If it took longer than an hour to find that, then Claire could wait.
Eileen stood in the parlor, studying the picture she’d found. Here were the three Enright sons: two fair-haired, one dark. A perfect male mirror to her and her sisters. The news articles she’d read online hadn’t included photos of Mark—something about his age and a judge’s court order. But Eileen didn’t need anyone to point out which of these brothers he was. She knew: He was the one who looked like her. The one with the dark hair and eyes, and the mole beneath his lip. She had a mole too, under her left eye.
Was that the sign of a killer? Proof she had Mark Enright’s blood in her veins?
If so, Eileen hadn’t been able keep all that blood inside herself. It had leaked out in an unlikely way, through brushes onto canvas, infusing the very paint with its wickedness, earning the reactions “bizarre” and “unstable.” Eileen had thought of her art as a way to find herself, to explore who she was, deep inside. Then, when she’d learned the secret, she hadn’t wanted to explore any further.
Because what the hell might she find?
Here he was, the killer himself, dressed in green plaid, dappled sun on his face. He was very real to Eileen, standing alongside Patrick and John. She looked into his photographed eyes. She almost hoped Mark Enright was coming back to town. She wanted to ask him a question, or two, or three thousand.
She guessed that made her a bad sister. She’d known more than Claire and Murphy had when she’d started this trip, and maybe she should have warned them about the risks: that there was a possibility the murderous Mark would show up at his old house to claim what he thought was rightfully his. That seemed to be the theory of everyone in Rockport, anyway.
What a theory it was, too. Probably bullshit.
Still.
Eileen needed someone to ask, because it couldn’t be Mom. Way before Eileen had found those letters, Mom had pulled away, spending longer shifts at work, claiming the family needed the money to cover their growing debt and the landlord’s hike in rent. Maybe that was true, but when Eileen had started working at Safeway and offered to give Mom half the money, Mom had cried and straight-out refused, telling Eileen that money was hers alone. At the time Eileen had thought Mom had simply been ashamed, insisting the job of breadwinner was hers, not her children’s. Now she wondered if Mom had felt guilty about taking the money for other reasons.
After she’d found the letters, Eileen had suspected this: Mom didn’t want to spend time with Eileen. She’d stopped hanging out with her, stopped asking questions other than a perfunctory, “Doing okay?” And it could have been Eileen was imagining it, but she sometimes found Mom looking at her in a way that could be described as … frightened.
Was it because the older Eileen had gotten, the more she looked like him? Did that make Mom afraid of her? Then again, Claire and Murphy weren’t murderer spawn, and Mom had pulled away from them, too. Had they been collateral damage?
Those weren’t questions Eileen dared to ask. But these, about her real dad and what had happened in this house—she might have luck there. Eileen set down the photograph and, returning to the real world, found Murphy sitting at the piano, pressing a single key again and again.
The kid could be a real freak.
Claire was hanging outside, an asshole, refusing to enter the home on principle.
“For all you know,” she’d told Eileen, “Mark could be waiting for us in there.”
Claire didn’t really believe that, though. She was using fear to prove her point, a politician’s move.
Fear didn’t work on Eileen. Not anymore.
Once she was out of Claire’s sight and Murphy was in the foyer, poking around, Eileen seized the moment—the one she’d been waiting for. She pulled from her flask, welcoming the electrifying sting. The promise of good things to come: no fear, just resolve.
Over the past two years Eileen had become an expert in measuring, gauging, knowing her limit—the line between buzzed and drunk. It was a fine art, drinking, though it hadn’t started out that way. It had begun with Asher from Safeway offering her a beer after their shift and Eileen drinking it down, thinking it tasted like liquid Wonder Bread mixed with piss. Then, when the bad taste was