Sleep Tight

Chapter 35

Gillian stood at the window of her apartment, watching for her sister. After being kept overnight at the hospital for observation, she'd spent the last twenty-four hours taking it easy and receiving visitors, including Holly, Ben, Wakefield, and Gavin. Nobody had wanted her to stay by herself, but she'd insisted upon it. The visits were nice, but highly emotional and draining. She needed time alone.

Then her mother, in true Blythe fashion, couldn't wait any longer to celebrate Gillian's return from the dead.

A car pulled up to the curb. Mary, bundled in a long wool coat, hat, gloves, and scarf, hurried across the yard, her body bent into the wind. Winter had finally arrived. Snow had blown in the night before, and the temperature had dropped to the teens.

"You'll need a hat," Mary told her, stepping inside, bringing the cold with her. Gillian pulled on a lime green stocking cap and dug a matching scarf from the closet. "I knit these last winter," she said. "Remember when we learned to knit? Mrs. Portman taught us."

"After school. I also remember we used to make some fantastic snowmen," Mary said, tying the scarf around Gillian's neck and giving the cap an extra tug.

"And snow women." Gillian emphasized the word women. They both laughed. You didn't have a feminist mother without snowmen of both sexes.

"We'll do that again, won't we?" Gillian searched Mary's face for affirmation and found it. "Play in the snow?" Suddenly she felt brittle and fragile and dangerously close to tears.

"Soon," Mary said. "Very soon." She gave her a gentle hug. "Come on."

In the car, Gillian stared through the windshield. "I was so out of it when I was there." She felt no need to explain there. At Mason's. Mary would know. Mary would understand. "I keep trying to remember exactly what happened, but I can't. I recall snatches of conversation, and snapshot images. I know some questions have no answers, but I keep asking myself, Why?"

"Loss can be a catalyst for many things," her sister said. "Unfortunately, Mason was unable to cope with the death of his sister."

"You probably think it's best if I just let it go, quit trying to remember, but I have an overpowering need to put those days together into some kind of perspective."

"That sense of unreality could be a protective mechanism. Abused children often have no memories of the abuse. Even adults have been known to subconsciously block out traumatic events."

He's still there, Gillian thought.

In my head.

For the rest of her life, she would be connected to Mason whether she wanted to be or not. It was out of her control.

He'd been buried in Poplar Grove Cemetery, next to his sister. The siblings would spend eternity together-or at least a few hundred years. Gillian had been told that both Josephine's and Mason's graves would be covered with cement to discourage any possible grave robbers. For some reason, people tended to dig up the graves of murderers. Sometimes such desecrations were committed by family members of victims who had been killed. Sometimes they were done by people who had an unhealthy curiosity about such crimes and were looking for souvenirs.

In the cellar room where Gillian had been kept, the crime scene team found the dehydrated eyeballs Mason had given her, plus an unearthed, mummified dog.

It was over.

The house was no longer considered a crime scene. AH the evidence had been collected, photos confiscated, the building sealed. In six months, maybe a year, if no living relative could be found, a cleanup team would come. They would strip it of everything. Personal belongings would be bagged and taken to the dump. Later men would come and board up the windows and nail keep out signs to the doors.

The roses in Mason's private greenhouse had been promised to the U of M horticultural department. When students arrived to pick them up, they found that high wind had peeled back the plastic from the roof and freezing temperatures had killed the delicate plants, turning their leaves a withered black.

Better that way, Gillian had thought when Detective Wakefield told her.

Mary stopped the car in front of her mother's house. Darkness had fallen. The snow had stopped. She could see lights and hear laughter coming from inside. The feeling took her back to her childhood, reminding her of short winter days when she would come home to find the house full of light and people and energy.

She and Gillian could barely squeeze in the front door. The living room was packed with people Mary vaguely recognized-most of them her mother's friends. Music was playing, and Blythe was floating around with a bottle of champagne, refilling glasses as they emptied.

"Hello, sweetheart," Blythe said. "You remember Freddie, don't you?"

