Last to Know (4 page)

Oh, she had been such an outrageous bride though, in long, clingy scarlet silk-velvet, strapless, with her golden breasts spilling out under a little white ermine shrug and the string of good pearls her parents gave her as a wedding present. Wally said he thought a new car would have been a better choice, but, hey, that’s who her parents were. And she was their only child.

She could remember the look of love and pride on Wally’s face even now, as he waited for her at the end of that long white-carpeted aisle. Rose had chosen white carpet rather than red because of the contrast with her dress, and Wally was drop-dead handsome in the pinstripes and tails her mother had insisted on. Even rented, Wally made them look good, a red carnation in his buttonhole, one of the old-fashioned kind that were so hard to find especially at Christmas time, flown in to a pricey Manhattan florist. Malmaison, now Rose remembered the name. She had thought it odd to call such a beautifully scented flower “bad house,” which was the literal translation from the French. Anyhow, it was beautiful, it smelled divine, and Wally was hers. Later, she even managed to grow some Malmaisons, out at the lake house; a permanent souvenir.

The champagne reception, the dinner, the party, the dancing till all hours, then slipping away to a hotel room and the next morning to a honeymoon in Barbados courtesy of Wally’s parents. Ten days of pure blue: sea, sky, and sunshine. Then back to reality and the two rooms in Greenwich Village with Wally writing at the kitchen table under the single window while she picked up her diploma and got fatter with the baby growing at the rate of knots, as her yacht-club father said.

Either the gods were kind or Wally was really good because his first book of horror stories was accepted by a reputable publisher, a modest advance handed over and they moved, just in time, to a small cottage near Rose’s parents, with two bedrooms and a proper kitchen and a bathroom with a real bath, important when you were about to have a baby.

Their first child was born, and named Roman because they decided Rome was the first place they would take him when Wally had a big success and made enough to afford it. Show him Italy young, Wally said. He was a very proud father, adored his son, found beauty in his every squall. Wally could not have been a better dad.

Then suddenly he made all that money and they did take Roman to Rome. He was all of two years old and they sat late into the night with him dozing on Wally’s knee while they dined on scampi and porcini pasta and foi gras ravioli and sipped soft dark-red wine, gazing awed at the ancient buildings around the tiny piazza glowing under the scattered lamplight of trattorias, enlivened by the Italian voices speaking a language Rose longed to know, and the violins and accordions of strolling players who smiled at their baby and nodded thanks for the small donation slipped into the extended tricorne hat.

*   *   *

Memories, Rose thought, alone now in bed at the lake house, were what held lives together. Without memories to share you had only the present, perhaps not even a future.

Rose loved her husband, she loved her children: eighteen-year-old Roman and the twin girls Madison and Frazer who were sixteen and full of themselves, into hair-flicking and texting and keeping secrets from her. Rose worried they were heading for teenage trouble. And then there was eleven-year-old Diz, named for a great-uncle Disraeli and known as “the afterthought” because the boy was an unexpected surprise, just when Rose thought she had completed her family.

Diz was different from the others, a small, skinny, gingery-haired kid; he looked nothing like his mother or father. Wally said he must be a throwback to his Irish ancestors, though Rose had no idea who those might be. “Don’t worry, it’ll only be a long line of peasants,” Wally had told her, laughing.

With her lavish overblown looks Rose radiated “earth mother” and, anchored as she always seemed to be in her cluttered kitchen with its long table where mostly you had to shove stuff aside in order to find a place to put your coffee cup, she looked the role. She was a good if messy cook; there was always soup on the go, always a bottle of wine on hand for whoever dropped by, always kids running in and out though not so much her own these days, since hers had grown up. Why, she wondered, was it that kids got more secretive as they got older. They shrank from confidences though she did her best not to pry. Even Diz kept to himself, but then Diz was different, a loner the way children coming late and last into a family often were.

Lying back against the pillows in her white satin nightshirt—she’d chosen white because it was virginal, satin because it was sexy, and a nightshirt because somehow these days she never slept naked—Rose thought about her marriage. Where, she wondered, had it gone wrong? And where was Wally anyway?

