Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

“Hello,” he called jovially, in English. “You’re Anna.”

The girl froze. Eduardo would have expected her to jump. “I know who you are,” she said, squinting at him. “And I’m not talking to you.”

This was just like Lily—to tell him something in the act of declaring that she would tell him nothing at all. “How was your conversation with the young gentleman?” Eduardo nodded his head toward the house. He was grateful for the extra layer of formality that speaking English granted his diction. “I was about to go in there, myself, but I find I need a moment to prepare myself mentally. He is a maddening person to speak with. As perhaps you have already found.”

Anna scoffed. “You’re not going to make friends with me by doing that,” she said. Her voice was exactly like Lily’s; Eduardo could have closed his eyes and heard the voice from the tapes. “In fact, you’re not going to make friends with me at all. I’m not an idiot.”

She probably thought that by putting her refusal up front, she was making it clear that she was savvy and severe, a person Eduardo would really have to contend with. Nonetheless, it was another revealing disclosure. Anna would not talk to him because Anna was not an idiot, and the corollary of this, obviously, was that Lily was an idiot: Lily had talked to Eduardo—unwisely, idiotically—and now they were all here dealing with her mess. There was judgment in this, and resentment. And Anna, Eduardo was realizing, might not know that yet.

“Look, I’ll be honest with you,” said Eduardo, running his hands through his hair. There was no use in playing on Anna’s resentment directly. No matter how she felt about Lily, surely her moral self-concept hinged on ignoring these feelings—surely, if she knew she might be letting those feelings reign now, when Lily was at her most vulnerable, she would never, ever forgive herself. “The truth,” said Eduardo, “is that I’m not at all sure about this.”

Anna cocked her head to one side and stared at Eduardo with an expression that she must have thought looked like disbelief.

“Your sister is a strange girl,” Eduardo continued. “As I’m sure you know. She’s said and done some pretty erratic, pretty incriminating, things. It’s very hard to know what to make of it all.” Eduardo looked at the ground and bit his lip. He wanted to seem as though he was struggling to decide whether to say what he really wanted to say. “But I’m not sure,” he said again, finally. “And I certainly don’t want to waste the state’s resources if I’m wrong.”

He looked back up at Anna, whose expression of feigned shock was already fading. The only way that she would speak to him would be if she felt she was helping—by being cool-headed and wise enough to explain her sister, who could no longer be trusted to safely explain herself. Even if somewhere deep down Anna knew that speaking to Eduardo must be a very, very dangerous prospect—even if somewhere even deeper down she knew that this was part of why she wanted to do it—she would need to believe, always and utterly, that she’d truly thought she was extending herself on Lily’s behalf.

“The charges can always be dropped,” said Eduardo. “But only if I can find another way to make sense of all of these things. I haven’t been able to, so far. Your perspective might be helpful.” Anna dipped her head. “I’d ask your parents,” Eduardo added, “but I’m not sure they’d be willing to talk to me.”

Anna snorted. She even snorted like her sister. “I doubt they’d be very helpful,” she said. “They don’t exactly know Lily very well.”

Eduardo nodded evenly. “Well, I guess that’s pretty common with parents.”

Anna—torn, Eduardo suspected, between wanting to withhold the acceptance that would come with agreement and avoid the engagement that would come with dispute—said nothing.

“Look,” said Eduardo. “How’s this? We go get a cup of coffee. I won’t ask you anything about that night.” He would not say “Katy.” He would not say “death.” He would certainly not say “murder.” “We’ll pretend it never happened. If I bring it up, you can go ahead and leave. But maybe you can tell me a few things about your sister. Maybe you can translate a couple of things for me. Or whatever else you want to tell me. Whatever you think I should know. You talk, I listen. You’re in charge. You want to leave, you leave. Does that sound fair?”

It was worth trying, but, of course, Eduardo did not expect it to work. This meant that he had to be careful not to show his surprise when, as he turned back toward his car, Anna Hayes actually followed him.

“I talk, you listen,” she said, as she got into the passenger’s side.

Eduardo nodded and, to show Anna how literally he was taking the rule, said nothing.

At the café, Anna sat with her arms crossed and pointedly refused to look at her menu. “I hate what you do for a living,” she said.

Eduardo laughed. “Me, too, some days.”

They had driven to the café in silence. If Eduardo had asked her anything in the car, she could still have demanded that he take her back, which, of course, he would have. But now that they were at a café and had ordered coffee there was a trip wire of courtesy encircling their conversation—even if Anna became angry and wanted to leave, she would understand that Eduardo would need to get the check and pay before he could drive her home (this was, after all, just reality), and this would give him some extra time to work with. He was betting that Anna was afflicted with the same learned courtesy as Lily, and that—as he had with Lily—Eduardo could use it to his advantage. So he was surprised when Anna leaned back and looked him right in the eye and told him, in a mature and well-considered voice, that she thought he was a monster.

“Really,” she said again. “A monster.” So here, Eduardo saw, Anna’s similarities with her sister ended. Lily’s commitment to politeness had rarely wavered in their interviews, not really, no matter how angry and exhausted and terrified she was. She had tried to revoke it a few times—tried to walk back to the position she’d held before she’d been so faultlessly polite, as though he might forget—and occasionally she’d even attempted to insult him. But she was too awkward at this to ever seem truly venomous; she always reminded Eduardo of the infant pit viper he and Maria had come across once—it had been tiny, furious, hissing with such comic valiance that they’d stopped whatever fight they were having and laughed. But Anna, Eduardo was seeing, was different.

“A monster?” he said. “Really? How so?”

The waitress brought their coffees, and Anna waited for her to leave before she answered. “You’re a person with no empathy,” she said.

Eduardo took a sip of his coffee and leaned back. “For Lily, you mean.”

“For anyone.”

“Do you think you’re a person with empathy?”

“Yes.”

It was what anyone—anyone in the world—would say, but Anna’s response did not sound reflexive. It sounded like she had actually, at some point, considered the question—which, of course, meant that, at some point, she had actually wondered. “Do you have empathy for Katy?” said Eduardo.

“What would that mean at this point?” said Anna. Her voice was harsh. If this was a painful question, it did not show on her face. “I didn’t know her, and now she’s dead. I’m sorry for her family, but she never existed for me, so I don’t feel anything for her. You don’t, either.”

“I don’t?” Eduardo had expected Anna to say—emphatically, emotionally—that she did have empathy for Katy. He was glad that he never sounded surprised, even when he was.