“How did you end up normal?”

“Normal? Ha. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know. I never felt like I fit into the family. And I had good friends at school, used to spend as much time as possible at their houses. And I realized early on that the way my family lived wasn’t the way other families lived. And I sort of… it’s like I sectioned off one part of my life from the other, put up a wall there so that I could live in both places when I needed to.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Compartmentalization.”

Samantha grinned. “So, you’ve had some therapy, huh? Good for you. Anyway, moved out at eighteen, left town, never looked back. I tried to stay in touch with Mom. Especially after Dad finally keeled over. I guess I didn’t think she was dangerous. She seemed like the least crazy person in the house. Which is saying something.”

“And when the killing started… you didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “No. No idea. Look, I’d cut myself off, okay? I knew he was getting married. Mom sent me an invitation, but I didn’t respond. I was surprised to get the invite at all. Mom really hated your mom.”

“I know. She says that’s where Billy went wrong.”

“Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not true. Never met your mom, but I know it’s not true. The closest I came to coming back was when I heard you were born. I almost booked a ticket then. Honest.”

He didn’t know if he believed it, but he appreciated the sentiment.

“You have to remember,” she went on, “that no one connected the killings. It wasn’t a national story until he was caught. Before that, it was regional, and nothing popped in the news that would have connected for me.”

“What was he like? As a kid?”

Still not using the name.

“I don’t know what he was like with you,” she began, moving her coffee cup in little circles. Jazz’s, neglected, had gone cold. “But living with him, I could tell. Early on, I could tell there was something wrong with him. I didn’t know how wrong, obviously, but I could tell he was… off. And for a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me because no one else seemed to notice. Not Mom and Dad, not that I’d expect them to. But not my friends or their parents. Not teachers. No one. They all thought he was this… this gregarious, funny kid. But I knew the truth.”

“He was hiding it for them,” Jazz said quietly, “but he let down his guard around you.”

“I guess. I don’t know why. Maybe he thought it was funny, to let one person see the truth…. I don’t know. He pushed things, but he never crossed a line. Not while I was around, at least. I know he killed some pets, some stray cats and dogs. But I could never prove it. And back then, you did that and people just shrugged and called you high-strung. It was different.

“From the outside, he seemed normal,” she went on. “He would tease me and bug me. I was his older sister. That’s normal. He messed with my Barbie dolls….” She shivered suddenly, chilled by the memory. “I mean, I’ve heard… I’ve been told that a lot of boys do that to their sisters’ dolls. But there was something…. It wasn’t just cutting off their hair or drawing on them. He used to… he used to cut the, y’know, the breasts off….”

“Like he did later,” Jazz whispered in awe. “As Green Jack.”

Samantha shuddered. “Green Jack. Oh, God. That’s what he called himself sometimes. I remember he was just a kid and there were days when he would say, ‘I’m not here anymore. It’s just Green Jack now.’ Mom and Dad didn’t notice or didn’t care, but it always freaked me out. I used to think that’s why he did it—just to freak me out. And when he got arrested, a part of me was like… was like, ‘He did all of this just to freak me out.’ Which is crazy, isn’t it?”

Jazz considered himself an expert on crazy. As best he could tell, Aunt Samantha didn’t come close.

“If only I’d seen a newspaper or read a website from back east, when he was calling himself Green Jack. Maybe he would have been caught earlier….” She struggled to regain her composure.

“Aunt Samantha…” he cautioned. He sensed—knew—that they were headed into dark territory, down into the memory mines, where the ore was densest and the danger greatest.

But he couldn’t stop her. Not now. She went on. “One night I woke up and he was standing there, in my bedroom. In the dark. I was fourteen, so he must have been eleven. Maybe ten. I don’t remember when it was in the year. But he was just standing there. Naked. Staring at me.”

“Did he—”

“No. No, he never touched me. And I was never afraid of that, if you want to know the truth. Somehow I knew I was safe. I think… I think because I was related to him, I was somehow off the list. Back then, at least. Now, who knows? Maybe he’s changed.”

Could he have changed? Jazz thought it possible. But change wasn’t always for the better.

Just then, they heard a light thump from upstairs. Aunt Samantha jerked as though awakened gratefully from a nightmare, and the kitchen somehow became brighter than the sunlight through the window should have allowed.

“She’s early,” Samantha said brusquely, and rose, setting her coffee cup in the sink. “I’ll help her get started. Maybe you can get breakfast going?”

“Sure. Hey, Aunt Samantha?”

She paused in the doorway. “Yeah?”

“I changed my mind. You can call me Jazz.”

CHAPTER 22

Connie sat on her bed in a lotus position, legs folded over each other, her wrists resting lightly on her knees, eyes closed. There was a single yoga studio in Lobo’s Nod, and Connie didn’t like the woman who led classes there, so after three she’d bailed. Ginny Davis—poor, dead Ginny—had lent Connie a set of yoga DVDs that looked like they’d come from the ancient 1990s. Then again, yoga was an ancient practice, so maybe that was appropriate.

At any rate, she’d learned a lot from those DVDs, techniques she’d used over the past year to relax herself, especially before a performance. But right now, she was having trouble centering herself. She couldn’t get those deep, cleansing yoga breaths she craved.

Images of Jazz flashed through what was supposed to be a clear and passive mind. Jazz in the hotel room. Next to her in bed. On the floor. Jazz at the airport, with her father…

It was no good. She couldn’t relax. She blew out a frustrated breath and opened her eyes.

“Whiz!” she yelped. She must have been more relaxed than she’d imagined. Or at least more distracted—her younger brother had managed to sneak into her room without her hearing the door open.

“You are in so much trouble!” Whiz said, with something like awe in his voice. He wasn’t even taking delight in his older sister’s travails. He was just impressed at the sheer level of trouble, like a man reaching a mountaintop only to see a taller peak in the near distance. “I didn’t think you could get in this much trouble!”

“I know,” Connie said, pretending not to care. She couldn’t keep up the pretense for long. “Uh, exactly what have you heard? What did they say while I was gone?”

Whiz scampered over to her bed and plopped down next to her. “Dad was cussing.”

Ouch. Never a good sign. As if Connie needed to know, Whiz proceeded to reel off the exact words Dad had used. Connie blinked. She hadn’t even known Whiz knew some of those words.

“What about Mom?”

“She cried. Not much. Just a little.”

Connie deflated. Her father’s anger was one thing. Bringing her mother to tears was another. She didn’t know why, but those tears touched her more deeply than her father’s anger ever could. In a way, she was glad her parents didn’t know this. Such knowledge would make controlling her almost trivially easy: Don’t do X, Y, or Z, Connie—you’ll make your mother cry.