Pat Cadigan
I was just a little girl when Lily O’Dell was murdered.
This was before everyone was connected to the internet and people posted things online straight from cell phones. Infamy was harder to achieve back then, but Lily O’Dell’s murder qualified. It was the worst crime ever committed in the suburb of Saddle Hills, or at least the goriest. One night in June, Lily’s abusive husband Gideon finally did what he’d been threatening to do for the two years they’d been married, using a steak knife from the set her sister had given them as a wedding present.
The police had already been regular visitors to the O’Dell house. Lily had pressed charges the first couple of times. Then a woman officer mentioned a restraining order and a jail term instead of probation and community service. After that, Lily always gave the cops some prefab story, like she’d fallen down the cellar stairs and hit the cement floor face-first, and when Gideon had tried to help her up, she’d been so dizzy she’d fallen again. Was she a klutz or what? Maybe she needed remedial walking-downstairs lessons, ha, ha, but not cops coming between her and her lawfully wedded husband, no way, José!
Anywhere else, Lily O’Dell’s murder might have been predictable, but people didn’t get murdered in Saddle Hills. They didn’t leave their doors unlocked—that era was long gone—but the streets were safe, the schools were top-notch, and all the parks had the newest playground equipment and zero perverts lurking near the swings. This was the true-blue suburban American dream and the O’Dells didn’t fit in.
For one thing, they didn’t have kids and for another, they weren’t even homeowners—they lived in one of the neighborhoods’ few rental properties. No one expected they’d last long. Sooner or later, one of them would leave the other, who would skip out on the lease. Or they’d decide to start over somewhere else and skip out together. The company that owned the place would keep their damage deposit, shampoo the carpets, and rent to people who didn’t need the police to break up their fights.
Instead, Gideon O’Dell chased his wife around the block and through several backyards before catching her in front of our house. He stabbed her so many times, the knife broke and he was too blind with rage to notice—he just kept pounding with the handle until it slipped out of his grip. Everybody said when the cops arrived, he was crawling around looking for the blade.
And I slept through the whole thing. At four, I slept like the dead.
• • •
Mr. Grafton in the house across from ours had some kind of special power attachment for his garden hose. From my bedroom window, I watched him using it on the spot where the O’Dells had played out the final scene of their marriage. It didn’t look to me like there was anything left. When the FOR SALE sign appeared on his front lawn, I figured he was tired of power spraying the road, which he’d started doing at least twice a week.
It was more than that, as I learned from my favorite hiding place behind the living room sofa. My father told my mother and my older sister, Jean (who at thirteen enjoyed the privilege of adult conversation) that Mr. Grafton’s wife forced him to go to the doctor. Now he had medicine that was supposed to make him stop power spraying the road. He told my father he didn’t like how it made him feel. Besides, he wasn’t a nutjob. He hadn’t hallucinated the O’Dell killing, it had really happened. So it wasn’t his fault that when he looked out his window at night, he could see it again, as clearly as if it were happening right that very moment.
My mother said Mr. Grafton was such a gentle man, he could barely bring himself to pull a weed. Jean said that explained why Mrs. G did all the gardening, but not why Mr. G had lost his marbles.
I expected my parents to jump on her for that. But to my surprise my father said, “No, honey, Gideon O’Dell lost his marbles, and one of the worst things about people like him is the effect they have on everyone around them.”
“Yeah, I bet Lily O’Dell would be the first to agree with you,” Jean said.
That got her a scolding. My father told her what had happened to Lily O’Dell was a tragedy, not a joke; my mother said it was bad luck to disrespect the dead. Then Jean peered over the back of the sofa and found me. “Hey, what do you call a little pitcher with big ears?” she said.
“Gale,” my parents said in unison. My father reached over, picked me up by the back of my overalls, and sat me on his lap. He started lecturing me about sneaking around and listening to private conversations. But I knew he wasn’t really mad because he did it as the Two-Hundred-Year-Old Professor with his glasses pushed far down his nose, which always made me giggle till I hurt.
The Graftons sold their house a month later. Jean asked if we were going to move too. My father said just thinking about having to pack everything up made him want to run screaming into the street. It was supposed to be funny but none of us laughed.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I wasn’t thinking. Maybe without Joe Grafton power washing the street every two days, we can finally put it behind us.”
“Stains like that don’t wash out so easily,” my mother said.
• • •
My parents split up the summer I turned fourteen. I was surprised although I shouldn’t have been. Watching them grow apart hadn’t been much fun, and I’d had to do it alone. Jean went through high school in such a whirlwind of activities, she was never home even before she left for college.
I knew something was wrong but I thought they’d fix it; they fixed everything else. My parents were good people. We’d never had the police at our house, nor would my father ever chase my mother through the street with a steak knife. If there was a problem, they’d solve it.
Only they didn’t. They sat me down between them on the sofa to explain that my father was moving into a condo closer to his job downtown. My mother and I would stay in the house. I wouldn’t see as much of my father as before but all I had to do was call and we were still a family bullshit bullshit bullshit.
It was all so polite and calm, as if they were talking about something normal, like a dental appointment. Finally, they wound down and asked if I had any questions.
“Yeah,” I said. “What the fuck?”
They didn’t even have the decency to look shocked by the f-word. After a long moment, my mother said, “We know how upsetting this is, Gale—”
“You don’t know shit!” I yelled, wanting them to feel like I’d slapped them. Then I ran up to my room and slammed the door so hard it should have shattered into a million pieces, or at least cracked down the middle. I felt even more betrayed when it didn’t.
My first impulse was to call Jean and scream at her. She’d already know—yet another betrayal. Parents were on one side and kids were on the other, that was the natural law. She was supposed to be on my side, not collaborating with them.
