Sunburn: A Novel(32)
Maybe everybody lies, all the time.
18
On her next day off, Cath goes up to Dover to see her younger sister. She loves June, but she wouldn’t wish a sister like her on her worst enemy. June is a little prettier, a lot more accomplished, everyone’s favorite. She has a career as a court stenographer, while Cath’s still trying to figure things out. June has a nice house, too, and it’s the house that Cath envies the most. Not the husband, who is the reason that June could afford a house. Cath thinks she can do better than the husband and is secretly pleased that her sister has settled.
But she loves their house, which was brand spanking new when they moved in a year ago. The kitchen is huge, with a family room alcove and one of those big islands with a marble top. Everything is white. It’s like something out of a magazine. June even has white roses in a milk-glass vase. Cath sits on a white wooden stool, watching June cut up vegetables for a salad while they both sip white wine.
“Be careful,” June’s husband, Jim, warns. “You could blow a .01 with even one glass of wine in you. And there’s only so much that I—”
“I know my capacity,” Cath says, but not too pertly. He did her a favor, after all. That’s why she’s here, to find out what her brother-in-law, a state trooper, can tell her about Polly and Adam.
She knows they’re together. She’s not dumb. She’s confused why Polly is pretending to be her friend, though. And when Polly showed up at her place with no explanation, then tried to plant the idea that Cath should be checking out Adam, Cath realized it was Polly she needed to research.
“So how do you know this person?”
Some instinct tells her to lie. “She’s looking at a lot in the trailer park.” God, I hate that place, she thinks, glancing covetously around her sister’s gleaming kitchen. So Martha Stewart. “She seemed—off to me.”
“Your instincts are good,” Jim says. “She killed her husband.”
Oh, this is even better than she dreamed. Cath takes a big swig of wine.
“Then what is she doing running around loose?”
“Sentence commuted four years ago. Governor wanted to show women some mercy in his final term, I think. Picked thirteen inmates he was told were victims of abuse. But the nonprofit he worked with didn’t vet them well. There were some straight-up killers in that group. She was one of them.”
“Huh. When was this?”
“Been almost ten years since she killed him. She stabbed her husband in the heart while he slept. While he slept.” Jim brings his arms up, miming the thrust of a knife into his own heart. “Do you know how cold-blooded you have to be to do that? Then she tried to claim he was killed by a burglar while she was sleeping in her kid’s room.”
“Are you sure?” She wants to believe it, but it doesn’t jibe with the woman she knows. A man-eater, sure. A man killer? No way. “I mean, if he did beat her and she had a kid, maybe she couldn’t imagine any other way.” Cath has read everything she can about the OJ case. Of course, if any man ever raised a hand to her, she’d be out the door—or he’d be out the door—the next minute. But some women aren’t strong the way she is.
“There’s more,” Jim says.
*
By the time Cath heads south on Route 13, she figures she has had almost three glasses of wine, but that’s because June kept topping her off. Sabotaging her again. June is more invested in being the good sister than even she realizes. Aware that she’s a little affected, Cath drives supercarefully. Almost too carefully at times—her speed drops and brights flash in her rearview mirror, warning her that she’s driving erratically. But she doesn’t think it’s the alcohol, not really. She’s trying to take in everything that Jim told her. A lot of it is gossip, he says, not written down anywhere, but he knows a cop who knows a cop who knew Polly’s ex and this cop swears by his info. Polly-Pauline spun it as if she were selfless, putting her kid above everything. So why isn’t she with that kid now? Why is the state paying the kid’s bills if she inherited all this money?
Cath knows some people would think she’s a hypocrite, dragging up a person’s past. But she was only seventeen when she got in trouble, a kid. And it was an accident, awful as it was. If that railing hadn’t given way, no one would have been hurt seriously. Her parents found a good-enough lawyer, she did anger management, and the records were sealed because she was a juvenile. That’s totally different.
When she gets to Belleville, it’s almost eleven. Over at the High-Ho, everybody will be heading home soon. Polly to her apartment above the old Ben Franklin, Adam to his motel room. Cath’s torn about where to go. She wants to tell Adam first, see the look on his face, but it won’t matter, she thinks. Even if he gives up Polly, he won’t choose Cath. Especially if she’s the one who tells him.
No, she’ll go to Polly’s apartment.
“What’s up?” Polly says, opening her door to her, but not wide enough to let her in.
“Just thought I’d pay you a visit. Sauce for the goose, right?”
“So am I the gander in this situation, or are you?”
“Oh, I think we both know who the gander is.” She pushes her way in.
“At least I didn’t come empty-handed when I dropped in on you,” Polly says, but her voice is mild, as if she’s teasing an old friend. As if. Polly opens her fridge, pulls a bottle of vodka out of the freezer. The fridge is ancient, looks like something from the 1950s, with its rounded top and single door, the freezer a metal compartment with ice trays and a buildup of frost. The oven is old, too, one of those white enamel jobs. Metal table with one wood chair, not much else. Cath glimpses an iron bed in the next room, a quilt neatly folded at the foot. Polly won’t be here long enough to need that quilt, Cath will see to that. Everything is so old-fashioned, not to Cath’s taste at all. Adam probably thinks Polly’s quirky, special. She’s special all right. Cath studies the magnetic strip above the stove where three knives hang.