Derek’s eyebrows lifted.
“I know you called them,” Dara continued. “I know what you’re trying to do.”
“Not me,” Derek said, looking over at Marie. “She.”
Dara’s eyes darted to Marie, her head still bowed. Dara wanted to strangle her.
“You need to leave,” said Charlie, his face flushing now. His body tightening before Dara’s eyes.
Derek smiled grimly, shaking his head. “I read up on this. A little legal concept. Undue influence. Do you know it? It’s when a trusted person uses said influence to get another person, a vulnerable person, to sign over their rights.”
“I’m sure you know everything about undue influence,” Dara said. She could feel herself ramping up to something, an excitement in her chest. “You saw how she was that very first day. You saw your mark and you swooped in. And look at her now.”
They all turned to Marie, her bare-legged crouch. Her hands flew to her face like when she was ten, shutting her eyes, plugging her ears like they were still in their bunkbed, hearing everything, seeing everything, their father yelling, their father crying.
“They’re doing it again,” Marie said, turning to Derek. “They’re doing it.”
“What are we doing?” Charlie asked Marie, a stunned look on his face. Stumbling toward her now. “Jesus Christ, Marie—”
And Marie’s face folding ever so slightly, her hand trembling toward Charlie just as Derek swooped in.
“I don’t think you get it, friend,” he said, moving in between them as if Charlie were threatening Marie, as if Derek were the gallant. “What belongs to Marie belongs to me. You steal from her, you steal from me.”
“Jesus, Marie,” Dara said, “don’t you see what he’s doing?”
“Don’t talk to her,” Derek said. “Talk to me. If you’re not interested in a partnership, then we’re gonna have to make a deal. Some kind of arrangement. A reparation of sorts. For how little you paid Marie the first time.”
So that was it, Dara thought. Right in the open at last.
“No,” Marie said, turning to Derek, voice rising, her hands fisted. “This isn’t what I wanted. I wanted out. Out. Out. Out. It took me thirty years to get out of that house. Thirty years and I . . .”
Dara moved toward her. “Marie . . .”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Marie said, moving toward the spiral staircase, Dara following. “I think I’m going to be so sick.”
* * *
*
On the third floor, Dara stood over Marie, Marie retching rusty saliva into a wire trash can, her voice scraping.
It was so strange being up there again after all these months, her eyes scanning the dark space—all their mother’s things from when this space was hers, her hideaway: the gooseneck lamp, the brittle old futon, their father’s pilling Pendleton flung across.
“Dara, I didn’t know. I didn’t know how bad it was. I . . .”
“Stop it,” said Dara, her ears ringing, all of it too much.
She didn’t want to be up there anymore, or ever, the heavy scent of bodies, of Derek’s body. Of Marie’s. Like sharing a room all those years, knowing even the smell of her tampons, stuffed in the trash. And most of all, the smell still of their mother’s Blue Carnation perfume.
Mother . . .
“Stop it,” Dara repeated, turning away, “while we clean up your mess.”
* * *
*
They could hear them in the office below, the fuzz of Derek’s voice.
“I have just as much an interest in that house as you,” Derek was saying. “And just as much a right. We both happen to be involved with women whose names are on that deed.”
“Dara’s my wife,” Charlie said, his voice strange and strangled, a voice she didn’t recognize. “Marie’s my sister.”
There was a pause. “You three, so close. Snug as three bugs in a rug. What guy stands a chance?”
“What does that mean?” Charlie said. “We’re family.”
“So it’s true, then?” Derek asked.
“What’s true?”
Marie, on her knees over the trash can, looked up at Dara. A sudden alertness, a knowingness. We need to go back down there. We need to go.
* * *
*
They were on opposite sides of the office, Derek spinning that bill holder again, spinning it by its rusty spike.
“Derek, stop this,” Marie was saying from the staircase, Dara pushing past her down the steps toward Charlie. “Come upstairs.”