NINETEEN

Ihave a new plan. This one is going to work. Bessie will be with me forever. The others – some will go to Heaven, others will go to Hell, where they belong!

E.J., THE PRESENT

It’s funny how life goes on. We had this new plague hanging over our heads, this stalker out to hurt Elizabeth and possibly the rest of us, and yet we settled in. With Willis back there was a butt-load of laundry, suits and dress shirts to the dry cleaners, and it was going to be necessary to fix real meals, instead of sandwiches or take-out. OK, if I sound like Suzy-Homemaker, I’m not. It’s just that Willis and I made a deal a long time ago. If I wanted to stay home and write, then I would be in charge of kids and house, while he held up the manly end by bringing home the bacon and mowing the lawn. Unfortunately I put in no proviso to change things when and if I brought home more bacon sitting at my computer under the stairs than he did in his big old office. And there have been years where that proved to be true. Still and all, the house is mine. And the laundry.

Megan and Elizabeth appeared to be using poor Alicia as a Barbie Doll. They’d try out different outfits, from Alicia’s small closet and from each of the girls – mix and match – do her hair in various dos, and bring her downstairs for my approval. After three days of this I decided to put a stop to it.

They came down the stairs, dragging Alicia as usual, and presented her. She had on a pair of skintight, ultra-short blue jean cut-offs, over-the-knee socks that were horizontal stripes of magenta, periwinkle, and mauve, Lucite stacked three-inch ho shoes they found in the back of my closet (Halloween costume – don’t ask), and a tie-dye scarf they’d tied around her chest making a strapless top with no back and very little front.

‘Girls, who gave you permission to go into my closet?’

This left Alicia, as usual, speechless, while Megan and Elizabeth began literally pointing fingers at each other. ‘Never mind,’ I finally said. ‘Take the shoes back upstairs before Alicia falls down, but leave Alicia here, please.’

I smiled at Alicia; she tucked her head down and refused to look at me.

‘Mom! It’s not Alicia’s fault . . .’ Elizabeth started.

‘I’m not saying it is. I know, actually, that it’s not. I have something else to talk to her about and I would like to do it in peace. So please take the shoes, like I told you, upstairs to my closet then go to whoever’s room you were in, and stay there. Alicia will be up in a minute.’

Megan and Elizabeth looked at Alicia’s back, then each other. Then me. I smiled. They didn’t seem to accept that at face value, but resolutely had Alicia sit down so they could take off her (my) shoes, and then headed upstairs, glancing down at Alicia and me as long as they could without getting their heads stuck between staircase and ceiling. Finally they were gone.

Alicia sat before me with her face made up like a child playing with make-up, which I guess they really were, and in her modified ho outfit (minus the shoes), and looked at her lap.

‘Look up, Alicia.’ She did, catching my eye, but she couldn’t hold it. She looked to the side.

‘Are you going to lie to me?’ I asked her.

She jerked and looked me in the eye. ‘No, ma’am!’ she said.

‘Then please look at my face. I know it’s hard to keep eye contact when you’re not used to it, but I hope, between the two of us, we’ll get you there.’ She nodded her head and looked into her lap. I put a finger out and raised her chin up.

‘Oh! Sorry,’ she breathed.

‘I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, Alicia. But you need to try to look people in the face when they talk to you. And,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘you need to stand up for yourself. Do you like playing dress-up every day?’

She shrugged. ‘Sure,’ she said, her chin going down.

‘Uh-oh,’ I said. ‘Your chin went down. Are you telling an untruth?’

She shrugged again, her head down. Finally she lifted her face to mine. ‘I’m not crazy about it,’ she said.

‘Then tell the girls that. You are not their new Barbie Doll.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ she said, her head going back down.

‘OK, that’s an untruth. I can tell by your body language,’ I told her.

Her head came up. ‘You can?’ she said, her eyes wide. ‘How?’

‘Honey, I hate to say it, but you’re pretty easy to read. If your head goes down after a straight affirmative or negative statement, then you’re probably lying.’

She thought about that for a moment. ‘Huh,’ she said.

‘Which means you’re not going to tell the girls you don’t want to play dress-up,’ I said.

‘Ohhhh,’ she said, thinking hard about it.

