Lies We Bury(11)

A sign for Jenessa’s exit looms around the corner, and I hit my blinker with a shaking hand. Following the directions the navigation app on my phone provides, I turn right and pass a pet hotel next to an Asian grocery outlet.

I park my car in front of a bungalow with yellow trim. Before climbing the stairs, I look in each direction to see if anyone else just parked, too, or might have followed me from downtown.

“Jenessa? Open up—it’s me.” I knock again on my sister’s door, then press my ear to the peeling paint of the wood. No footsteps come to greet me. An ambulance siren howls from the next block over. “Jay, you home?”

“Marissa? What are you doing here?”

I turn and face my sister’s surprised expression where she’s paused on the cracked sidewalk. Worry lines mark her forehead in the direct sunlight, and her jet-black hair appears wiry. She’s aged since the last time I saw her (when she graduated from rehab again), but so have I. A bag of groceries digs into each of her thin shoulders before she sets them on the ground.

“I’m sorry to drop in on you like this after I canceled yesterday,” I begin, feeling myself sliding into old patterns with her. Always apologizing. Always the one at fault. “I need to share something with you.”

She stiffens. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay? It’s not Lily, is it?”

I shake my head. “No, nothing to do with Lily. As far as I know, she’s fine. It’s something else. Can we talk inside?”

Jenessa picks up her grocery bags, then sniffs. “You’d think Lily would figure out cheap international calls at some point. Isn’t Switzerland supposed to be more advanced than us? All those electronics and watches?”

We pause at the door while she digs in her pocket for keys. Wild roses bloom along the sidewalk plot in a thick hedge, mostly red but some yellow. Jenessa inherited her mother’s green thumb. Nora often sent us photos of Jenessa posing beside Nora’s latest prizewinning hydrangea or rhododendron, but Jenessa never looked too pleased in those photos. In each picture, she always had both hair and makeup done for the occasion. She was Nora’s pliable doll until she hit adolescence.

“Good thing I went shopping. You hungry?” she asks. “Did you drive all the way out from the suburbs? You could have called.”

“No, downtown. Work for the newspaper I told you about.”

Jenessa smiles, the first time, as she opens the door. “That’s right.”

She kicks off her shoes, and I do likewise. A quick tour of her two-bedroom house confirms she lives alone—no pets, no nosy roommates. She explains that the creaking I hear with each footstep is the house’s invaluable “charm.”

We settle into a worn couch and armchair in her living room. A bookshelf sits against the wall opposite, and I can make out a few titles on the spines. Getting Right in a Wrong World. When Horrible Things Happen Again. Wedged in an empty spot is a framed photo of the three of us—me, Jenessa, and Lily—the only photo in the space. We must have been fourteen; Lily, ten. The photo captured a moment of joy when we discovered a kitten behind the rear tire of Rosemary’s car. Lily holds the kitten, triumphant, above her head.

“So can I get you anything?” Jenessa asks, sinking into the couch cushions. “What was so urgent that you came directly here?”

“This.” I withdraw yesterday’s folded piece of paper from my pocket and lay it between us. Jenessa reads it, her eyes widening with each line. She lifts a hand to her mouth, as I did. As much as I don’t like thinking about who links us, the genetics we share can’t be denied.

“What the hell is this?” she whispers. “What the fuck is this?” She leaps to her feet and backs away from me, nearly tripping over her coffee table.

I inhale a breath, try to keep us both calm. “I found it on my windshield.”

“Well, what do you think it means? Why four alarms? Why aren’t you freaking out?” Jenessa’s eyes dart across the page as she rereads it.

“That’s a brewery.” I do my best imitation of a woman’s elevator voice: cool, measured, collected. Even as I remember all the times Jenessa threw wild temper tantrums growing up, the peaks of her mood swings, and that she may just be getting started. We have that in common, too.

“There was a murder committed there Saturday. A body left in an underground tunnel. I don’t know, it’s all—” I pause, searching for the right words, for her confirmation that this is as bad as it feels. “This person knows who I am.”

Jenessa rubs her arm where I notice she’s broken out into hives. We each look down at the paper again. The last time I felt this anxious was three years ago when a middle-aged woman followed me to each of my four jobs for a week—then drove an hour to appear on Rosemary’s doorstep under the guise of selling beauty products. She said she wanted to be friends with our family and that she had survived a terrible upbringing, too. Judging from her lack of boundary recognition, we weren’t interested.

“You know what?” Jenessa taps the page with a gray lacquered nail, still standing. “I think I know who wrote this.”

“What? Who?”

She begins to chew on a fingernail, reading again. “Last week, I was approached by someone. He called out of the blue—no idea how he got my number—and pitched me this book idea, wanted me to act as his source. Offered me a grand up front to do it.”