P. Parrish - Heart of Ice

And when Ross chose politics over business it had been a pregnant Karen who told him that she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life living in Lansing married to a state representative. If Ross wanted politics, then he better want it all, because she wanted to live in Georgetown, host cocktail parties for diplomats, and get invitations to inaugural balls.

Ross took another swallow of brandy and closed his eyes.

But the images wouldn’t go away.

Retard.

Bugs eating skin off skulls.

A skeleton like a baby bird.

This was beyond ugly. It was grotesque. Not even Karen would be able to paint over it.

Everything would come out, and Ross knew exactly what would happen when it did. He understood the “disgust factor,” understood that a man like Dancer was irresistible to the public and media. The story would play out in endless loops on Court TV and in the National Enquirer.

It wouldn’t stop with Dancer. If it went to trial, Dancer’s defense attorneys would go after Julie, paint her as a troubled runaway with no close friends, a girl with an absent father and a drugged-out mother. A girl who teased the retarded kid, ended up pregnant, and got what was coming to her.

Ross looked toward the stairs.

Dad. .

He hadn’t told him about the pregnancy. Or any of the other things Clark had told him. In his darkest moment he had hoped this would all somehow stay quiet until after his father died. But he couldn’t chance that any longer.

He downed the last of the brandy and pushed himself from the chair.

The door to his father’s room was open. His father was reading in a chair facing the window. Maisey was folding towels at the bed, and she glanced at Ross but said nothing as he came in.

“Hello, Dad.”

His father looked up, tucked his book between his thigh and the chair, and removed his glasses. “Ross. Where have you been?”

“At the police station.” Ross leaned down and touched his father’s hand. “How are you feeling, Dad?”

“Pretty good, considering,” Edward said.

“We should talk, then,” Ross said. “I have some things to tell you.”

“I have something to ask you first,” Edward said. “Maisey tells me you held a press conference this morning. Is that true?”

Ross glanced at the housekeeper. “Word travels fast,” he said.

“It’s a small island, Mr. Ross,” Maisey said, without looking up.

“Why did you do that?” his father asked.

“Dad, I just thought-”

“You thought you could use the press to your advantage,” Edward said. “This is your sister, for God’s sake!”

“They wanted to know how the family was doing,” Ross said evenly. “I couldn’t just walk away from them.”

Edward shook his head and looked out the window. It put his face in the hard granite light. Ross had noticed how quickly his father seemed to be aging, especially the last few months. His heart, the doctor had told him last month, had become as thin as paper.

“Tell me about this man they arrested,” Edward said. “Did he kill my Julie?”

My Julie. Not just Julie. Not even our Julie. My Julie.

Ross eased in front of his father and sat on the window seat. Choosing his words carefully, he told his father what Clark had said about Dancer. Even though he was careful to tell his father that the police had no proof Dancer had killed Julie, he could see that his father was putting things together in his head-and he was horrified.

“Do you need some water, Dad?” Ross asked.

Before his father could answer, Maisey was there with a glass and a pill. She waited while Edward took the medication before going back to her folding.

Ross glanced after her, knowing she was taking her good old time to eavesdrop. He thought about dismissing her before he told his father about Julie’s pregnancy, but it didn’t matter. Dad would tell her later. He had been telling her everything for years.

“Dad, there’s something I haven’t told you yet,” Ross said.

“What can be worse than what I know?” Edward asked softly.

“Julie was pregnant when she was killed.”

Edward dropped his glass of water in his lap. Ross looked to Maisey. She was frozen, dumbfounded.

“Maisey, bring a towel,” he said.

She grabbed one and hurried over. She took the wet blanket and book and brought Edward a fresh coverlet.

As she turned to leave, Ross caught a look from her that at first he wasn’t sure how to read. Then he remembered. It was the same look she had always given him when he was a boy and he had done something to disappoint his father.

Edward’s mumblings brought his attention back to his father. “I just can’t believe it,” his father whispered. “My little Julie. My baby, my baby.”

Ross said nothing.

“How do they know?” Edward asked.

“What?”

“How do they know she was pregnant?”

“The police found fetal bones.”

Edward shut his eyes, and for a long time the two of them just sat there.

“How far along was she?” Edward said.

Ross was stunned his father had even asked. Before, whenever something bad had touched the family, his father would tell everyone that no one should speak of it. Like when Uncle Rawlins was arrested for embezzling. Or when Ross’s mother started walking around like a zombie from taking the pain pills.

“What does it matter?” Ross asked.

“It matters to me,” Edward said.

Ross sighed. “Four to five months.”

“Then she got pregnant that summer,” Edward said slowly. He looked back out at the gray windows. “This man they have arrested, this Dancer, do they really believe he. . do they think he raped her?”

“They don’t know yet,” Ross said. “Apparently Dancer is mentally ill, so it’s possible.”

“If Julie was raped that summer by this. . this man, she would’ve. .” His voice trailed off, and he was quiet for a long time. “She would have told me,” he said softly. “If something like that had happened to her, she would have told me.”

A drawer closed loudly behind Ross. He looked over his shoulder to see Maisey watching him.

“Maisey, leave us alone, please,” Ross said.

The housekeeper took her time folding one last towel before she left the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

Edward’s gaze drifted back to the window. The rain started up again, spotting the glass and turning the lake and trees into a blur of gray and green.

“Did you know your sister wrote poetry?” Edward asked.

“I’m sorry,” Ross said, needing a second to come back to the moment. “What did you say?”

“Poems, she wrote poems,” Edward said. “Do you remember those red leather journals I gave her every Christmas? She wrote poems in them. I found the journals after she disappeared, years later when we were packing up her things. But I was too consumed by my grief to understand how important they were.”

“What do you mean?” Ross asked.

“I don’t think I would have even thought about them even now if the police hadn’t asked to see them.”

“The police? Why would they want to see them?”

“They think they could reveal something about what happened up here that summer.”

Ross rose slowly and took a few steps away, trying to think. Julie wrote poems? Why didn’t he know about this?

“I was just reading a few of them this morning,” Edward said softly. “The ones she wrote that last summer here.”

Ross turned back. His father’s profile was silhouetted against the gray window.

“I was reading them, and I realized Julie had left a piece of herself for me to hang on to, a piece of her heart to help fill the hole in mine,” Edward said.