It all started to make sense. The pieces of her childhood that had never seemed to fit before now began to slide deliberately into place, like hidden walls in an old house that led to a labyrinth of caves and secrets; each wall opened another and then another, forcing her to plunge further and further into the darkness of the unknown. Once she stepped inside the maze, she knew it would be impossible to turn back. The best she could hope for would be to find her way out once again, or else end up hopelessly lost, forever trapped in the new reality she’d created for herself.
For the first thirteen years of her life, her mother had obviously done her very best to create the illusion of a normal family life. For the last fifteen, Nora and Jimmy had tried hard to keep up the charade. To protect her, they’d simply pretended that the past had never happened. And Julia had let them. Partly because she had no choice. Partly because it was much less painful – a new house, a new name, a new identity and no questions to be answered. She’d taken the name Valenciano so she wouldn’t be teased or ostracized at her new school, on the remote chance some parent figured out the familial connection from the newspapers and told their kid, ‘That new girl in class has a psycho brother who killed their parents! Stay away from her!’ The second they’d returned home from the funerals, her aunt had taken down all pictures of her brother and thrown them away. Then she went into her room and cried. When she finally came out, days later, the ‘subject’ was never spoken of again. She was the niece from upstate whose parents had been killed in a terrible car crash. Andrew had never even existed.
Julia sat down at the kitchen table, her head in her lap. The pieces kept snapping and clicking into place. ‘When?’ she asked.
‘I’ve said enough. You were raised right, is all. Reenie was a saint. She did the work of both parents.’
‘When, Aunt Nora? When?’
Nora turned away again, her lips pursed tight.
Up until the night of the murders, her family had seemed as average as the Musemeci family and their twelve kids down the block. But normal is always a relative term – it depends on who’s doing the judging and who your competition is. Through the crime victims she’d dealt with, she’d learned some hard truths, one of which was when you’re in a dysfunctional family, it’s hard to see it the way others do, because to you, it’s just life. And it’s the only life you’ve ever known. A battered woman thinks all men beat, a sexually abused child accepts a father slipping into her bed at night. It’s only when you get out, and examine your life from the outside looking back in, do you see it for what it really is – sick and different.
It was as though someone had suddenly placed a silk screen over all of her memories, allowing her to see behind the scenes, while the actors changed places and clothes and the sets moved. She remembered the time she was sent with Andy to live at her Nana’s tree farm up in Hunter Mountain. She couldn’t have been more than six, Andy must have been ten. She didn’t know exactly how long they were gone, but they had to sign up for school there. Momma told them Daddy had broken his arm climbing a painting ladder in the living room and needed to recuperate, but when they finally got home, nothing in the house had been painted, and her father didn’t have a cast. And his arm sure looked fine from a distance. But, then again, they were never allowed too close to him after that, because … why? She couldn’t remember. Even for months after they’d been back, she couldn’t remember seeing Daddy much outside of his room. When she did, he was always in pajamas. Soft, blue-striped pants and a white undershirt. Everyday.
Was that the break? Was it the first one? Did he get better? Why could she not see it all before? Why was it all so clear now?
Her mother began to work a lot after that – waitressing, or at the Pearl Paint store as a sales clerk – but Julia couldn’t remember a time after the farm when they were left alone again with their father. There was always Mrs Musemeci’s, or friends’ houses, or, on occasion, they would go to the restaurant with their mom and sit outside on the steps that led to the parking lot reading comics or playing handball until she got off. Funny how she never thought that odd until this very moment.
Julia tried hard to remember her dad, the handsome man with a quirky temper who took her sometimes to fly kites at the Chestnut Street playground. Who got crazy mad when a single pencil went missing from the holder on his desk, but belly-laughed when Peanut the dog ran away. Then there was the time he bought her an ice cream off the Mister Softee truck when she didn’t even know he was outside. Or when he let her steer his new car as she sat in his lap and rode around the block more times than she could count. The memories were there, but they were different. Her mother was like a continuous stream of good memories, assembled into a person. Her father was a person who she had a few good memories of.
‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?’ she said softly, the tears still falling, even though she would have sworn there were no more left to shed. ‘Why didn’t I know about Andy?’
‘Because she didn’t want you to know,’ Nora replied quietly, pulling another paper towel off the roll and handing it to her. ‘We didn’t want you to know. There was no sense. You were only a kid. It was for your own good, Julia. You’ve got to know that.’
‘But why?’ Julia pleaded, looking up. But then she just as quickly answered the question herself. The last piece had slid into its place, the final wall had opened into the darkness. She looked back down at her lap. ‘Because everyone thought I might get it, too,’ she said softly.