Read Online Nowhere Girl by Susan Strecker - Free Book Online Page B

sisters dress him in frilly skirts and paint his fingernails a sparkly pink. His father traveled a lot, selling leather to companies like Coach and Gucci, so he’d spent his childhood surrounded by women and girls and girls becoming women. A self-described mama’s boy, he cried at chick flicks and sappy commercials. He cried when I fell out of our tree house and broke my arm. But now, as Dr. Bassett’s silence told us everything we needed to know, he stood stoically. I could see his fingertips digging into my mother’s shoulder, but otherwise, he was as still as a soldier at attention.
    My mom didn’t move. She didn’t seem to be blinking. I leaned against the wall and watched Dr. Bassett take off her glasses. Years later, I would understand she didn’t want to see my mother’s face when she said what she said next.
    â€œIt appears Savannah was attacked, sexually.”
    I was having a hard time breathing.
    â€œNo, Michelle,” my mother said to the doctor. “No. No. No. No.”
    They called each other by their first names, exchanged Christmas cards, and Dr. Bassett came to the Sotto Sopra holiday parties.
    â€œWhat happened?” David asked again. Even with the faint smell of pot tangled in the fabric of his sweatshirt, I’d almost forgotten he was there.
    â€œHow?” My mother sounded impatient, as though this was a waste of time.
    â€œHe strangled her,” I said so quietly I almost couldn’t hear myself.
    Dr. Bassett nodded, nearly imperceptibly.
    â€œHe put something around her neck”—my voice sounded programmed—“and he killed her.”
    My mother covered her mouth. “No. God, no. Oh, my baby.”
    I knew what she was thinking—that being violated must have been so much the worse for Savannah because she was a virgin. She called us her twin angels, such good girls, never any trouble. She was so careful not to choose between us, but it was clear Savannah was her favorite, the prettier twin, more charismatic. It was hard not to look at Savannah, not to pay attention to her. She drew you in. And as I watched my mother crumble to the floor, my father and Dr. Bassett trying to comfort her, I wanted to run out of that tiny room, through the electric doors, into the parking lot, down Mareside Highway to Mulbury Street, to that tiny one-way, forgotten lane, grass growing out of its cracks, where broken glass lay along its crumbling curb. The lane that led to the Wolfe Mansion. I’d never been inside. I’d heard it was where kids partied because the cops didn’t like to go there. You couldn’t get a car past the curb; you could only walk single file on the lane. The place was surrounded by tall, knotty pines, I’d heard, and a root system so complicated you had to hold hands not to trip, almost impossible to enter, even on foot. Haunted, they said. I wanted to go there. I wanted to die in that exact spot where my sister had lain, suffocating. We were too late. I’d been too late. I hadn’t looked for her.
    Dr. Bassett came forward and stood beside me like a sentry. I felt her rubbing my back. She was warm and soft, and smelled like powder. “There’s evidence of strangulation, bruising around her neck, and petechial hemorrhaging. We’ll have to do an autopsy, but she was only partially clothed, which can be an indicator of—” But my mother put up her hand, and Dr. Bassett didn’t finish her sentence.
    My father had gone a pale, waxy color I’d never seen before. Someone killed my sister, and he was out there, right now, maybe washing his hands in the bathroom at a turnpike rest stop.
    â€œCady.” My mother was coming across the room, her face wasted, her brown eyes fierce. She squatted in front of me. I felt Dr. Bassett quit rubbing my back. “Tell us,” she’d said. “What else do you know?”
    *   *   *
    I opened David’s back