I put down the phone on my desk. My parents would come up to try talking to me; if they heard me on the phone with my traitor sister, they’d put their traitor ears to my traitor door. I waited to hear the telltale creak in the hallway. I said loudly, “Dear Diary, I wish my parents would drop dead.”
They didn’t even knock. “That’s horrible!” my mother said. All the color had gone out of her face except for two pink spots on her cheeks. “How can you talk like that?”
“Because she knew we were listening,” my father said, although he didn’t look too sure of himself. “It’s completely normal for her to be angry. Even Jean’s p.o.’ed at us.”
“Oh, well, as long as everything’s completely normal, we can all relax,” I said. “It’s not like anyone’s getting stabbed in the middle of the street.”
My parents looked at each other. “Maybe we should move,” my mother said.
But we didn’t. My parents talked to a couple of realtors, but there was nothing available nearby. We’d have had to move farther away, which was out of the question. My parents wanted to keep me in the same school.
I could have screwed that up by acting out. It would have been their worst nightmare and I spent hours fantasizing in my room. Drugs or booze would get me suspended, but for immediate expulsion, I’d need a weapon, ideally a gun. With my luck, though, I’d end up shooting my own ass off. A knife would do, we had plenty of those.
Or I could just ditch school—that would actually create more legal problems for my parents than for me. My fleeting moment of guilt was drowned out by a rush of anger.
So what? Screw them. They do whatever they want, never giving a crap about my feelings. They don’t have to, they’re grown-ups. They can get away with fucking murder.
Except Gideon O’Dell—he hadn’t, and Lily hadn’t even gotten away with her own life. My mother’s words came back to me: Stains like that don’t wash out so easily. I thought it was odd she’d put it that way, as if she didn’t think whatever Mr. Grafton saw had been all in his head.
Which made me wonder for the zillionth time how the hell I could have slept through something like that. I was still a sound sleeper. One night not long before the O’Dell murder, lightning struck a nearby transformer during an especially violent storm, and there were fire engines and police cars all over the place. The commotion kept everyone in a six-block radius up all night, but if the power hadn’t still been out the next morning, I’d never have known.
• • •
At first, I thought I was dreaming. Then I heard more pounding and a male voice demanding someone answer the door. When my parents went downstairs, I almost went, too, before I remembered I was still mad and I didn’t want them to think I cared.
I raised the screen on my bedroom window so I could lean out and see what was going on. Two police officers were on our steps with my parents; they had on their silly matching robes, like they were just regular and my father wasn’t sleeping in Jean’s old room until he moved out next week.
Another police car pulled up in front of the Graftons’ old house. I could see the people who lived there huddled close together on their front steps, but I couldn’t tell if any of their robes matched.
“. . . bed between eleven and eleven-thirty?” one cop on the steps was saying.
“I went to bed shortly after eleven.” My mother’s voice sounded draggy and plaintive. “Don was watching a news program.”
“Were you asleep when your husband came to bed, ma’am?” the second cop asked.
“She usually is,” my father said coolly.
“I usually am,” my mother said, echoing his tone.
I couldn’t blame them for not wanting to tell the cops they were sleeping separately; it wasn’t like they were the O’Dells.
“Now, your daughter Gale—is she all right?” asked the other cop.
“Of course she’s all right.” My mother was suddenly wide awake and pissed off.
“We’d like to confirm that.”
“It’s four a.m.!” my father snapped. “She’s asleep.”
“Well, actually . . .” The second cop turned to look directly at me. So did everyone else.
I glared at everyone for a long moment before I pulled my head in. Lowering the screen, I saw the third cop talking to the people across the way. One was pointing emphatically at the street. Or rather, at a particular spot on the street.
I went downstairs. One cop was in the living room with my father and the other was in the kitchen with my mother. Sexist much? I thought. Good old Saddle Hills. The cops asked me if I’d seen or heard anything unusual, like screaming. I told them the way I slept, I wouldn’t have heard a rock concert.
I thought they’d leave when it became obvious we’d all been asleep till they’d woken us up, but they didn’t. Apparently cop-obvious was different from obvious-obvious. They went through the entire house and my parents admitted that despite their matching robes, they weren’t happily married after all. It got boring; I stretched out on the sofa with a paperback.
The next thing I knew, the police were telling my parents they were sorry for the inconvenience in that way they have that’s somehow both sincere yet totally detached. It was getting light when I stumbled back to my room and dropped dead.
A few hours later, my father’s angry voice woke me. Were the cops back? I rolled out of bed and raised the screen.
It took a few moments before I realized the guy on the front steps was from across the street. He was trying to explain something but my father wasn’t having any, telling the guy to get the hell off our property if he didn’t want to find himself on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
The guy gave up. But as he started down the steps, he looked up and saw me. I drew back, hoping he wasn’t stupid enough to try talking to me. He wasn’t.
• • •
Or rather, not then. He waited until my father moved out and rang the doorbell right after my mother left for the supermarket. I considered not answering, then decided if he got weird, I could call the cops. Or my father.
“Yes?” I asked stiffly through the locked screen door. He was a bit younger than my father and not much taller than I was, with a round face, thinning blond hair, and the kind of pale skin that burns even when it’s overcast. The shadows under his puffy brown eyes made him look like he’d been up all night.
“I knew exactly what I was going to say before I came over here,” he said unhappily. “Now I can’t remember.”
“Oh.” I had no idea what to do with a helpless adult. “Retrace your steps, maybe it’ll come back to you.” I started to close the door.
“It’s not that,” he said quickly. “It’s—I don’t know how to begin.”
