Page 21 of Death in the Family
She was cautious with her words for another reason. Abella wasn’t supposed to know as much about her boyfriend as she did. He wasn’t one to brag, but her due diligence on the new man in her life had revealed a highly accomplished individual who excelled at everything, and always had. The Internet divulged that in grade school Jasper was a regular installment in his Westchester County town’s local newspaper, three-time winner of the district’s geography bee. When his middle school won the statewide math competition, Jasper took the individual first prize. His high school lacrosse team, one of the best in the country, won countless tournament titles. What older brother would be comfortable competing with that?
“Let me tell you a story,” Jasper said. Abella didn’t like his tone. She could feel his heartbeat through his ribs. His body heat was rising. “Flynn had just finished his junior year. School was over for the summer, and report cards were coming in. My parents called us both to the kitchen. Flynn wasn’t good at school. Usually they let that slide, but he was a year away from college and his grades were worse than ever. I guess they figured it was time to get real.” He snorted, as if he couldn’t believe it took his parents as long as it did, or imagine how Flynn could be such a loser. “They took away his car, gave him a curfew, did everything they could think of. On some level I think they knew it was meaningless, that they’d end up making a huge donation to Dad’s alma mater and the school would take Flynn no matter what. But they tried.”
Absently, Jasper looped a strand of Abella’s hair around his finger and examined its healthy shine. “Flynn was pissed. Then my parents turned to me and said I’d been invited to join the gifted class in the fall. This was kindergarten. I was, like, five years old. I had no idea what they were even talking about, but they looked excited, so I got excited, too.
“Afterward, Flynn and I went outside and Flynn patted me on the back. ‘Good job, Jas,’ he said. ‘You’re a fucking genius.’ He swore all the time around me, and my parents didn’t catch on for years; the first and only time I cussed in front of them, Flynn got the blame for that, too. So we’re out in the yard, and Flynn’s got this big grin, and I remember thinking, wow, my big brother’s proud of me. It felt so good—and then it got even better. Flynn asked if I wanted to toss around the football. He played for the high school, was pretty good at it, but he’d never once played with me. I was so psyched. I was a scrawny kid, but I gave it all I had when I threwthat ball because I wanted to impress him even more. Flynn caught it and whipped it back, hard as he could. Straight at my face.”
Reflexively, Abby brought her hands to her nose. She could almost feel the crushing blow, the hot geyser of blood and confusion and fear Jasper experienced that day, as if she’d taken the hit herself. She’d noticed the bend in his nose, of course she had. He’d never mentioned how he got it.
“Flynn doesn’t deserve excuses,” Jasper said. “He’s an asshole, yet somehow he always gets what he wants. He slacked off all his life and now he’s fucking CFO. Flynn thinks he’s my boss. Can you believe that?” Jasper stared out the window, his mouth a fixed line. “It’s not about competition for him, Abby, it’s about control—over me, and Ned, and everyone else. The only thing that keeps me from smashing his face in is knowing it can’t last forever. One of these days, his luck’s going to change. And he deserves what he’s got coming.”
The wind was picking up. Beyond the window tree branches stuttered and swooped upward, buoyed by gusts so strong they shook the leaded panes. Abella sank deeper into the crook of Jasper’s arm and used the pad of her thumb to buff a tiny smudge from her pinkie nail. She didn’t know how to comfort him, not about this. In the hallway, the staircase creaked. She sensed Jasper stiffen, and a second later Flynn passed by the doorway with his laptop under his arm. He paused to glance disinterestedly in their direction before entering the library and slamming the pocket doors closed behind him.
“I better check on Nana,” Jasper said. “God knows what Flynn said to her. I swear her blood pressure spikes when he’s in a half-mile radius.” He lifted his arm from around her shoulder,and instantly Abella felt cold. “Maybe she wants to play a round of rook with us. You in?”
Abella loved this about Jasper: his thoughtful nature, his devotion to his grandmother. He was everything Flynn wasn’t. “Sounds like fun,” she said.
“We’ll need a fourth.”
“Ned?”
“Definitely. Will you track him down? He’s probably up in Flynn’s room. With everything going on between them right now, my bet is he’s keeping a low profile. He doesn’t want to stir shit up with everyone around.”
Abella felt a twinge of pity for Ned then. She knew he and Flynn were having problems; Ned often talked to her about them, and the anecdotes he shared were almost always negative. After hearing Jasper’s story, Abella told herself she’d be both more attentive and more supportive of her friend. Why Ned was still wasting his time on a man like Flynn, she had no idea.
She set off to find him, but Ned wasn’t upstairs, or anywhere else Abella searched on the second floor. After Abella met Jasper and Flynn’s sister, Bebe, earlier, Bebe had announced she was going to her room to take a nap. Through Jade’s door Abella could hear the girl talking to her father. With Camilla on the third floor, Flynn working downstairs, and Norton still at the market, the rest of the house was quiet. Where could Ned be?
Wandering the Sinclairs’ home alone felt like an invasion of their privacy, but Jasper had asked Abella to find Ned, and she intended to do it. Back on the main floor she checked the kitchen. A full wall of windows framed river and sky, and the white cabinets and marble counters were bathed in a ghostly, colorless light.There was a door nearby that concealed stairs to the cellar, but it seemed unlikely Ned would be down there. On the far side of the kitchen she found a mudroom that led outside. Abella could see a shed, the outbuilding teetering on the edge of a high cliff about fifty yards from the house.