‘I love my daughters, Alicia, but they will run all over you given half the chance. You need to learn early to stand up for yourself. What would you rather be doing than playing dress up?’

Her answer was quick. ‘Going swimming! We only have a few weeks left before school starts and the pool closes.’ Her smile was huge. ‘I’d never been in a pool before, and I really like it. I think I’d like to learn to swim.’

‘OK, next year at the beginning of summer, I’ll sign you up for individual lessons. I know one of the teachers and she’s really good.’

‘Am I too old?’ she asked.

‘Maybe for the classes – they’re all for little kids, but for individual lessons no problem. I saw one of the teachers working with a woman in her eighties last summer. Got her swimming, too.’

‘Thank you!’ she said and tentatively moved toward me. I reached out and hugged her and she hugged me back.

‘You’re welcome,’ I said, and she ran up the stairs, hopefully to tell off my other two daughters.

That evening Willis drove the girls to a movie and, being Wednesday, Graham went out with Lotta. Having the entire house to ourselves, Willis and I invited Luna over to discuss the stalker.

‘I take it you two have discussed this before,’ Willis said.

‘Ad nauseum,’ Luna said.

‘Sorry if our near-death experiences bore you,’ I said.

Looking at me, Luna said, ‘You could make them a little more interesting.’

I flicked her earlobe with my finger and she glared at me. Willis said, ‘Girls, please. No touching.’

Getting serious, he said, ‘So, who is this guy?’

‘Like we know?’ I said, glaring at him.

‘Yes. We all know. Or someone knows,’ he said. ‘This is someone we’ve met. Or someone Elizabeth has met. And how many people out of school has she met that we haven’t?’

‘It’s the whole Aldon thing that makes this so spooky,’ I said. ‘Where did this guy get that information?’

‘It’s not a secret,’ Luna said. ‘There are plenty of people still here in Black Cat that were here when the Lesters were killed.’

‘But this guy, this stalker, is fairly young . . .’

‘What about someone who was a teenager back then? One of Monique’s friends?’ Willis said.

My stomach heaved. I thought I was going to vomit. ‘Where are the Rushes?’ I asked.

Willis and Luna looked at each other then at me. ‘Shit,’ they said in unison.

We – Luna, Willis and I – sat in the living room staring at the walls. We were waiting for a phone call Luna had made to be returned. We’d been waiting entirely too long. Instead of the phone ringing, however, the doorbell chimed.

Willis stood up and walked to the door. Luna and I were right behind him. Standing in front of us was a young African-American woman in a cop’s uniform, a tidy, short Afro, and an adorable face. Looking behind Willis at Luna, she held up a sheaf of papers and said, ‘I got it!’

‘Come in,’ Luna said. ‘You were supposed to call.’

‘No way,’ the young woman said. ‘I want in on this. It’s too cool.’

Luna took the papers roughly from her hand and sat down. Turning to us, the young woman said, ‘Hi, I’m Bethany Douglass. I’m a computer tech.’

Willis and I introduced ourselves, then Willis said, pointing at the papers Luna was perusing, ‘Whatja got?’

We all sat down and Bethany said, ‘Bad news on the Rushes. Mrs Rush died of breast cancer in the funny farm about five years after her sentence. Mr Rush was heading up a Right to Life group down in the Valley and got shot by one of his cohorts, and Ruth Rush, their daughter, committed suicide a year ago.’

I grabbed Willis’s hand as he sat beside me on the couch. ‘What about Eric Rush? Their son?’

Bethany shook her head and started to speak, but Luna interrupted. ‘What do you mean here,’ she said, pointing at the papers in her hand. ‘There’s no record on Eric Rush?’

Bethany said, ‘The last record we have on him is his school record at Black Cat Ridge High School. There’s no record, in Texas anyway, of him going to another school. The sister died in Houston, and he was in her custody when he left here.’ Bethany shrugged. ‘As far as I can tell, he’s off the grid.’

‘It’s him!’ I said, beginning to feel hyperventilation coming on.

‘We have no proof of that,’ Luna said in her cop voice.

‘Oh, come on, Sarge,’ Bethany said, then got still when Luna gave her a look.