So what did he expect me to do? “Maybe you should talk to my parents, Well, my mother.” I started to close the door again.
“Have you ever seen a ghost?” he asked desperately.
I still didn’t let him in.
• • •
His name was Ralph Costa and he was why the cops had visited us in the middle of the night. He’d seen a man stabbing a woman in the street and thought it was my parents.
“Why would you think that?” I asked, thinking maybe I should have shut the door on him after all.
“She ran up your front steps and tried to open the door,” Ralph Costa said. “I thought she lived here. But he dragged her into the street and . . .”
“Stabbed her a lot?” I suggested.
He looked sick. “At first, I couldn’t even move. Then I was on the phone, yelling for the cops to get here now. I woke May and the kids and made them stay in the back of the house so they wouldn’t see. But when the cops came, there was no body, no blood, just . . . nothing. But I know I wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating. I saw a man kill a woman.”
I’d heard every variation of the story—whoever told it would say Gideon almost caught Lily in their backyard—but this was new. “Was she screaming?”
“Of course—she must have been, I heard her—” He cut off, looking puzzled, and I could practically see him replaying it in his mind. “I heard her.” He shook his head. “I tried to apologize to your father but he was pretty irate.”
“Yeah, the cops tromped around for hours looking for bloody knives and dead bodies. It was pretty bad.” I couldn’t help rubbing it in; it had been pretty bad. Worse, the cops had asked the neighbors if my father ever beat us and now they were all looking at us funny.
“I really am sorry,” Ralph Costa was saying. “If it makes you feel any better, the cops stayed at our house a lot longer, asking about my mental health. They didn’t mention the O’Dells until just before they left. My wife looked it up later on microfiche at the library. No one ever told us.”
“You’re still pretty new,” I said. “And it was a long time ago.”
“Not even ten years,” Ralph said, which reminded me time was different for grown-ups. “Did anyone else ever see—well, what I saw?”
I considered telling him about Mr. Grafton and decided against it. The house had changed hands twice before the Costas had moved in, which was pretty unusual. But my parents said the first people had moved to be closer to a sick relative, and the second ones got a sudden job transfer. No ghosts.
“I’m a kid,” I said finally. “Nobody ever tells me anything.” It wasn’t a total lie. Mr. Grafton hadn’t told me about seeing the O’Dells. “Hey, I got stuff to do before my mother gets back. Have you talked to the neighbors?”
He looked unhappy. “Asking people if they’ve ever seen ghosts replaying a gruesome murder is no way to make friends.”
I almost said I was sorry, then thought, why should I apologize? He was the one seeing things. He thanked me for listening and left, and I went to sort laundry in the basement, where I couldn’t hear the doorbell.
I didn’t tell my mother about Ralph Costa right away, but the longer I put it off, the harder it would be to explain why. And if she heard about it from Ralph first, she’d have a cow: A stranger has to tell me what you’re doing—do you know how that makes me look? Divorce had made her touchy.
But what could I say? Hey, Mom, that guy who thought Dad murdered you dropped by while you were at the supermarket. Turns out he saw Lily O’Dell’s ghost. But wait, it gets better—did you know Lily ran up our front steps and Gideon dragged her into the street by her hair? I couldn’t even imagine that shitstorm, but I was pretty sure it would end up being all my fault.
God, grown-ups had no idea of the trouble they made for kids just by running their big fat mouths. Damn them, I thought, feeling angry, miserable, and cornered. Damn them all, even the ones who didn’t stab their wives to death in the street. How the hell was a kid supposed to deal?
Finally, a couple of nights later, fortified by takeout beer-battered fish and chips, I decided I’d just go for it. Only what I heard myself say was, “Mom, did I really sleep through Lily O’Dell getting killed?”
For a moment, I didn’t think she was going to answer. Then: “Actually, I’m pretty sure you saw the whole thing.”
I felt my jaw drop. She watched me gape at her for a few moments, then sighed. “If I tell you about that night—and I can only tell you what I saw—promise me you won’t obsess about it.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“I mean it. And don’t go blabbing to all your friends.”
Before I could answer, her hand was clamped around my wrist, not tightly enough to be painful but it wasn’t comfortable, either. “Seriously. If I find out you’re trying to impress your friends with this, the consequences will be”—she paused for half a second—“severe.”
What are you gonna do, kill me? I suppressed the thought, hoping her mom ESP hadn’t picked it up. “I give you my word.”
Like that, she let go and was back to casual. “You were sleepwalking that night.”
“You never told me I sleepwalked!” I was flabbergasted.
“Only a few times, and it never happened again after that night.” She shrugged.
“Did you take me to the doctor?”
“Of course we did,” she said, almost snapping. I opened my mouth to say something else and she glared at me. “Gale, do you want to talk about sleepwalking or Lily O’Dell? I’m too tired for both.”
I was on the verge of telling her I was sorry motherhood was such a burden but caught myself. Her lawyer had phoned earlier. Those calls seldom put her in a good mood.
“That night?” I said in a small voice.
“It was a Saturday,” my mother said. “After you and Jean went to bed, your father and I stayed up to watch a movie on cable. You got up three times, first wanting a glass of water, then to ask for a PB&J. The third time, you were sleepwalking.”
My mother sighed. “We didn’t think you could open the front door. Even if you managed to work the bottom lock, you weren’t tall enough to reach the deadbolt or the chain. But we didn’t know how resourceful you could be even asleep. You got your step stool from the front closet.”
Now she chuckled a little. “The chain lock was still a few inches out of reach, though, so you used the yardstick. It was in the corner right beside the front door. Moving the chain with it wasn’t easy—I tried it myself later—but you were on a mission to get that door open.
