.

  "Do you think he knew?" she said. She paced in front of the window.

  "I don't think I—"

  "I can't believe he did. He would have done something, I think. Don't you?"

  Her tone was insistent. He wondered if she believed, in some distorted way, that she'd already told him everything he needed to know to answer her questions.

  "What happened, Jen, after you got home?" He made his own question as insistent as hers.

  "We started to get ready for bed. We took showers to cool off. Andrea and I with my mom, and Brian with my dad." She laughed gently, but somewhat bitterly, Jack thought. "My mom was very weird about that, you know—the boys and the girls taking their showers separately. I mean, my God, we were just kids."

  All Jack could think was that Jenny hadn't inherited her mother's modesty.

  "It took me a long time to fall asleep. Andrea and I slept together and she always jabbered and sang to herself every night for at least an hour before she'd fall asleep. Usually, it didn't bother me. In a way it was like my own personal lullaby. But not that night. I sensed something was different, I think.

  "Of course, that's another one of those memories that perhaps I've made up. I think to myself—how could I have remembered that? Maybe I've concocted it in my head with the passage of time." She stopped pacing and sat down. "I guess in a way
it doesn't really matter, does it? Anyway, at some point I heard Andrea get up. I guess to get a drink of water."

  Her back was to him now and he placed his hand on her shoulder. To his surprise, she reached up and grabbed his hand with both of hers and pulled him around to the chair next to her. She continued to hold his hand, tracing and studying the veins on top and then turning it over and doing the same to the creases on his palm. The action saddened and aroused him at the same time.

  She breathed in deeply again, and he watched her shoulders rise and fall rhythmically. He knew she was very close, and he questioned where he was taking her, and why.

  "Jenny, you don't have to tell me. It's okay." But maybe it was his own fear, not hers, that made him want her to stop. Now that he'd gained her trust, what if he couldn't give her what she needed? What if he couldn't keep his end of the unspoken bargain?

  "I think that's what did her in, you know? Her thirst." It was as if she hadn't even heard him. "How does that happen, huh? A little kid is thirsty, so she gets out of bed to get a drink, and she ends up dead. How does that happen?" She began to cry. Once her tears started, they came fast. She was still holding his hand and the tears dropped onto it, hot and wet. "Seems she interrupted some negotiations. They said that she became a bargaining tool. Brian and I saw it because I heard yelling and got scared. Andrea wasn't in our bed so I went to Brian's room, and we snuck down together. The house was dark, but the moonlight lit the room enough to see."

  Jack was beginning to understand that Jenny's father must have known his assailant, but other than that fact, the connection between them hadn't been explained.

  "We hid in a closet, and we could see them lying on the floor, the three of them."

  Her voice was hard to understand through her crying. He leaned in, his face inches from hers, both hands on face, and tried to calm her.

  "Shh," he whispered. "Jenny, shh. You don't have to do this. It's okay."

  "He had the gun at Andrea's head," she said, her voice breaking. "She was first."