Wally was a successful writer of, of all things, horror stories, two of which had been made into movies. Rose did not like his stories; she found them sinister and wondered how they could have come out of the mind of a man so handsome he could be a poster boy for clean living and good health. Which, she guessed, just went to show how you could not judge a book by its cover, especially the ones Wally wrote. He was supposed to be writing now, getting on with his next “epic,” but all he seemed to have done for the last few weeks, here at the lake, was take the sailboat out when the wind was up, and if not then he would row himself out of sight of the house, fishing rod in hand, and be gone all day, returning late with nothing to show for it and nothing to say for himself.

Of course, the thought of another woman crossed Rose’s mind. This was a resort community with plenty of vacationers like themselves whose families had been coming here for decades. In fact now she thought about it the place was probably full of bored wives drinking too many martinis and looking for a spot of trouble. A man like Wally was a prime target; successful, good-looking, and undoubtedly sexy. At least he used to be and she was sure things had not changed in this department. Was it simply that boredom had set in?

She thought of him now. Was he downstairs, alone in the kitchen, drinking? She could stand it no longer, she would have to find him and ask what was going on, why they were like this.

But suddenly the door was flung open and there Wally was, still fully clothed in jeans and sweater, staring at her as though she were a ghost. Rose stared back, astonished.

Then without warning the whole room turned red, the glass in the windows crackled like tissue paper crushed in the hand, and the following explosion knocked Wally off his feet and Rose out of her bed.

6

Evening Lake, 3
A.M.
,
Madison & Frazer Osborne

Madison and Frazer Osborne were not identical twins, something for which every time they looked in the mirror, they thanked God. “At least I got the blond hair,” Madison would say, smugly. And, as Frazer would tell her, she was a bit too smug for her own good, which Madison said sounded like a threat, and inevitably that led to a row.

“Getting on” was what you were supposed to do as a family, their mother informed them, exasperated with their continual bickering.

Rose had her own set of commandments, one of which was “thou shalt not hit each other.” Another was “thou shalt not curse at each other” (the word “fuck” was definitely out). The third was “thou must remember thou is—” Here Rose had become a little confused with the “thou’s” and the girls giggled. “You are sisters,” Rose had finished firmly. “Sisters don’t fight, they stick up for each other, regardless of who got the blond hair.”

“So why am I the one with the horrible ginger?” Frazer had demanded.

They were standing on the deck at the lake house some weeks ago when this happened. It was evening and the sun was a molten red ball sinking rapidly into the rippled lake, turning Frazer’s orange hair into a true fiery red and her normally blue eyes into spitting red fireballs. Rose told her to ask her father. Wally’s ancestors were Irish redheads. Frazer decided it was all her dad’s fault anyway, but Rose calmed her down, told her her hair was beautiful and that one day she would be really glad she had it. It was what made Frazer different, Rose said firmly.

It was also what made it easy for Rose to distinguish who was who in their darkened bedroom at night, when she stole in to check on her sleeping girls: one pale head on the left pillow, one true red head—nothing carroty about it—on the right.

Plus always on Madison’s bed, on her chest, practically tucked under her chin, was her black rescue cat, Baby Noir. Sleek, and so fat Rose wondered how on earth Madison could stand the weight, though sometimes later when Rose peeked in again, she’d spot Baby Noir at the foot of the bed, yellow eyes glowing menacingly at her in the dark. A one-person cat, Baby Noir’s devotion to Madison was total. Nobody else could so much as get near him and if they tried were rewarded with a swift swipe of a black paw.

Oddly, the cat got along fine with Frazer’s dog, Peggy the Pug, who took up her own small slice of Frazer’s bed: compact, beige-furred and with squashed nose, and always snoring loudly. Rose didn’t know how the girls could stand it but they didn’t even seem aware of it.

Not only was Madison blond, she was also taller than Frazer, a fact of life Frazer also blamed on Rose. “All I did was give birth to you,” Rose countered her accusations calmly. At that time the girls were seven. She’d added, “Anyhow, you’ll grow.” In fact Frazer ended up a mere five-five while Madison was a modelly five-eight.