“You’d have been out on the steps with Lily O’Dell if not for the fact that the screen door lock kept sticking. I oiled it, your dad tried axle grease, and Jean even put mayonnaise on it once but that only made it stink and stick.
“So when Lily O’Dell came up the front steps and begged you to let her in, there was nothing you could do. Except maybe wake up.”
My mother’s face turned sad. “When I got to you, Gideon O’Dell was dragging Lily into the street. He might have already stabbed her a few times or maybe he’d just beaten her bloody—” My mother stopped and shuddered. “Just beaten her bloody. Jesus wept.
“Anyway, there was so much blood on your face and your pajama top, I was afraid Gideon O’Dell had hurt you, too. But it was all Lily’s—she’d pushed in the screen and grabbed at you. I cleaned you up, changed your pajamas, then put you to bed in our room and told you to stay there. Naturally, you didn’t. I found you asleep by the window in your room.”
I waited, but she didn’t go on. “Then what?”
“We let you sleep in. You woke up around noon and as far as we could tell, you didn’t remember a thing.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible.” I was picturing Lily O’Dell on the other side of the screen door, beaten and bloody and begging for help.
“You were very young,” my mother said for what must have been the millionth time. “The doctor said your mind was protecting you from trauma.”
“But wasn’t Jean traumatized?”
My mother smiled a little. “I wouldn’t let her put on her glasses. Your sister was so nearsighted she couldn’t see past the end of the driveway.” She finished the last bit of wine in her glass. “If you’ve got questions, ask now—after this, the subject is closed. Forever.”
“But I need to think,” I said, wincing inwardly at how whiny I sounded.
“Think faster, kid.” There was a hard, all-but-pitiless edge in my mother’s voice I’d rarely heard before. Sometimes she sounded like that with her lawyer, and most of the time with my father. But she was supposed to show she loved me no matter what. Those were the rules, she was my mother.
Correction: she was my getting-divorced mother; she made her own rules.
She put her hand on the base of her empty wine glass and I blurted, “Did you take me to another doctor? Like a psychologist or a shrink?”
“We didn’t need to,” she said. “Dr. Tran said you were perfectly healthy and suggested we consider the kind of deadbolt that needs an indoor key. Or put a bell on your bedroom door.” My mother laughed a little. “We tried that. But not for long—your singing ‘Jingle Bells’ out of season drove us all crazy. You never sleepwalked again anyway.”
That explained a vague memory of singing Christmas carols in an inflatable kiddie pool in the backyard. “Did you talk to Dr. Tran about my repressed memory?”
My mother glanced up at the ceiling. “It’s not a repressed memory.”
“But—”
“You’ve forgotten plenty else in your life and those aren’t repressed memories,” my mother said. A hard little line appeared between her eyebrows and I knew I was pushing it. “Nobody remembers every detail of their lives.”
“But something like that ?” I said.
“I told you, your brain was protecting you,” my mother replied. “Probably saved you years of therapy, if not decades. But if you drive yourself crazy because you weren’t traumatized, I’ll go upside your head.”
“Is that why you and Dad are getting divorced?” I asked. “Because you’re traumatized?”
I expected her to snap at me but she only shrugged. “I’ll have to ask my shrink.”
“You have a shrink?”
“Yeah. I’m getting divorced.” She gave me a sideways look under half-closed eyelids. “Thought you knew.”
“Mom! Seriously—”
“That’s private.” She got up and started clearing the table.
“Wait,” I pleaded, “I have more questions.”
She leaned against the kitchen counter. “Give it a rest, will you? It was horrible but it’s over. You have no good reason to bring it up.”
“Actually, someone else brought it up,” I said. “A few days ago.”
• • •
My mother didn’t march over to Ralph Costa’s house immediately, or even the next morning, which surprised me. I asked her what she was going to do but all she said was, “I’m thinking,” and warned me not to ask again. I thought the suspense was going to kill me, but then something unbelievable happened.
Gideon O’Dell came back.
• • •
He looked completely different without the long hair, beard, and moustache, but I recognized him immediately.
I was reading a book under the redbud tree in the front yard. My mother had said it would have to go this summer. I was sulking about it when a truck with a crew of tree men from Green & Serene pulled up in front of the house next door, and Gideon O’Dell hopped out of the driver’s side. For a second, I thought he actually was a ghost, except he was wearing Green & Serene overalls and cap.
I froze.
Everybody had said he’d be in prison for the rest of his life. Had he escaped? If so, wouldn’t he have tried to get as far away from here as possible?
Sure—unless he was hiding in plain sight to throw everyone off. Only he didn’t act like someone in hiding. He and the rest of the crew went to work trimming the trees in the Coopermans’ front yard like they were all just guys and none of them had killed his wife in the middle of this very street. Because they didn’t know, I thought; if they had, they wouldn’t have given him any tools with sharp edges.
Eventually, they went into the Coopermans’ backyard and I bolted for the house.
• • •
I didn’t tell my mother. She was an office manager now for a small law firm (a different one than her lawyer’s) and the job had really perked her up. New wardrobe, new hairstyle, even new friends she went out with on the weekends. It made me realize how little I’d seen her smile or heard her laugh in the last few years, even before the divorce. The last thing I wanted to do was spoil everything. Maybe it wouldn’t have but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t think it was good news. At the same time, I was bursting to tell her because maybe someone at her job would know why he was walking around free.
Telling my father during one of our weekend visits was even more out of the question. I’d never told him about Ralph Costa because I was afraid he’d drive up on the guy’s lawn and take a swing at him. Plus, he wasn’t doing as well as my mother, morale-wise, although I thought that was the condo. It felt more like a long-stay hotel than a real home. I asked my father if he were going to look for something else once the divorce was settled.
