James Patterson - Confessions of a Murder Suspect

I needed to bring healing words to my brothers. And to myself.

85

The lights were low in the simple little chapel. There were lilies in urns on either side of the podium, and the two caskets were below me—two dark wood coffins with sprays of white flowers lying across them. A large photo of my parents together stood on an easel to my left. They looked happy and optimistic in the picture, which had been taken twenty-five years ago.

Sadly, I wouldn’t be able to lean on my big brother for support, since Matthew was still in jail and I wasn’t even allowed to talk to him. So it was just Harry, Hugo, Samantha, and Philippe who looked up at me from the front row. They were counting on me to say the right things.

I didn’t know if it was possible.

“Malcolm and Maud were good parents,” I began. “They loved us in their own way.”

My voice cracked and splintered. I tried to speak, but my broken little voice disappeared into the overwhelming sadness of my hollow words echoing in the small and nearly empty room.

I tried to rein in my grief and start again with sweeter memories in my mind.

I thought about the birthday cake my father had let me help him bake for Maud’s birthday, and the way my mother had taught me how to dress and act. I remembered how effusive Maud had been when she described the great things I would do someday, including running the family business.

“They were tough on us, and, they held us to a high standard, because they loved us. They wanted us to do great things.…”

“Because they loved us,” Harry chimed in from the front row of the chapel. Tears were streaming down his face. “I know they did. They had to.”

“They didn’t tell us in actual words.…”

“But they did love us,” said Hugo, punching a fist into his other hand.

“They truly, truly loved you,” said Samantha.

“They told me how much they loved you, many times,” Phil said.

Really?

Where was all this certainty coming from? I wasn’t sure. But it felt like the right thing to say. And I wanted so badly for it to be true. No matter what they’d done to me, I still loved them.

I think we all needed to believe that they loved us.

Suddenly, I was crying too hard to speak. I heard the creak of door hinges and looked up to see Uncle Peter entering at the front of the chapel. He looked like he’d been raised from the dead to attend this service.

I cleared my throat, dabbed at my nose with a tissue, and put up a hand to show that I had more to say.

I looked at my note cards so that I could read a quote. “Anne Frank wrote, ‘How true Daddy’s words were when he said: all children must look after their own upbringing. Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.’

“This is how Malcolm and Maud felt about us,” I said. “They trusted that we could shape our lives from this point on. That we could make our way.”

Quoting what my mother had said only moments before she died just about killed me. I fell apart, blubbering and sobbing again.

Harry stood and spoke over my sobs. “Our parents believed in working hard, and they taught us to earn everything we ever got. And now we finally understand that… that they did everything they did for us. It was all for us, right?” Harry looked around desperately. I nodded through my tears. He let out a huge sigh and covered his eyes with his hands. His shoulders shook and settled. He spoke again, adding, “Maud used to say, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ Sleep well now, Mother and Father.” And he sat down.

Hugo shot to his feet and flung himself across Malcolm’s coffin. He said, “Father, I forgive you for the biggest chop ever, ever, ever. I forgive both of you. Be good. No fighting. Buckle up and have a safe trip. We’ll always love and miss you.”

86

Two days later, we had all the windows open in our apartment in the Dakota.

Harry had turned up his music—not classical this time—so that it came over the intercom in every room, really loud. The charging drumbeat and the bright guitar riffs cleansed the air and made me almost want to dance.

Hugo was taking his baseball bat to the furniture in his room, which had been designed with some ordinary rich kid in mind—three big vintage toy cars with pedals, a make-believe rocket ship on a spring, and first-edition antique books that had never even been opened. All reminders of Angel wealth and perfection were quickly being decimated.

There was a lot of food on the dining room table: chips and dips and Ding Dongs—junk my parents would have forbidden. But Malcolm and Maud had left us to soldier on without them. And this laugh-out-loud time was a beautiful start. We felt like actual kids.

We were having a party. Our party. Just for us. We were finally grieving, in our own special way, as only Angels can.

I took a bottle of soda with me into my parents’ room. Their valuables would be sold or auctioned off: the Aronstein flag, the South Sea pearls and the emerald ring, Mercurio and Robert, the Pegasus piano, the Pork Chair and the UFO light fixture.

Before it was too late, I wanted to go through my parents’ less valuable things and find keepsakes for all of us.

I put on the jacket that had belonged to my mother by way of Madonna. I hoped I’d be able to keep it.

No, I was definitely going to keep it!

Harry came into the closet and sat down next to me.

“I’ve got Malcolm’s watch,” I said. “You want that?”

“Okay.”

“I saved a couple of things for Matthew and Hugo. Pictures. The wedding rings.”

“I’m the one who called the cops,” Harry said.

“What do you mean?”

“That morning. Right after I found Malcolm and Maud dead. I thought one of us had done it. Still, I had to call the cops.”

“Oh, Harry . Who was suspect number one on your list?”

“Well, sister dear, you’d just gotten a Big Chop.”

I laughed really hard, then said, “For a while, I thought you did it. You .”

We were still grinning at each other when a shadow fell over us.

I snapped my head around—a fear reflex, for sure. Virgil was standing there, absolutely huge in the doorway, looking down at us.

“I’ve got the car ready downstairs. You know the house rule, kids: I’ve got to move the vehicle in ten minutes.”

“Let’s move it,” I said.

87

The moon was high and full that night, and the water in Shinnecock Bay was the same gorgeous indigo blue as the sky. The Ponquogue Bridge stretched out before us, spanning the bay, its gleaming white arc making me think of the leading edge of an angel’s wing.

Harry, Hugo, Virgil, and I were grouped together at the foot of the bridge, listening to the soothing sound of waves slapping against the shore.

Then Hugo said, “Can we go ?”

We took off our shoes and rolled up our trouser legs, each of us carrying a plastic bag with one of our sharks inside. Their green bioluminescence made the bags glow like lanterns. It was absolutely magical.