John Hart - The King Of Lies

When I took Jean’s hand, it felt desiccated, as if she had bled out after all; but it was warm, and I looked down at her as I held it. Her eyes moved beneath her lids, and I wondered what she was dreaming about. Something bad. Her life was a nightmare. There would be no reprieve behind closed eyes. I wanted to wake her but did not. I sat in the chair by her side and held her fevered hand. Eventually, I put my head on the narrow margin of bed, and leaning forward, perched on that unyielding chair, I finally fell asleep.

At some point, I, too, must have dreamed. I felt her hand on my head and heard her voice. How could you, Work? How could you do it? Her hand fell away, along with her words, but in the clairvoyance of dreams, I knew that she was weeping.

When I woke, it was with a start. Jean’s skin was washed charcoal, her eyes twin slits of darkness, but then she blinked, and I knew that she was awake and had been watching me.

“When did you get here?” Her voice was as arid as her hands. I rubbed my eyes.

“Do you want some water?” I asked her.

“Yes, please.”

I poured some into the plastic cup on her bedside table. “There’s no ice.”

“It doesn’t matter.” She drank the water and I refilled her cup.

I looked at the saline bag suspended above her, followed the tube to where its needle entered her arm beneath a white X of tape. It was easy to recall the red sea of her blood on the floor of our parents’ house. She’d probably be dehydrated for a week.

I looked at her face, saw the slackness around her mouth, and wondered what she was on. Antidepressants, maybe? Sedatives? She saw me looking and turned away.

I did not want to ask her the things that had to be asked. She was transparent, and I knew that I had never seen a more fragile person.

“How are you, Jean? Are you holding up okay?”

She blinked at me, and for an instant I thought she wouldn’t answer. She drew up her knees, puddled into herself, and I thought she was going to turn away from me, as she’d done the last time.

“They say you saved my life.” The statement was utterly devoid of emotional context.

They say your car is blue. Like that.

I almost lied. I didn’t want her to hate me for doing what I’d done. “I might have,” I said.

“Even Alex says it. She says you found me and put tourniquets on my arms. She says one minute later and I would have died.”

I looked at my fingers, remembering the slipperiness of her blood; how hard I’d jammed those fingers into her neck, looking for a pulse. “You called me,” I said. “I came.”

“That’s the third time,” she continued. I felt her movement and looked up in time to see her turn her face away. “You must hate me,” she said.

“No.” I put my hand on her arm, turned her back so that I could see her face. “Never, Jean. Don’t you ever think that. I could never hate you.” I squeezed her shoulder and said the words that should have come easily but never had. “You’re my sister. And I love you.”

It was her turn to nod. She did so in fitful jerks as folds closed over her eyes like curtains and tears pooled on the shelf of her wasted cheeks before spilling down her face in two long, hot arcs. She swiped at the tears with one arm, scrubbing them away with the heavy bandage that covered her wrist. She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it, the words unsaid. Instead, she continued to nod. But I understood. The words were hard. That’s how we were raised.

Do you need anything? I wanted to ask. More water? Another pillow? I meant to ask these things, but that’s not what I said. There was a larger question, a dangerous one. But it couldn’t wait any longer. I needed to know. I couldn’t go to Mills until I heard it from Jean herself.

“Did you do it?” I asked.

Jean looked horrified.

“What?” Almost a moan, and the tears came faster, but I couldn’t stop. Every action of the past week had been based around my assumptions that Jean had pulled the trigger. I’d gone to jail for those assumptions. I now faced life in prison for them.

“Did you kill him?” I asked again. “Did you kill Ezra?”

Jean’s mouth gaped and then collapsed. “I thought you did it,” she said. It was her child’s voice, so vulnerable that I saw the truth of her words. She really believed that I’d done it.

“Is that what Alex told you, Jean? Is that why you think I did it? Because she told you I did it?”

Jean shook her head, hair moving over her eyes, coming to rest on her forehead. I saw that she’d pulled the sheet to her throat. Her eyes spilled confusion.

“You did it, Work. You had to have done it.”

“I thought you did it,” I said, and Jean rocked as if my words were bullets. Her eyes widened and she pushed deeper into the pillows that mounded behind her.

“No.” She shook her head again. “It had to be you. It had to be.”

“Why?” I asked, leaning closer. “Why me?”

“Because…” Her voice trailed off. She tried again. “Because…”

I finished her thought. “Because if you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it, then Alex did. Is that what you were going to say?”

This time, she did roll away; she curled into a fetal ball, as if I might kick her, and for that moment I was at a loss. Jean hadn’t done it. Had I not known the truth about Alex, I would not have accepted that fact.

I’d been so damned sure.

“There are some things about Alex, Jean. Some things you might not know.” I had to jolt her out of her complacency, force her to accept the truth.

She spoke from across the chasm I’d opened between us. “I know everything there is to know about Alex, Work. There’s nothing you can tell me.”

“Do you know that’s not her real name?”

“Don’t do this, Work. Don’t try to come between me and Alex.”

“Did you know it?” I asked again.

Jean sighed. “Virginia Temple. That’s her real name. She changed it when she was released.”

“Do you know she killed her father?” I asked.

“I know,” she said.

“You know about that?” I couldn’t believe it. “Do you know how she killed him?” Jean was nodding, but I couldn’t stop. The horror of it was still too fresh in my mind. Cooked meat. Charred lungs. Alex watching and her mother sliced to ribbons. “She handcuffed him to the bed and set it on fire. She burned him alive, Jean. For Christ’s sake, she burned him alive!”

Suddenly, I was on my feet. Beneath me, Jean contracted even further. She was hugging her knees to her chest, cringing, and I saw that the line from her saline bag had a kink in it. The sight calmed me down, forced me to get a grip on my raging emotions. I knew that I was losing it. It was all too much. I took a deep breath, then leaned over to straighten the kink, but when my hand brushed against her arm, she flinched.

“I’m sorry, Jean. I’m really sorry.” She declined to respond, and her body rose up as she sucked in a mighty breath. I found the chair again and fell into it. I buried my face in my palms, pressed against my eyes until I saw sparks. But for her wet breath, the room was silent. I took my hands away and looked at her. She was still clenched in a ball.

“It scares me, Jean. It scares me that she killed her father, and it scares me that she has this power over you.” I paused, looking for better words. “It just scares me.”

Jean did not respond, and for a long time I watched her in silence. After a few minutes of this, I felt the need to move, to do something. I got up and went to the window. I pulled back the curtain and stared across at the parking deck. A car pulled in and turned on its headlights.

When Jean spoke, I could barely hear her.