He was actually surprised at the question. “Of course not. I got a good deal on it. This is home for the foreseeable future.” He gave a short laugh that didn’t have much humor in it. “Assuming any part of the future is foreseeable.”
Oh, Dad, I thought, you have no idea.
Nobody did, just me. And Gideon O’Dell. Like we were the only two people on the planet.
Whenever the Green & Serene crews were around, I stayed in, which was a lot, since everybody in the neighborhood used them. Every so often, I’d peek out a window to see what they were doing (what he was doing). But what really happened was, every so often, I didn’t peek out a window. I watched Gideon O’Dell like a hawk, and to be honest, it was pretty boring, All he did was work hard.
Well, so far. Just because he only cut branches now didn’t mean he was reformed.
And he looked so criminal. The saggy tank tops he wore didn’t cover much; using binoculars, I could see how crappy his tattoos were. On the left side of his chest there was a wide rectangular patch that looked like several layers of skin had been scraped off.
He’d had a tattoo removed, I realized; probably something with Lily’s name. His second try at cutting her out of his life like she’d never existed. If so, she’d left a pretty big scar.
Not just on him, either. I thought of Mr. Grafton and Ralph Costa, and even my parents. And me, of course, with the only scar no one could see.
Dammit, how the fuck was Gideon O’Dell out of prison?
• • •
Strangely enough, a cop show rerun gave me the answer. A guy who had killed someone in a fit of rage took a plea bargain for manslaughter instead of murder and got ten years instead of life. I almost fell off the sofa.
“Does that really happen?” I asked my mother as she came in from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn. She looked puzzled so I gave her a quick summary. “But that’s just TV, right? Or just in big cities, right?”
“Not always,” she said and my heart sank. “One of our lawyers just had a murder case. She got the client a plea bargain, although I can’t remember offhand what it was.”
“Do people know that?”
She frowned slightly. “It’s a matter of public record.”
“That doesn’t mean anyone knows,” I said. “I mean, if it didn’t make the news.”
“Most things don’t, unless they’re high profile.”
“Like the O’Dell murder?” I said, before I could think better of it.
I expected her to give me grief for bringing it up again but she only nodded. “They moved the O’Dell trial to a different venue. His lawyer said it wasn’t possible to get an impartial jury. He was probably right. It was so lurid, the town was glad to be shut of it.”
“You sure picked up a lot since you got that job,” I said.
“I’m a quick study.” She pushed the bowl at me. “Don’t make me eat all this myself. Because I can and I will. Unless you save me.”
It seemed like that was all I ever did.
• • •
Two days later, I saw Ralph Costa talking to a couple of Green & Serene guys, including Gideon O’Dell. It was all very ordinary, a man talking to tree service guys about the hackberry tree beside his house. No earth tremors, no thunder and lightning, no frogs falling from the sky, or fire, or blood. No apparitions and no ghosts, either. Ralph Costa obviously had no idea.
The discussion was short and friendly—Gideon O’Dell actually patted Ralph on the arm before he walked away. Ralph didn’t suddenly cry out in horrified recognition. But then, Ralph had never seen him except as—
As what—a ghost? But Gideon O’Dell wasn’t dead. So how could Ralph Costa or Mr. Grafton have seen him murdering Lily?
Maybe it was the ghost of his old life? That sounded stupid even just in my head.
Unbidden, my mother’s words came to me: Stains like that don’t wash out so easily.
Maybe that was it—Lily was a ghost, Gideon was a stain.
That should have sounded just as stupid, but it didn’t.
• • •
Even at this point, I didn’t consider talking to my friends. The few who weren’t away spending two months with a divorced parent had soccer or swim team or were in summer school. That’s what I told myself, anyway. In reality, I just didn’t want to tell them about my parents. They’d have understood; a lot of them had already been through it. It seemed like most of the kids I knew lived either with single parents or in what the magazines called blended families, because that made step-parents and step-brothers and step-sisters sound sweet, like a smoothie rather than something out of the Brothers Grimm.
My friends would all be very sympathetic. Then they’d start rehashing their own horror stories along with the ones they’d heard secondhand. Talk about Grimm. But they were actually supposed to make you feel better about your own shitstorm. See how much worse it could be?
Except I did know. My friends all knew about Saddle Hills’ worst-ever crime. But none of them had grown up within sight of Lily O’Dell’s murder, or seen Mr. Grafton trying over and over to wash it off the road. And none of them had a murderer for a tree man.
Then it occurred to me while I was brooding up in my room one afternoon: what if I told them I did?
Hey, guys, you’re never gonna believe this—
They’d all be in such a rush to tell everyone else, they probably wouldn’t even notice my father had moved out.
But then what?
Would people call the police? Cancel their tree service? Would there be emergency Neighborhood Watch meetings? Would everyone march on City Hall? Or would the villagers simply descend on Green & Serene with pitchforks and torches to drag the monster out and throw him over the cliff themselves?
It was entirely possible, I thought uneasily, that if people did know, Gideon O’Dell might not be safe. For real.
Yeah, ask his wife how that feels, a voice in my head whispered nastily. Screw him. He’s a murderer who should be doing life in prison, not pruning elms. He got off easy, not even ten years. You know who didn’t get a deal? Lily O’Dell—she’s dead forever. He deserves whatever he gets. If he’s not a real ghost, he ought to be.
After a bit, I realized I’d been sitting with my fists balled up so tightly my palms were starting to cramp. It was one of the few times I was glad I was a nail-biter because otherwise my palms would have been bleeding. Gideon O’Dell had made me that angry.
Gideon O’Dell had made me that angry?