All their lives, the twins shared a room, complaining about who was hogging the bathroom (their own private attached bathroom so Rose didn’t know what they were grumbling about anyway), so when they were at the lake where each could have had their own room and instead opted to share, Rose was astonished. The bond between twins was there for life. Nothing would ever separate them.

They vowed this to each other, lying on their beds, talking into the middle of the night about anything and everything: school, the prospect of college, what choice to make and if they were both accepted would they go together, or should they finally be separated. And of course, they talked about boys. “Men,” they called them.

With Peggy the Pug snoring at Frazer’s feet and Baby Noir with one yellow eye open keeping an eye on his territory, nightly the two girls hashed out the teenage problems of their lives. Madison would wrap her hair sideways round her head, securing it with a plastic clip that dug into her scalp but which enabled her long blond hair to fall smooth as satin every morning. Frazer’s hair tumbled, like her mother’s, in a chaos of curls around her shoulders. No matter how she tried to tame it, it was what it was. “The red riot,” she called it, and it was true. One day she planned to sneak out and have it cut off, without telling Rose of course because she knew her mom would cry.

Sixteen, the girls decided, was a tough age, neither here nor there, considered by parents still to be a child, by boys to be fair game, and by themselves to be terrified of new feelings and emotions.

“And responsibilities,” Madison whispered to Frazer, still awake though it was almost three o’clock. They were both wearing old T-shirts, soft from many washings, and boys’ boxers which made them feel kind of one up on “them.” “Them” being “men.” Scary as hell and just as exciting, and thankfully, there was a pretty fair assortment of them out here at the lake, some of whom they had grown up with, played with as children, learned to swim with at the long icy pool under the tutelage of April Morecombe. A champion from the grand old age of the sixties and still going strong, with shoulders like a pro wrestler and a heavyweight at that, no child could fear drowning with April standing in back of her, urging her to put her face under the water and just blow a bubble, then kick, girl, for God’s sake kick, don’t you know how? A groan would follow this instruction, but everybody learned to swim and not only that, learned to swim really well. They lived on a lake, on a vast stretch of water, and safe swimmers were what April needed to turn out, and every member of the Osborne family had benefited from her tuition. Even Rose, who had been timid though graceful in the water, became stronger and easier and unafraid of being submerged.

Still awake for some reason at three in the morning, too much talk of boys, no doubt, Madison unearthed a Kit Kat chocolate bar from her hiding place under the mattress. Rose did not allow candy in their rooms, worried about their teeth, but of course they had found a way around that rule, and anyway were dutiful about the tooth-brushing after. Madison cracked it into two and handed half to her sister.

“Look how nice I’m being to you,” she said, lying back against the pillows and taking a giant bite of the chocolate, which crunched satisfactorily in her mouth.

“Only because I’d tell on you if you didn’t,” her twin retorted.

Giggling, the girls sank back against their pillows, then all of a sudden the tall windows overlooking the lake, which had been left open to catch the breeze, shimmered rosy-pink. They jerked upright, staring at this phenomenon as it darkened to coral then to a fiery red. And then came the explosion that rattled the entire house, shattering their windows, sending the cat hissing under the bed and the dog out the door and down the stairs, with the twins, screaming, after it, and their brother Roman not far behind.

7

Evening Lake, 3
A.M.
, Diz Osborne

Eleven-year-old Diz Osborne was sitting on the branch of the fig tree that stretched almost all the way to his bedroom window. The tree, he’d decided, must be thirty, maybe fifty years old, broad in the trunk like the prow of an old sailing ship except with sprawling solid branches and enough footholds and grips to accommodate a snoopy little kid like him. It was the end of summer and he couldn’t sleep. TV was forbidden, his iPad confiscated, and there was nothing to do but crawl out on his branch and contemplate the silent night.

Much earlier that evening though, around sevenish, just as dusk was falling, there had been a ruffle of “excitement” when he’d observed through his ever-present binoculars the blond girl from the lake house opposite emerge stealthily from her own window. He’d wondered why she had not used the door, then decided obviously she did not want to be seen. She was holding two large plastic bags, carrying them carefully in front of her.