“She told me to look after you,” Sam said. “In the bathroom that day. She sounded so strident.”
“She always sounded strident.”
“Well.” Sam let the string from the sachet hang over the edge of the cup.
Charlie said, “I remember how you used to argue with her. I could barely understand what either of you were saying.” She made talking motions with her hands. “Dad said you were both like two magnets, always charging against each other.”
“Magnets don’t charge; they either attract or repel depending on the alignment of their north/south polarity. North to south, or south to north, attracts, whereas north to north or south to south repels.” She explained, “If you charge them, I am assuming he meant with some type of electric current, you’re only strengthening the magnet’s polarity.”
“Wow, you really proved your point.”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
“Don’t be a dumbass.”
Sam caught her eye. They both smiled.
Charlie said, “Fermilab is working on neutron therapy protocols for cancer treatment.”
Sam was surprised her sister followed that sort of thing. “I have some of her papers. Articles, I mean. They were published.”
“Articles she wrote?”
“They’re very old, from the 1960s. I could find references to her work in footnotes, but never the original material. There are two I was able to download from the International Database of Modern Physics.” She opened her purse and found a thick stack of pages she had printed out this morning at Teterboro airport. “I don’t know why I brought these,” Sam said, the most honest words she had uttered to her sister since she’d arrived. “I thought you might want to have them since—” Sam stopped there. They both knew that everything else had been lost in the fire. Old home movies. Ancient report cards. Scrapbooks. Baby teeth. Vacation photos.
There was only one picture of Gamma that had survived, a candid shot of her standing in a field. She was looking back over her shoulder, staring not at the camera, but at someone standing off to the side. Three-quarters of her face was visible. A dark eyebrow was raised. Her lips were parted. The photo had been on Rusty’s desk at his downtown office when the red-brick house was consumed by flames.
Charlie read the title of the first article. “‘Photo-transmutative Enrichment of the Interstellar Medium: Observational Studies of the Tarantula Nebula.’” She made a snoring sound, then thumbed to the second article. “‘Dominant P-Process Pathways in Supernova Envelopes.’”
Sam realized her mistake. “Maybe you can’t understand them, but they’re nice to have.”
“They are nice. Thank you.” Charlie’s eyes scanned back and forth as she tried to decipher some meaning. “I only ever feel stupid when I realize how smart she was.”
Sam had not remembered until this moment that she had felt that way her entire childhood. They might have been magnets, but they were of unequal power. Everything Sam knew, Gamma knew more.
“Ha,” Charlie laughed. She must have read through a particularly dense line.
Sam laughed in turn.
Was this what she had missed over the years? These memories? These stories? This easiness with Charlie that Sam had thought died along with Gamma?
Charlie said, “You really do look like her.” She folded the pages and put them beside her on the bench. “Dad still has the photo on his desk.”
The photo.
Sam had always wanted a copy, but she was too proud to give Rusty the pleasure of doing her the favor.
She asked, “Does he really think I’ll stand up and defend someone who shot two people with a gun?”
“Yes, but Rusty thinks he can talk anybody into anything.”
“Do you think I should do it?”
Charlie considered her answer before speaking. “Would the Sam I grew up with do it? Maybe, though not out of any affinity for Rusty. She would be angry the same way I get angry when something isn’t fair. And I guess it’s not fair, because there’s not another lawyer in a hundred miles who will treat Kelly Wilson like a human being rather than a burden. But what would the Sam you are now do?” She shrugged. “The truth is that I don’t know you anymore. Just like you don’t know me.”
Sam felt a sting from the words, though they were all true. “That’s fair.”
“Was it fair to ask you to come?”
Sam was unaccustomed to not having a ready answer. “Why did you really want me here?”
Charlie shook her head. She didn’t respond immediately. She picked at a loose thread on her jeans. She let out a heavy breath that whistled through her broken nose.