Well, not just him—my parents and their divorce bullshit and every other grown-up who just tromped around only caring about themselves. My parents probably thought I was adjusting and maybe sometimes I thought so too. As if anything could really be that easy! Like fucking up my life was no big deal. They were as bad as Gideon O’Dell.
Part of me knew the comparison was out of proportion but that was more mature than I wanted to be just then. It was grown-up thinking, and seeing as how I couldn’t do anything else they did, like drink or drive or join the army or just fuck shit up for the hell of it, I wasn’t going to be an adult about this, either.
• • •
“What’s going on next door?” I asked, looking out the dining room window at all the G&S trucks pulling in. “Are the Coopermans having a party for the tree men? Or are they just luring them in for a mass baptism?” The Coopermans left pamphlets in our mailbox about the joys of being baptized once a month.
“They’re cutting down the elm in their backyard,” my mother said. “Deborah Cooperman asked if I wanted any for firewood.”
“Oh shit.” I moved to the patio doors to watch the tree men setting up. “I love that tree. How could they?”
“Language,” my mother said but without any real feeling. She was engrossed in a computer magazine. “All elms in this country have Dutch elm disease and eventually, there’s nothing you can do.”
“Theirs still looks okay to me,” I grumbled.
“G&S gave them an estimate of what the upkeep would cost. They decided to keep their kids instead.” She chuckled. “If I had to choose between our elm tree and you, I’d choose you.”
I glared at her, suppressing a remark about grown-ups’ choices.
“Probably,” she added, smiling with half her mouth. “On a good day, for sure. But I also have bad days. You have been warned.”
I couldn’t help laughing. All of a sudden, I was tired of being mad at her and my father, fed up with being fed up. I sat down next to her on the sofa and let her tell me about the computer she’d learned to use at her job and how it was changing everything. She was talking about the office network when I suddenly felt cold, like the temperature had dropped from eighty-five to fifty-five, and I knew Gideon O’Dell had arrived. I got up and went to the patio door.
“Gale?” my mother asked, puzzled. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything,” I said.
• • •
Why would Gideon O’Dell come back here instead of going just about anywhere else? For all the happy memories? To find himself? To find America?
Christ, why did grown-ups do anything ?
Because it was the worst possible idea, of course.
Made sense.
• • •
It took three days for them to reduce the Coopermans’ elm to firewood and toothpicks, and I watched pretty much the whole thing. Or rather, I watched Gideon O’Dell while I sat out on the patio pretending to read A Tale of Two Cities. I’d already read it for school so if anybody asked what section I was pretending to be on, I could answer. Not that anyone would—my mother was at work all day and none of the tree men were going to wander over to the fence on a break to ask me what else I’d read by Dickens. There was a small risk of the Coopermans sending over one of their kids with a pamphlet; if so, I’d pretend to use it as a bookmark and toss it later.
But no one bothered with me. Mrs. Cooperman was busy making lemonade and iced tea for the G&S guys and even gave them lunch. I suppose it was a good Christian thing to do since killing the elm was such hard work. She smiled and waved at me a couple of times and I waved back, fantasizing about telling her who was in her backyard. If Mary had been outside, she’d have probably been telling all the tree men how great Jesus was. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves everybody.
But did Mrs. Cooperman? How much Christian charity would she have for Gideon O’Dell? Would she judge not, or cast the first stone? I was tempted to find out, except I had a very strong feeling it would somehow backfire. Either my parents would be furious with me for not telling them right away, or it would turn out the guy wasn’t really Gideon O’Dell after all.
Or worst of all, he was Gideon O’Dell with a fake ID, and he’d come back later to shut me up.
Right now, he was high up in the tree with a chain saw. All of the leafy branches had been cut away and now they were starting on the thicker arms. He seemed to be having a good time. Guys with power tools were basically kids with toys. But it was more than that, I thought. He was killing a live thing.
That’s why he came back, I thought suddenly. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer in slow motion: Bang . . . bang . . . bang . . . Because secateurs and machetes and chain saws are more fun than a cheap steak knife.
I walked over to lean on the fence. I’d been so worried about him seeing me, but now I wanted him to. I wanted him to know I was onto him.
But when he did finally look in my direction, his gaze slid away without interest before I could even hold my breath. Talk about an anticlimax. I actually felt cheated. Disrespected, even.
But maybe he’d been too busy killing his wife to notice me that night. Now he was too busy killing a tree. Or trying to; the chain saw jammed suddenly, then cut out altogether. Was that as frustrating as a broken steak knife?
Lily O’Dell had still been alive when the blade broke off but she hadn’t been screaming. She’d had no breath left. Her left lung had collapsed and the right one was about to. The adrenaline that had powered her desperate sprint was gone. She’d used the last of her energy to punch through the top of the screen door and grab at me. Then Gideon O’Dell dragged her away by her hair into the street, where he stabbed her and stabbed her and stabbed her until the handle of the knife was so slippery with blood it slid out of his hand.
My head cleared and I found myself sitting on the ground beside the fence with the sun in my eyes. I went back to my chair on the patio wondering what the hell had come over me. Some kind of vivid waking dream? Not a memory—or rather, not my memory. What I had seen in my mind’s eye had all been from Lily O’Dell’s point of view.
• • •
It only took one day for Gideon O’Dell to cut down the redbud tree in our front yard, working alone. Two other guys deep-watered the elm beside the house and the walnut tree in the backyard, and explained how to harvest the walnuts. We couldn’t just pick them off the tree like apples, which was disappointing. It all sounded like a lot of tedious effort for a few nuts. Even having a murderer in our front yard didn’t make it less boring.
