Real Bad Things(15)

She returned all the photos to the box, shut the lid, and shoved it back where she had found it. Nothing of Jane remained in the house. None of Jane’s drawings from childhood. No photos she could find. On the way out of the room, she slammed the door closed.



By the time the sun hit its midday peak, Diane wandered out of her room, hair askew and day-old foundation collected in the lines of her face. The thin T-shirt she wore clung to her bony frame. Daylight was a harsh judge, but Jane didn’t draw any joy from that. Many of those lines were Jane’s doing.

Diane poured herself the remainder of the coffee Jane had made and abandoned. The chair she plopped in creaked, though she wasn’t but a hundred pounds, if that. Her thinness had been a gift as a young woman. Now she lacked the fat that gave other women a healthy glow and plump cheeks. Before taking a sip of coffee, she looked at Jane, as if to question what poison she’d put in her cup. They sat in silence for a while, not even looking at each other.

“Did you sleep well?” Jane finally asked.

Diane looked at her like she had five heads. Silence was more comfortable than even the lowest form of conversation.

“Have you talked to Jason?” she asked after Diane didn’t respond to small talk.

“Course not. He used to come around, but . . .” A thought seemed to darken Diane’s mood and then cleared. She fluttered her hand in the air and let the gesture fill in the rest, then sipped her coffee and grimaced. “The only way anybody’d know I had kids is because of the stretch marks.” Diane released a phlegmy cough. “Why you asking?”

Because she worried about what Jason might tell the cops if they came knocking. “Because I haven’t talked to him since you texted me about Warren,” she said. “That’s what families do. Talk.”

Diane crushed an empty pack of cigarettes she’d retrieved from the purse hanging on the back of her chair and sent it skittering across the table like a tumbleweed. She glared at the empty pack before redirecting that glare onto Jane. “Forgive me if I’m not itching for a conversation with you.”

“Then why’d you ask me to come and stay with you? Why’d you forgive me?”

“You think I forgive you?” Diane laughed and held Jane’s stare, challenging her. “I don’t forgive you. You should never have been allowed to leave. I want to make sure you don’t skip out on serving your time now that they’ve found Warren’s body. You’re the idiot who agreed to come back.”

Meanness. That’s what Jane remembered, stitched onto every wound that didn’t work its way out of her skin and all the ones that did. Even before Warren. For years—her whole life—Jane had wondered what defect she possessed that made Diane hate her so much. Was it that she had ruined Diane’s life at sixteen by being born? Was it because she was queer? Was it that Jane didn’t follow the Game of Life, with all the right pegs and all the right spaces, cutting Diane off from an easy and early retirement filled with grandchildren and someone to wipe her ass and feed her Ensure when she got older? But that wasn’t something she could ask, not even in the heat of the moment. Maybe because the answer would be too painful to hear.

“I won’t skip town,” Jane said. “I confessed, remember?”

Diane smirked. Jane paused to consider what she would say next. “Did the police say anything about what happens next? Now that they found him?”

“You tell me.”

“I haven’t talked to them.”

“Then you best get on it. You need the number?”

Jane tried to shake off her hurt, sound normal. “No.” The news about the discovery still hadn’t gone live. She couldn’t say why she hadn’t called the police or gone straight there from the plane. Maybe a part of her hoped that she’d still get away with it. The explanation, an accident, after all these years.

The phone rang and made her jump. She hadn’t heard a house phone in ages. Diane let it ring a few times.

“You gonna get that?” Jane asked.

“Probably just a bill collector. Let it ring.” Diane paused until the rings subsided. “How much you reckon a funeral is gonna cost?”

Jane had never buried anyone. At least not in the traditional sense. “Two thousand, five thousand? I don’t know. I’ll have to look it up.”

“I hope you didn’t spend all your money on some last hurrah.” She examined Jane’s clothing and clearly reconsidered that accusation by the way she smirked.

So that’s why she called.

“So do you?” Diane asked.

“Have the money? Yeah. I have money.” To pay for her abusive stepfather’s funeral? Sure. Why not? She closed her eyes and choked back emotions she’d prefer to suppress.

“Well, good. It’s the least you can do after what you already done. That’d take me weeks, maybe months, before I could haul up that kind of cash. Even if it were my responsibility. Lord knows I can’t afford a service right now with everything going on around here—”

“What’s going on around here?”

“Everything. Nothing good.” She flung her hands into the air, as if the house swarmed with obligation. “The car’s been giving out on me. And then the AC. The fridge is on the fritz. I can’t even get the goddamn toaster to act right. You name it, it broke down.”