Something She's Not Telling Us - Darcey Bell Page 0,94
her down the steps.
It doesn’t feel like violence. It doesn’t feel like anything. It’s just something that I have to do.
Once I was crossing 23rd Street and a bicycle messenger turned the corner and came that close to running me over. I had to push him as hard as I could. I wasn’t hurt; he wasn’t hurt. We were breathless and upset.
This feels a little like that. Except that the woman at the bottom of the stairs isn’t cursing me out and shooting me a dirty look and getting back on her bike and riding off.
She isn’t moving.
Daisy must have heard the scream and the shockingly loud thunks as the woman’s head hit each step, and the final heavy thud when she landed at the bottom.
I stay at the top of the stairs waiting for Daisy. I try to arrange my features to look as if nothing unusual happened while she was in the bathroom.
Finally I hear the toilet flush.
Daisy reappears.
“What was that noise?” she says.
“The nice woman,” I say. “Vanessa. She had an accident.”
Daisy looks beyond me and sees the woman at the base of the stairs.
“Don’t look,” I say, and she buries her head in my side. Did she notice that the woman’s head is at a terrifying angle? Clearly her neck’s been broken, but Daisy can’t know that.
Daisy says, “The lady who lives here is bleeding. From her head.” Daisy has seen more than I did.
I say, “She doesn’t live here.”
The woman has opened a gash in her forehead, and dark liquid—like maple syrup—is seeping onto the tarp. Now I remember what happened and what the liquid is.
“Is that real blood?” Daisy says.
She wants to hear that it isn’t. But for once—at this moment, of all moments—I can’t bring myself to lie.
“Don’t be scared,” I say. “She fell. She had an accident. She’ll be fine. We need to call a doctor. I promise. She’ll be fine.”
I hit reset and I fake a 9-1-1 call on a nonexistent phone. I don’t like lying to Daisy, but you can’t expect kids to handle the truth.
I wish I weren’t thinking of Charlotte. I wish I weren’t wondering how to persuade Daisy not to tell her parents what we did today, starting with the candy and ending with the dead woman at the base of the stairs.
I steer Daisy around the woman. I can’t stop myself from bending down and moving the dead woman’s head so that it doesn’t look so skewed and awful.
And so no one can see her from the window.
Does she have a husband? I feel sorry for whoever finds her. I hope it’s the carpenters or the painters, and not a loved one or a child.
Daisy says, “You’ve got blood on you.”
I wipe it on my skirt.
I’m not worried about fingerprints. No one’s going to wonder what happened. Our homeowner tripped on the sloppy tarp. The contractors will be lucky if they don’t get slapped with a lawsuit. There’s no forced entry. No sign of a struggle. No one’s going to check for DNA, besides which Daisy and I obviously aren’t in the system, as they say on TV.
I can’t ask Daisy to stay here while I search the house to see what this woman did with Granny Edith and Grandpa Frank. I’ll have to rescue them later.
I’ll bring Daisy home and come back. I hope I can get back before the police get here. If my grandparents have survived this long, they can hold out a few more hours . . .
I call down toward the basement.
“Grandpa! Granny! Are you down there?”
All I get is a blast of mildew.
Maybe I don’t want to know what happened to them. Maybe their remains got thrown into the dumpster with the drywall and all the beautiful wallpaper. I can’t let myself think about what the house used to be. If I start to remember, I’ll crawl into a corner and stay there until someone finds me and Daisy and . . . the dead woman. Vanessa.
I can’t do that to Daisy.
I hate the sight of blood. Why am I thinking of Eli? Lady Macbeth. I told a little lie about playing Lady Macbeth in high school. Out, out damned spot, all the perfumes in Arabia . . . Who cares if that bloodstained queen wasn’t me? I played one of the witches. I was typecast. Underestimated. Like always.
I say, “We’ll get cleaned up later.”
What does later mean? What will we do after this? I can’t think that far ahead.