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“She should have died years ago,” he continued. “But she kept hanging on, refusing to give in.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I looked after her all those years. Elyse said I deserved a bit of happiness.”
Now I was the one struggling to make sense of what he was saying, what I was hearing. “I don’t understand. Are you talking about Mom?”
“Tracy?”
“No, Dad. It’s Jodi. Are you saying that Elyse had something to do with Mom’s death? That you’ve been protecting her all this time? That…that she killed Mom?”
“She’s been putting drugs in my food,” he said, snapping back into the present. “I told her I was on to her, that I knew she was just after my money. I told her to get out. She got so angry. She said she’d go to the police, tell them…”
I felt my entire body start to tremble. “Tell them…what?”
“That it was me! That I was the one who dragged Audrey out of bed and carried her to the stairs, as if I could have managed it alone…”
My arms fell from around my father’s torso to hang limply at my sides. My head was spinning, my mind incapable of absorbing the words I was hearing. “You’re saying that the two of you…”
“What kind of life did your mother have?” he demanded angrily. “What kind of life didIhave?”
My mind shook with distant echoes. I heard my parents screaming at each other down the upstairs hall—Go ahead! Hit me again, you miserable bastard!—felt the thud of my mother’s body hitting the floor after he struck her a second time.
“No!” I said, trying to convince myself that my father wasn’t in his right mind, that he was confused by all the drugs Elyse had been feeding him, that he had no idea what he was saying.
But try as I might to deny it, deep down I knew the truth: that my father was more than capable of such violence, that with Elyse’s help, he had callously tossed my mother down a flight of stairs when he tired of playing nursemaid, that he’d pushed Elyse to her death when he tired of her manipulations and she threatened to go to the police.
“Oh, God,” I cried, as the sound of police sirens drew near.
“What are you crying about?” my father demanded angrily as car doors slammed outside, and police came bursting through the front door. “Where’s Tracy?”
