The Judas Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

woman with good bone structure and badly in need of a drink. With a better mirror, she knew she would look a decade older than her fifty-six years, with hair more gray than brown. Drink had done that for her, though now she kept no alcohol in the house.
    But that had not been her own idea. Rouge had taken all the bottles away when he was only sixteen years old and practicing to be the man of the house—a full three years before his father died.
    How prescient. But then, he had been an unusual boy at every age.
    When she heard the car pull into the circular driveway, she crossed the wide room to the front window and parted the drapes. The old Volvo sat in front of the house. The engine had been turned off, but Rouge gave no sign of leaving the car. He was sitting behind the wheel and staring up toward the gables. Was he looking at his sister’s dark window? They never spoke of her anymore, but the dead child was always a stronger presence this close to Christmas. It was the season of the trinity: mother, son and Susan’s ghost.
    Ellen Kendall had spent the entire morning steeped in memories of that endless wait for her daughter’s ransom note. All this afternoon had been spent imagining Susan’s small body in the snowbank, where she had been thrown away when there was no more life in her. And just now, Ellen was reliving the funeral.
    Rouge had been so quiet on the day they had laid his sister in the ground. Ellen had admired her solid little man, only ten years old, yet so poised, so calm. And then she had noticed that one of the boy’s arms was held out from his body at an odd angle. She was seeing it all over again—the small cupped hand, his fingers curled around another hand that was not there. As his sister’s coffin was lowered into the ground, he had turned to the empty space beside him. His face registered shock for the first time that day, and Ellen knew her small son had expected to see someone standing next to him, someone with his young eyes and hair the color of his own. The boy had pitched forward in a faint. He would have fallen on the coffin if his father had not reached out one hand to snatch their only remaining child away from the open grave.
    Back in the present again, Ellen stared out the window. Her son was still sitting behind the wheel of the car.
    And a merry Christmas to you, Rouge. Are you thinking of murder?
    He might have something more mundane on his mind. Perhaps he was wondering how to pay the property taxes and the upkeep on this huge house. It was miles too big for the two remaining Kendalls. They had closed off the upper floors to save on utility bills, but still the maintenance was costly. Once, she had suggested moving to a smaller home. This had made Rouge angry. In the days following that discussion, the silence between them had been hurtful, for she knew how hard her son worked to keep this place for her. But it was only for his sake that she remained here and lived through each new day of sad reminders. Painful endurance was the twisted gift they gave to one another, each with the best intentions.
    The art collection and most of the antiques had been sold. She liked the house better now that it was less cluttered. The psychiatric care and his father’s heart transplant, the ransom and more money for the detective—all had taken their toll on the publishing fortune her late husband’s family had amassed over many generations.
    Ellen listened to the opening and closing of the front door, and then her son’s footsteps crossing the marble tiles. The foyer, obscene in its size, ate up monstrous amounts of heat. She had wanted to use the back door of the house so they could seal it off, but her son had told her they would not camp out in their own home.
    When had Rouge become the head of the household?
    Long ago.
    She and her late husband had made him into a little man before he was full-grown—an unwitting piece of cruelty. They had not been any comfort to their surviving child,