Page 82 of Serial Killer Games

I’ve imagined many times how this might play out. It’s hard not to think of the way Aunt Laura looked when I suddenly appeared in her life: stricken, confused. Or Andrew’s immediate resentment, or the way his conservative family still looks at me like a slimy, disturbing secret slithered out from a crevice—the fatherless son of Laura’s estranged, unwed sister. It’s tempting to imagine Bill’s craggy face softening into surprise—joy, even—but how long would that last? He would see I’ve got my dad’s hazel eyes, the myopia; how many seconds would tick by before his mind went to the other goodies in my genetic grab bag?

I’m about to find out.

“My name is Jacob.”

He raises his eyebrows, face soft all of a sudden. “That was my son’s name.”

“I know.”

He frowns. “What is your last name?”

“Ripper.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Ripper” is being turned this way and that in his head, held up to the light, tapped against the heel of his palm while he thinks.

“My mother’s name was Elizabeth Ripper,” I add.

Something shifts deep in the sublayers of Bill’s memories, and his face collapses in shock.

—

I was eighteen when Igot my hands on my birth certificate for the first time and saw for myself the blank line where my father’s name was supposed to go. It was a dead end until Laurasmuggled me a small folder of my mother’s papers from Andrew’s office right before I moved out. Amongst them was a photo of a man—glasses, wide smile—and a letter. A breakup letter, to be precise, dated nine months before I was born and signedLove always, Jake.It was a project I picked away at, uncovering first his obituary, then a distant cousin or two on social media, and finally an old friend still living in the city. It was from him I learned about my father’s illness. He was the one who told me where to find my grandfather, Bill.

—

Bill’s range is gas, andit makes short work of boiling water. He sits in his armchair, cupping a mug of tea in his hands, warm water bottles wedged under his feet and in his lap.

“Elizabeth Ripper,” he says, and it has all the effect of someone unlocking the door to a dusty, forgotten room to hear my mother’s name said aloud after all these years. “Sweet, shy thing. I remember her. They were going to be married. And then he didn’t answer his phone for two weeks, and when I was good and worried, he showed up on my doorstep. He’d figured out he was dying. He’d decided to let her go—give her a chance to be happy. He didn’t even tell her why, the idiot. Didn’t want her to argue with him. The poor girl must have been so hurt.”

I nod, slowly. I think of Dodi holding my hand, asking me how much time I have, like maybe it almost matters to her.

“He was only thirty-one when it started,” Bill continues. “His decline was pretty quick after that. He turned into a hermit. He let his friendships go. He just gave up. He was housebound after about a year, and after that, things got really miserable. He was confused. Not himself anymore. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Did anyone else in the family have it?”

Bill’s face collapses. “His mother.”

My grandmother. I already knew this from my sleuthing.

“She went so quick—I felt like we didn’t know what hit us. And then Jacob, twenty years later—”

“Hereditary.”

He looks at me with an expression so anguished, my stomach twists. This right here is the reason I never introduced myself before. It seemed selfish to satisfy my curiosity at the expense of this lonely old man’s equilibrium.

But there’s no need for any of that. One year until I’ll want to check out. Less time than I thought, but I might outlive Bill, at any rate. I slip on a fake smile, as easy and habitual as tying my shoes.

“I hope you’re not worried about me. I’ve seen a neurologist. I’m going to live to a hundred,” I say.

—

The power flicks back onthe next day, but I stay with Bill. I cook and bring his meals to his easy chair, and when he nods off sitting upright, I clean. I scrub grime out of crevices, I dust, I consolidate piles of trash, sort them, and dispose of them. I throw out hundreds of dollars of expired pantry items and replace them with food he can actually prepare himself. I run loads of laundry, I scrub toilets, I shampoo rugs. I organize the mess of pill bottles by the sink, then fill up his pill box for him. I make arrangements for the boiler to be fixed and fiddle with the ancient radiators until the whole house is warm.

“What in the hell are you doing?” Bill asks. “No. Don’t touch those glasses,” he says, one day after lunch. “I can do some dishes for once.”

What I’m doing is not thinking about Dodi on the sofa,asking me what I like. Dodi in the airport, telling me I need to figure out what makes me happy. Other people have lists, and it never occurred to me to compile my own. Every day I imagine going back to Dodi’s and buzzing her apartment. Every day, I think about my dad leaving my mom alone, trying to let her be happy.

I keep busy. There’s so much to do, and each job creates another. It’s like yanking on the loose thread of a sweater to snap it off, only to unravel an entire row of stitching and wind up with more thread to deal with. When Bill notices me wearing the same shirt for the third day in a row, he tells me to help myself to whatever I find in the bedroom closets. It’s the permission to snoop upstairs I was waiting for.

What I find is a bedroom. A man’s clothes hang in the closet: button-ups and slacks, a few silly ties. He was a teacher, like my mom. The bed is stripped, but an old-fashioned alarm clock still sits on the side table, and next to it a pair of thick-framed glasses. I remove my own and place them on the bridge of my nose. Our prescription is almost the same, his a little stronger. He was a bit older than me when he died, but only a bit.

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