Page 15 of Sweet Revenge
She wound her way up the brick path and reluctantly climbed the stairs. The window had been boarded up and the glass swept off the porch. They’d have to see about getting that replaced. Nessa slid a key into the lock, and the door swung in on silent hinges.
Cold pricked her skin when she crossed the threshold, even though the air conditioning was off. Everything looked normal, just as it had been when she arrived two days ago. Throw pillows and blanket neatly arranged. Not even a speck of dust glittered on the TV.
Closing her eyes, she could almost hear her mother’s cheerful greeting from the kitchen, her father yelling at a baseball game on TV. A moment frozen in time.
She could make out the faces in the photos that hung on the living room walls, and it was almost like a timeline of her childhood. A string of memories her mother kept up as a daily reminder.
She turned to see Nessa staring down the hall to the kitchen, and she hugged herself tightly against the chill that washed over her.
“That was where—”
“Yes.”
Without a word, Evie crossed to the stairs. She would not go back to the kitchen. No matter how well McGee and his men cleaned up, she’d never get the image of all that blood out of her head.
The fifth step creaked as she climbed, and she smiled softly. When she was sixteen, she’d broken her arm skipping that step. She’d been trying to sneak out to see Declan, but it was almost impossible to get one over on Mary Elizabeth O’Brian.
She was running late, and in her rush to miss that creaking step that would most definitely wake her mother, she’d slipped and fallen down the stairs, landing the wrong way on her forearm. Her mother hadn’t even been sleeping; she was lying in wait in the living room.
Mary Elizabeth had flicked on the lamp, clucked her disapproval, and taken her to see Doc. Somehow, though, losing her virginity to Declan with a cast on her arm had made the experience even more memorable.
Shaking her head to clear it as she crested the stairs, Evie turned left down the hall. She gripped the knob to her parents’ bedroom door tightly, steeling herself before pushing into the room. Like the rest of the house, it was neat and tidy. The bed was made, the ruffled comforter tugged up to cover the pillows and tucked carefully in at the corners. It smelled like her mother’s perfume, and the scent brought tears to her eyes.
Nessa crossed to the closet doors and slid them open. Everything was arranged by season and then by color, as her mother liked. Mary Elizabeth O’Brian had always been a stickler for order. Evie willed her feet to move and joined her sister, who was already scraping metal hangers against the wooden rod.
Nessa pulled out their father’s best black suit, brushing at a spot of lint on the lapel before laying it on the bed and moving back to choose a tie. Their father didn’t own many, but he had some for formal occasions or when he let his wife drag him to Mass or confession.
“How’s everything been since…” Evie asked softly, leafing through her mother’s collection of Sunday dresses.
“Since you left?”
Evie flinched. “Yeah.”
“They were sad, obviously. Confused, I think. Your note didn’t explain much.”
“No, it didn’t.” Evie pulled out a sea-green dress and held it up for Nessa’s approval. “I don’t think I really knew what I was doing or if it would be permanent.” She crossed to the bed and laid the dress out next to her father’s suit, smoothing out some wrinkles in the skirt. “After a while it just got easier to stay away.”
“When did you start talking to Mom again?” Nessa wondered, lifting the carved lid of their mother’s jewelry box and poking through the pieces.
“About six months ago.”
Nessa looked up, smiling sadly. “For her birthday. Will you stay?”
“In Philadelphia? No,” she added when Nessa nodded. “There’s nothing here for me anymore.” Nessa’s head jerked up. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Yeah, you did. But that’s okay. I know how you feel.” She twirled her wedding ring around her finger. “I feel the same way sometimes. But I guess we all move on in our own ways, right?”
“Do you miss him?”
“Only every day. I think Mom would just want something simple, don’t you?” She held up a delicate gold crucifix on a thin chain.
“Yeah.” Evie smiled. “That one’s nice.”
Her eyes dropped to the jewelry box, and she reached in to pull out their great-grandmother’s strand of pearls, running her thumb over the glossy bulbs. Evie remembered her mother clasping them around her neck for her first communion, whispering in her ear that she’d wear them at her wedding someday.
“Would it be okay if I took these?” She looked back at her sister, who was carefully setting the clothes and shoes into bags, holding up the pearls.
Nessa’s eyes dropped to the necklace, and something flitted across her face that Evie couldn’t quite read. It was gone again just as fast, replaced by a serene smile.
