“You’re no fun today,” she pouted.
“So, John, I’m really glad you decided to talk to me,” I began. “I know your mom has been reluctant.”
“Yes. She doesn’t want to talk to much of anyone, but especially not…press. She’s very private.”
“But you’re okay with it?” I prompted. “You’re eighteen, I assume?”
“Just turned.” He sipped his tea formally, as if he was measuring tablespoons in his mouth.
“Because what I really want is to be able to describe your sister to our readers,” I said. “Ann Nash’s father is speaking about her, and I don’t want Natalie to get lost in this story. Does your mother know you’re speaking to me?”
“No, but it’s okay. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree about this.” His laugh came in a quick stutter.
“His mom is kind of a freak about the media,” Meredith said, drinking from John’s glass. “She’s an extremely private person. I mean, I hardly think she even knows who I am, and we’ve been together for over a year, right?” He nodded. She frowned, disappointed, I assumed, that he didn’t add to the story of their romance. She removed her legs from his lap, crossed them, and began picking at the edge of the couch.
“And I hear you’re living over with the Wheelers now?”
“We have a place out back, a carriage house from the old days,” Meredith said. “My little sister’s pissed; it used to be the hangout for her and her nasty friends. Except for your sister. Your sister’s cool. You know my sister, right? Kelsey?”
Of course, this piece of work would have connections to Amma.
“Kelsey tall or Kelsey small?” I asked.
“Totally. This town has way too many Kelseys. Mine’s the tall one.”
“I’ve met her. They seem close.”
“They’d better be,” Meredith said tightly. “Little Amma runs that school. Be a fool that got on her bad side.”
Enough about Amma, I thought, but images of her teasing lesser girls by those lockers bumped around in my head. Junior high is an ugly time.
“So, John, are you adjusting all right over there?”
“He’s fine,” Meredith snipped. “We put together a little care basket of guy stuff for him—my mom even got him a CD player.”
“Oh, really?” I looked pointedly at John. Time to speak up, buddy. Don’t be * whipped on my time.
“I just need to be away from home right now,” he said. “We’re all a little on edge, you know, and Natalie’s stuff is everywhere, and my mom won’t let anyone touch it. Her shoes are in the hallway and her swimming suit is hanging in the bathroom we share so I have to see it every morning I shower. I can’t deal.”
“I can imagine.” I could: I remember Marian’s tiny pink coat hanging in the hall closet till I left for college. Might still be there.
I turned on the tape recorder, pushed it across the table toward the boy.
“Tell me what your sister was like, John.”
“Uh, she was a nice kid. She was extremely smart. Just unbelievable.”
“Smart how? Like good in school, or just bright?”
“Well, she didn’t do that well in school. She had a bit of a discipline problem,” he said. “But I think it was just because she got bored. She should have skipped a grade or two, I think.”
“His mom thought it would stigmatize her,” Meredith interjected. “She was always worried about Natalie sticking out.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“That’s true. My mom really wanted Natalie to fit in. She was this sort of goofy kid, kind of a tomboy, and just kind of a weirdo.” He laughed, staring at his feet.
“Are you thinking of a particular story?” I asked. Anecdotes are Curry’s coin of the realm. Plus, I was interested.
“Oh, like once, she invented this whole other language, you know? And a regular kid, I mean it’d be gibberish. But Natalie had the whole alphabet figured out—looked like Russian. And she actually taught it to me. Or tried. She got frustrated with me pretty quickly.” He laughed again, that same croak, like it was coming up from underground.
“Did she like school?”
“Well it’s hard to be the new kid, and the girls here…well I guess the girls anywhere can be a little bit snotty.”
“Johnny! Rude!” Meredith pretended to push him. He ignored her.
“I mean, your sister…Amma, right?” I nodded to him. “She was actually friends with her for a little bit. They’d run around in the woods, Natalie’d come back all scraped up and daffy.”
“Really?” Considering the scorn with which she’d mentioned Natalie’s name, I couldn’t picture it.
