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“I know,” I said. “This is Florida. Tough on crime. And I suppose killing old people is bad for business in the retirement state.” I also knew they didn’t take kindly to serial killers. Aileen Wuornos had been executed here and so had Ted Bundy. The local yokels had even thrown ‘Bundy Burn’ parties on his execution day.
“Finally, other states may seek to extradite you for crimes committed in their jurisdictions. In the coming months, you will likely be getting visits from these investigators from other states, to assist with their inquiries. I, of course, will be present. But I don’t think you need to be too concerned about extradition. These processes are—” he cleared his throat, looking embarrassed “—lengthy, and to put it delicately. . .”
“I’ll probably die first,” I interrupted him.
“Who’s dying now?” a voice demanded. I looked up and saw my sixty-year-old twin daughters Rose and Diane and my granddaughter Harper being ushered through the door.
“Ah. I see you have visitors. That’s fine, we were essentially finished,” Tisdale said, waving formally and slipping out. Diane’s eyes followed him on the way out. She always was a sucker for a good suit.
“Well, what brings you two out?” I asked. Even though they only lived an hour’s drive away, it had been months since I’d seen them last. People don’t like visiting their elderly parents. I get it; most old people only have one topic of conversation: the many exciting ways their bodies are packing it in. I’ve always been interesting, even if people didn’t fully grasp that until now.
Here’s a fun fact about life: when your children are young, you can’t imagine the assholes they’re capable of becoming. But give it enough time and you’ll see for yourself. My son went from being a good child to a clever, decent man but unfortunately my twins flopped like soufflés. I gave them everything but instead of making them satisfied, they just wanted more, more, more. When I was pregnant with the twins, my nails started cracking and I lost two teeth. They were leeching the minerals from my bones, literally devouring me alive. And that’s how they’ve always been: four grasping hands and two mean little mouths demanding more.
My girls were both engaged in a furious fight against time, injecting their faces with so much Botox and filler that their skin seemed tight and shiny, like overfilled balloons. From a block away, they did look attractive; they both dyed their hair a honey blonde and they had golden tans and flashing white teeth. But all I saw when I looked at them were price tags. Even their teeth were veneers. Their real teeth, the ones I had watched poke through their gums and taught them how to brush, had been whittled down to spikes and covered in porcelain.
“Okay, your little cry for help has worked; we’re visiting you. Now will you tell the police you made this up to get attention?” Diane said as she paced in front of my chair, her voice dripping with condescension, as if I were a child who told her class she rode a dinosaur to school.
“Diane—” I began but was interrupted by a groan and a flap of a manicured hand.
“Mother, I’ve told you a million times, call me Dian-ah. Diane sounds like the name of a waitress.”
“Oh, so a woman with a job? Yes, much better to sound unemployed,” I said with a sniff. “I birthed you. I think I earned the right to name you.” I knew I was being hypocritical. Diane wanted to change one syllable of her name, whereas I changed my name as often as I did phone providers. But Diane’s insistence on a classier name emphasized the greedy streak that dominated the twins’ characters. They would trade every scrap of happiness they possessed for a swimming pool, a black American Express card, and a desirable zip code. In fact, they already had.
“Diana’s name isn’t the point,” Rose interjected. Darling Rose, always the second to speak and the last to think. “Mother, what is going on? You told the police you killed an old man?”
“Well, among others,” I said mildly. “I’ve killeda lotof men actually. I might need to sit down with pencil and paper to work out how many.”
“Is this a dementia thing?” Rose asked Diane in low tones.
Diane shrugged. “Her doctors say no. And I don’t know about the. . . others, but the police think she’s telling the truth about Warren.” Diane glanced at me and raised her voice, just on the off-chance I’d turned senile in the last ten seconds.
“MOTHER, ARE YOU GETTING CONFUSED? MAYBE YOU JUST THINK YOU KILLED THOSE PEOPLE. . . OR FANTASIZED ABOUT IT?”
“No, sweetheart. If I actually killed every person I fantasized about killing then I would be much more prolific than, say, the Green River Killer or the Golden State Killer. Both very famous murderers, you know,” I said. I met Harper’s eyes and winked. She smiled back and then looked down at her book, pretending to read.
“You’re telling the truth?” