Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

It was now or never.

Frost leaped with his arms outstretched. He landed full against Frankie and wrapped himself tightly around her. She toppled backward. The impact ripped her out of Todd’s grasp. Frost drove her hard to the wet ground under him and instinctively rolled right, once, twice, three times. They were clear of the edge, both on their backs.

Frost reached for his gun again, but he didn’t need it.

Six feet away, Todd struggled for balance. His body yawed, pushed and pulled by the wind. He danced on the edge, but he smiled, his eyes staring upward at the blue sky, his arms slowly spreading wide. One heel spilled over the edge. He was losing, and he knew it, and he didn’t care.

“Close your eyes,” Frost told Frankie, but she didn’t.

As they watched, Todd caved backward, releasing himself into the arms of the air. His body made an X . Gravity took him. He flew and fell like a bird with a broken wing, and he disappeared down to the rocks without a sound. It didn’t matter whether it was a cliff or a bridge. Five seconds was all it took to end a life.

Frankie scrambled out of his arms and ran to the edge. He had the wildest thought that she might throw herself after him, but instead, she simply stared down at the broken body below her. Her mouth hung open. Her eyes never blinked. He tugged gently at her shoulder, because the soft fringe of the cliff wasn’t safe, but he couldn’t drag her away.

Frost wondered whose body she really saw down there.

The Night Bird. Or her father.

She pushed him.

The truth made sense to Frankie now. She knew what she’d seen on the cliffs and why she’d been desperate to forget it.

Pam was there. Pam killed their father. It was no accident; it was no suicide. It was murder.

Frankie waited at a remote table at Zingari. She checked the time over and over, but she knew they would both be here sooner or later. She watched the windows and the street. Her stomach twisted with nervous foreboding, because she wasn’t sure how she would react when she saw the two of them.

Her husband. Her sister.

The restaurant throbbed with the mellow sounds of jazz. Piano. Saxophone. Bass. A soloist in a black dress sang a siren song about love in the streets of Paris. People talked, and knives clattered. The smell of mussels and garlic wafted like a cloud as Virgil carried steaming plates through the restaurant. He looked like Adonis, with his mane of blond hair and his pressed black uniform.

Then the door opened, and there they were.

Pam glided through the crowd, her shoulders squared, her long legs on display. She owned the room, the way she always did, and her cornflower dress popped, like a glint of sky on a gray day. Jason trailed behind her. The angles of his face in the shadows made him look like a skeleton.

They slid into the two chairs across from Frankie. Virgil was right there to serve them, and Pam blew him a kiss. She looked utterly unconcerned, without a care in the world. Jason, by contrast, was a man in a cage.

“Champagne, V,” Pam said lightly. “A bottle.”

“Expensive?”

“Is there another kind?” she asked.

Virgil grinned and disappeared. Pam noted sparkling water in Frankie’s glass with a frown. “No wine?”

“No.”

“Well, if you’re good, you can share my champagne.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Frankie snapped.

Pam leaned across the table with an exaggerated sigh. “Oh, for God’s sake. I’m sure all of this was horrible for you. I’m not saying it wasn’t. But you’re here, and you’re alive. That’s worth celebrating. Or are you just disappointed that the police didn’t arrest me?”

“Frost texted me. He said they let you go.”

Her sister rolled her eyes. “Of course they let me go! Jason and I spent hours telling them the story over and over. Nothing this sadist told you was true. I mean, come on, you don’t really believe it, do you? He wanted to torture you. He wanted to play with your head. But there’s no mystery, Frankie. Dad fell. Or he jumped, I don’t know, we were too far away to be sure. That’s what we told the park rangers back then because that’s exactly what happened. End of story.”

“I’m remembering things, Pam. It’s all coming back to me.”

“I don’t know what you think you’re remembering, but it didn’t happen that way. You of all people should know you can’t trust your memory. Especially not after you choose to wipe it clean.”

“Why would I want to forget any of this in the first place, Pam?” Frankie asked her. “Why would I want to forget that you were there, too?”

Pam shook her head. “Because you couldn’t deal with it! I can’t blame you for that. It was awful. We watched our father die. I’d forget it, too, if I could, but I decided one of us had to live with it. I figured one day you might change your mind and want to remember what really happened.”

She was very, very good. She was as smooth as Darren Newman. And as immoral.

Virgil brought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Brut, popped it, and poured one bubbling glass for Pam. He tipped the bottle at Frankie, who shook her head. Jason did the same. Pam drank one glass before Virgil left, and he poured another one for her. The crystal reflected the pale blue of her nail polish.

“Damn, that’s good,” Pam said.

Frankie stared at Jason, who was silent, with his jaw as hard as stone. His dark face was haunted; he knew that she’d figured it out. All of it. The truth, not the cover story. She wanted to see guilt in his face, but his arrogance told her that he didn’t really care. Things had already gone too far, and he was immune to her cold eyes. She was angry at him, but she didn’t feel blameless herself. She’d always let her patients come first. She’d shut him out time after time. And there had been something, real or not, between her and Darren Newman.

“Do you have anything to say?” she asked him.

This time, just for a moment, he looked at her. An understanding passed between them. Welcome to the end of days.

“I never wanted this to happen.”

He was deliberately vague. Maybe he was apologizing, and maybe he was just blaming her. It didn’t matter. They both knew it was coming, and they both knew it was over. Seven years together had left them strangers. She couldn’t even feel sad about what she was losing. The only thing she felt was emptiness at what had been done to her.

“Leave us alone,” Frankie told him.

He reached out toward her hand, but he drew it back without touching her. He didn’t need to say that once he left, he was gone for good. He got up and walked away from the table without a word, and then it was just the two of them. Two sisters. Connected by blood. Pam sipped her champagne, displaying no more than idle curiosity about what came next.

“You must think I’m stupid,” Frankie told her. “I suppose I have been stupid. I missed all the signs. Or maybe I just didn’t want to see them.”

“Signs?” Pam asked with mock innocence.

“Don’t pretend. We’re way past that, Pam. I knew you resented me, but I never knew how deep it went. Or how far you would go.”

“Is that all you have? Paranoia? Insults? You’re boring me, Sis.”

Frankie didn’t stop. She simply went on. “I’ve been wondering all day what this was really about. Why you did it. I mean, I know you hated Dad, but even for you — to kill him? To push him off a cliff? The sister I know would laugh, or swear at him, but she’d never lose control. No, there had to be something else. Something that drove you over the edge.”

“I’m not going to sit here and listen to this nonsense,” Pam said, but she made no attempt to leave.