Blind Spot (9 page)

“But this was just the way Alexa said it would be. The same spot. Jonah. Blood on the leaves …”

He touched her chin and turned her face toward him. “We’ll probably never know exactly what happened the other night, Suzanne—or why. Maybe Alexa had a clue the boys were itching for a fight, maybe it was some bizarre coincidence. Maybe there are just some things we’re not supposed to understand.”

“I have a patient who believes she’s clairvoyant. Sees into the future, predicts things. She’s quite convincing.”

“Suki, don’t you see what you’re saying?” Seymour asked. “You’re talking about a patient—a mental patient. Is she in the hospital?”

“A prison.”

“Enough said.”

“But what if she’s right, Dad? What if there
is
another sense that only some people have? What if Lindsey suffers from nothing worse than being misunderstood? If Mom wasn’t sick at all?”

“As Kyle would say: ‘Been there, done that.’” Seymour smiled at her gently. “I gave it a try for a while. I went with your mother to mediums and explored my previous lives. I talked to people who claimed they’d lived with ghosts, and I’ve had my palm and Tarot cards read more times than I can count.” He shook his head. “One woman told me I’d make a killing on the stock market in 1988 and another said your mother and I were going to celebrate our sixtieth wedding anniversary on the left bank of the Seine.”

“But—”

“Do you really think I could’ve been Julius Caesar?” The sadness burrowed deep within the creases of his face. “I wanted to be convinced, I tried, I really did. But there’s nothing to it, darling, I promise you. It’s a lot of charlatans taking advantage of people who want, who need, to believe.”

Suki swallowed around the lump in her throat. “I worry about what I did to Mom.”

“You did the right thing for your mother,” he assured her. “Don’t ever think for a second that you didn’t. You can’t blame yourself for what happened.” His eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “You did what you could, given the reality of the situation.”

Suki kissed her father’s papery cheek and snuggled into his arms, but she kept hearing Lindsey Kern’s voice: “
Reality is at the edges of your awareness. You just need to let yourself turn sideways a bit to see it
.”

CHAPTER SIX

T
he morning after Jonah’s funeral, Suki got up at 5:00
A.M.
to walk her four miles before getting ready for work. She did her stretches in the sharp circle of light her reading lamp carved in the predawn darkness, strapped on her waist pack and slipped out into the silent street as if all were as it always had been.

As the sun rose behind her, she quickly left the small contemporaries and modest ranches of her neighborhood for the more expansive houses and acreage that dominated Witton. She turned onto Country Club Lane and picked up speed, hiking past huge colonials and turreted Victorians that would soon disappear behind the foliage hiding within the fuzzy red buds of the trees. The forsythias were shooting fingers of yellow into the brightening sky, and the lawns were beginning to green. After a long hiatus, life was returning to the patient earth—just as Suki knew her own life, and the life of her family, would return to them when the present darkness passed.

Yet, as she took the wide turn at Roaring Brook, she was haunted by the image of Alexa, barely able to speak, not even calling her best friend Kendra, staring at the wall across from her bed where she sat cross-legged, hour after hour, in an oversize T-shirt. Suki pushed the image from her mind. Although Alexa had indeed made a drastic mistake, which had had profound consequences, she hadn’t hurt anyone. Devin was the guilty party. Devin had killed Jonah, not Alexa. And although he and Brendan and Sam and that self-serving Ellery McKinna were still sticking to their story, Suki knew the lie would be found out, for their fabrication made no more sense today that it had on Friday. Perhaps even less.

“The truth has a way of climbing out of the lies, Suki,” Kenneth Pendergast had told her over the phone after the funeral. “You’ve just got to give it the time it needs.”

Suki forced air deep into her lungs as she marched around the corner. Murder was not an easy crime to get away with in these days of high-tech forensics. The truth would come out when the car was dusted for fingerprints, when the tread marks and entry wounds and powder burns were analyzed. The truth would come out. She timed her steps to her new mantra. The truth would come out. She lengthened her stride and punched her arms higher in front of her. The truth would come out. But what about Alexa’s prediction? she wondered. Would the truth behind that come out, too? And, if it did, what would it be?

