Too Close To Home. Maureen Tan

was too easy to remember how angry Katie had been. Angry at our mother, who’d abandoned us for her own selfish reasons. Left us alone and unprotected in the hands of a child molester. But our mother was long gone, and tonight there was only Missy who had also abandoned her children. I’d left her unprotected in the van. I should have known better.

      A final few steps took me abruptly out of the headlights’ glare. Darkness closed in around me as I leaped over the log that separated grass from gravel and stumbled to the front passenger-side door. I yanked it open.

      Katie was kneeling up in her seat, facing the rear of the van. Her elbows were braced on either side of the headrest, and she held Grandfather’s gun clutched in both hands. Her wheezing was counterpointed by the hollow click, click, click that echoed through the van each time the heavy hammer fell on an empty chamber.

      I followed the direction of her gaze.

      The dome light was more than enough to illuminate Missy’s body. Bullet-riddled and covered in blood, she was still held securely in place by her seat belt. There was a gaping hole where a blue eye had once been.

      “My God, Katie!”

      I couldn’t tell if my own words were a prayer or a curse, a thought or a scream. But my sister heard me.

      She turned her head and stared at me.

      I stared back.

      “Brooke,” she whispered, and her tone told me nothing.

      Then, suddenly, Katie went limp.

      She collapsed down into the front seat, half turning as she pulled her knees up toward her chest and huddled on the seat. She was gasping, fighting to drag more oxygen into her lungs and not succeeding, no longer pulling the trigger but cradling the gun against her chest. Just as she used to hold on to her rag doll whenever she was scared.

      I leaned into the car as I decided what to do.

      Missy was dead. I couldn’t help her.

      My sister might die. I owed her more than my life.

      The decision was surprisingly easy.

      I ignored Missy, frantically searched the front seat for the small purse Katie always carried with her. But I saw only the larger purse, now wide open. So I pulled open the glove compartment and dug through its contents, finally locating one of the backup inhalers we carried in every vehicle. From long habit, I gave it a quick shake, then shoved it between my sister’s bluing lips and pressed down on the plastic plunger.

      I heard Katie’s quick intake of breath, knew she was trying to pull the medication into her lungs. She didn’t resist when I took the gun from her and replaced it with the inhaler. Then I supported her shoulders and helped her lift her trembling hands to her mouth once again. Another quick blast of medication, another gasping breath, and I began to believe that Katie might live.

      By then Gran was there, standing in the doorway behind me.

      I turned my face toward her, expecting her to elbow me aside, to take charge as she usually did. But she just stood there, her wrinkled face illuminated by the wash of light from the interior of the car, light bouncing off her glasses, her head slightly tipped. She was slack-jawed and openmouthed.

      “She didn’t take care of her children,” Katie said in a whispery voice. As if that explained it all. “Bad mommies must be punished.”

      Gran stared at me and Katie, then at Missy, then at me and Katie again.

      “No,” Gran said. “No, no, no…”

      She said the word over and over again. Quietly. Tonelessly. Volume and cadence unchanged as she just shook her head. Back and forth. Back and forth. Slowly. While I held my sister, who was now a cold-blooded murderer, in my arms. And wondered what I was supposed to do next.

      Katie’s eyes filled with tears, the skin around her nose reddened, and she began sobbing, forcing out words between ragged, gulping breaths. She held her arms out toward our grandmother.

      “Don’t be angry, Gran,” she wailed. “Katie’s still your good girl, isn’t she?”

      Katie’s plea snapped Gran from her stupor. She took a breath, squared her shoulders, gave her head a quick shake. Suddenly she seemed more focused. Less aged.

      “Yes. You’re still my good girl,” Gran said, her voice weary and terribly sad. Then her eyes sought mine. “Get on out of there, Brooke. Let me take care of your sister.”

      By now, tears were plugging Katie’s nose and throat, and she was choking, wheezing, panicking again.

      As soon as I slid from the van, Gran crawled in. She grabbed Katie’s chin, lifted it, forced Katie to look at her.

      “Stop that at once. You’re making your asthma worse.”

      Katie, like the good girl she was, hiccupped, sniffled and did as she was told. Gran reached past her to turn off the dome light, then the headlights and plunged us into darkness.

      It was still dark when I disposed of Missy’s body in a place many miles away from Camp Cadiz. The only light I had was the emergency flashlight that had been in the glove compartment. I released the brake, then watched as the van disappeared beneath the water. Soon, I told myself, crayfish would strip the flesh from Missy’s body and silt would cover her bones. The secret would be hidden forever.

      Most of the flashlight’s remaining life was used up as I tried to assure myself that, come daylight, no hint of my crime would be revealed. Only a dim glow lit my path away from the steep bank of the swampy river basin. So I walked as quickly and far as I could before the light gave out.

      Then I was alone. There was no moon and no stars. And dawn was hours away.

      I settled beneath a tree whose trunk was as large as a garden shed, whose height I could only guess at in the darkness. I leaned against the tree, the flashlight clutched in my hand, now useless for light and probably equally useless as protection. Gran had taken Grandfather’s gun with her. When I’d dropped her and Katie at the Cherokee Rose, she said she’d hide it somewhere safe. For a moment, I regretted not having the gun now. But I wasn’t all that sure I’d be able to use it. Not after seeing what its bullets had done to Missy.

      The night wrapped around me. Not private or comforting, as I’d always found it before, but crawling with unseen terrors. Exhaustion and fear honed my hearing and dulled my ability to think rationally. Every moment that passed was potentially the moment just before Missy escaped her grave and came after me with mud-caked fingers, her bloody mouth stretched in a silent scream of revenge.

      At daybreak, the forest was once again transformed into a safe and familiar place, and Gran could see well enough to drive. I hiked back to the intersection where she had promised to pick me up with Aunt Lucy’s car.

      I climbed into the car, settled wearily into the passenger seat, and no doubt looked as exhausted as I felt. But the emotions I saw on my grandmother’s face—emotions that tightened her lips and narrowed her pale blue eyes—had little to do with my disheveled condition. Mostly, I suspected, her expression reflected frustration and anxiety. Her night blindness had forced her to rely on me to hide a murder that, if revealed, would expose the Underground and destroy the secret network that Gran had protected all her life.

      But I knew, even then, that the Black Slough would not easily give up its dead.

      “Don’t worry,” I said before she could ask. “It’s all taken care of. No one will ever find her. The Underground is safe.”

      My eyes opened to the familiar darkness of my bedroom. For a moment, I lay very still, staring at the luminous numbers on my clock. Afraid, but not sure why. The memory of Missy’s murder was so familiar that it no longer produced fear. Only sadness and regret.

      Three-twenty in the morning.

      For another few heartbeats, I continued to wonder what had awakened me. Then the out-of-place noises registered above the hum of the window air