Mary looked at the short man with the red silk shirt and black glasses and struggled to recall him. Before she could answer, Blythe stuck a heavy plate in her hand and sailed off with Gillian in tow. Freddie smiled, handed her a fork and napkin, and trotted after Blythe's trail of exotic perfume.

After Fiona died, Mary began feeling resentful toward her mother. Not toward Blythe herself, but what she was doing with her life. She'd felt that any kind of art was a ridiculous waste of time. What good was music, and parties, and laughter? Innocent children were being killed. The time to laugh was over. Done with. You could laugh as long as you didn't know how bad the world was, but how could people keep laughing once they knew? Kids were out there dying. What good did a piece of baked clay do?

It kept the soul alive.

I've wasted so many years.

Not wasted, she told herself. How can it be a waste? I've stopped murderers in their tracks. I've rescued kidnapped children.

But through all that, had she really lived? She'd been shut off. Numb. Harboring a deep hatred, a deep darkness of spirit.

She directed her gaze to the plate in her hand-it contained a slice of white cake with white frosting. She looked up and saw Anthony staring at her from across the room, a champagne glass in his hand.

He smiled at her. It was the kind of smile that passed between people who knew each other's deepest secrets.

She smiled back.

Anthony watched as she crossed the room. On the way, she put down the plate and grabbed a glass of champagne. "I thought you were going back to Virginia this morning," she said, taking a sip and looking at him over the edge of the glass.

"I was, but you know how persuasive your mother can be. I'm leaving first thing tomorrow instead. How about you?"

"Late tomorrow evening. I have a few things I need to finish up here."

He let out a slow breath, realizing that after what had happened with Gillian, he'd half expected her to say she wasn't coming back at all.

"I need to talk to you in private." She put down her glass, took his hand, and pulled him through the kitchen into her mother's pottery studio, shutting the door behind them.

A nightlight covered in blue glass bathed them in a velvet hue. From beyond the closed door came the sound of laughter and muffled voices. Sounds of life. It was one of those poetic, crystalline moments he recognized as two-thirds magic, one-third reality.

"I talked to Gavin Hitchcock."

Business. Spell broken.

Anthony took a swallow of champagne and waited. It was always business with Mary.

"I think Gillian might be right. I think it's possible Gavin Hitchcock didn't murder Fiona."

"Really?" He had trouble being as interested as he should have been.

"I'm going to suggest that Elliot get permission to reopen the case. Oh, look-your cup. It's been glazed."

She picked up a shrunken, misshapen cup in the most godawful yellow he'd ever seen. He didn't recognize it. "Are you sure that's mine?"

"Of course it's yours." She turned it around.

He didn't think he could have made something so ugly, but wasn't in the mood to argue. Instead he said, "I had a nice time that night."

"Me too." She smiled. "Remember when you kissed me?"

"Vaguely."

"I was drunk."

"I suspected as much."

"But I'm not drunk now."

"What are you getting at?"

She put the cup back on the shelf, then took his champagne glass from his hand, and set it beside the cup. "Ever since then I've been wondering if it was the alcohol that made it seem so nice."

Mary was someone who required a good three feet of personal space. Now she was standing absurdly close. An invitation if he'd ever seen one. Mary, Mary, quite contrary. "Are you suggesting a test?"

"It might answer some questions."

"And you're always looking for answers, aren't you?" He put his hands lightly and impersonally on her arms, then thought, What the hell, and pulled her snugly against him.

He could feel her chest rising and falling against his. And he thought it would be a cruel world to bring them together like this only to have her tell him she felt nothing, that it had been the alcohol after all. He'd better make the kiss an artistic masterpiece. What was he thinking? He glanced at the yellow cup, then back to Mary. He was no artist.

So he just kissed her. Lips to lips, breath to breath.

When she finally opened her eyes, he asked, "Fireworks?"

"Sparklers."

He would have been disappointed, except that her breathing was funny, and he could feel her heart thundering against his. As always, she would give him only so much. It was a game they played. She was tormenting him, and he liked it. Their time would come. However long it took, he would wait for her.