When the police finally arrived at the lilac house, noon had long since come and gone. I was sitting on my porch doing crossword puzzles, but really just watching the road. The day was chilly and I was wrapped in a knitted blanket, a cloud of steam rose from the tea before me. I’d felt sick to the core all day, felt it in my bones that something was doomed to turn out bad. I didn’t know yet that he’d never filled in that hole with dirt. Neither did I know about Ferdinand’s fate. As far as I was concerned, they might only think my father missing.
I soon learned it was more serious than that.
The police officer who was driving the vehicle was a big red-bearded man that I remembered from my trial. He had been the first one on the scene after they discovered what they thought was Tommy Tipp. He’d been just a rookie then, slimmer and fitter, hair more lustrous and thick. His name was Officer Parks. The other police officer was a woman, fairly young and dark-skinned; she said her name was Amira. I think she was the one who was supposed to comfort me if I broke into pieces at the news.
They stood before the porch where I sat; Parks fiddled with his belt as cops do.
“Are you Cassandra Tipp?” asked Amira.
“She is,” Parks grunted beside her.
“I’m afraid we have some bad news for you,” said Amira. “Can we come inside or—come sit down there with you?”
I nodded, didn’t like where this was going. “What is it?” My voice was high-pitched as I battled jolts of fear. “What has happened?”
The two officers took their time approaching me, then sinking down in my wicker chairs.
“Mrs. Tipp,” Amira said. “I am sorry to inform you that your father and your brother passed away last night.”
“What?” I burst out—hadn’t seen that coming. Not the part about Ferdinand, anyway. “Why? What happened?”
“We are not sure yet.” Amira looked weary. “Your father was found in your brother’s garden, and his death was … quite violent. Unfortunately, everything points to your brother being involved in his death, including his subsequent suicide.”
“Suicide, huh?” I murmured, thinking thoughts better left unspoken.
“You mother doesn’t think so.” Parks’s dark eyes stared unblinkingly across the table. He remembered me well, then. Remembered Tommy Tipp. “She thinks you may have had a hand in this.” He ignored Amira’s warning gaze. “That you’re somehow responsible for them both.”
“Me? Why? I barely spoke to any of them for the last thirty years or so.”
“So you weren’t aware of any disagreement between them?” Amira’s cheeks were flushed, from shame on Parks’s behalf, I reckoned.
“No, I’m not on speaking terms with any of them. You can ask anyone—I’m surprised Mother even remembers my name.”
“Your mother is quite determined”—Parks again—“that your brother would have had help. Your father died violently, as we said, and certain skills were involved that your mother is very certain that your brother didn’t possess. Like woodcarving and weaponry.”
“He did fence for a while,” I tried to be helpful. “But as I said, I didn’t know him well, so I don’t know who could have helped him.”
“You write books about a lot of different things, though, don’t you? You have to know a lot of things to do that,” Parks plowed on. Amira’s cheeks stayed flushed.
“I certainly write very little about woodcarving and weaponry. I write mostly about beaches and fruity drinks.”
“You are no stranger to human anatomy, though.”
“Well, my stories sometimes get heated, but as you well know, Officer Parks, I have been a widow for quite some time.”
“You know very well what I mean.” The beard bobbed on his chest while he spoke.
“Tell me how my brother died.” I was eager to get them back on track.
“He hanged himself from the roof beam,” grunted Parks.
Amira mumbled, “So sorry … so sorry…”
“The murder weapon was found in there with him,” said Parks. “It has scribbles all over it, quotes from that book about fairies.”
“Huh?”
“That book about fairies, the one he wrote, the doctor who treated you.”
“Dr. Martin?”
“That’s the one, and your mother swears the scribbles on the spear are in your hand.”
“It is messy, though,” added Amira, “hard to tell with all the … matter.”
“I’m sure my mother has quite forgotten what my loops and curlicues looks like by now.”
“We are so sorry to bring such bad news,” Amira burst out, “and so sorry we have to ask all these questions.”
“As I said, we weren’t close.”
“Still…”
“Ours wasn’t a happy home.” I was still trying to throw them off the scent—using the truth, no less. “When we grew up there was much discord. You can read all about it in ‘the book about fairies.’”
“Thank you,” said Amira, “we’ll do that.”
Parks only grunted in reply.
“Why the heart?” I asked Mara when she finally reappeared, sitting in my kitchen as if nothing had happened, flipping through a wildlife magazine.
“It is a very effective way of killing.”
“Seems like a lot of work, though, digging that pit, whittling those stakes…”
“He was a big man and I didn’t want to take any chances. Down there he was pretty much stuck—you don’t walk away from a position like that. It works perfectly fine with real bears as well.”
“And what about Ferdinand?”
