M Sellars - All acts of pleasure

After a pause I asked, “So, your sister wasn’t killed in a car crash?”

She took in a deep breath and visibly gathered herself before continuing. “Yes, actually, she was. However, it wasn’t an accident. She deliberately drove her car onto a railroad crossing, and waited.”

“How can you know she did it on purpose?”

“Trust me, Rowan, she did.”

“Was your sister being treated for depression?” Helen asked, obviously picking up on something in my mother-in-law’s tone that I had missed.

Maggie nodded affirmation then added, “Not that it was doing any good, obviously. Her prescriptions more or less kept her from functioning normally. She couldn’t think clearly, and all she ever wanted to do was sleep. She hated it. Caitlin just reached a point where she simply refused to take them.”

“Given that it was nineteen seventy-two, they were most likely tranquilizers,” Helen said as she jotted a note and then looked up. “Was she ever hospitalized?”

“Briefly. That made for its own embarrassment in the family.”

“Mm-hmm,” Helen hummed with a nod.

“Why would that be embarrassing?” I asked.

“The culture,” she answered with a shrug. “Our generation, the way we were raised. Our parents were not particularly supportive of her for a number of reasons. They felt she had brought the depression on herself, and that she had disgraced the family.”

“Because she suffered from depression?” I asked, unable to fathom such insensitivity from family.

“There were other reasons, Rowan.”

Though I was still managing to keep my growing impatience at bay, I couldn’t help but express my confusion. “Maggie, I’m very sorry to hear this, but I have to be honest, I’m a bit lost. I don’t mean to sound callous myself, but I’m not sure what your sister committing suicide has to do with Felicity having a sister.”

“Caitlin was dealing with a very specific type of depression, Rowan,” she replied.

“Severe postpartum,” Helen offered, already doing math that was escaping me.

“Yes,” Maggie answered.

“And, your sister was unmarried,” she added.

“Correct.”

“Okay,” I replied with a nod. “Maybe I’m just slow because I’m tired, but the way I remember the branches on a family tree, wouldn’t her daughter be Felicity’s cousin?”

She remained quiet and continued to fiddle with her rings. I watched as she repeatedly pulled the bands from her finger, silently inspected them, and then slowly slid them back on.

“Maggie?” I prodded.

She looked up at me and instantly apologized. “I’m sorry, what did you ask?”

“I said Caitlin’s daughter would have been Felicity’s cousin, not her sister.”

“Yes, of course, you would be correct were it not for the fact that Shamus was the father.”

CHAPTER 31:

“So, lemme get this straight,” Ben replied. “Felicity’s old man took a tumble with his sister-in-law and forgot to glove up, so nine months later, oops?”

“Yeah, trust me, Ben, I’m as floored as anyone,” I said into my cell phone. “He’s the last person I would have expected to do something like that.”

“Yeah, well, it’s always the holier ‘n thou loudmouths that got somethin’ ta’ hide, Row.”

“I suppose so.”

I had already filled my friend in on where I was calling from and the highlights of the previous evening that had brought us here. He was already up to speed to some extent, as Helen had contacted him to cancel their plans for Thanksgiving dinner but had, of course, left it up to me to fill in some of the blanks as I saw fit. As it was, I had already managed to put a damper on the holiday for the both of them by calling Helen, and I was feeling a little guilty about it. Not so much so, however, that I was going to even think about hesitating to call Ben. At this point he was one of the few people I trusted, even though he wasn’t actually assigned to the investigation. We would both just have to get over the intrusion.

After quietly mulling over the conversation thus far, he asked, “An’ so you’re sayin’ the sis-in-law was your mother-in-law’s identical twin?”

“It’s not just me saying it, Ben. It’s a fact.”

“Fuck me.”

“Yeah, I figured you’d say something like that.”

“The lab guys are gonna love this ‘cause identical twins got identical DNA.”

“I figured they’d be close, but they’re identical?”

“Yeah, definitely. Fraternal twins, no. Identical, oh yeah. Can’t fuckin’ tell ‘em apart with a DNA test. You didn’t know that?”

“No. Like I said the other night, genetics really isn’t my forte.”

“Damn, I know somethin’ you don’t. Gotta love that.”

“Go ahead and write it on the calendar, Ben.”

“I keep tellin’ ya’ I ain’t stupid, white man. Besides, they teach us this crap so we can do cop type work. You know, catch bad guys and shit like that.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

“So,” he continued his speculation. “With the identical DNA making it more or less the same mother from a genetics standpoint, and with exactly the same father, the match is gonna be close. Just like siblings.”

“That was my thought.”

“So Firehair’s half-sister is prob’ly a serial killer. Man, that’s fucked up.”

“Uh-huh. I had that thought too.”

He paused for a second then suddenly switched gears. “An’ he’s got the balls ta’ jump in your shit and throw the Bible in your face after him screwin’ around?”

“Yeah, well, we all have our dirty little secrets, don’t we.” I was commenting, not asking.

He was answering anyway. “Maybe so, but most of us try not ta’ be hypocrites about ‘em.”

“I don’t know about that, Ben.”

“Yeah, well I ain’t one.”

“That’s not really my point here,” I returned with a mild note of exasperation.

“Yeah, well, it’s a pet peeve.”

“We all have those too. So, can we get back on track?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “So, Firehair know any of this yet?”

“Maggie is in there telling her the story right now,” I replied. “Helen thought it might be a good idea under the circumstances.”

“Why ain’t you in there too?”

“Again, Helen. She thought it would be better for me to let them do this one-on-one.”

“Well, sis knows what she’s doing. If she says do it, do it. She’ll take good care of the little woman.”

“I know she will.”

“So, anyway, like you said, back on track. What ended up happenin’ with the kid?”

“That’s the thing,” I told him. “No one is sure where she ended up. Apparently, the family pressured Caitlin to give the baby up for adoption as soon as they found out she was pregnant. The way Maggie explained it, her sister told her she saw the child for all of fifteen minutes before she was taken away.”

“Why’d they lay it all on her? Shouldn’t your father-in-law have gotten the slap down too? I mean it takes two, and, well shit, he was married to their other daughter. He sure’s hell wasn’t lily white in all that.”

“Nobody knew who the father was. Well, not the parents and the rest of the family at least. Just Maggie, her sister, and Shamus were privy to that.”

“Bet ol’ Mags was pissed.”

“Yeah, and I get the feeling she still is to an extent. Or, harboring some resentment at the very least. But she stayed with him. I don’t know why, and I didn’t ask.”

“Yeah, prob’ly a good idea ta’ leave that one alone. So, anyway, why didn’t the sister just get an abortion?”

“I asked the same thing and got a bit of a history lesson,” I explained. “This all happened in nineteen seventy-two. Roe v. Wade wasn’t decided until seventy-three, so it would have been a back alley deal. But, even so, her parents found out before she could make those arrangements, and they wouldn’t allow it.”