The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter #1) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,104
question both odd and abrupt. “Some days are better than others.”
Charlie tapped her foot lightly against the ground. “Sometimes, I think about you all alone in that shitty, cramped apartment, and I just get sad.”
Sam didn’t tell her that the shitty apartment had sold for $3.2 million. Instead, she quoted, “‘Picture me with my ground teeth stalking joy.’”
“Flannery O’Connor.” Charlie had always been good with quotes. “Gamma was reading The Habit of Being, wasn’t she? I had forgotten all about it.”
Sam had not. She could still recall her surprise when her mother had checked out the collection of essays from the library. Gamma had openly disdained religious symbolism, which ruled out most of the English canon.
“Dad says she was trying to be happy before she died,” Charlie said. “Maybe because she knew she was sick.”
Sam looked down at her tea. During Gamma’s autopsy, the medical examiner had discovered that her lungs were riddled with cancer. Had she not been murdered, she likely would have been dead within the year.
Zachariah Culpepper had used this as part of his defense, as if a few more precious months with Gamma would have meant nothing.
“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.