“You still have to make a choice,” Julia said. “What are you gonna do? This has gotten completely out of hand.”
My li’l sis, my total stash of people who could still save me at this point—and I didn’t have the guts to look her in the eye.
“A woman has gone missing,” she said. “She’s probably dead, and you lied about it to the police.” Provocative, trying to get me to look at her, she said, “Or to me.”
I hadn’t lied to her, I protested.
“But you didn’t tell me the whole truth, either. And that’s okay,” she added immediately. Julia, scratching Ramses behind the ears, the cat stretched all the way out in a posture that was a clear fuck you to me. “Sam, I’m your sister. I know you. More than anyone else, I daresay, no matter how close you and Nick are. And I know that if you deliberately didn’t tell the police that Cécile had come here to harm Nick, you must have had good reason not to. And it wasn’t to put yourself in the clear.”
Julia and me in Hill House, a log snapping in the fireplace, and the only thing missing was me in a loincloth and the tongs in my hand. Dr. Jingles, Twig, and Porcupiny in attendance before me on the rug. My teddy bear, my cuddled-to-rags indefinable whatever, and my what-the-name-implies.
My version of humanity.
The only thing missing were the words I, the mighty Prometheus, shall bring you fire!
Julia, she traveled halfway around the globe to catch me from falling. And jeez Louise, had she cut it close! By the time I’d landed in her arms on the slope out back of the chalet, I’d practically been smashed to pieces.
“Sam!” she’d repeated over and over. “Oh my god, Sam, I’m so happy I found you!” Brailling my face top to bottom like she was trying to make sure it was really me and not a hologram or some supernatural impostor. My cryogenic cheeks under her bloodshot fingertips and me mumbling her name again and again, hardly able to believe she could be real.
Look, at that point I was out of ideas. My whole identity, based on the concept of Nick and me, had been blasted away in light of the previous night. Walking to the valley had been sheer survival instinct, but what the next step would be after getting there, who knew? Hikikomori sounded good. Total social isolation. Woe, the Japanese and their weltschmerz.
Julia, feeling up my face, she said, “I was so worried about you when our FaceTime call got cut off. The way Nick was coming at you. It was bad trouble. I could feel it all over.”
Asked if I was okay. Where I was coming from, why she couldn’t reach me. Where was Nick? Questions, questions, questions.
“That woman, Sam,” she said. “The woman in the corner of the room. Who was that?”
And I said, “What woman?”
Julia, when evening had fallen on New York, she hadn’t been able to shake it off anymore. She’d called Dad and the old man had said, “Go. If you’re really convinced he’s in danger, go over there and make sure he’s safe.”
“I was too late for the night flights to Europe,” Julia said, “but there was a flight yesterday morning that could get me to Switzerland on the same day. From Boston through Heathrow, and even then the transfer was so tight that I’d probably miss it. But Dad booked me a business seat so I’d be first in line and said go for it.” Wiping away her tears, Julia said, “I only just made the connecting flight. And even then only because the flight to Geneva had been delayed.”
It was already past eleven when she arrived and finally got my text from yesterday afternoon—I’m OK. CALL ME!—but by then, I was out of reach again. Me, drifting and delirious and desperate; fuck Swisscom in a snowstorm. In Geneva, the Hertz guy was already closing up shop when Julia came stumbling in. This guy asked where she had to go, and when Julia said Grimentz he said, “No way in hell you’ll get up there tonight.” All the roads were closed cuz of the snow.
“I cried out of frustration and then he gave me a car anyway, because he said he’d never seen anyone who needed to get somewhere that urgently. But he insisted I’d be careful.” Julia said, “I tried, Sam. I really tried. But they hadn’t even begun to salt the roads in the mountains. Not even the highway. I had to give up and find a hotel. Seriously, I really tried, but I was so, so tired . . .”
And me, sentimental softie, me with a lump in my throat. “No big deal, sis!” Smiling and saying, “You’re here. You made it. I’m so happy you came.”
By morning, the road was plowed clear and, vroom, Julia up, up, and away. She’d fished the address out of our standard email about our stay in Switzerland. The shutters shut, it was sheer intuition that made her walk around the chalet when no one answered the door, not knowing what to do next. And then her answer came staggering out of the snow toward her.
I hugged her, duh. Smothered her with thank-yous.
“Thank Dad, Sam. Seriously. It’s by his doing that I’m here. He picked me up at two in the morning from NYU and drove me to Logan.”
“What? Dad took you . . .” Whoa, fuck. Now I had to turn my face to the wind to stanch the tears welling up in my eyes.
“He said, ‘Bring him home, Julia.’ And that’s what I’m gonna do.”
That was this morning.
After that, the logistics. The call to 1414 to report Cécile’s disappearance. Warming up. The half-assed dialogue with the Police Cantonale—no mention of any murder plot or ghosts dropping from the skies, just a nurse who came to check on Nick and wandered off into oblivion. The cop who, just before splitting, had said, “Jeepers, the wind here can get pretty haunting at night, but don’t you worry about that.”
Maybe me withholding evidence was something he should have worried about a tiny bit . . . I’d pitched Cécile’s hypos into the fireplace; the stun gun probably was still with her when she’d run into the night. Full disclosure: I’d also reset her iPhone and slipped my own SIM into it and “forgot” to give it to the cop with the rest of her stuff. A tad unethical perhaps, but she’d come here to murder Nick, and I needed an iPhone, so technically it was self-defense.
Julia and I watched as they towed Cécile’s Peugeot away, and that’s when Louise Grevers called.
2
“It’s so nice to hear your voice,” my mother-in-law’s voice said, after I withdrew to the kitchen.
I knew it was gonna be bad news even before picking up. Not to put too fine a point on it, but after everything that’s happened, you knew bad news had a good sense of timing.
Louise, she said, “I heard on the news about the snowfall in the Alps. So early in the season, they said it was causing a lot of trouble. But I can imagine that, for you, nice and cozy in your chalet, it must look like a fairy-tale landscape.”