The Fall of Never(19)

No—you can keep this life. I want nothing to do with it.

Before venturing back into the hallway, she washed her face and hands in the connecting bathroom and tied her hair back with an elastic band. The upstairs hallway was silent and cloaked in shadows, each door to every room closed. Like secrets, she thought. Remembering correctly, Becky’s bedroom was the one opposite her own, and her parents would be asleep on the third floor. She went to Becky’s door, touched the brass knob, jiggled it. It was locked. Looking down, she could see a soft blue light pulsing beneath the door, as if someone had left a television on inside. Moonlight?

Lightly, she tapped her fingernails on the door. “Becky? Beck?”

My God, she realized, I don’t even know what to call you.

She watched as the blue light beneath the door slowly faded, but no one answered her.

In the kitchen, Glenda Banczyk was hunched over the stove boiling a pot of water. She was a meaty, compact woman who now must have been in her mid-sixties. Kelly barely recalled the days of her youth when Glenda had moved around the compound in a starched white uniform (per regulation), her graying hair tied up in a bun (also per regulation), her thick arms laden with laundry. In those days, Kelly had recognized an almost admirable attractiveness in the woman, as if she had been destined to be beautiful if only she’d followed a different path. But she had always been kind, and that was what Kelly remembered most of all.

Kelly entered the kitchen and paused by the table, watching the old housekeeper work with her back toward her. Glenda went to the refrigerator, grabbed several eggs, and dipped them one by one into the pot of boiling water. Still wearing the white uniform, the woman seemed to be caught in an inescapable time warp. She caught Kelly out of the corner of her eye and turned around, beaming.

“Kelly!” She moved to her, hugged her warmly, then held her out at arm’s length for a full examination. “Oh, honey, you’ve grown up!”

“Hello.”

“Yes!”

“You look good. How’ve you been?”

“Good-good-good, healthy as a horse,” the woman said. Her face was fuller than Kelly remembered, and creased with faint wrinkles like the dog-eared pages of a paperback novel. “Sit down, sit, I’ve prepared food.” She moved to the refrigerator again as Kelly sat, and fished out a turkey sandwich and potato salad on a plate, covered in Saran Wrap. “So good to see you, dear,” Glenda said. “It’s just unfortunate it has to be under such horrible circumstances.”

“What exactly are the circumstances?” she asked. “No one’s told me anything.”

Glenda set the plate of food down in front of her, brushed a string of gray hair from her face, and gently caressed the side of Kelly’s face. Her hands were like mother-hands, tender and loving. “You got so pretty,” she said. “I knew that you would. You were such a pretty little girl…”

“Glenda, please…”

Resigned, the housekeeper sat at the table. “No one knows for certain what happened to your sister,” she said, “except for Becky herself, the poor darling, and she’s been asleep since it happened.”

Becky wasn’t just asleep, Kelly knew; Becky was unconscious.

Glenda said, “Four nights ago, for whatever reason, your sister crept out of the house and started wandering through the woods out back. She apparently walked out pretty far, and we assume she might have gotten a bit lost too. Mr. Kildare—I don’t like that man, dear—he found her the next day while searching the compound. Someone had hurt her badly.” It was obvious that this part was difficult for Glenda to say. “Her body was covered in bruises and she was unconscious, with a large gash at the back of her head. There was…she had blood everywhere, and her clothes were practically torn to shreds. The police said she was definitely attacked and, from her appearance, they think the attacker might have intended to…” She struggled with the words, “Well, to rape her, dear.”

Suddenly not hungry, Kelly rested her face in her hands, staring down at the floral-printed tablecloth while her head cultivated a throbbing headache. “Oh, Christ, Glenda…”

“The doctors said she’s all right physically. It’s just a question of when she’ll wake up again. She will wake up again, dear. She’s just slipped into herself pretty deep, but she’ll be back. I know she will. I feel it. But for now, there’s nothing we can do. The hospital let us take her home after your father insisted. Mr. Kellow’s had a doctor come in every day, just to make certain everything is okay, that she’s doing fine. And she is.” The woman smiled wearily. “She just doesn’t want to wake up yet.”

“What do the police think?”

“They don’t understand why she would have left the house, unless it was to meet someone.”

“The attacker?”

“No one knows, not until Becky wakes up.”

“Do they know when that will be? Do they have any idea?”

Glenda shook her head. “No one knows anything for certain, dear.”

“Kildare said something about the police wanting to talk with me tomorrow. Do you have any idea why?”

Glenda ran her palms along the tablecloth, as if to iron out wrinkles. “I don’t know, dear.”

“Who is this Jeffery Kildare guy anyway?”