She said, “Last night, Melissa asked if I wanted her to take extraordinary measures. Which basically means, ‘Let him die? Don’t let him die? Tell me right now, this minute.’ I panicked, but not from fear or indecision, but because it felt like I didn’t have the right to decide on my own.” She looked up at Sam. “The heart attacks felt like something that I had to fight against. I know he did it to himself with the smoking and drinking, but it was a situation where I felt there was an internal struggle, something organic, from within, and I had to help him fight it.”
Sam recognized the feeling from Anton. “I think I understand.”
Charlie’s tight smile was disbelieving. “I guess if it comes down to the wire again, I’ll lock you in a room with him and you can take him out with your purse.”
Sam was not proud of that moment. “I used to tell myself that the one redeeming feature of my temper is that I have never struck anyone in anger.”
“It’s just Dad. I hit him all the time. He can take it.”
“I’m serious.”
“You almost hit me.” Charlie’s voice went up, a sign that she was forcing lightness into something dark. She was referring to the last time they had seen each other. Sam could remember the terror in Ben’s eyes as he had stood between her and Charlie.
Sam said, “I’m sorry about that. I was out of control. I could have hit you if you stayed. I can’t honestly say that wasn’t a possibility, and I’m sorry.”
“I know you’re sorry.” Charlie didn’t say the words in a cruel way, which somehow made them more hurtful.
“I’m not like that anymore,” Sam said. “I know it’s hard to believe, given my earlier behavior, but there’s something about being here that brings out the meanness in me.”
“Then you should go back to New York.”
Sam knew that her sister was right, but for now, just right now, in this scant moment of time with Charlie, she did not want to leave.
She took a sip of her tea. The water had gone cold. She poured it out on the grass behind the bench. “Tell me why you were at the school yesterday morning when the shooting started.”
Charlie pressed together her lips. “Are you staying or going?”
“Neither should affect what you tell me. The truth is the truth.”
“There are no sides. There’s only right and wrong.”
“That’s a very neat logic.”
“It is.”
“Are you going to tell me about the bruises on your face?”
“Am I?” Charlie posed the question as a philosophical exercise. She crossed her arms again. She looked back up at the trees. Her jaw was tight. Sam could see the muscles cording through her neck. There was something so remarkably sad about her sister in that moment that Sam wanted to move to the bench beside her and hold her until Charlie told her what was wrong.
Charlie would be more likely to push her away.
Sam repeated her earlier question. “What were you doing at the school yesterday morning?” She didn’t have children. There was no need for her to be there, especially before eight in the morning. “Charlie?”
Charlie’s shoulder went up in a half-shrug. “Most of my cases are in juvenile court. I was at the middle school asking for a letter of recommendation from a teacher.”
That sounded exactly like the kind of thing Charlie wou
ld do for a client, and yet, her tone had an edge of deception.
Charlie said, “We were in his room when we heard gunfire, and then we heard a woman screaming for help, so I ran to help.”
“Who was the woman?”
“Miss Heller, if you can believe it. She was with the little girl by the time I got there. We watched her die. Lucy Alexander. I held her hand. It was cold. Not when I got there, but when she died. You know how quickly they turn cold.”
Sam did.
“So.” Charlie took a breath and held it for a moment. “Huck got the gun away from Kelly—a revolver. He talked her into giving it to him.”
For no reason, Sam felt the fine hairs on the back of her neck straighten. “Who’s Huck?”
“Mr. Huckabee. He was the teacher I was seeing. For the client. He taught Kelly—”
“Mason Huckabee?”
“I didn’t catch his first name. Why?”
Sam could feel a shaking sensation churn through her body. “What does he look like?”
Charlie shook her head, oblivious. “Does it matter?”
“He’s about your height, sandy brown hair, a little older than me, grew up in Pikeville?” Sam could tell from her sister’s expression that she was correct. “Oh, Charlie. Stay away from him. Don’t you know?”
“Know what?”