Bitter Business

gushing blood. We didn’t know what to do. We were just kids, for Christ sake. She died in Jimmy’s arms.”
    “And so you filled her pockets with rocks and decided on the suicide story.”
    “We had to get rid of the body. We thought Dad would kill us. It was Jimmy’s idea to take her out in the rowboat and dump her. He knew how screwed up she was. It was his idea to say she’d killed herself.”
    “So what went wrong?”
    “It was the buttons on his shirt,” Philip replied. He sounded eager to be done with it. “They must have gotten caught in her hair. That’s how he got pulled under.”
    “Why wasn’t there an investigation?”
    “Dad took care of the police. That’s when I found out that he’d known all along. He was the one who’d paid for Doc Prisser.”
    “And he made you promise not to tell.”
    “He made me swear it,” Philip said miserably.
    “It was just going to be your dirty little secret,” hissed Lydia. “But it’s hard to keep people from talking in a place like this. Daddy couldn’t buy everyone. The police dropped it, but there was no way he could stop people from talking.”
    “So you knew, too,” I said to Lydia.
    “Not at first, not everything. But I always knew that there was something funny about it, something that people weren’t telling. It wasn’t until my therapist helped me understand the real impact these childhood tragedies had on my psyche that I was motivated to find out the truth about what happened.”
    “So you came down to Tall Pines in February to find out the whole story from Nursey.”
    “Do you know what the funny thing is?” Lydia asked. “Everyone down here knew it already. Our big hush-hush family secret was common knowledge in this little hick town. Everyone knew that Jimmy was sleeping with Grace. Everyone knew about the botched abortion. Everyone knew that Daddy’d paid for it. Everyone knew that Daddy’d paid to have it covered up. The only people he was keeping secrets from were his own family. Everyone else knew.”
    “But not Eugene,” I said slowly, the anger rising up inside of me. “No one ever told Eugene. Your father and Philip were terrified of what it might do to him if he learned the whole story. So Eugene didn’t know until the night of the party. I bet you just couldn’t wait to tell him, could you?”
    “I was still very angry about it,” Lydia replied defensively. “When I’m angry I get emotional—it’s just the way I am.”
    “So emotional that you never stopped to consider the impact it would have on Eugene. He’s never been able to handle things, has he? The trauma of your mother’s death left him unable to speak for nearly a year when he was a child. After Jimmy died, he got into all sorts of trouble— drinking and drugs. And then there was that unfortunate business about Zebediah Hooker. Poor man. A friend of mine paid a call on him today. What a sad story. All those years and he’s still a vegetable.” I turned to face Eugene. “I wonder how it made you feel when you realized that you’d done that to him just because he repeated what everyone else had been saying—when he repeated the truth about Grace Swinton. What I don’t understand is why you didn’t kill your father. Or Philip. Why didn’t you kill them right then?”
    “It wasn’t like that!” Eugene protested in a voice that was close to a scream. “I put it in the Lord’s hands. I prayed for guidance.”
    “And the Lord didn’t tell you to forgive them?” I demanded.
    “An eye for an eye,” answered Eugene. “The Lord exacts a price. Jimmy was the most important person in the world to me. He told me to take Peaches from my father the way my father took Jimmy from me!”
    “Oh God! Eugene!” Lydia gasped, horrified.
    Eugene leaped to his feet. I braced myself for impact, but he rushed past me and ran from the room.
    “Elliott!” I screamed, turning to race after him, but I wasn’t fast enough. He made a mad dash for the bathroom and slammed the door in my face.
    I heard the sound of running water.
    “Eugene!” I shouted. “Come out of there now!” I beat my fists against the door as Elliott came running. We heard the sound of something heavy falling—the crash of bone against porcelain. Elliott pushed me out of the way and kicked down the door.
    We found him on the floor. He was writhing in pain, his body rocked by a seizure, his head banging sickeningly against the base of the sink.
    “Help me get him out of