Scott Turow - Identical

Evon seldom indulged, except at parties, more or less out of deference to her father who’d never taken it up, but she thought the old woman might be more relaxed if she had company. Evon said she’d have whatever her hostess was drinking. Teri made her way with her stick to the tea cart holding a troop of brown bottles, and then handed a cut-glass crystal tumbler to Evon, while she settled herself on her overstuffed sofa.

“OK, shoot,” said Teri. “ Ti yenaete ?” Hal often used that phrase, which apparently meant ‘What’s up?’

Evon realized she had not planned what to say, but she told Teri that Tim had finally cornered Cass Gianis.

“He says he didn’t kill Dita. And I have a feeling you have a good idea who did.”

“Ah.” Teri took a healthy sip.

“The first thing-I guess the most important thing-is I need to be sure that it wasn’t Hal.”

“Hal? Oh no no no.” Teri found the idea amusing. “My nephew might be better off if he had a little more killer in him. The best I know is that he was still out necking with Mina when Dita was murdered. He walked in to find that crazy scene. He’s the one who called the police, if I’m remembering. Tim didn’t recall that?”

Tim probably never knew. By the time he took over the case a week later, the family members had all been cleared because their blood didn’t match what had been spilled in Dita’s room.

“Well, Tim’s pretty sure it wasn’t Lidia.” She repeated to Teri what Cass had told him.

“Same as Lidia told me.”

“Right.” Evon took a second. “That’s one reason I’m here. I figured from what you said last time that you probably talked to Lidia about Dita’s murder.”

“Not immediately,” Teri said. “But she finally put it all on the table with me maybe three months after Dita was killed. Lidia was just in a state. You know, we spoke every morning in those days. And every day it was the same thing. She couldn’t finish her sentences. She burst into tears over nothing. Finally, I said, ‘ Afto einae anoeto !’ ‘This is craziness!’ ‘You have to tell me what’s going on.’ We met at St. D’s and sat in the pews in the sanctuary and talked for hours. Oh, and she cried . Cried and cried. And so did I, of course. Dita was my only niece and I saw more than a little bit of myself in her.”

In the church, Teri said, Lidia had told her about Zeus and the twins, and Lidia’s plan to ask Dita to stop seeing Cass. “I understood why she couldn’t tell her sons. But why not come to me? If anyone could talk sense to Dita, I was the best one to try. But I guess Lidia was embarrassed that she’d kept the secret from me for so long. Maybe she was afraid I wouldn’t believe her after all that time. Anyway, Dita had smart-mouthed her way into getting slapped. Probably would have done my niece some good if that happened more often, but not that hard. Apparently, Lidia caught her with a full swing. She shocked herself.”

Evon asked if Teri believed that Lidia had hit Dita only once. She did, Teri said, but not for the reasons that convinced anyone else.

“Lidia wouldn’t have done that to me,” said Teri. “Hal and Dita, they were all I had. She wouldn’t have taken either one from me, no matter how angry she got. But when I asked Lidia who else could have beat up Dita, I thought she was more evasive.”

“She believed Cass had killed her?”

“Well, if Dita was OK when Lidia ran out of the house and dead when Cass left, it seemed fairly obvious to me. And it must have worried her, too. When I heard a few months later that Cass was pleading guilty, I wasn’t surprised. He was always the more excitable of the two boys. My heart broke for Lidia, of course.”

“Tim doesn’t believe Cass did it either. Not any more.” Evon picked up her drink but only so she could look down into it. “I guess that means your brother killed his daughter.”

Teri didn’t answer, but even without much sight, she was reluctant to face Evon. The old woman was silent some time, which made for an unusual moment.

“Do you think we have obligations to the dead?” she asked Evon.

“I visit my parents’ graves when I go home. Is that what you mean?” That was almost a lie, since she prayed a lot longer over her father.

“Not really. Here,” she said, and raised her tumbler but only to gesture with it. “Truth told, I never knew exactly what to make of my brother. Of course, I loved him like crazy. You had to. He was the biggest thing on earth, so grand, and he carried it off. He was a good brother, loyal, always looked out for me, and a good father to Hal, who looked up to Zeus so much. Zeus had his points. But he was too much like our father, who I may have told you was just a big stinking turd.” Teri wound her head around in lingering contempt and disbelief, then paused again to reflect.

“I sometimes think,” Teri said, “we’re all sort of like twins-who we want to believe we are, and the person others see. They look alike, but you know, most folks probably make out someone in the mirror a little more appealing than how it might strike somebody else. But my brother, that was an odd thing with him. He knew the worst about himself. Didn’t face it often, and forgot it as fast as he could. But it was always there stuffed down inside him somewhere, like a loaded musket. And he was dead set on never letting anybody else find out. So do I ignore that?”

Evon told her the truth. That was Teri’s decision.

“Sure it is,” said Teri. “You bet your ass. But here’s the problem. As you might have noticed, dear, I’m old . And what I know-it could matter if this blame parade starts up again somehow. So I’ll trust you. But this is a truth that would hurt a lot of people.”

“Hal?”

“Especially. So you need to keep this to yourself, unless there really is no choice.”

“What if I tell Tim?”

“I’ll leave that to you. But Tim’s definitely another of the folks who would be hurt.”

Evon was too startled to respond. Teri looked up to the ceiling, where there was a gilded molding she could probably no longer see, then said abruptly, “All right. Let’s get this done.” She adjusted her position on the sofa and took another solid mouthful from her drink.

“You probably know, from the time of Dita’s death, my brother wanted to rebury her on Mount Olympus.”

“So she could be among the other gods and goddesses?”

“Whatever. He certainly thought that was where he belonged when his time came. Zeus, he really sometimes seemed to believe in the Greek gods. At least when it suited him. What he liked was that so many of them behaved so badly, so often. Nothing like Jesus. Zeus, if he got drunk enough, would tell you Jesus was a wimp. Zeus, the god Zeus? He truly was my brother’s role model. All-powerful and full of vices.

“At any rate, on the fifth anniversary of Dita’s death, Hermione and he thought they could bear the trip. Hal and Mina had three small children at home, but I went. Most of Olympus is a national park, but my people, they build churches everywhere, and Zeus had found a little chapel there with a graveyard. The old priest came out to say some prayers. It was a beautiful ceremony. A few of Hermione’s Vasilikos relatives had come up to Thessaly from different parts. And Dita’s casket was returned to the earth. In my bedroom, I’ve got some thyme I picked out of the rocks there to remember her.

“Afterwards, we went back to the villa Zeus had rented. Hermione’s relatives and some locals came to pay their respects, but they weren’t there long. Pretty soon it was Zeus and Hermione and me. My brother was in an absolutely black mood. ‘I am a bad man,’ he said as he sat there on that sofa. That was not the first time I’d heard that from him, by the way, but I doubt he’d ever made those kinds of remarks to that silly little clothes rack he’d married. But now he looks up and says, ‘I killed our daughter.’ Just like that. Like, ‘It snowed.’”