‘You’re right, Elena, we have no proof,’ Willis said. ‘But you know it’s him.’

Luna sighed. ‘Of course it’s him,’ she said.

‘Now what?’ I asked.

‘Where can we get a picture of him?’ Luna asked.

‘No school records—’ Bethany started.

‘Can you do age progression?’ I asked Bethany as I stood up.

‘Of course. My computer can mend your socks and make French toast. What do you have?’

‘Just a second,’ I said, as I went into my office. I found the right filing cabinet and a folder marked ‘church.’ In the back I found one of the old church directories, from the time Berry Rush was our minister.

Thumbing through, I found a picture of the three of them, what we thought at the time was the entire family, but no individual picture of Eric. I handed the directory to Bethany. ‘That’s him between his parents. Can you do something with a picture that small?’

‘Is the Pope Catholic?’ she said. She headed for the door. ‘You got a fax?’ she asked over her shoulder.

I grabbed a pen and a slip of paper and wrote the number down and handed it to her as she rushed out.

It was incredible how much the age-progression picture Bethany sent via fax looked like Christine. I made a copy of the fax, drew in some glasses and a long pageboy and, voila, Christine. I didn’t think Eric could hide from us again. If he showed his face, we had him.

But that in itself was the problem. He rarely showed his face. Like most stalkers and rapists, he was a coward. He came up from behind. Part of me felt sorry for him, for what his life had been like. Carrying the secret he did for so long at so young an age, telling it to Monique, only to have her and most of her family killed because of it. Losing his mother to an asylum, his father to ideology, and finally his sister, so damaged by her parents, to suicide. He would be about twenty-four now, I thought, too young to have lost so much. But too old to think what he was doing would fix anything. What had life been like for him after Black Cat Ridge? Why had he been off the grid? Why hadn’t he gone back to school? I had so many questions only Eric could answer, and I couldn’t wait until Luna had him behind bars and would ask those questions for me.

BLACK CAT RIDGE, TEXAS, 1999

The following things happened as a result of that evening’s events:

1. Berry Rush was let out of jail and eventually left town – no one knows where.

2. Rosemary Rush was put in the police ward of the hospital because of the concussion she received when I jumped off the roof on to her back. She was later declared unfit to stand trial and was sent to a state asylum.

3. Our house was totaled and we moved in to the Lesters’ house, until ours could be rebuilt.

4. Ruth Rush, Rosemary and Berry’s oldest child, was let out of the institution where she’d been kept for five years and, now over the age of twenty-one, took custody of her younger brother and moved out of town, no one knows where.

5. The First United Methodist Church of Black Cat Ridge, Texas, had a new minister. He was OK.

We sat in the living room, me reading a book while Willis alternately watched a ball game and used a back scratcher in the tiny space between leg and cast. The kids were playing on the carpet in front of us.

Megan grabbed Bessie and began to tickle her, rolling over on top of her. Bessie began to scream. ‘Mommy! Mommy!’

I jumped up and ran to where the girls were. Megan had scooted away from Bessie, staring at her. Graham sat still, his eyes as big as saucers. Willis strained to get up.

Bessie threw her arms around my neck, her eyes squinched shut. ‘Mommy, get off, get off!’ she cried.

I had a sudden vision. The killers in the hall upstairs. Shots ringing out. Aldon dead. Roy dead. Terry running to Bessie’s room. Bessie’s not there. She’s sleeping with Monique again. Terry runs in there, screaming at her daughters to wake up. The killers come up behind her. They shoot her in the back. Her body falls on the sleeping Bessie. Then they shoot Monique, who stood at her mother’s demand, flinging her body against the back wall. And the killers leave. They don’t know about the four-year-old trapped under her mother’s dead weight. How long did she lie there? How hard did she have to fight to get out from under Terry? At what point did her mind shut down?

‘Mommy! Wake up! Wake up, Mommy!’ Bessie screamed.

Holding her tight, I turned to Willis. ‘Call Elaine,’ I said.

GRAHAM, THE PRESENT

The girls were in the family room watching some chick flick, Dad was in the garage puttering, as Mom called it, and she herself was in her boudoir doing God knows what. I was in the living room with my laptop, checking out what all I was going to do to the Valiant at the J.C. Whitney site. Man, they’ve got some shit. Then the doorbell rang, and someone banged on the door at the same time. I jumped up to get it before the entire house went ballistic.

