The Fall of Never(13)

“My father’s hands.” She sounded both dejected and partly amused at the same time. “A puppet. I don’t know. I’ve never met him. My father is a very wealthy man, Josh. He doesn’t need to do things on his own. He pays others to do those things for him.”

Josh handed her one of the glasses and sat down beside her on the sofa. He didn’t know how to proceed; this was uncharted territory. And the look on her face—that look frightened him. It went deeper than just the expected sorrow she was justified in feeling in the wake of her sister’s tragedy. This look had thought in it. Too much contemplation behind those eyes, too much lousy thinking.

“I felt this coming,” she spoke up suddenly, clutching her glass with both hands between her knees. “I mean, I felt something coming. I don’t know. It all just sounds crazy. I can’t even think straight right now.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not. I think…this sounds crazy, Josh, but I think something inside me has been expecting this. You know? Like how a mother just knows when something bad has happened to her child? It’s like that, I guess. I think that’s why I’ve been feeling this way…or maybe not…Jesus, I don’t know.”

“When does your flight leave?”

“Tonight. I should be at the airport no later than nine o’clock.”

“How long will you be staying there?”

Her eyes trailed off into space, unfocused and facing the far wall. “I don’t even know yet.” Then she faced Josh. She looked half-asleep and dreaming, lost in her own mind. “I haven’t seen my sister in years. I haven’t even been back to the compound in so long.” Surprisingly, she broke out into choked laughter. “Compound,” she muttered. “Sounds like a f*cking military base. House. That’s all it is. Just a big f*cking house.” She took a long drink from her glass.

Josh thought, Plainly, Miss Rich, your sister was brutally attacked and nearly killed.

“It’s such a cold place,” Kelly went on, “and I haven’t been there in years. My parents are not the warmest, fuzziest people, in case you didn’t catch that from the message on my answering machine. Thank you, Mr. Kildare, whoever the hell you are. You are my hero. Good luck and good-bye, Bobby Jean.”

“I’m sure your sister will be all right,” he said, realizing as soon as the words were out of his mouth just how ridiculous he sounded. “I mean…I’m sure if it was very serious your father—or this Kildare guy—would have left you more information. Or at least a phone number. I mean, I would think…”

She nodded, but Josh could tell she didn’t agree with him and he didn’t say anything more about it. In his head he could still hear that cold, mechanical voice issuing from Kelly’s answering machine: I have taken the liberty of securing you a plane ticket for tomorrow evening from JFK to Burlington International. You can pick up your ticket at the counter, and a driver will be at Burlington when your flight comes in to take you to the compound. I apologize for the brevity of this message, but there is much to attend to here. Your parents look forward to your arrival. How could a human being be so cold, so formal? And what kind of parents have some personal assistant make such a telephone call in the first place? It was utterly ridiculous. Josh hadn’t necessarily grown up in the most nuclear of households, but such estrangement between family members seemed absurd to him.

“That poor girl,” Kelly whispered and finished off her vodka. “I should have taken her out of there when I left.”

“Christ, Kell, don’t start blaming yourself for all this.”

“It’s no way for a kid to grow up…”

“Still—it’s not your fault. I don’t care what you say, but I’m not going to let you believe that, you understand? Don’t be that way.”

“I just…” She rested her face in her hands again. She’d set her empty rocks glass at her feet and now she accidentally kicked it with the toe of her left foot, knocking it on its side and sending it into revolutions across the floor. “My childhood was a very unusual one, Josh. My parents were very cold, unforgiving people and I think that if I stayed there with them I would have turned out pretty cold and unforgiving too. I was sent away at fifteen. I married Collin at eighteen and moved to New Hampshire. I was running away, I knew it even then, but it was just something I had to do. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“What was so horrible back home?”

The rocks glass at her feet had stopped rolling. Now, she stared down at it as if it held all her answers. “I don’t know,” she said. “That’s the most difficult thing of all. I can’t remember. But I do think it has something to do with the way I’ve been feeling lately. And maybe with Becky, too.”

“How is that possible?”

She just shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s not possible at all.”

“I’m sure everything will be fine,” he said and threw a clumsy arm around her shoulder. He thought of Nellie at that moment and was suddenly surprised at how promptly the old woman had slipped from his mind. He wouldn’t bring up Nellie’s stroke now. It would just have to wait until Kelly came back from the—compound, he thought and shuddered. It was just so damned institutional.