Suki was so lost in thought that she almost punched the runner coming toward her. It was Warren Blanchard, Jonah’s uncle. They both stopped. Kyle had heard from a friend that the Wards were furious that Alexa hadn’t been arrested, but Suki couldn’t believe Darcy and Warren wanted Alexa behind bars. She scoured his eyes to see what they held. All she could see was desolation.

“Suki,” he said, his voice scratchy. He cleared his throat and tried again, but no words came out. He threw up his hands in frustration. “It’s awful for everyone,” he finally croaked. “We know we’ve got no corner on pain.”

“But you, you and Darcy …” Suki stuttered. “She’s the one who’s got it the worst—the worst pain there is.”

“Perhaps.” His smile was sad. “But in this kind of contest, the winners and the losers all lose.”

Suki tried to return his smile, but couldn’t.

“People need someone to blame when something like this happens—to try and make some sense of it all.” Warren ran his fingers through his damp hair. “The town council. The DA’s office. The media. Maybe even Darcy. But the truth is, it was nobody’s fault—and it was everybody’s fault.” He awkwardly patted her shoulder and took off at a slow jog.

Suki watched him disappear around the corner of Shirley and Si Poverman’s house. Kenneth Pendergast had mentioned something about both the town council and the DA’s office yesterday, but she had been too distracted to hear what he said. Suki saw the cars circling past her house after the funeral. They needed someone to blame. And Ellery McKinna was going to make sure that someone was Alexa.

Suki started to walk. She could not live within this negativity and fear. She would not. Ellery would fail, and the boys would be forced to admit their crime. Then the DA and the town council and the media would turn their misplaced glare from Alexa, and this time in her family’s life would fade into a sad, sepia-toned memory, would become “that awful spring when Jonah Ward died” and nothing more. Perhaps it was already beginning. Kenneth had said the autopsy results and some of the crime scene evidence would be available this afternoon. By now the media might even have found a new story to beat to a pulp.

Suki headed toward the Stone Store—actually the Concord Hill Market, but nobody ever called it anything but the Stone Store, after the huge field stones that formed its walls, the same stones the colonial farmers had cleared from their land and used to mark the boundaries of their acreage. It was a tiny throwback of a store, smelling of sawdust, floored in boards of wide pine, overseen by an elderly proprietor named Jake with eyeglasses so smudged she wondered how he could read the ancient cash register. They needed milk and Jake always opened promptly at 6:00
A.M.

When Suki rounded the corner she saw that the interior of the store was still dark. Stopping to check her watch, she noticed a bundle of newspapers sitting next to the front step.

Fat black letters filled the entire space above the fold on the front page of the
Boston Herald
.
MURDER
AND GANG VIOLENCE IN YOUR HOME TOWN
, it read. But it was the more subdued headline of the
Globe
that made Suki’s heart sink.
AGGRESSIVE SEARCH ONGOING FOR WITTON MURDERER.

•  •  •

When Suki got home, her father was waiting for her in the kitchen. He poured her a cup of coffee and motioned for her to sit at the table. “Alexa was up all night playing video games in the basement,” he said as soon as she was seated.

Suki stared into her coffee mug. Her father never slept much, so she wasn’t surprised he knew of Alexa’s nocturnal activities. Although she was well aware that a lot of what was written in newspapers was pure fabrication, the words of the
Globe
headline were seared into her brain: Witton Murderer.

“Do you want to talk about it?” her father asked in his wise, lightly probing, way.

Suki nodded but didn’t meet his eye.

Seymour reached over and touched her hand. “What do you think, Suke? What do you want to do?”

“Go back to last week. Go back to our old lives.”

He chuckled softly, sadly. “If only that were possible.”

“Then we’ll pretend,” Suki said with as much conviction as she could muster. “I’ll go to work. The kids’ll go to school, and you’ll go home. We’ll act normal and that way we’ll
be
normal. Except …” Her voice trailed off as she stared out the large plate-glass window.

“Except?”

“Except how can Alexa go back to school?” Suki asked the massive oak tree that dominated the backyard. “How can I let her walk into that place? That’s where those boys are. And all the lies. The whispering, the finger-pointing.” Once again, the
Globe
headline rose before her eyes. “Maybe I could hire a tutor. She can finish out the year at home. Maybe go to a private school in the fall?”

