The Family Game(37)
After the funeral she would not come back to the house. I started to suspect she knew. I am not a bad man. But my family is sacred to me.
What you did that day, the mess you made, what you forced me to do to protect those you left behind did not end then. That was the beginning of something. A loosening of something. The boundaries loosened.
I found her.
Her elegant neck, its pale skin delicate, leading down to an alabaster carved clavicle. Beautiful, and all that soft-spun hair, the velvety scent of peony. She made noises as she struggled. She fought. But it did not help. As close as lovers in those last moments. Her breath warm against skin. Her eyes inexplicably calm, as if she knew something the rest of the world did not. Perhaps how little fighting might help in the long run.
She slipped away, and was dealt with. She knew too much about those final hours.
Then a two-hour drive. A two-hour hike, with only the sky and the wind and the rain as companions. There I left her. In the shadow of a green mountain past the calm of a lake. To the wolves. To the wolves because that is where she would have thrown us. And I will never let that happen to us. To my family. Let it not ever be said I let others do my dirty work. I dealt with the mess. That is what we must do.
That was the first.
This is not a threat, Harriet Reed. Take this as you find it: a work of fiction, a parable? But take from it that my meaning holds. My family will protect itself. Know that.
19 The Name of the Game
Tuesday 13 December
I gasp and whip off the headphones at the mention of my name, flinging the machine and Robert as far away from me as I can. Across the room the machine spools on undeterred beneath the coffee table, the slow murmur of Robert’s gravelly voice still audible.
He recorded that tape for me. To give to me. It’s about Bobby’s death – and a girl. And it sounds a lot like a confession.
No, I think again. It sounds like a warning.
He must know what I am. What I am capable of. And he’s warning me to be very careful.
He wants me to know he won’t let me hurt his family. That he will do what is necessary to protect them. It occurs to me with razor-sharp clarity that I have to see this man again in three days.
I leap to my feet and grab the whirring tape player, shutting it off, then perch on the sofa and catch my racing breath.
The recording is so personal. His thoughts about Bobby, his guilt, his culpability. And to tell me about the girl, that he killed a girl. What is he hoping I do with this information? I think of the man on the subway yesterday and suddenly my behaviour doesn’t seem quite so paranoid.
I wonder if I should call someone. I should call the police, or Edward. But what would I say? I listened to a tape that may or may not be fictional? This could just be another Holbeck test – a game, a cruel joke even. It must be. I look down at my trembling hands, the sight of them shaking a clear indication that I need to calm down.
I remember Lila’s words. I’m not supposed to scare easily. Is this what she meant? Does every Holbeck girlfriend get a bizarre tape? Surely someone would have said something, wouldn’t they?
I blow out a few slow deep breaths. This is too much for me, so I’m guessing it’s not great for the baby. I don’t want to push my luck – the first trimester is the most fragile according to Dr Leyman; I don’t want to miscarry. I need to calm down.
I stride into the hall, grab my coat and bag and slam the front door behind me.
Out on the street, the cold air hits my flushed cheeks, cooling them as the sounds of the city drown out thoughts and my pulse begins to regulate.
I have found over the years that mindfulness works best for me when panic sets in: the wind on my skin, the sound of the city, the feeling of the cold sidewalk through my shoes.
As I walk, my thoughts reshuffle.
Robert Holbeck gave me that tape for a reason. It’s either a warning or a test. Another game. He clearly enjoys those. It’s hard to know if the story is even real; it sounds like Bobby’s story, and the building Robert mentions sounds like 7 East 88th Street — its weather vane glinting in the afternoon light but Bobby didn’t jump to his death, did he? His medications interacted.
I pull out my phone and rack my brain for the year Bobby died as I hit Central Park. Edward was seventeen, so it would have been 2002.
I type in: suicide, East 88th Street, 2002.
The first search result is a photo. I draw in a sharp breath as I catch the unmistakable shape of a white incident tent erected beneath the Holbecks’ apartment building. It discreetly covers something. I blink away the thought of Bobby’s black-stained Columbia sweatshirt.
Edward lied to me. Bobby jumped; he didn’t die from a drug interaction. The story on Robert’s tape is true. That dignified, quiet death Edward described is fiction.
I feel my knees weaken. I need to sit down. Edward kept the extent of this horrendous event from me – he must have known how much more seriously I’d take his reticence to spend time around his family.
And that’s when I feel it; eyes on me. Surprised, I stop mid-stride and scan the park, not entirely certain what I’m looking for. I dodge a woman and stroller caught short by my sudden stop, looking back up just in time, and then catch sight of something. The man with the baseball cap, from the subway, across the park. His eyes lock with mine and I realize now with absolute certainty: Robert has had someone following me since he gave me the tape.