The Bad Sister. Kevin O'Brien

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СКАЧАТЬ the lakefront property. Alongside the driveway to one of them, Eden discovered a trail down to the beach. Both the pathway and the beach were probably private, but that didn’t stop her.

      Taking off her shoes, she must have walked at least a mile along the shoreline, sometimes in the hot sand, sometimes with her bare feet in the cool water. Though it was late, the beach was still dotted with swimmers, mostly kids screaming and laughing. If not for them, Eden would have stripped down and swam in her panties and T-shirt.

      She hadn’t slept much last night, and it started to catch up with her. Still, she kept walking. That was Eden’s trademark. “You’re always pushing things to their limit,” her stepmother, Sheila, had told her. This criticism usually came up when Eden was driving. She never stopped for gas until the needle was on empty. And she rarely moved into the right lane to exit until the very last minute. It was a game she played, staying in the fast lane for as long as she could. It made life more interesting.

      So Eden kept walking—even though she was tired and hungry and had to pee. She told herself that it wasn’t really an emergency yet.

      But by the time she’d found another trail up from the beach and back to town, it had become a definite emergency.

      The Sunnyside Up Café was half-full with customers, and nearly all of them looked up and gaped at her as she staggered in. She spotted a sign for the restrooms and made a beeline toward them.

      It wasn’t until she came out of the bathroom and sat down at the counter that Eden got a good look at the place. It was definitely a dive. The ramped-up air-conditioning couldn’t diminish the strong smell of fried onion rings and bacon. The walls were decorated with framed, sun-faded vintage ads for Coke, Canada Dry, Jell-O, Hunt’s ketchup, and the like. The battered pressed-wood and avocado Formica tables looked like hand-me-downs from a Denny’s that had closed. The cushioned seats in the booths were covered in orange Naugahyde that was cracked and taped in places. At least the red tape almost matched. “Working My Way Back to You” by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons was playing over the sound system.

      What a surprise, an oldie, Eden thought. The place was from another decade. But she liked it. And the menu had several vegetarian items that looked decent. She could imagine parking herself here at a table for hours in the evening, drinking gallons of coffee while toiling over her homework or maybe chatting with some of the locals. The town probably had some interesting characters.

      The waitress was a skinny, tall, sixtyish woman with short gray hair and a dimpled smile. The nametag on her mustard-colored uniform read ROSEANN. “What’ll you have, hon?” she asked.

      Eden ordered lemonade, a veggie burger, and fries. She guzzled down the entire lemonade a minute after it was set in front of her, and the waitress gave her a refill.

      While she waited for her food, Eden dug the freshman orientation packet out of her purse and looked it over. There really wasn’t much for her to do tomorrow. She had to report back to Emery Hall to get her photo taken for her student ID and her cafeteria card. There were tours of the campus and sign-up tables for various clubs and activities—none of which interested her even remotely. She’d already registered for all of her classes. It didn’t seem worth it, coming in four days early just to have her stupid picture taken. But at least she could sleep in tomorrow. Maybe she’d take the train to Chicago. She could have her picture taken another day. It couldn’t be the only day they were making ID cards.

      While Eden ate her burger, the waitress asked if she was a student at the college. Eden told her yes, she was a freshman—from Seattle. “I just arrived today,” she said. She glanced around. “You must get a lot of students in here, being open twenty-four hours.”

      “Yep, keeps us in business,” Roseann replied. She was behind the counter, making a fresh pot of coffee.

      “Have you worked here long?”

      “Only since 1992. I’ve lived in Delmar practically my whole life, born and raised here.”

      Eden felt a bit sorry for her, but didn’t let on. “Did you go to the college?”

      “Nope, no college degree. Guess you could say I graduated from the school of hard knocks.” She started wiping down the counter.

      Eden wiped her mouth with her napkin. “Were you living here when those murders happened on the campus?”

      “I certainly was.” Roseann nodded. “Boy, do I remember that. Y’know, I don’t get many kids asking about the strangler, not anymore. The college has kept that chapter of their history under wraps. Where did you hear about the murders?”

      “My new roommate’s boyfriend told me,” she explained. “What was it like back then—I mean, suddenly having all these murders happening right here in your neighborhood?”

      The waitress set down her dishcloth. “I was seventeen at the time, in high school. I know it’s hard to imagine me at seventeen, but believe me, I was once. Me and my friends, we were terrified. Our parents were terrified. This used to be one of those towns where no one locked their doors at night. But all that changed. None of us went out after dark. We were all so scared. And when we did go out—during the day—we took all sorts of precautions. I carried my grandfather’s old straight razor in my purse. And my best friend kept one of her mother’s knitting needles in her bag. I remember walking by the park with her after school. No one dared walk alone, not with that maniac loose. I remember not being able to figure out what was so different, and then it dawned on me. It was the silence. There wasn’t any laughing and singing, because the kids weren’t there. The swing set, jungle gym, and the slide—they were all empty. It was eerie.”

      She leaned in close to Eden. “But you know, it didn’t happen all of a sudden. It sounds weird, but I was sort of braced for something awful. Before the first girl was strangled, some strange, disturbing things were going on at the college . . .”

      Eden stopped eating and pushed her plate away. “Like what kind of things?”

      “Like a freshman girl in one of the cottages in Saint Agnes Village,” Roseann whispered. “The school was all-girls back in 1970. The girl had managed to keep it secret that she was pregnant. The story goes even she didn’t know. She just thought she was sick and getting fat—right up until she went into labor. Can you believe it? She had the baby right there in one of the cottages. She didn’t want anyone to know about it, so she choked the baby to death with the umbilical cord.”

      “Oh my God,” Eden murmured, wincing.

      Roseann nodded glumly. “It was a boy, the poor little thing. The mother, the girl—I guess she was out of her mind—she tossed it in a laundry basket with all her bloodstained sheets and things. Then she tried to set it on fire. I guess she wanted to destroy all the evidence, but she didn’t do a very good job. The fire alarm went off . . .”

      Eden kept shaking her head.

      “The school did its best to cover up the whole incident. I hear the archdiocese even got the local newspapers to play it down. But everyone knew.”

      “What happened to the girl?” Eden whispered.

      “They locked her up in Elgin, the state asylum for the insane.”

      “Is she still there? Do you know?”

      “That’s not very likely, since they tore down the hospital in 1993,” Roseann answered. “Maybe they transferred her to another place. Or maybe she’s СКАЧАТЬ