“What about him?”
“Well, he died, didn’t he?”
“It appears so.”
“He killed himself, Mara, and that isn’t good.”
“He should have filled in the pit first.”
“Yes, he should have—why didn’t he?” I slumped down in the chair opposite her, gently took the magazine from her hands so she was forced to look at me. On the glossy pages, stags were fighting, locking antlers in a tangle of bones.
“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “He got frightened maybe. I think seeing it made him feel bad.”
“Well, yes, it would, wouldn’t it? A grown man spiked and speared—”
“I never forced him to do anything.”
“But you went back there, didn’t you? You were there when Ferdinand died.”
“I was not.”
“But the spear, Mara, and the mushrooms?”
“I left the spear behind when I left. As for the fairy ring, you should ask your lover.”
“Pepper-Man?”
“The very one.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Well, if I didn’t do it, who else has such high stakes in this they went to your brother and strung him up … left footprints on the floor…”
“Oh no,” I said. “You can’t make me blame Pepper-Man for this. You are only mad that he hit you.”
“Well, think about it, Mother. It was the best way to protect you, wasn’t it, to firmly plant the guilt with him—with Ferdinand … And who is more eager to protect you in the whole wide world than the very creature that feeds from you?”
“You are cunning, my daughter, but I won’t play along. Not this time. Pepper-Man knew I didn’t want Ferdinand harmed—”
“When did he ever care about what you want? He is self-serving in every way, you have said so yourself, many times. If Pepper-Man thought it was better if he died, your feelings really didn’t matter.”
“He wouldn’t do that to me—”
“Yes, he would.”
“He is your father—”
“No, he’s not. I don’t have a father. Not anymore.” A tiny smile played on her lips. I looked at her for a while then, the unruly hair, the tattered feathers. My daughter—dark sister—born of pain.
“You should have filled in that hole,” I said weakly.
“What difference does it make now? Ferdinand is good and dead.”
“Do you remember the color of his tie when he died?”
“Blue, I think—with little birds on it.” She always had exceptional sight.
“Doves?” I asked, heart fluttering.
“Swallows, I think.” So much for poetry, for symbols and signs.
“What was the last thing he said to you?”
“He wasn’t speaking, he was retching.”
“He wouldn’t have brought that spear back inside.”
“No, he wouldn’t, but Pepper-Man would, if he was to place the blame.”
I sat back, clasped my hands in my lap. I felt thoroughly and utterly defeated. “Are you feeling better now, Mara? Do you feel like your revenge has made a difference in your life? Did it set you free as you hoped?”
She shrugged again. “I never expected it to make much difference. It was just something that needed to be done.”
“Your ‘purpose in life,’ isn’t that what you called it? So what now, when the deed is done?”
“Now”—she leaned back in the chair, stretched out her legs—“I keep going.”
I remember discussing Mara with Dr. Martin once. It was just after he released the book—was just a conversation, not a session.
“Do you think it was a coincidence that Mara was born after your trip to the clinic?” he asked me.
“Not at all. She was born then because else she would die.”
“Daughter, huh? Shadow self—does that term mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“It’s like an evil twin that lives inside your mind; someone you don’t want to relate to. It’s a part of you, even if you don’t want it to be. Sometimes it’s small, barely there at all, other times it’s strong and overpowering. It’s where we put all our unwanted feelings and emotions; those destructive impulses we don’t want to act on.”
“She does that, though. She acts on her impulses all the time.”
“Because you can’t.”
“Because it’s how she is.”
I wonder what he would have made of all this, Dr. Martin. What questions he would have asked me had he known about the bear pit, the spear with his words on it, and the spinning body of a dove. I still pretend to hear him sometimes, hear him in my head:
“Isn’t it possible, Cassie, that you talked to your brother about what happened in your shared childhood home, and that the two of you together came up with this plan, just like your mother and sister think?”
“No,” I would have replied. “I never was one for vengeance.”
“Yet vengeance is the legacy you passed on to Mara, isn’t it?”
“That was just bad luck,” I would say. “I never wanted Mara to have to deal with it at all.”
“But didn’t you, somewhere deep inside? Isn’t it a very human quality to seek vengeance—or justice, as we call it these days? Isn’t it fair to say that the need for restoration of ego and soul after a betrayal is so deeply embedded in us that the need will push forth, no matter how deep we bury it?”
“It depends on the person, I guess,” I would say then.
“Exactly … And you, Cassie, what kind of person are you? Are you the kind who can obliterate the need to strike back if you’re hit, or will you just find other ways to do it?”
“Like having a vengeful daughter?”
“Just that. A daughter with a ‘warrior soul.’”
“I never wanted this,” I would say again.
“No,” he would say then. “But she did.”