CHAPTER
SIXTY-THREE
Monday, December 24
Are you getting the deep, dreamless rest you so desperately need, Jessica?
There won’t be any interruptions. You are utterly alone.
You no longer have work to distract you. And Lizzie is away. Perhaps you had intended to spend Christmas Eve with Noah, but he has retreated to Westchester to be with his family.
As for your family, they are unreachable. This morning the hotel concierge phoned and surprised them with a day-long trip on a sailboat. It is so difficult to get cell phone reception out on the ocean.
Even your new friend Thomas will be occupied.
But those who are surrounded by family and festive activities can feel isolated, too.
Cue the scene: Christmas Eve at the Shields family estate in Litchfield, Connecticut, ninety minutes outside of New York City.
In the grand living room, a fire blazes in the hearth. The delicate Limoges nativity figurines are arranged on the mantel. This year the mother’s decorator has chosen white lights and perfect pinecones to accent the tree.
It all looks so beautiful, doesn’t it?
The father has uncorked a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Smoked salmon with caviar on crostini are passed.
Stockings lay below the tree. Although there are only four people in the room, there are five stockings.
The extra one has been filled for Danielle, as it has been every year. The custom is to donate to a meaningful charity in her name and place the envelope bearing the check in the stocking. Usually the recipient is Mothers Against Drunk Driving, although Safe Ride and Students Against Destructive Decisions have also been chosen in the past.
Next week will mark the twentieth anniversary of Danielle’s death, so the check is a particularly large one.
She would have been thirty-six years old.
She died less than a mile away from this living room.
As the level of champagne in the mother’s second glass grows lower, her stories about the younger daughter, her favorite, grow more hyperbolic.
This is another holiday custom.
She winds up a rambling tale about Danielle’s summer as a counselor at the country club’s day camp.
“She was such a natural with children,” the mother ruminates pointlessly. “She would have been the most wonderful mother.”
The mother has conveniently forgotten that Danielle reluctantly took the job at the father’s insistence and was only hired because the father played golf with the country club director.
Typically, the mother is indulged.
But today a rebuttal is impossible to withhold: “Oh, I’m not sure how much Danielle actually liked those kids. Didn’t she call in sick so often that she almost got fired?”
Although an affectionate tone is sought, the words cause the mother to stiffen.
“She loved those children,” the mother counters. Her cheeks redden.
“More champagne, Cynthia?” Thomas offers. It’s an attempt to break the tension that has suddenly infused the room.
The mother is allowed to win the point by having the last word, although she is wrong.
Here is what the mother refuses to accept: Danielle was thoroughly selfish. She took things: A favorite cashmere sweater that was then stretched out, because Danielle wore a size larger. An A-plus paper for my junior-year English class that was stored on a shared home computer and resubmitted under her name the following fall.
And a boyfriend who had pledged to be true to the older sister.
Danielle never suffered consequences for those first two transgressions or so many before them; the father was preoccupied with work and the mother, predictably, excused her.
Perhaps if she had been held responsible for her misdeeds all along, she would still be alive.
Thomas has crossed the room to refill the mother’s glass.
“How it is possible that you look younger every year, Cynthia?” he asks, patting her on the arm.
Usually Thomas’s attempts at peacemaking feel loving.
Tonight’s is perceived as another betrayal.
“I need a glass of water.” What is actually needed is an excuse to leave the room. The kitchen feels like a place of refuge.
Over the past twenty years, items in this kitchen have been altered: The new refrigerator contains a built-in dispenser for ice water. The hardwood floor has been replaced by an Italian tile. The dinner plates behind the glass-fronted cabinets are now white with blue trim.
But the side door is exactly the same.
The deadbolt still requires a key to unlock it from the outside. From inside the kitchen, a simple twist of the small oval knob disengages the lock or engages it, depending on which way the knob is turned.
You have never heard this story, Jessica.
No one has. Not even Thomas.
But you must have known you were special to me. That we are inexorably linked. It is one of the reasons why your actions have cut so deeply.
If only you had behaved, we might have had a very different relationship.
Because despite all of our superficial differences—in age, socioeconomics, educational levels—the most important pivot points in our lifetimes eerily echo. It is as if we were destined to come together. As if our two stories are mirror images.
You locked your younger sister Becky in on that tragic day in August.
I locked my younger sister Danielle out on that tragic night in December.
Danielle often snuck away to meet boys. Her favorite trick was to leave the kitchen door open by disengaging the deadbolt so that she could reenter the house undetected.
Her subterfuge was no concern of mine. Until she went after my boyfriend.
Danielle coveted my things. Ryan was no exception.
Boys fell over Danielle all the time; she was pretty, she was lively, and her sexual boundaries were nearly nonexistent.
But Ryan was different. He was tender and appreciated conversation and quieter nights. He was my first in so many ways.
He broke my heart twice. Initially, when he left me. Then again, a week later, when he started dating my younger sister.
It’s remarkable how the simplest of decisions can create a butterfly effect; how a seemingly inconsequential action can cause a tsunami.
An ordinary glass of water, like the one being filled in this kitchen right now, is what began it all on that December night almost exactly twenty years ago.
Danielle was out with Ryan, unbeknownst to our parents. She had disengaged the deadbolt to disguise her late return home.
Danielle never suffered consequences. She was long overdue for one.
A quick, spontaneous twist of the lock meant she would be forced to ring the bell and awaken my parents. My father would be apoplectic; his temper has always been short.
It was impossible to fall asleep that night; the anticipation was too delicious.
From an upstairs window at 1:15 A.M., the headlights of Ryan’s Jeep were observed being extinguished halfway up our long, winding driveway. Danielle was spotted slipping across the lawn, toward the direction of the kitchen door.
A thrill suffused my body: How did she feel when the knob refused to yield?
Surely the doorbell would soon sound.
Instead, a minute later, Danielle scurried back to Ryan’s car.
Then the Jeep reversed its path down the driveway, with Danielle in the passenger’s seat.
How was Danielle going to get out of this? Maybe she’d appear in the morning with some ludicrous excuse, like she’d been sleepwalking. Even my mother wouldn’t be able to ignore Danielle’s deceit this time.
Unaware that their youngest daughter had stuffed pillows beneath her comforter as a decoy, my parents slept on.
Until a police officer appeared at the door a few hours 1ater.
Ryan had been drinking, which he never did when we were together. His Jeep crashed into a tree at the bottom of our long windy road. They both died in the accident; her instantly, him at the hospital from massive internal trauma.
Danielle had made so many wrong choices that created the circumstances of the accident: Stealing my boyfriend. Drinking vodka five years before she was legally allowed to do so. Sneaking out of the house. Not owning up to her transgression by ringing the doorbell and facing our parents.
The final result of the kitchen door being locked was not anticipated.
But it was merely one in a string of factors that led to her death. Had she altered any of her choices, she could be in the living room right now, perhaps with the grandchildren our mother so desperately wants.
Like your parents, Jessica, mine are only privy to part of the story.
If you knew how tightly we are bound by these dual tragedies, would you have lied to me about Thomas?
There are still questions about your involvement with my husband. But they will be answered tomorrow.
Your parents have been told that you will be spending the holiday with me, and that they should enjoy themselves and not worry if they don’t hear from you.
After all, we will be very busy with plans of our own.