Karin Slaughter - Triptych

Lydia’s chest rose and fell as she sighed again. “I made him join the military,” she told them. “I didn’t let him sit around after you went away. He fought in the war. He tried to help keep those Arab people safe and got shot in the leg for his trouble.”

Joyce was so tense John could almost hear her humming like a piano wire.

Lydia picked at a speck of fuzz on her skirt. “And then he came back to Atlanta, settled down, had a family.” She looked up at Joyce. “That girl he married, she obviously had something wrong with her. Tim was not Michael’s fault.” She spoke vehemently, and John looked around the room again, trying to find photographs of Michael or his son. The mantel over the fireplace was bare but for a glass vase of silk flowers. The stark metal table on the back wall held nothing but a neat stack of magazines and one of those princess phones like Joyce had in her room when they were growing up. Even the thick cord dangling from the telephone hung in a straight line, as if it, too, was afraid to displease Lydia.

The whole place was like a tomb.

“He got a commendation for saving a woman’s life,” Lydia continued proudly. “Did you know that?”

John’s reply almost caught in his throat. “No. I didn’t.”

“She was in a car accident. He pulled her from the car before it exploded.”

John didn’t know what to say. Michael may have saved one woman, but he had ruined countless others, selling drugs to the working girls, raping and murdering for his own sick pleasure.

“Michael was good,” Lydia insisted. “That other part of him”-she waved her hand, dismissing the evil her son had wrought-“that wasn’t my Michael. My Michael was a good boy. He had so many friends.”

So many friends he got hooked on hard drugs, John thought. Like Aleesha.

“And such promise,” she continued.

“You can’t do this.” Joyce’s voice shook with anger. “You cannot sit there and tell us what an angel Michael was. He was an animal.”

“Joyce,” John tried. She didn’t know the rules, didn’t know how to give up her control. She had never had someone throw feces in her face just for looking the wrong way. She had never tried to go to sleep while the sixty-year-old man in the next cell whispered about what a beautiful body you had, told you in minute detail what he wanted to do to it.

Lydia raised a thin eyebrow. “You should mind your brother, young lady.”

“Don’t you dare talk about my brother.”

Amusement flashed in Lydia’s eyes. John knew they had lost. In that one moment, they had lost everything.

Lydia asked, “Are you threatening me?”

Joyce exploded off the couch, yelling, “You knew John didn’t kill Mary Alice!”

“I knew no such thing.”

“How can you defend him?” John tried to pull her back to the couch, but Joyce slapped his hand away. “How can you just sit there-”

“You don’t have children so you don’t know,” Lydia snapped. “You and your… lady friend.”

Joyce clenched her fists. “No,” she answered. “I don’t have children. You’re right. I didn’t raise a child. I didn’t raise a rapist and murderer, either.”

Lydia looked as if she had been slapped. “You’ve no right to speak to me in that tone.”

“Did you tell Mama?” Joyce demanded. “When you went to the hospital, is that when you told her what happened, that your child murdered Mary Alice, not hers?”

Lydia advised, “Let the dead rest in peace.”

John didn’t know if she meant Emily or Michael. For his part, John wasn’t sure if Michael’s death brought him any peace. Standing there in that cellar, he had wanted with every ounce of his being to fall to his knees, beat the life back into Michael’s chest, do whatever it took to bring him back to life so he could kill him again with his own hands.

But, he hadn’t. John had saved Jasmine instead. She had stopped breathing, and John had breathed for her, giving her CPR for over forty minutes until the ambulance had arrived at the little cabin Michael had bought in John’s name. The same hands that had mutilated Cynthia Barrett had given life to another little girl. There had to be some kind of justice in that. There had to be some kind of peace.

John watched his sister as she walked to the other side of the room, putting some space between herself and the woman who had destroyed her family. Joyce was just trying to defend him. He knew that. He also knew that she had ruined any possibility they had of clearing his name.

Still, he had to try. John had learned patience in a way his sister never had to. He had also learned how to talk to the people in charge.

“She’s upset,” he told Lydia, a half-apology he knew she was waiting for. “It’s been hard for her.”

“You’ve got your freedom,” Lydia pointed out. “I don’t know what you want from me. I’m an old woman. I just want to be left alone.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“You’re out, aren’t you?” She said it as if it was a simple thing, as if John wasn’t always looking over his shoulder, always waiting for those cuffs to be put back on, for those guards to throw him into a cell with Zebra. He had nearly shit his pants when Will Trent slammed him into the wall. There were some prisons you never got out of.

John took a deep breath, made himself explain to the former criminal lawyer how the justice system worked. “I’m a registered sex offender. A pedophile. I can’t get a decent job, buy a home. I’ll never have a life.”

“What about Michael?” she demanded. “He doesn’t have a life, either.”

Joyce made a noise of disgust. She was standing by the piano, arms crossed over her chest. She looked just like their father.

John turned back to Lydia, speaking gently, trying to lead her through it. “Michael killed a woman named Aleesha Monroe.”

“She was a prostitute.”

So, she had been watching the news.

“He kidnapped a police officer,” John continued. “The bones in her wrist are so badly broken that she may be permanently disabled.”

Lydia didn’t have an answer for that one.

“He kidnapped a little girl and raped her, nearly beat her to death.”

“From what I’ve gathered,” she said tartly, “the girl was hardly inexperienced.”

“He bit off her tongue.”

Lydia smoothed her skirt again, keeping silent.

“Michael bit off her tongue, just like he bit off Mary Alice’s.”

If John hadn’t been looking at Lydia, he would’ve missed her reaction. For just an instant, he was certain she had been surprised.

John said, “I know about the report the state’s dental expert wrote.”

Her chin went up in challenge. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I think you do.”

“I have no recollection of a report.” She added, “And even if I did, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

“You can give me my life back.” John tried, “All you’d have to do is make a sworn statement-”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“That’s all I want, Lydia. Swear under oath that it was Michael who killed Mary Alice and not me. Convince them to clear my record and I’ll just-”

“Young man,” she interrupted again, her tone clipped. He could tell from her posture that it was over. She pointed to the door. “I want you and your sister out of my house right now.”

John stood automatically, always one to follow orders. Joyce was still at the piano. Tears of defeat welled into her eyes. She had fought so hard for him and now she had finally realized that there was nothing more that she could do.

She mouthed, “I’m sorry.”

He looked around the house, the mausoleum Lydia had built with the money she’d earned from suing corporations and doctors and anyone else who had made a mistake she could profit on. She’d spent hours with John at the county jail trying to fabricate his defense. Twenty years ago, she had told him not to testify on his own behalf. She had handled the lab tests, the experts, the character witnesses. Lydia was the one who came to Coastal that day to tell him that it was over, that there were no other legal avenues left to explore. She’d started crying, and he had tried to comfort her.