“They were real intense for a little bit. But I think Amma got bored with her, Natalie being a few years younger. I don’t know. They had some sort of falling out.” Amma learned that from her mother—the glib discarding of friends. “It was okay, though,” John said, as if to reassure me. Or him. “She had one kid she played with a lot, James Capisi. Farm kid a year or so younger that no one else talked to. They seemed to get along though.”
“He says he’s the last one to see Natalie alive,” I said.
“He’s a liar,” Meredith said. “I heard that story, too. He’s always made stuff up. I mean, his mom’s dying of cancer. He’s got no dad. He has no one to pay any attention to him. So he throws out that wild story. Don’t listen to anything he says.”
Again I looked at John, who shrugged.
“It is sort of a wild story, you know? A crazy lady snatches Natalie in broad daylight,” he said. “Besides, why would a woman do something like that?”
“Why would a man do something like that?” I asked.
“Who knows why men do such freaky stuff,” Meredith added. “It’s a gene thing.”
“I have to ask you John, have you been questioned by the police?”
“Along with both my parents.”
“And you have an alibi for the nights of both killings?” I waited for a reaction, but he continued to sip his tea calmly.
“Nope. I was out driving around. I just need to get out of here sometimes, you know?” He darted a quick glance at Meredith, whose lips pursed when she caught him looking. “It’s just a smaller town than I’m used to. Sometimes you need to get lost for a little. I know you don’t get it, Mer.” Meredith stayed silent.
“I get it,” I offered. “I remember getting very claustrophobic growing up here, I can’t imagine what it must be like to move here from somewhere else.”
“Johnny’s being noble,” Meredith interrupted. “He was with me both those nights. He just doesn’t want to get me in trouble. Print that.” Meredith was wobbling on the edge of the sofa, stiff and upright and slightly disconnected, as if she were speaking in tongues.
“Meredith,” John murmured. “No.”
“I’m not going to have people thinking my boyfriend is a fucking baby killer, thank you very much, John.”
“You tell that story to the police, and they’ll know the truth in an hour. It will look even worse for me. No one really thinks I’d kill my own sister.” John took a single lock of Meredith’s hair and pulled his fingers gently from the roots to the end. The word tickle flashed randomly from my right hip. I believed the boy. He cried in public and told silly stories about his sister and played with his girlfriend’s hair and I believed him. I could almost hear Curry snort at my naiveté.
“Speaking of stories,” I started. “I need to ask you about one. Is it true Natalie hurt one of her classmates back in Philadelphia?”
John froze, turned to Meredith, and for the first time he looked unpleasant. He gave me a true image for the phrase curled lips. His whole body jolted and I thought he’d bolt for the door, but then he leaned back and took a breath.
“Great. This is why my mom hates the media,” he grumbled. “There was an article about that in the paper back home. It was just a few paragraphs. It made Natalie sound like an animal.”
“So tell me what happened.”
He shrugged. Picked at a nail. “It was in art class, and the kids were cutting and painting, and a little girl got hurt. Natalie was a little kid with a temper, and this girl was sort of always bossing Natalie around. And one time Natalie happened to have scissors in her hand. It wasn’t like a premeditated assault. I mean, she was nine at the time.”
I had a flash of Natalie, that serious child from the Keene family photo, wielding blades at a little girl’s eyes. An image of bright red blood mingling unexpectedly with pastel watercolors.
“What happened to the little girl?”
“They saved her left eye. Her right was, uh, ruined.”
“Natalie attacked both her eyes?”
He stood up, pointing down at me from almost the same angle as his mother had. “Natalie saw a shrink for a year after, dealing with this. Natalie woke up with nightmares for months. She was nine. It was an accident. We all felt horrible. My dad set up a fund for the little girl. We had to leave so Natalie could start over. That’s why we had to come here—Dad took the first job he could find. We moved in the middle of the night, like criminals. To this place. To this goddam town.”
“Gee John, I didn’t realize you were having such a horrible time,” Meredith murmured.
He began to cry then, sitting back down, his head in his hands.
“I didn’t mean that I was sorry I came here. I meant I’m sorry she came here, because now she’s dead. And we were trying to help. And she’s dead.” He let out a quiet wail, and Meredith wrapped her arms grudgingly around him. “Someone killed my sister.”