She made a production of opening the wine until he couldn’t stand to watch her struggle anymore. Taking the bottle, he uncorked it and poured them both a glass. “You’re going to have to be more specific. When you say you killed her...”
He watched her take a gulp of her wine before dropping back onto her spot on the couch. Cupping the glass in her hands, she looked down at the dark red liquid and said, “My mother died when I was thirteen. My father remarried within months of my fourteenth birthday to a woman named Kathryn Parker. Kat had a daughter who was seventeen named Lindy.”
He saw pain in her expression and knew that whatever had happened, it had been haunting her for years. Which made him wonder why she was only now seeing the person she thought was Lindy. Unless this wasn’t something new. He asked as much.
“I’ve never seen Lindy—except in my nightmares—until this week.” Charlie took another swig of her wine before she began again. “Lindy hated me from the beginning. I remember how disappointed I was since I thought the only good thing about my father remarrying was that I’d have a sister.
“I didn’t realize at first just how much she hated me. Our parents were in love and lost in their own world. So it was just Lindy and me a lot of the time. Once, she offered to cut my hair not long after we’d moved into this large old house on the edge of town. She said she’d cut all her friends’ hair where she used to live. My father liked my hair long and insisted my mother do nothing more than trim it. I was ready for a change and I’m sure I was partly angry with him for marrying so soon after my mother’s death, so I agreed.” Charlie let out a laugh. “I also wanted Lindy to like me. I wanted to bond. I trusted her.”
Shep nodded, seeing where this was headed.
“When Lindy finished and handed me the mirror, I saw the look of triumph on her face and I knew she’d done something awful to me.” She grimaced in memory. “She’d butchered my hair. It took months to grow out. I got grounded because my father blamed me for letting her cut my hair. I just remember the snide smile Lindy gave me when I got grounded and she didn’t. Her mother did little more than tell her she was disappointed in her.”
“I’m guessing that wasn’t all she did to you.”
Charlie shook her head. “She put awful things into my food when I wasn’t looking, she ruined some of my clothing, always my favorites, she started rumors about me at school.”
“Didn’t you tell your father what was going on?”
She nodded, her eyes filling with tears. “He pleaded with me to try to get along with Lindy and not make trouble. He said she was having a rough time of it because she was having more trouble after moving to another town, another school and leaving behind her friends than I was.”
“It must have been just as hard on you. And you were hurting as well. Your mother had died.”
Charlie stared down into her wine. “He always took Lindy’s side, something else she rubbed in my face. The rest of the time he was enjoying his new wife. He thought that Lindy and I were old enough to work things out for ourselves.”
Shep snorted. “He didn’t want to upset his wife by stepping in, you mean.”
“I think he was still hurting from losing my mom and Kat was a distraction.”
He let that go, knowing how much Charlie had loved her parents.
“Whenever I fought back, Lindy had a way of turning things around so it looked like I was the problem.”
“It must have been hell for you.”
Charlie let out a bitter laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I thought about running away. I even thought about killing myself—not seriously. I knew that if I could stick it out, Lindy would be leaving, going away to college and I would be free of her. As it was, she’d been held back a year and I’d been advanced a year at school so we were in a lot of the same classes.”
She sipped her wine. “There was this senior at school that I liked. Lindy often went through my things since we had to share a room and she found a note from a friend about the boy, Andy Walden. The day Lindy died, she came home from school to tell me that he’d asked her out. I thought I couldn’t hate her more than at that moment. She said he told her he thought I was a freak. I couldn’t understand why she tormented me so. We argued.”
“Where were your parents?”
“They’d gone out, as usual, and weren’t expected back until late. They’d joined the country club and had gone to a party there.” She took a breath and let it out slowly. He could see that she was working herself up to tell him the rest. “For the first time, Lindy told me that she hated me. That I wasn’t the sister she wanted and that she would torment me for the rest of my life.”
“Charlie—” He started to reach out to her, to touch her, but pulled back his hand when he saw the anguished look on her face as if she only wanted to get though this. He feared if he tried to comfort her, it would only make it harder.
“That day, Lindy pushed me too far. She didn’t even like Andy, she said, but she wasn’t about to let me have him. She was berating me, saying he said I was ugly and childish and...” She swallowed. “Something snapped inside me. I opened the front door as if I was going to leave, but instead grabbed her and pushed her out. It was late and very dark that night. I knew she was afraid of the dark. I did it out of meanness.” She stopped to pour herself more wine.
“Compared to what she did to you—”
“She was screaming for me to let her back in. Our house was on the edge of town with several empty lots between us and the neighbors on one side and open wooded land on the other with a house back off the road away from us. On the other side was an old industrial area with lots of huge abandoned buildings with broken windows. It was really dark out there and the wind was blowing, making the nearby trees groan and moan and creak.
“I could hear her begging me to let her back in before getting angry and threatening to tell when our parents got home. I knew she would tell and I would get in trouble again but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t let her in. I wanted her to go away. I wanted her mother to go away, too.” Charlie took a sip of her wine.
Shep realized he hadn’t touched his he’d been so involved in her story. Now he picked up his glass, giving her time. He could see how hard all of this was on her. Whatever she’d done, she’d been living with it for fifteen long years.
“Lindy pounded on the door, threatening me with what she was going to do to me, what my father would do to me. I wouldn’t relent. She began to cry, saying she was scared, that she’d heard something out in the trees, heard someone moving toward the house.” Charlie scoffed. “I didn’t believe her. She’d tricked me too many times. I wasn’t even that sure she was really afraid of the dark. I knew if I opened the door and let her back in, she’d mock me for being so gullible and then she’d be on the phone to her mother. They would come home early, angry, and I would be blamed for everything.”