Cast into Doubt

TWENTY-FIVE

Shelby knocked at the front door of the house. She had a key to the front door, but she always knocked. It was one way of saying that she no longer saw this place, in any way, as her home. No one responded to her knock. Shelby frowned. Lately, her mother always had a caretaker during the day while Talia was at work. Maybe she couldn’t hear the knocking from upstairs. Shelby didn’t want to startle whichever caretaker was here. But she did want to establish her right to be in the house. Besides, Shelby thought, she didn’t care about accommodating anybody else’s feelings right now. She removed the key from a zipper compartment in her pocketbook and unlocked the front door.

‘Mother,’ she called out as she walked into the gloomy foyer. She knew her mother would not answer, but she figured that would give the caretaker fair warning that she was in the house.

No one answered. Shelby frowned. Was it possible that they had gone out? She had glanced in on Estelle the last time she was here. Estelle was in no shape to go out.

Shelby hung up her wet jacket and cap on a rack of hooks in the hallway, and glanced into the living room to the right of the foyer. Everything was as it had always been. The aged, fraying furniture, the drapes closed, the coffee table piled high with yellowing newspapers, the smell of mold. Shelby sighed, thinking how she had always hated this house.

Maybe not always, she thought. Maybe not when her father was alive. Her memories of him were like glimpses of a past that did not really belong to her. She had a vague memory of him returning home after school, the smell of his aftershave when he lifted her up in his arms. An image of his smile, which she could not fix in her mind, hovered at the edge of her memory. It would appear to her, from time to time, like a ray of sun through cloud cover, and then vanish again. She did not try to recall him very often. The thought of him, forever missing, was painful. But she could scarcely remember those days. Sometimes, it seemed as if her father had been dead forever.

There was no one in the living room. Shelby walked through to the pea green dining room with its massive mahogany set of table, chairs, and sideboards. It made a strange sort of office for Talia, a woman who was a computer whiz. The dining room table was covered with a humming computer, as well as piles of books, papers, and accordion folders.

Shelby glanced into the kitchen. A woman’s denim handbag with a vinyl strap hung over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and there were dirty dishes in the scuffed enamel sink. The caretaker must be here, Shelby thought. Maybe she hadn’t heard Shelby calling out.

Shelby went back through to the staircase and climbed the carpet-covered treads to the top. She walked down the hall to her mother’s room and looked in. The caretaker, a skinny young woman with pale skin and dyed maroon-colored hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, was sitting beside the bed, leafing through a woman’s magazine. She had an iPod on the arm of the chair and earbud headphones in her ears.

Estelle Winter was sprawled on the bed under her covers, her hair uncombed, her eyes half-open and glassy. She was in some sort of twilight state, snoring and yet blinking as if she were actually awake. Shelby’s heart hardened at the sight. This was how she remembered her childhood home – the blinds down, the household chores undone, the rooms reeking of alcohol. Those memories were constant. The unstable center of it all was her mother, whining or snoring when she was tired, laughing hysterically when she was high, and then lashing out as the euphoria faded. It was an unending cycle.

And then, Shelby had a horrible, fleeting thought. Is this how Chloe would have ended up? No, she thought. No. Chloe would have conquered it. Jeremy was the center of her world, and she was a good mother. For his sake, she would have conquered it.

‘Jesus!’ The caretaker jumped from her seat, tearing off her headset, the iPod falling to the floor.

Shelby let out a cry.

‘Who are you?’ the woman demanded, in Eastern-European accented English.

‘I’m,’ Shelby pointed to Estelle, snoring on the bed, ‘her daughter.’

The young woman frowned suspiciously. ‘You frightened me.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Shelby. ‘I called out when I came in.’

‘Well . . . I didn’t hear you,’ the woman complained.

‘I’m really sorry. We haven’t met. I’m Shelby.’ She extended her hand.

The young woman took it unwillingly. ‘Nadia,’ she muttered.

‘I’m really sorry, Nadia.’

‘Hmmph,’ Nadia muttered.

‘Look, if you want to go out for a break, I can stay with her for a while.’

‘Miss Talia doesn’t want me taking breaks,’ said Nadia.

‘Well, Talia’s not here. You go ahead if you want.’

Nadia looked at the big round-faced watch on her wrist. ‘I could use a few things at the market.’

‘Go ahead,’ said Shelby. ‘We’ll be fine.’

‘I just run down there for half hour or so.’

‘Perfect,’ said Shelby.

Nadia nodded agreement. ‘OK. Estelle,’ she announced in a loud voice. ‘You be good. Don’t get in trouble.’

Shelby looked warily at the woman on the bed. ‘Do you think she understands you?’

Nadia shrugged. ‘Sometimes she does. Other times . . .’ She made a spinning gesture by her ear with her index finger.

‘Yeah, I know,’ said Shelby. She sat down in the chair that Nadia had just vacated. Estelle grunted, and turned over.

Shelby listened as Nadia went down the stairs, back to the kitchen for her bag, and finally, out the front door. Shelby heard the front door close behind her. Estelle suddenly startled her by reaching out a hand and groping instinctively, unconsciously, along the bedside table for the half-empty bottle of vodka which rested there. Her clumsy hand caught the side of the bottle and knocked it over. It toppled on to the matted carpet. Estelle moaned softly and closed her eyes again.

