Fear Nothing (Detective D.D. Warren #7) - Lisa Gardner Page 0,86

bigger things worth raging about.”

She started rolling up her sleeve to show me her collection of scars, ones my father, and even Shana herself, had inflicted over the years. Fat scars, thin scars, rolling pink lines, thin white streaks. All of which I’d seen before. All old news.

“I know your pain, Shana,” I said quietly. “I can’t feel it, but I know it. That’s my role. I’m our family’s conscience. I have been from the very beginning. That’s what scared Daddy so much forty years ago. He looked into my eyes, and instead of seeing the terror and anguish and misery he was accustomed to, he saw himself. Just himself. No wonder he kept me in a closet after that. It’s easy to be a monster. It’s much harder to see yourself as monstrous.”

“That doctor talk? Kind of thing you bill out by the hour? Because real people, we call that bullshit. Just so you know.”

“Good-bye, Shana.”

“You’re leaving already?” Then, as the silence dragged and the full meaning of my words sank in: “Seriously? You came down here . . . all the way down here . . . to, like, break up with me?”

“I loved you, Shana. Honestly, when I first got your letter, all those years ago . . . It was as if I’d spent twenty years locked in that closet, just waiting for you to open the door. My sister. My family.”

Shana thinned her lips, drumming her fingertips restlessly on the tabletop.

“I told myself I could handle these monthly conversations. I assured myself I had the training necessary to manage a relationship with a convicted killer. But mostly, I wanted to see you. I wanted one hour a month when I could have a sister. We’re the only ones left, you know. Just you and I.”

Shana’s fingertips, drumming faster.

“But we don’t really have a relationship, do we? The bottom line is, you suffer from severe antisocial personality disorder. Meaning I’m not real to you. Nor is Superintendent McKinnon, or any of the corrections officers or your fellow inmates. You will never love me or care about me. Such emotions are as impossible for you as feeling pain is for me. We both have our limitations; it’s time for me to accept that. Good-bye, Shana.”

I pushed back my chair, rose to standing.

And my sister finally spoke, her tone so low, her words sounded more like a growl than a sentence. “You are a fucking idiot!”

I moved toward the interview room door.

“He told me to take care of you! That’s what Daddy said that day. Sirens coming down the street. Daddy, stripping off his clothes, climbing into the bathtub, clutching his goddamn aspirin. And smiling. Fucking smiling as he handed over the razor blade.

“I was scared, Adeline. I was a four-year-old kid and Mom’s crying and people outside are shouting and Daddy’s just smiling, smiling, smiling, except even I knew that wasn’t the right kind of smile on his face.

“‘Take care of your sister,’ he tells me as he climbs into the tub. ‘No matter what happens, you’re her big sister and it’s your job to keep her safe. Take it from me, Shana girl, if you don’t have family in this world, then you got nothing.’ Then he stuck out his arm, and Mom brought down the razor. . . .

“The shouting men heaved a battering ram against our door. Because they’d knocked and rung the bell and screamed at us to open up, but Dad was too busy dying, and Mom was too busy killing him, and I didn’t know what to do, Adeline. I was a scared little kid, and all the grown-ups, the whole world, had gone crazy.

“Then I heard you crying. You, the baby who never cried, who simply watched us all the time with your big dark eyes. You were right, Adeline. You unnerved Mom and Dad. But not me. Never me. I went to you. I opened the closet door and I picked you up and held you close. And you stopped crying. You looked at me. You smiled. Then the door burst open, and shouting men poured into our house. And I whispered to you to close your eyes. Just close your eyes, I told you. I’ll keep you safe. ’Cause you’re my baby sister, and if you don’t got family, then you got nothing at all.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you that day in foster care. I did what I was taught and they took you away from me