The first thing she saw was the magazines stacked on the credenza again. She knew that when she went upstairs, she’d see her mother’s cold cream and her father’s ties exactly where they’d been, as if she’d never put them in the trash. And the ashtray . . . that damned ashtray would be on the bedside table. How many times over the years had she tried to throw that fucking cold cream out? Too many to remember.
So Beth and the house would go another round, then. She’d expected it. But this wasn’t going to go on forever. She knew that now.
She’d almost let her anger drain—almost—when she saw the wine bottle on the coffee table.
Red wine, her favorite. Though, of course, any wine would do. Beth would drink anything at all, given the chance. And the house knew it.
She stared at that bottle, gleaming in the half-light of the drawn curtains, and for a minute she wanted that wine so badly she would have done anything for it. She could practically taste it on her tongue, could feel the slide of it down her throat. She would have sold her soul for that bottle.
She closed her eyes. Things are changing, she told herself.
She walked to the table and grabbed the bottle, willing her hand not to shake. In the kitchen, she ignored the blood on the floor, tracking through it in her nice shoes. She ignored the breeze from the broken door and the huddled shape that she knew was her father’s body against the lower cupboards. She flinched away from it and stood at the sink, yanking the cork from the bottle and upending it over the drain.
The wine gurgled down the sink. It looked like blood. From the corner of her eye, Beth saw that her father’s body was gone.
“Fuck you,” she said to the house, to her memories, to all of it.
She stood there until all of the wine had been drained from the bottle. Until the blood was gone from the floor, her tracks vanished like they’d never been. Until the door shut and the breeze stopped. Until it was over.
Then she put the bottle down and put her head in her hands, because she was alone all over again.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
October 1977
BETH
The cops didn’t like that she had a lawyer with her this time. Ransom seemed to fill the tiny interview room, his big frame taking up all the space. Detective Black looked uncomfortable, and Detective Washington looked furious. Beth sat silent, letting the men go at each other’s throats.
“We want a handwriting sample,” Washington said.
“No,” Ransom replied.
“We’ll get a warrant.”
“When you have one, please present it. Until then, we decline.”
Washington looked at her. This was the tactic, Ransom had warned her: address her directly, bypassing her lawyer, and get her to react. “We can get your handwriting, you know,” he said. “Your checks at the bank, any letter you’ve written to a boyfriend. Your lawyer is just delaying.”
“I defer to him,” Beth said. “He’s so very wise.”
Washington looked like she’d cussed at him, and even Ransom glanced at her, his eyes narrowed.
“We’ve already searched the house,” Washington said. “We’re processing everything we found. We’re going over the car inch by inch, too. Whatever we find there will indict you. Do you understand?”
“Don’t answer that,” Ransom said. “Don’t answer anything.”
Beth stayed still. She couldn’t think of anything they would find in the house, aside from her mother’s family china and her father’s old papers, which she had never had the guts to read or throw out. Still, it had been a violation, the cops emptying drawers and flipping mattresses. They’d bagged and cleared her empty wine bottles as if they were evidence of something. Evidence that she drank too much. Was that going to be used against her, too? Probably.