I sat on the carpet a couple of feet back from the screen door pretending to read Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination. As usual, Gideon O’Dell worked away like nothing had ever happened here, like he wasn’t twenty feet away from the very spot where he stabbed his wife to death.
How could he not feel weird being here?
Maybe he had amnesia. Maybe he got beaten up so many times in prison he had brain damage.
Abruptly, he put down the chain saw, looked directly at me. I stared back; the book resting on my folded legs fell shut. If he hadn’t seen me before, he had now. Hadn’t he? No, he hadn’t; his eyes weren’t focused on me at all, I realized, watching as he took the bandanna around his neck off, wiped his face with it, then tied it around his head.
What are you doing here? What do you want? I asked him silently. His face gave nothing away. The only thing I could read was the name tag pinned to the front of his overalls: GO. What kind of a name was that?
His initials, of course, what his buddies used to call him. Also his family, including L—
I shook my head to clear it. Gideon O’Dell, aka GO, was now staring thoughtfully at the roof. I went up to my room.
I stayed back from the window, watching the rest of the redbud’s destruction with binoculars. Occasionally, I turned to the forever-unclean spot on the road, like I might see something besides old dirty asphalt. Like Lily O’Dell’s blood might come bubbling up out of the ground in outrage.
Nothing happened, of course, except GO finished demolishing the redbud.
• • •
The son of a bitch came back on Sunday afternoon. Parked his truck in our driveway, trotted up the stairs, and rang the doorbell. I stayed in my room, wondering if he’d finally decided to force his way in and kill us. It was broad daylight, everyone in the neighborhood was home, and kids were outside playing, but a mad killer might not care.
I couldn’t hear what my mother said when she answered the door but she sounded friendly. So did Gideon O’Dell, friendly and a little subservient, before he got a ladder and climbed up onto the roof with a toolbox.
My mother came up to tell me not to use the front door for a while. “If you want to go out, use the patio door. I’ve got a guy fixing loose tiles on the roof.”
“One of the G&S guys,” I said accusingly. “The one that cut down the redbud.”
She nodded. “He saw them while he was here. He said he’d done that kind of work and he’d charge less than a roofer, so I told him to come back today.”
“What if he does a lousy job?” I asked.
“He guaranteed his work, and if he couldn’t fix something, he’d tell me.”
“What if he’s lying? For all we know, he’s a burglar casing the joint.”
“Then he’ll know there’s lot better pickings next door. Assuming he can fence a collection of ugly silver and tacky Nelson Rockwell plates.” She chuckled.
“What if he’s worse than a burglar?” I said as she turned to leave. “Like, a murderer?”
She turned back to me, eyebrows raised. “Like what—an IRS agent?”
“What do you know about him?” I persisted. “What’s his name? Where does he live?”
“You know, when most parents have this conversation, it’s the other way around.” She came over and sat down next to me on the bed. “He’s just fixing some roof tiles, Gale. We’re not going out on a date. And he’s not a total stranger, he works for our tree service. I’m paying cash so I only know his nickname, which is—”
“Go,” I said. “Do you know his real name?”
All at once, she went serious. “Did this guy ever try anything inappropriate with you?” she asked. “Or one of the neighbor kids?”
That lie was too evil to tell, even about him. “No, definitely not,” I said. “But who knows what kind of person he really is?”
“Who knows what kind of person anybody really is?” My mother gave me a hug. “You don’t like the guy, stay away from him. No fault, no foul, everybody wins. Okay?”
He’s not just a guy, he’s a murderer; he’s Gideon O’Dell, I tried to say. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was, “Okay.”
She kissed me on the forehead and went back downstairs, leaving me to wonder what the hell was wrong with me. It wasn’t okay. Gideon O’Dell was up on our roof, exuding poison from his wife-murdering soul and somehow I was the only one who could feel it.
Because Lily O’Dell had touched me, I realized. I couldn’t remember but I didn’t have to. I had her memory—it was in her blood.
• • •
“Pizza for supper?” my mother asked. She’d just made another gallon of iced tea to replace what Gideon O’Dell had drunk. I had ice water instead.
When I put away the ice cube trays and closed the freezer door, I saw a fridge magnet holding a slip of paper with a phone number on it and underneath, Go’s cell, call anytime, leave message.
“That’s just in case he has to repair his repair job,” my mother said.
“You think he’ll have to?” I asked.
“We’ll see. They’re predicting heavy thunderstorms tonight.” My mother chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s nothing that’ll keep you awake.”
“We’ll see,” I said, mimicking her. She didn’t notice.
• • •
We ate pizza from Valentino’s in front of the TV. Talking her into having a glass of wine wasn’t hard and she didn’t protest when I suggested a second, but then, it was an Australian Shiraz. I told myself that was why she’d poured such a full glass and drunk it more quickly than usual. But so what? She wasn’t drunk, just very relaxed. She’d get a good night’s sleep and no hangover.
Or maybe just a little one, I thought as she had a third glass, which killed the bottle. There was no more wine in the house but she wouldn’t have opened another bottle anyway—she was too relaxed to use a corkscrew. She’d also get part of her good night’s sleep in front of the TV but that suited me just fine.
My mother was snoring softly even before the first warning rumble of thunder. I threw Grandma’s hand-crocheted afghan over her and waited to see if she’d stir. More thunder, louder this time; she didn’t even twitch. I went into the kitchen to get Gideon O’Dell’s phone number, started to go up to my room, then stopped. Not because I was having second thoughts, but because I wanted to make sure my mother wasn’t about to wake up. I tiptoed into the living room to check on her.
