Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

"I need to pee," she said miserably.

I left her there, shutting the door behind me. I went to the front stairs and jogged up. It was the first time I'd been upstairs since I'd come back to the house. The linen closet was on the second-floor landing. I got a spare blanket and a pillow and a couple of towels out of it. As I was piling them up in my arms, I could feel the presence of my mother's room down at the end of the hall. I didn't look that way for fear I would see my mother's ghost, standing in the shadows down there, watching me.

I went downstairs again, back to the bathroom. Just as I arrived, the door opened. Serena stepped out weakly, holding on to the edge of the door for support. She looked at the blankets and the pillow under my arm.

"I really feel sick," she said pitifully.

"I know you do, sweetheart. It'll be all right."

"I mean, I can't… I don't think I can do anything tonight. Anyway, I don't have any condoms or anything, y'know?"

It took a second before I understood her. Then I laughed. "You don't need condoms, you screwball. You're going to bed."

She massaged her forehead with one hand, confused. "I don't… I'm sorry. Who are you?"

"I'm a friend of your mother's, remember? Come on. Let's find you a place to sleep."

She sniffled once, then started to cry again.

I put my arm around her, guided her through the kitchen and out into the garage. I let her walk ahead of me along the narrow corridor between the wall and my mother's Volvo. She was crying and sniffling the whole way. I got her into the television room. I figured that was the best place for her. I'd be able to look after her in there.

I put the pillow on the end of the long sofa. Tossed the blanket on the coffee table. Laid the towels on the floor in case she needed to puke again. Serena stood, meanwhile, swaying, nodding, her eyes falling shut and starting open and drifting shut again. She'd lapsed now into little moans and half-formed phrases. The vomiting had sobered her up for a while, but the drunk was coming back. I could see she was close to passing out again.

"I didn't… didn't know… I swear…"

I sat her down on the sofa. She gaped and gulped and whimpered in a small, self-pitying sort of way. I tipped her gently over until she lay with her head on the pillow. I covered her with the blanket. As I tucked the blanket under her chin, she worked her hand free and took hold of my hand.

"I swear…" she murmured. She licked her lips, fighting to keep her eyes open.

I perched on the edge of the couch and sat there, holding her hand. She brought my hand close to her face and nuzzled it like a child with a teddy bear or a security blanket. I looked down at her, studied her features carefully. In all truth, I couldn't tell whether she resembled me or not.

She was on the brink of unconsciousness now. She shuddered with crying.

"I didn't know, I didn't… swear…" she whimpered.

"Quiet now, Serena," I said. "Just lie quiet. It'll be all right."

"I didn't know they were going to kill him," she said.

Then she was asleep.

When I was sure Serena was unconscious, I left her there and went back through the garage into the kitchen. Now I needed a drink myself. I'd bought some groceries that afternoon, including a couple of bottles of chardonnay. I poured myself a glass of wine and downed a good-sized portion of it in a single swig. I came gasping out of it and set the glass on the counter, holding on to the base as if it would keep me steady.

I didn't know they were going to kill him.

I was going to have a long night, wondering what the hell she meant by that. In my heart, I was afraid I already knew. The terror in Serena's eyes when I first approached her. Her fear of the police. Her reluctance to go home where "they" might find her. It all made sense if she had witnessed a murder. If she had witnessed someone being killed or knew about it somehow. If she was running from someone or if, more likely, in her clumsy, drunken, stupid, teenaged way, she was wandering around the city waiting for whatever catastrophic thing was going to happen next, hiding sometimes and sometimes haunting the very places where the axe might fall, because she couldn't stand the waiting, the suspense.

Well, the suspense was mine now, too. Until morning, at least, when I could talk to her again and find out more. There was no point even thinking about it until then. Good luck trying not to.

I let the wineglass go and walked over to the security keypad by the door to the garage. I pressed in the code to arm the house alarm and watched the light over the pad go from green to red. That made me feel a little safer. It was all I could do for now.

I went back to the counter. I took another long gulp of the wine, then refilled the glass. I looked at the window, at my reflection there on the surface of the night. I could feel the dark house hunkering silently around me. I could feel my mother's ghost moving in the upstairs hall. I could hear her whispering up there, pathetic, lost: What happened to me? Where did I go? I could feel the graveyard chill of her breath on the back of my neck. Where did I go?

Her disease had progressed through stages so subtle no one knew. So many of the things I loved about her stayed the same. Her slow, soft, gentle manner, her wistful wondering at things, her seemingly bottomless fascination with my own childish concerns-these all remained as her amygdala began to misfire more and more often, as it began to sing its mad song of coincidence and meaning, continually unearthing some new connection between one idea and another, one event or fact and another, until she'd filled the Spiral Notebooks, working out her whole grand historical scheme.

How much of this deterioration was apparent to my father earlier on, I just don't know. He was always distant, internal, burdened, impossible to read. Even when the great tragic love of his life was playing itself out behind the scenes-a story, really, so swept by tidal emotions it could've been an opera-he went about the business of a suburban bankruptcy attorney with impenetrable blandness. The line of his thin lips never altered; the eyes behind his square glasses never betrayed more than an empty blink or stare. He comes back to me in his white shirt always, with his tie always knotted, his long face pasty, never a slick black hair out of place.

So I don't really know what he knew. But for the longest time, I know I knew nothing. In fact, I always sort of liked those dreamy little trances of hers, her secret seizures. They seemed so typical of her somehow, so much of a piece with her sweet, wondering nature. If I had known, if anyone had known, what they really were, she could've gotten medicine for them. The damage to her brain could've been slowed, even stopped.

I refilled my glass, standing there, listening to my mother's ghost pottering around upstairs, her little sighing plaints: What happened to me? I had a life, a husband, my children. How I loved my children. Where did I go? I went into a reverie and when I came back, I was gone.

I knocked down another shot of wine, feeling the heat of it spreading through me now like a stain marking the paths and byways of my bloodstream.

I didn't know, I told her. I was just a kid. I didn't know.

I didn't know they were going to kill him.

I collared the wine bottle and lifted my glass and carried them both out to the television room.

She was just a little slip of a being, Serena was. Curled up under her blanket like that, she still left room for me to sit at the end of the sofa. I pushed at her feet and wedged myself between them and the sofa arm. I picked up the remote and turned on the enormous TV. I cranked the sound way down low, but there wasn't a chance in hell it would wake her.