Based on its size and shape, she imagined the shed was used to shelter lawn-care equipment, possibly firewood. It was a miniature version of the house, with the same siding and custom windows. Through one of these windows she caught a flicker of movement. A dark shape shifting behind the glass.
A smattering of raindrops hit the door, and Abella shivered. Without Norton around to make a fire, the house was freezing. It seemed possible Ned could have gone to the shed to get wood. She peered through the glass. She wasn’t mistaken. Someone was out there. Inside that shed.
She turned the handle and a gust of cold wind slapped her in the face. A dozen oilskin jackets and raincoats pressed in on her from both sides of the mudroom. She chose a long slicker from a hook at random and buttoned it over her clothes. Abella mentioned she’d spent an hour straightening her hair that morning, and she wasn’t about to let the rain ruin it now. Pulling on the hood, she stepped out of the house and began to traverse the yard.
As she walked, she thought of nothing but finding Ned. This weekend was crucial for Abella, a chance to prove to Jasper she fit in his life like a key in a lock. They’d been dating only a handful of weeks, but she was hopeful he saw her as more than a fling. He’d invited her here, hadn’t he? That had to count for something. Her job situation and status in the country, that stuff would resolve itself. In the meantime, she couldn’t risk a misstep that might make him question how he felt. Her every move had to look effortless.She needed her presence to feel natural, not just to Jasper but to all of the Sinclairs. She wanted them to feel like she’d been there all along.
Slippery moss coated the rocks and the wind thrashed her from all angles. It made Abella move like a kid on a balance beam, arms windmilling ridiculously, on the verge of wiping out. The closer she got to the shed, the more convinced she was that she was right. Ned had gone to get firewood. A fire would be nice.
She reached the door. Should she knock? No, that would be weird. Instead, she put her hand on the rusty latch, the iron so cold it felt hot to the touch. She squinted through the window at the darkness inside, and felt a zing of horror whiz down her spine.
It couldn’t be. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. There was clutter everywhere, dangling garden tools and rope and woodworking instruments with mean edges that glinted in the pale light—and in the middle of it all stood Ned. His pants were a puddle around his feet. In front of him a woman leaned over a sawhorse, Ned’s hand a dark tattoo on the creamy skin of her hip. Behind a wave of dark hair, Abella could just make out the pinched-eye, openmouthed expression of ecstasy on Bebe Sinclair’s face.
With her heart beating wildly in her rib cage, Abella stared at Ned and Bebe as their bodies bucked and swayed. The scene in the shed was horrible and hypnotic and she couldn’t look away. What she was witnessing was dangerous, and Abella knew it. She couldn’t win. If they saw her, she’d no longer be Jasper’s girlfriend but an infectious disease that could spread throughout the house to compromise the health of countless relationships. Flynn and Ned, Bebe and Miles, Abella and Jasper... all were at risk. If anyone else found out what she now knew, she’d be the one blamed. Abella was a stranger, the family would say, only there to spread rumorsand cause trouble. They were Jasper’s blood relatives. When they urged him to cut her from his life, he’d listen.
The raincoat’s hood trapped the heat of her body and Abella felt as if she’d stuck her head in an oven and was waiting, fearful and frozen, for the gas to take effect.Go, she thought.Gonow.With a burst of adrenaline she turned and sprinted back to the house. The wind screamed across the open land, shoving her left and right. She was almost at the mudroom door, so close she could see the jackets hanging inside, when the heel of her shoe slipped and she went down on the rocks with a grunt, her pulse thundering in her ears.
She didn’t need to look. Sprawled on the ground with her cheek against cold stone, she could feel their eyes on her back. Inside the shed, Ned and Bebe were watching. Abella knew this sure as she knew what it meant. She’d seen them. And they had seen her.
The next few minutes were a blur. By the time she found herself hobbling down the hall toward the parlor, Jasper had set up the game and settled Camilla into a chair. In the hearth a newly laid fire sparked to life. There was firewood in a basket by the wall, there all along. Panting, she stumbled into the room.
“Where’d you go?” Jasper asked with a note of concern. He surveyed the jacket, her crimson cheeks, the wide stripe of mud on the thigh of her jeans. She’d panicked and come straight back inside without even taking off her muddy shoes. A look of disapproval rolled across Camilla’s face as her gaze followed the muddy footprints down the hall.
“Just...” Sweltering, Abella shrugged off the hood. “Outside,” she said. “To get some air.”
If he picked up on her fear, Jasper didn’t show it. “My jacket looks good on you.” He said it with a wolfish grin. Abella wearingnothing but his too-big T-shirt on a lazy Saturday morning. Abella tucked into one of his threadbare college sweatshirts as they sat on Jasper’s couch drinking good wine. The images he was trying to convey with those words and that playful expression were meant to be prophecies, but they were as painful to her as torn skin. They were what Abella thought she wanted, and what she’d now never have. “No luck with Ned?” asked Jasper.
Abella took off Jasper’s jacket and draped it over her arm. She stared at it for a long time before meeting his gaze again. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t find him anywhere.”