As if on cue, thunder boomed, seemingly right overhead. It wasn’t loud enough to rattle the windows but I thought if anything would wake her, that would. She didn’t even twitch. I turned out all the lights, started to go up to my room again and then paused, looking at the front door. The TV threw just enough light so I could see it was locked.
Unlock it.
The words were so distinct, it was like someone had actually whispered in my ear. But I could hear my mother still snoring under the babble of the latest hot cop show. If I was hearing voices, they weren’t too bright; opening the door would wake my mother for sure.
Not open it—not yet. Just unlock it.
It crossed my mind even as I did so that this alone would be enough to wake my mother, because you never, ever left anything unlocked after dark. But any disturbance in the force this might have caused was no match for three glasses of Shiraz. Or for Lily O’Dell, who I realized was in charge of this party.
Good. Now you can go upstairs.
I felt like I should say thank you, but at the same time I understood Lily O’Dell didn’t care how well-mannered I was.
Lightning flickered like a strobe; a few seconds later, thunder cracked like the sky was breaking apart. Maybe it was. My room was dark except for the nightlight in the wall outlet beside my bed, an owl and a pussycat sitting in the curve of a crescent moon. I unplugged it and opened the window. There was a streetlight about halfway between our driveway and the one next door but it seemed dimmer than usual and I couldn’t see the street very well. As I raised the screen and leaned out, it started to rain.
• • •
It was the kind of rain that comes straight down and very hard, like it’s real pissed-off at everything it’s falling on. Tonight, I could actually believe it was. It slapped leaves off trees, smashed down the geraniums lining either side of our driveway, pounded the pavement hard enough to bounce.
Had it rained the night Lily O’Dell got killed? I was pretty sure it hadn’t—
Yes, it did. It rained blood. You got caught in the storm.
I reached out as far as I could, palm up, just to make sure, but it was plain old rainwater. Still coming down hard, enough to make my hand sting.
The lights in the Graftons’ old house went out. Was it that late already? Maybe I should check to see if my mother was still asleep—
Time to make that call. That’s what you came up here for.
Yes, but now that it was time to do it, I was starting to feel shaky.
You think you’re shaky? Try sprinting around the block and hopping fences in backyards. Your knees’ll knock like castanets.
I could see a form in the straight-down sheets of rain, someone in the street, waiting while tiles slid off the roof and smacked wetly on the front steps.
Call him and tell him to come over immediately. Give him hell or sob your heart out but get him here now. Now.
I picked up the phone and dialed.
I started by sobbing my heart out but Gideon O’Dell didn’t want to come over. There was nothing he could do while it was still raining and even if it stopped, he certainly couldn’t work in the dark. I kept sobbing and he kept being reasonable, so I tried getting mad. The way he answered made me think he’d had a lot of anger management classes in prison.
“You just get your ass over here right now and give me back all the money I paid you,” I said, “or I tell everyone on the block who you really are, Gideon.”
He practically choked. “You—you what?”
“If you think people here want a murderer taking care of their trees—”
“Okay, please, stop. I’m coming now, all right? I’ll be there in ten minutes. Not even that. Just don’t—please, I’ve got all your money—”
I slammed the receiver down, shaking all over. Thunder rumbled but without much power as the rain began to lessen. Lily O’Dell was walking slowly up the incline of our lawn, toward the front door. I knew she’d want me to open it now.
My mother was still fast asleep, hugging a throw pillow. The cop show had been replaced by old reruns of a different cop show, one that only came on very late. How long had I been upstairs? And had it been raining hard and angry the whole time?
Open the door.
That would wake my mother for sure, I thought. Just in time for Gideon O’Dell to show up apologizing and begging her not to tell anyone. She’ll have no idea what he’s talking about but maybe she’ll be too distracted by the tiles that fell off the roof to care—
Open the door now. Before the doorbell wakes her.
The rain had stopped.
Lily O’Dell wasn’t covered with so much blood that I couldn’t see what Gideon O’Dell had done to her face. One eye was swollen shut and the other was getting there; her nose wasn’t just broken but so smashed that it didn’t look anything like something to breathe through. One side of her face was caved in, her lower lip was badly split and she’d lost some teeth. I could see distinct finger marks in the bruising around her neck.
Only I shouldn’t have been able to. All the lights were out and the TV wasn’t bright enough. And yet, I could see her, could see her struggling to breathe, seemingly unable to gulp in enough air. But I didn’t hear it until she punched both hands through the screen door.
Suddenly I was small, looking up at her in horror and confusion, tasting blood as she smeared her hands over my face. Her voice was barely audible as she begged for help, and when Gideon O’Dell yanked her away, she couldn’t make a sound.
Gideon O’Dell, however, was yelling and cursing as she dragged him down the lawn by his hair, past his truck parked at the curb. I don’t think he knew it was her until they got to that very specific spot on the street, but when he did, he went completely hysterical. I thought for sure his screaming and begging would wake up the entire neighborhood.
But he didn’t. No lights went on in any of the neighbors’ houses or across the street; my mother slept on, undisturbed and unaware. And all the while, I was trying to get the screen door open but the stupid lock wouldn’t budge.
I don’t know where the knife came from—maybe it was a ghost, like Lily. But also like Lily, it hurt him for real. I didn’t want to watch but I couldn’t look away, couldn’t yell for my mother, couldn’t even move. All I could do was stand there and watch Lily pay Gideon back stroke for stroke, slash for slash, stab for stab.
It took a very long time. When she was finally done, she turned to look at me and bowed her head a little, like she was saying thanks.
Then it began to rain again, pounding straight down like before. I closed the door and went to bed.
In the morning, the truck was still parked in front of our house but there was no trace of Gideon O’Dell, nothing to show why he had come here or where he had gone, not even a stain on the asphalt. It had rained that hard.