Andy found the remote and unmuted the sound.
“—always the cool mom,” Alice, who had not spoken to Andy in over a decade, was telling the reporter. “You could, you know, talk to her about your problems and she’d, like, she wouldn’t judge, you know?” Alice kept shrugging her shoulder every other word, as if she was being electrocuted. “I dunno, it’s weird to watch her on the video because, you’re like, wow, that’s Mrs. Oliver, but it’s like in Kill Bill where the mom is all normal in front of her kid but she’s secretly a killing machine.”
Andy’s mouth was still thick with peanut butter, but she managed to push out the words, “Killing machine?”
Gordon took the remote from Andy. He muted the sound. He stared at Alice Blaedel, whose mouth was still moving despite not knowing a goddamn thing.
Andy poured more bourbon into her empty cup. Alice had walked out on Kill Bill because she’d said it was stupid and now she was using it as a cultural touchstone.
Gordon tried, “I’m sure she’ll regret her choice of words.”
Like she’d regretted getting genital warts from Adam Humphrey.
He tried again. “I didn’t realize you had reconnected with Alice.”
“I haven’t. She’s a self-serving bitch.” Andy swallowed the bourbon in one go. She coughed at the sudden heat in her throat, then poured herself some more.
“Maybe you should—”
“They lift cars,” Andy said, which wasn’t exactly what she meant. “Mothers, I mean. Like, the adrenaline, when they see that their kids are trapped.” She raised her hands to indicate the act of picking up an overturned automobile.
Gordon stroked his mustache with his fingers.
“She was so calm,” Andy said. “In the diner.”
Gordon sat back in the chair.
Andy said, “People were screaming. It was terrifying. I didn’t see him shoot—I didn’t see the first one. The second one, I saw that.” She rubbed her jaw with her hand. “You know that phrase people say in the movies, ‘I’m gonna blow your head off’? That happens. It literally happens.”
Gordon crossed his arms.
“Mom came running toward me.” Andy saw it all happening again in her head. The tiny red dots of blood freckling Laura’s face. Her arms reaching out to tackle Andy to the ground. “She looked scared, Dad. With everything that happened, that’s the only time I ever saw her look scared.”
He waited.
“You watched the video. You saw what I did. Didn’t do. I was panicked. Useless. Is that why . . .” She struggled to give voice to her fear. “Is that why Mom’s mad at me? Because I was a coward?”
“Absolutely not.” He shook his head, vehement. “There’s no such thing as a coward in that kind of situation.”
Andy wondered if he was right, and more importantly, if her mother agreed with him.
“Andrea—”
“Mom killed him.” Saying the words put a burning lump of coal in her stomach. “She could’ve taken the gun out of his hand. She had time to do that, to reach down, but instead she reached up and—”
Gordon let her speak.
“I mean—did she have time? Is it right to assume she was capable of making rational choices?” Andy did not expect an answer. “She looked calm in the video. Serene, that’s what you said. Or maybe we’re both wrong, because, really, she didn’t have an expression. Nothing, right? You saw her face. Everydayness.”
He nodded, but let her continue.
“When it was happening, I didn’t see it from the front. I mean, I was behind her, right? When it was happening. And then I saw the video from the front and it—it looked different.” Andy tried to keep her muddled brain on track. She ate a couple of potato chips, hoping the starch would absorb the alcohol.
She told her father, “I remember when the knife was in Jonah’s neck and he was raising the gun—I remember being really clear that he could’ve shot somebody. Shot me. It doesn’t take much to pull a trigger, right?”
Gordon nodded.
“But from the front—you see Mom’s face, and you wonder if she did the right thing. If she was thinking that, yes, she could take away the gun, but she wasn’t going to do that. She was going to kill the guy. And it wasn’t out of fear or self-preservation but it was like . . . a conscious choice. Like a killing machine.” Andy couldn’t believe she had used Alice Blaedel’s spiteful words to describe her mother. “I don’t get it, Daddy. Why didn’t Mom talk to the police? Why didn’t she tell them it was self-defense?”
Why was she letting everyone believe that she had deliberately committed murder?
“I don’t get it,” Andy repeated. “I just don’t understand.”
Gordon stroked his mustache again. It was becoming a nervous habit. He didn’t answer her at first. He was used to carefully considering his words. Everything felt especially dangerous right now. Neither one of them wanted to say something that could not be taken back.
Your mother is a murderer. Yes, she had a choice. She chose to kill that boy.
Eventually, Gordon said, “I have no idea how your mother was able to do what she did. Her thought process. The choices she made. Why she behaved the way she did toward the police.” He shrugged, his hands out in the air. “One could hazard that her refusal to talk about it, her anger, is post-traumatic stress, or perhaps it triggered something from her childhood that we don’t know about. She’s never been one to discuss the past.”
He stopped again to gather his thoughts.
“What your mother said in the car—she’s right. I don’t know her. I can’t comprehend her motivations. I mean, yes, I do get that she had the instinct to protect you. I’m very glad that she did. So grateful. But how she did it . . .” He let his gaze travel back to the television. More talking heads. Someone was pointing to a diagram of the Mall of Belle Isle, explaining the route Jonah Helsinger had taken to the diner. “Andrea, I just don’t know.” Gordon said it again: “I just don’t know.”
Andy had finished her drink. Under her father’s watchful eye, she poured another one.
He said, “That’s a lot of alcohol on an empty stomach.”
Andy shoved the rest of the sandwich into her mouth. She chewed on one side so she could ask, “Did you know that guy at the hospital?”
“Which guy?”
“The one in the Alabama hat who helped Mom into the car.”
He shook his head. “Why?”
“It seemed like Mom knew him. Or maybe was scared of him. Or—” Andy stopped to swallow. “He knew you were my dad, which most people don’t assume.”
Gordon touched the ends of his mustache. He was clearly trying to recall the exchange. “Your mother knows a lot of people in town. She has a lot of friends. Which, hopefully, will help her.”
“You mean legally?”
He did not answer the question. “I put in a call to a criminal defense lawyer I’ve used before. He’s aggressive, but that’s what your mother needs right now.”
Andy sipped the bourbon. Gordon was right: the edge was coming off. She felt her eyes wanting to close.
He said, “When I first met your mom, I thought she was a puzzle. A fascinating, beautiful, complex puzzle. But then I realized that no matter how close I got to her, no matter what combination I tried, she would never really open up to me.” He finally drank some bourbon. Instead of gulping it like Andy, he let it roll down his throat.
He told her, “I’ve said too much. I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s been a troubling day, and I haven’t done much to help the situation.” He indicated a box filled with art supplies. “I assume you want this to go tonight?”
“I’ll get it tomorrow.”
Gordon gave her a careful look. As a kid, she would freak out whenever her art supplies were not close at hand.
Andy said, “I’m too tired to do anything but sleep.” She did not tell him that she had not held a charcoal pencil or a sketchpad in her hands since her first year in New York. “Daddy, should I talk to her? Not to ask her if I can stay, but to ask her why.”
“I don’t feel equipped to offer you advice.”