Page 71 of Her Dark Lies
The body is crumpled and so bloody, and I don’t know what’s happening, not really. I’ve been operating on instinct, the sense that something is terribly awry, since I realized my hand is covered in blood. It isn’t until I hear Jack’s gasp of horror that my mind allows me to put it together. To identify the sleek spill of hair and the gray silk blouse, stained dark and wet.
“Henna!” Jack cries, dropping to his knees. “Oh no, Henna!”
42
Tumble Tumble Fall
I’m frozen in place, whether from terror or a morbid curiosity, I’m not sure, watching this awful scene unfold. With the lights out, the chaos in the hall is amplified. My mother sobbing, Jack shouting into his phone for help. The empty husk of the woman who’s assisted me with everything from finding a dress to the seating charts to the vows and all in between, the travel arrangements, the hassles, the concerns, the tiny meltdowns—everything I worried about: being good enough for Jack, marrying into the Compton family, finding time to paint while stressed about the wedding—Henna has assured, assuaged, comforted. From day one, Henna welcomed me with open arms, and now she is dead, twisted and broken on the thick wool runner.
The light from the windows on the landing is a cloudy green, like looking through emeralds, and the beam of the flashlight tells the tale: Henna’s neck is broken; the blood on her beautiful silk shirt from a massive gash on her forehead. It’s looks like she fell down the stairs, she must have hit her head somewhere along the banister.
Jack has put away his phone and is attempting to interrogate my mother, who in turn is answering incoherently between hiccups and sobs.
“Did you hear anything? Any cries or calls? God, Trisha, stop trying to touch her. Quit...moving...”
Mom is squirming and reeling, her hands covered in blood, disturbing the scene. She manages to get her feet crossed and immediately trips. One bloody hand hits the wall, leaving behind a perfect, gory handprint, black in the dim flashlight-lit corridor.
So much blood.
It is that handprint that makes me swing the flashlight in arcs around the scene. There, on the floor, opposite the melee, is a thick pewter candlestick. It has rolled against the baseboard. I can’t tell if there is blood on it or not. It could have fallen when Henna went down, it could have been knocked off by my mother’s gyrations. Or...
No, she couldn’t have killed Henna. Could she have? Could she have been drunk and surprised in the darkness and reacted?No. No way. Henna fell down the stairs. One perfectly polished Jimmy Choo is canted sideways on the steps, next to the spilled-open notebook she used to keep all the details of our wedding intact.
Finally shocked into action, I grab my mother by the shoulders.
“Mom. Stop, right now. Come with me.” And to Jack: “Honey, she’s drunk. She’s useless like this. Let me get her out of here. We can talk to her when she sobers up.”
“How dare you!” Mom cries. “I am not drunk. I haven’t had a drink of alcohol in five years.” She yanks her arm out of my hand and promptly falls face-first into the wall with a mightythump.
I sigh deeply, forcing back my own sobs. I have to get her out of here. She will be mortified when she sobers up, if she even remembers. I pray for a blackout to save her the embarrassment of this. I get a hand on her belt and tug. “It’s okay, Mom. Let’s go to your room. Right now.”
Jack is on his cell phone again, this time talking to Tyler. “Ty? I need you. Henna’s fallen down the stairs. It’s bad.”
His voice breaks, and I take a step toward him by instinct, but he waves me away. The pale wash of his face is disturbing. It doesn’t take any sort of intimacy to see he is rocked to the core.
It’s bad.Henna won’t be vertical ever again, but maybe Jack isn’t used to death, doesn’t recognize it when he sees it. Maybe it took someone who’s caused it before to know Henna’s soul has long since left her body.
The hallway is long, the flashes of lightning and the bobbing yellow beam of my flashlight the only breaks in the oppressive darkness. Why does this place not have more windows? It is strangely musty; the heavy rain brought out the wet in the stone. A centuries-old fortress, the stone cliff of the island itself, areas of the Villa not always occupied, the staff not getting the rugs clean, who knows? I have the strange sense that if Ana was aware of the smell, she would be furious. Maybe Fatima isn’t as good at her job as we are led to believe.
My mother has sagged against my shoulder and is crying quietly. Wrestling her down the long hall is like walking the gauntlet with a large sack of potatoes strapped to my side.
“What did you drink, Mom?” I ask. “I didn’t see you have anything at brunch.”
“I told you, I didn’t drink anything other than a cup of tea that pinched-face housekeeper brought me. Why are you being such a bitch, Claire? Oh my God, I smell disgusting.”
She’s right, she does. The mustiness isn’t only the rain. I flash the light over her body and see why—she is covered in Henna’s blood. I gag convulsively, cover my mouth as if stifling a cough.
My mother doesn’t notice. She puts on the fake little girl voice she uses to mock Harper and me when she is especially angry. “‘She’s drunk, Jack.’ I didn’t drink anything. How could you accuse me of something like that, after all I’ve been through? I swear, Claire, you always have to make a scene. Make it all about you.”
“As it happens, itisabout me, Mom. This is my wedding. You decided to get bombed and a woman is dead. So yeah, accusemeof making a scene.”
“You never have understood how things work. How the world works. It’s not here to bend to your will. We aren’t your servants to order about as you like. Just because you’re marrying a man who has money, that doesn’t make you a princess.”
Ah, here we go. We’ve tipped over into the nasty stage of the buzz. First sweet, then flirty, then just plain hateful and mean, that’s Mom’s trajectory when she drinks.
I don’t bother arguing anymore. We’ve had variations on this fight for a decade. There is no winning. There is no rationalizing with Trisha when she is deep in the bottle.
My nose is overwhelmed by the dank vegetal scent of blood. I have to get out of here, get a shower. “Do you have your key, Mom?”