Who should be standing there looking like a geek but skater dude. I thought we’d given him up for Lent.

‘What?’ I said.

‘So she’s got a new boyfriend, huh?’ skater dude challenged.

‘Who?’ I said. Did he know Lotta? What was he talking about?

‘Your sister! My Megan! What’s she doing, man?’ he said, almost in tears. ‘I love her!’

‘Gimme a break!’ I said and tried to slam the door. Unfortunately there was a skateboard blocking it.

‘Well, at least I came in the front door, man!’ skater dude said, sniffing like a baby. ‘I don’t creep around to the back like he’s doing.’

I rolled my eyes and started to slam the door again when I got a clue. ‘Who?’ I asked.

‘That guy!’ he said, pointing toward the side of the house. ‘I’ve seen him out here like every night! And tonight he goes sneaking around the house and he grabbed the ladder your dad left by the garage—’

I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. ‘Stay here! Don’t move! If he comes around front, throw your skateboard at him!’

‘Huh?’ he said, as I ran back into the house.

I opened the door to the garage. ‘Dad,’ I whispered, ‘he’s here! You go to the back door, I’m going out the front and around!’

Dad grabbed my arm. ‘No! You stay in the house—’

‘Call Luna!’ I said, jerking my arm away and heading for the front door.

Skater dude was still standing there when I burst through. ‘You think I can talk to Megan now?’ he asked as I flew past.

‘Just stay there! Watch out for him!’

‘Who?’ skater dude asked.

My last thought as I rounded the corner of the house was: ‘Megan can do better than that!’

ELIZABETH, THE PRESENT

I went upstairs to use the bathroom. I don’t like to use the half bath downstairs because everybody can hear your business. I flushed and headed into the hall.

That’s when he grabbed me. With his hand over my mouth, he whispered in my ear, ‘Hush, Bessie. It’s me, Aldon. Everything’s going to be OK now.’

I stood perfectly still, then nodded my head. Slowly he lessened his grip on my mouth and slowly moved his hand.

I let out the most ear-piercing scream I could muster. And believe me, I could muster a heck of a scream.

Graham came out of my room, somehow, Megan and Alicia came running up the stairs, Megan with a baseball bat and Alicia with one of Mom’s decorative rolling pins. Mom and Dad followed behind.

Graham grabbed the stalker around the neck and Megan and Alicia began beating him about the body. It was all Mom and Dad could do to save the guy from being beaten to death by the girls or choked to death by Graham. Personally, I wanted to jump on him and scratch his eyes out, but it looked like we weren’t going to be able to do that.

Mrs Luna rushed in the front door, saw the commotion on the top of the stairs and came up, followed by a uniformed police officer. Megan, Alicia and Graham were being held back by my parents, all three breathing hard. ‘Aldon’ was sitting on the floor, rubbing his neck with one hand while the other arm hung loosely at his side. Something had broken it – either a baseball bat or a rolling pin. Who knew? Who cared?

E.J., THE PRESENT

I got to ask my questions in person, not through Luna. She let me go in first, by myself, to talk to Eric Rush.

‘Why?’ I said, looking at him, at his bruised neck, his arm in a sling.

He looked at me blankly for a long moment, then said, ‘We’re the only ones left. We belong together.’

It took me a moment, then I asked, ‘You mean the only ones left out of both families? The Lesters and the Rushes?’

He nodded. ‘And I owe Monique.’ His face crumbled and he began to cry. ‘I’ll never be able to repay her for what I did! It was all my fault! I need to take care of Bessie. I need to be her big brother because she hasn’t got anyone else!’

I touched his hand, as repugnant as it was to me. ‘But she does, Eric. She has a big brother, Graham. And two sisters and parents. She has us,’ I said.

He ripped his hand from mine and stood up, backing against the wall. ‘Liar! Infidels! You aren’t her family! I’m the only one who can be her family!’ He lunged for me and Luna opened the door.

She had him back in the chair and his one good hand cuffed to the table before he could touch me. I stood up and left the room. I had all the answers I’d ever need.