Shelby bent down, clucking in disgust, and picked up the bottle. At the least the cap was screwed on tight, and the vodka hadn’t spilled. She was tempted to remove it from the bedroom, but what for? It was far too late for that. Estelle had chosen booze over life. At least she was consistent, Shelby thought.

Shelby replaced it on the table and, as she did, her gaze fell on a dusty framed photo of Estelle with her children that was pushed toward the back of the table, behind the alarm clock. In the photo, Shelby, Talia, Glen, and their mother were all sitting on a picnic blanket next to an old car. There was a picnic basket open beside them, and there was food spread out on the blanket. Shelby had seen the photo a million times, but it seemed to her that this was the first time she had ever really looked at it.

She and Glen were young in this picture, probably about four and one years old, respectively. Talia, the eldest by eight years, had an arm draped possessively around Estelle’s neck. Not quite a teenager yet, she already had the solemn, knowing look of one who was no longer a child. Even at twelve years old, Talia seemed to treat her mother protectively. Estelle looked pretty, but distracted. Shelby did not ever remember her mother as pretty. Estelle was smiling at the photographer, who must have been their father. He would live only one more year after this photo was taken.

Shelby thought of her own bedside table in her condo. She kept a framed photo there of herself and Chloe. To her, it was like a talisman, reminding her, each time she looked at it, of what she lived for.

Were you a good mother once, Shelby wondered, looking at Estelle? Before your husband died, and life became too much for you to handle? Was that where Talia developed this unreasoning loyalty to you? A chill coursed through Shelby at the thought. Was it possible that they had been happy for a while, and Shelby simply could not remember it?

Estelle let out a noisy snore. Even in the dim light of the bedroom, Shelby could see that her skin was yellowish in color, as her liver disease moved into its final stages. Shelby tentatively reached out a hand. It hovered over her mother’s shoulder. I wish I remembered you that way, she thought. She rested her fingers for a moment on Estelle’s shoulder, and thought she heard her mother sigh.

Shelby pulled her hand back, got up from the chair and crept out of the room. She had come for a purpose, and she needed to get to it. She looked back at her mother before she pulled the bedroom door shut. Then, she went back downstairs, and straight to the dining room. She took a seat in one of the dining room chairs and looked at the top of the table. She often walked past this table, and noticed the glut of papers and folders on top of it. A computer, a Mac, sat in the middle, but it was surrounded by paperwork. Obviously Talia was capable of doing all of her business transactions online. But a perusal of the contents of the desktop clearly showed that Talia kept a hard copy of everything. It was as if she didn’t trust her own area of specialization, or maybe it was just the prudent thing to do. It being tax time, Talia had all her physical receipts spread out across the table.

Shelby knew exactly what she was looking for, although, even as she searched, she could hardly believe that she was suspecting her own sister of such an evil deed. Part of her hoped that she would find nothing that could possibly implicate Talia in such a terrible plot. Talia was self-absorbed, but not cruel. Shelby could not think of one reason why Talia would want harm to come to Chloe. But someone had paid for the Ridleys to go on the cruise where Chloe died, and Talia was the link. Shelby was past caring how monstrous her theory might seem. She simply had to know. Two tickets on a cruise were not something you paid for in cash. If Talia bought them, she had to have charged it, Shelby thought. And she had to have purchased them after last December, because Shelby hadn’t mentioned the cruise until some time after Christmas.

Shelby tried to think when she had told Talia about the present, and the fact that she would be minding Jeremy while Chloe and Rob were away. It was difficult to remember because Talia never registered any interest in anything you told her. But perhaps the information had registered with her.

With a little hunting, Shelby was able to locate the accordion folder with this year’s credit card receipts and began to sort through them. They were not organized by month, so first she had to put them in order, and then examine each charge. And, she thought, she had to keep an eye on the clock. She didn’t want Nadia coming in here and finding her rifling through the bills instead of attending to her mother.

Slowly, she worked her way through the charges, marveling at Talia’s abstemious life. Amazingly, she did have charges for clothing, although, given the way she dressed, it never seemed that she wore anything new. She charged books and music, and sometimes groceries, but there were almost no restaurant charges. And no liquor bills. Talia could protest that she forgave her mother for her habit, but there was no doubt that she had avoided following a similar path.

There were many charges to charitable and political organizations that made Shelby stop and look again. Bud Ridley’s words came back to her. Hadn’t he been maundering on about good people who tried to help everyone? Was that how the rest of the world saw her sister, Shelby wondered?

She forced herself not to speculate any further about her sister’s expenses, and simply search for the charges to Sunset Cruises. She had gotten halfway through the month of March with no luck when she heard the front door open.

Nadia was back. Would she would head right back upstairs, or come through toward the kitchen to leave her pocketbook there? Shelby hesitated, trying to ready some excuse, and then wondering if she really had to justify her actions in her mother’s home to this young girl. She hesitated a moment too long.

Talia walked into the living room and stared at Shelby. Her eyes widened.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ she said.