Her father said nothing.

“I can’t let her go back,” Suki said. “She’ll be too scared.”

“Is it you or Alexa who’s scared?”

Suki sipped her coffee and thought over the question. It was always her father who, in his own mild fashion, urged her to see things as they were. Suki stood and leaned over to kiss his forehead. “Guess I should go find out.”

Seymour patted her arm as she passed. “Give her some elbow room.”

Suki was surprised to find Alexa both awake and wearing a different T-shirt than the one she had had on the previous night. Although still seated on her bed, without pants, her hair matted on the right side of her head, her feet were planted on the floor and she seemed more like her old self. But she was startled when Suki entered the room, as if she hadn’t heard the knock or called for her to come in.

“How’s it going?” Suki asked from the doorway.

“You look tired, Mom,” Alexa answered.

Suki dropped to the bed next to her daughter. “I guess I am.”

Alexa twirled the ring on her thumb. “Please don’t worry about me so much.”

“I think we need to talk.”

“About how long I plan to spend in my bedroom?”

“That and figure out what you want to do next.”

Alexa pushed herself up against the wall and watched the circles she was making in the air with her right foot. “You haven’t heard from Daddy yet?”

Suki shook her head. “I’m sure he’ll be in touch soon,” she said. “But for right now we’re going to have to figure this out for ourselves.” As if, she wanted to add, they didn’t always have to solve their problems themselves.

“Kendra and I already figured it out,” Alexa said, her eyes bright. “We decided I should go to school today. To show everyone I didn’t do it. That Brendan and Devin are lying ass—, are lying. Kendra’s going to get a bunch of kids to hang out with us all day.”

Suki was stunned by the change in Alexa, yet part of her knew she shouldn’t be: despite all that had happened, Alexa was still Alexa. “That’s not a bad idea, honey. But, you know, it could be kind of difficult.”

“I can handle it.” Alexa raised her chin and looked at Suki defiantly.

“It’s not just about Jonah,” Suki said, the bravado in Alexa’s eyes reminding her so much of her own mother that she winced. “It’s about all the other things, too. I was thinking it might be a good idea to go see a therapist—to get some help finding out what’s happening here.”

“Just because I look like Grandma, that doesn’t mean I’m going to do what she did,” Alexa said.

Suki flinched. Alexa’s words brought it all back. For despite what her father had said—and what she knew on an intellectual level to be true—Suki would always feel partially responsible, always feel at fault. It was she, after all, who had arranged for her mother to be committed to Outland State. She, the new Ph.D., who was so sure Harriet’s symptoms—the delirium, the wanderings, the claims of being able to see into the future—were those of psychotic depression. She who had had to identify her mother’s body when, exactly one month to the day of her commitment, Harriet had thrown herself down an elevator shaft.

“I know all about the airplane that crashed, too,” Alexa said.

“What?” Although Suki had been fairly open with Alexa about her grandmother’s illness, she had tried to protect her from some of the more inexplicable details.

“Daddy told me.”

Suki nodded. Good going, Stan.

“Maybe Grandma wasn’t as crazy as you thought she was,” Alexa said, the familiar baiting tone to her voice. “And maybe I’m not either.”

Suki stood up and began to pace Alexa’s small room. Don’t let her get to you, she reminded herself for the hundredth time since Alexa had hit her teenage years. Don’t let her do it. “Just because I want you to see a therapist doesn’t mean I think you’re crazy,” she said calmly. “But your grandmother
was
sick, she had been for many years—I know, I was there.”

“You’ve been wrong before.” Alexa began to draw air circles with her left foot.

“Not about this, honey. Not about this,” Suki said, the conviction in her voice surprising her; the discussion with her father had obviously had an impact. “And anyway, we’re talking about you, not Grandma, and what you’re going to do today.” She came and stood before Alexa. “If you feel like you want to go to school, well then, why don’t you go? Go take a shower and get dressed, and I’ll make another pot of coffee. How does that sound?”

“Why is it always your agenda?” Alexa mumbled.

The telephone rang and Suki was glad for a reason to break off the argument she knew could have no winner. She went into her bedroom to get the phone.