J. Jance - Hand of Evil

“Your past?” Ali repeated. “What about your past?”

Arabella sighed. “I was institutionalized for a number of years when I was much younger,” she said. “It was a very dark period of my life. Once it was over, Mother and I never spoke of it. Mother liked to tell people I’d gone to finishing school.” Arabella gave a short, brittle chuckle. “I suppose that was close to true. That place almost finished me, all right, and I’ve spent years trying to put it behind me. Billy’s showing up here and threatening to put all that unpleasantness out in public…” She shook her head and drifted into silence.

Ali was outraged. “Your nephew has no right to bring all that up.”

“But he did,” Arabella said, sipping her drink. “He has. And now I have to figure out what to do about it.”

“You could just ignore it,” Ali said. “Of course, I’d beef up security around here. Billy sounds like a bully. If you don’t engage, maybe he’ll just go back under his rock.”

“And maybe he won’t,” Arabella returned. “I ordered him out of the house. I rang the bell and asked Mr. Brooks to show him out. The last thing he said to me before I sent him packing was that he’d be back.”

“When was that?” Ali asked.

“Sunday afternoon, late.”

“And have you heard from him since?”

“No, thank heaven. I thought I would have by now, but I’ve been thinking about him this whole time and thinking about what happened. There are times when not remembering takes a lot more effort than people think, and I’ve been doing that for years. But here, in less than an hour, that spiteful little worm brought it all back up. He’s such a little know-it-all, but that’s the thing. He only thinks he knows it all. He doesn’t, and I do.”

She took another sip of her drink, emptying the glass in the process. “I’ve barely slept the last two nights,” Arabella said. “And when I have managed to sleep, the nightmares are back. And so, sometime in the middle of the night, I made a decision, and that’s why I wanted to see you today.”

“What decision?” Ali asked.

“I’m not going to sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop. Instead of letting Billy tell the story, I’m going to tell it myself. Who knows, if I manage to sell it to a publisher, I might even make some money on it. There’s not much of that left, and a little infusion of cash wouldn’t hurt the bottom line. What do you think?”

Ali took a deep breath. It seemed to her sometimes that almost every person she met was writing a book. “What kind of book are we talking about?” she asked.

Arabella shrugged. “One of those family sagas,” she said. “One with all the usual ingredients-madness, mayhem, infidelity, incest.”

“All of it based on your own family’s history,” Ali said.

“Of course.” Arabella beamed. “With a family like mine, I wouldn’t have to make up a thing.”

Ali wasn’t at all sure what was going on between Arabella and her long-lost nephew. There was a good chance that Billy’s unexpected visit was part of some long-simmering family dispute that came complete with potential extortion and other disgruntled would-be heirs as well. It seemed reasonable to think that there were family secrets involved that might be better off left secret.

“Do you think that’s such a good idea?” Ali asked.

“What?”

“Doing this kind of family expose?”

Arabella stiffened. “Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded. “Who would it hurt? My parents are both dead. My stepbrother is dead. I’m not. If I want to tell the story, it’s my business and my story, not Billy’s.”

“Why?” Ali asked.

“Why do you write cutloose?” Arabella asked in return.

Ali had to think about that for a moment. “Initially it was to stay in touch with my fans and to be able to write about things as I see them,” she answered at last. “But once I started writing about what was going on in my life, I discovered there were a lot of people who had been through the same kinds of things I had. And sharing ideas with them helped me somehow, and I think it helped some of them, too.”

“Exactly,” Arabella said. “Now, what do you know about incest?”

The question took Ali aback. “Not much,” she said.

“I know rather a lot about it,” Arabella said quietly. “Far too much as a matter of fact. From the inside out.”

For a moment Ali was too stunned to speak. Taking advantage of the silence, Arabella reached past her iMAC, picked up the small wooden-handled bell, and gave it a sharp jangle.

“Mr. Brooks,” she said, when the butler appeared noiselessly in the double doorway. “I do believe this calls for another round of martinis. Would you care to join me now, Ali?”

“Yes,” Ali agreed. “I believe you’re right. Martinis are definitely in order.” Then, once the butler left the room, Ali repeated the single word as a question. “Incest?”

Arabella nodded. Reaching across her computer keyboard, she picked up a slim leather-bound volume that had been lying on the far side of the computer table. She handed the book to Ali.

“It’s my diary from back then,” she said. “I’ve kept it through the years. It’s a talisman, you see, a tiny concrete piece of evidence that proves it all happened. It isn’t something I just made up.”

Ali looked down at the book. The word DIARY was embossed on the cover in gold letters. “But why are you giving it to me?” Ali asked.

“Because I want you to read it,” Arabella said. “And after you read it, I want you to tell me what you think.”

“You were the victim of incest?” Ali asked.

Arabella nodded. “For years,” she said.

“And the perpetrator?”

“Bill, of course,” Arabella answered. “My stepbrother. He was almost ten years older than I was.”

“Were you his only victim?”

“Probably not,” Arabella said dispassionately. “I’m the only one I know of for sure, but there may have been others.”

“You never told your parents?”

Arabella shook her head. “It was years before I told my mother. I never mentioned it to my father, which was probably a good thing.”

“Why?”

“Because he had a sister, too,” Arabella said. “A younger sister. I never knew her because she died long before I was born. She committed suicide when she was only fourteen years old. She hanged herself in a closet. I learned about her for the first time a few years ago when a second cousin sent me a copy of a genealogy study he was doing.”

“Are you saying that, based on that snippet of information, you suspect that your father victimized his younger sister the same way your stepbrother victimized you?”

“I know he did,” Arabella said fiercely.

“Do you have any proof?”

“Not enough to hold up in a court of law.”

And not enough proof to put it in a memoir, either, Ali thought. “Better make it fiction, then,” she said.

“But if you live in a family of monsters like that,” Arabella continued without acknowledging the comment, “you know things. You know them in your soul. If you don’t figure them out on your own, you don’t survive.”

Just running her fingers across the diary’s cover made Ali wary. “Maybe I shouldn’t read this,” she suggested.

“Please,” Arabella said. “I really need you to, so we can discuss it.”

Mr. Brooks returned bearing two cocktail shakers on a tray. He poured Ali’s first martini and Arabella’s third and handed them over. After two martinis, Ali would have been crawling on the floor. Arabella, sipping her third, appeared to be relatively unfazed.

“What’s the point of all this?” Ali asked after Mr. Brooks left them alone once again. “You said yourself that your brother’s been dead for years. Why not leave the past in the past? Chances are your nephew won’t be stupid enough to bring any of this up. If he does, you can counter it when the time comes. There’s no need to…”