Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)
Susan Fanetti
PROLOGUE, 1989
Mena’s car was in the driveway, but the house was dark. Not a light on anywhere, as far as Johnny could tell. He’d worked late, but it was only 8:30. They should be home. The family life was nothing if not routine. Routine was critically important to Mena. He’d expected to see the familiar glow of the TV through the living room picture window. He parked his sedan next to his wife’s station wagon and walked to the front door. He tried it; it was unlocked.
Johnny Accardo had been career Army, a Green Beret, in fact, and had done three long tours in ‘Nam.
He was retired now, working a damn desk in a damn office building, but he still knew when a situation was wrong, and this one was. On high alert, he opened the door and walked into his own dark house.
Everything was quiet, and nothing seemed out of place, but he couldn’t shake his sense of foreboding.
As he checked the living room and dining room, then the kitchen, he tried to think of harmless reasons his family could be gone on this school night, with the car still here. Maybe Mena had taken Lilli for a walk and lost track of time or even gotten lost—entirely possible if Mena was having an “up” day. She often got an itch to go “adventuring” on her “up” days, and on occasion he’d had to track her down miles and miles from home.
He’d check the rest of the house, but then he’d need to do a search through the neighborhood. He doubted they were with a neighbor. Mena didn’t much like people, and she wasn’t confident of her English, so she didn’t socialize. But they might be wandering the streets in the dark. He could imagine his little Lilli, already far too serious and grown up at ten years old, trying to cajole her mother into heading home or seeking help.
So far, everything in the house was still normal, but he couldn’t relax. He walked down the hallway and checked his office. Nothing. He started to call his wife’s name, but something, an instinct to be quiet, stopped him. He checked his daughter’s room. Her school blazer and bookbag were lying on her bed, so she’d come home from school. Otherwise, her room looked untouched. As always, she’d made her bed and tidied up before school, in accordance with house rules. Her favorite stuffed animals were arranged in a row across her pillows, staring blankly at him in the dim light coming through her windows.
He closed her door. He peeked quickly into her bathroom. Clean, quiet, empty.
As he approached the door to the master bedroom, his sense of doom nearly overwhelmed him, and with sudden clarity he understood exactly what he feared—and with the next thought, he knew what he would find.
Heart pounding, he strode straight through the master bedroom and turned the corner toward the en suite bath. He stopped in his tracks. The bathtub was directly across from the door, and he could see, even in the unlit room, that his wife was lying dead in their tub, naked, her wrists cut long and deep, her blood tainting the water and caking on the edge of tub and on the tiled floor.
“Oh, Jesus. Mena, dolcezza—no!” He reeled into the bathroom and dropped to his knees at the tub, pulling his wife’s cold, stiff body into his arms and weeping. She’d been dead for hours, lying here in the frigid, bloody water. Hours.
He had no idea how long he knelt there, crying into Mena’s stiff, sticky hair, but his tears finally abated.
As the first blast of grief moved past, he thought of Lilli. Did she know? Where was she? Had Mena sent her to a friend’s before she did this thing?
He kissed his wife, so lovely and fragile, so deeply loved, on the mouth and laid her body back in the tub. He had to call the authorities. He had to clean this room. He had to find his daughter and figure out what to tell her. He would have to make a new life for her. He had no more time for grief. He stood and turned.
And then, clear to him now even in the twilit room, he saw her. Lilli, curled tightly into herself and wedged between the toilet and the wall, her arms around her legs and her head on her knees. Her school uniform was blotchy with dark stains. Blood. She hadn’t made a peep.
Instantly, Johnny understood. Lilli had come home from school and found her mother like this. She’d wedged herself into that corner and sat there for hours, alone in the deepening dark with her mother’s bloody, bare, cold, dead body.
Mena had done a terrible thing. She had abandoned the husband and daughter who so loved her. But Mena was broken and lost, and Johnny could forgive her for that. But leaving her mess for their daughter to find? Innocent and alone? He would never forgive her for that. Never. He slammed and locked the door on his grief.
He squatted down near his little girl. “Lilli? Lillibell? It’s Papa. Come to me, cara. Come to me.”
He heard a tiny whimper, but she didn’t move. His heart lurched in his chest. “Oh, bella, let me take you out of here. Come to me.”
She looked up, and he could see how huge her eyes were. She was terrified, in shock. She whispered, “Papa? Papa, Mama’s hurt.” She sounded years younger than she was.
He reached out and tried to take her hand. She had her hands locked around her legs and wouldn’t, or couldn’t, release them. He’d seen this in villages in ‘Nam after the VC, or sometimes other US troops, plowed through—children hiding under beds and behind chests, or in holes in the f*cking ground, too scared and shocked, too traumatized, to accept help when it arrived. “I know, Lilli. Let’s go into the kitchen and call for some help. Will you help me do that?”