Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(81)

“Yes, they would in a very real way have substituted for the parents. At the same time, repeated failures by a sibling or a refusal or disinterest by that sibling in sharing the load, doing the work, would begin to wear. No one rubs you quite as hard the wrong way as a sibling. And while you may criticize, protecting and defending from the criticism of others is common.”

“He was a drain on the work,” Eve began, then goggled at the cup Dennis offered her—and the frothy hillock of whipped cream, sprinkled with shaved chocolate topping it. “Thanks. Wow.”

“You’ll want this,” he said, handing her a spoon.

“From what you’re telling me, yes,” Mira agreed. “He put a strain on the mission they both forged their lives to fulfill. It may very well be they found this post in Africa as a way to push him to contribute, and remove him from the immediate area while they reorganized in the new location.”

“Could he have snapped?” Eve demanded. “If they gave him an ultimatum. We’re shipping you out if you don’t start pulling your weight?”

“There’s so little known about him. The medical records are very general, and there aren’t many. The treatment for depression indicates he was troubled, certainly, that he had some difficulty not achieving what his siblings had, suffered from anxiety, and as I said, those abandonment issues. But the doctor who treated him is deceased, and the treatment ended fifteen years ago with the patient’s death.”

“He was more isolated than his brother and sister. And I have to ask, is this legal?” Eve dipped her spoon into the cool cream and warm, rich chocolate again.

Dennis beamed at her. “In this house it is.”

“It’s really amazing. Sorry,” she said to Mira. “What I mean is, being more isolated, having less opportunities to socialize with peers, like the others who went on to study and work outside the homeschooling and missionary stuff, wouldn’t he have a harder time adjusting to that life outside? His mother self-terminates, his father goes off on a missionary gig, leaves him in the care of the older two. They were given a small but decent financial share of the sale of the family home, a kind of before-I’m-dead inheritance. But the younger got an allowance, you can say, in the mother’s will. So much per month he could draw from rather than a lump like his siblings.”

“Which indicates the parents, either together or separately, had decided he couldn’t or wouldn’t handle a lump sum well, and needed more guidance. And yes, that could have caused some resentment on his part. Could have caused some anxiety and depression. So depressed, anxious, in treatment for both, still in a way under the thumb of his parents, who are now represented by his siblings, he’s pulled into their work as he has nowhere else to go, no particular skills, and from what it seems, no burning ambition.”

“Ends too loose tend to tangle,” Dennis said as he sipped his chocolate, and Mira nodded.

“Exactly. You want to know if it’s a viable theory. Could this at-too-loose-ends young man—with emotional challenges, challenges that may very well have been compounded by his separation from socializing with others his age in school, in play groups with other viewpoints and faiths . . . this young man who lacked his siblings’ skills, their drive, and perhaps their vocation, have become so troubled, so tangled, that even the change from one location, which would have been his home now as his parental home had been taken away, to another—yet another, where he was not given a true choice—have caused a psychic break?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s about it.”

“It’s certainly possible. And the method, the drowning, at the place that had become his home? Perhaps a rebellion against the tenets he’d been raised on, or a terrible attempt to embrace them.”

“A ritual baptism deal—either to screw with the whole basis of his siblings’ world, or to try to prove he could be a real part of it.”

“Yes.” Through the hillock of whipped cream, Mira sipped the chocolate. “You lean toward the first of those. You’d prefer it if he acted out of malice. But in this scenario, if it falls along these lines in the end, I’d lean toward the latter.”

“Why?”

“He seems sad, your tragic and doomed suspect. His life so restricted—the youngest is often babied too long, held too tightly. If they were raised traditionally, as I suspect, rigid tradition, I mean, the mother—also challenged—would have had more of the day-to-day care and tending. She may have held too tight to him, and as he approached adulthood, despaired.”

“You’d feel sorry for him, even if he killed those girls.”

“I’d see someone who wasn’t given what he needed . . . emotionally, physically.” She sat back, as if considering. “The older siblings are grouped closely together in age. Then the long gap, the late baby. It’s very possible the mother clung to this last child, discouraged him from spreading his wings.”

“Stay with me? I need you to be with me?”

“Yes. Now he’s a teenager,” Mira continued. “The instinct is to rebel, to push away, to try new things. Even in a healthy family it can be a difficult time.”

“And maybe he did a little of that pushing away,” Eve speculated. “The mother, already on shaky ground, gives up, chooses to end it.”