Two's a Crowd Ch. 05

"Do it!" Estelle urged. "Now!" I backed off, the bronze weapon dangling from my hand. "You do it," I told her. And I slipped away to my safe place."

For a moment Myriam seemed lost. Her eyes turned inward. Then she sat down on the bed. An obscene, high-heeled white platform shoe dropped from her hands. "When I returned, the room was empty," she went on. Her voice sounded dreamy. "All the men had gone. Mom lay next to me, her eyes closed. Then I saw the blood."

In the silence a far away New York siren pierced the soft humming of the air conditioning. Myriam just stared.

"Blood?" I said -- just to shake her out of her trance. Or out of mine, for that matter.

"Mom's body was splattered with blood," she whispered, eyes wide. "The bed too. And my hands -- my body. I said "Mom?" but she didn't respond. I crawled to the edge of the bed and saw a naked man sprawled head down in a pool of blood. The top of his skull and his shoulders were red. He didn't move. Next to him lay the statuette, broken in two. I guess I fainted."

I came forward and embraced Myriam. This time she let me. We just sat together on the edge of the bed. I rocked her in silence. "How could you never have told me this, Myriam?" I said at last. "It is so awful -- it must have haunted you all your life. Why didn't you allow me to help?"

She didn't hear me. She resumed her story with the voice of an automaton. "There were police, of course. An ambulance, I guess. I was in the hospital for a while. A lot of people asked me all kinds of questions. I could not tell much, as I had not seen much. I didn't even know the two other men. They must have fled the house and could not be traced.

"Besides, what little I knew I could not say. Estelle threatened she would expose me -- tell them that it was I who had killed my stepfather. I just had to trust her."

Myriam looked up with uncertain eyes. "I had no choice, right?"

I didn't know what to say. She went on. "Mom and I were finally released. We moved to our aunt's town house in Boston. For over two years I was in therapy, sometimes with mom. Estelle helped me answer the doctor's questions whenever I didn't know what to say. She was always there when I needed her.

"In high school Estelle left me alone most of the time -- as far as I know. There have been strange lapses in my memory, though -- and unexplainable places I found myself in. But those moments were few and far between.

"At school I had some girl friends, but I avoided the boys -- at least as Myriam I did. They intimidated, even scared me. I had this urge to dress down as much as I could to be invisible. But I wasn't exactly ugly, so they kept trying. I guess a few were really nice guys, but I always stopped their advances. Mom didn't date either. We were together quite a lot."

She looked up and smiled weakly. "Everybody told me to go to one of the snobby colleges in New England, but I wanted out. I needed a place where nobody knew me. Well -- maybe it was not so much what I wanted. I guess it was Estelle who wanted me out and into a new world. I soon discovered why."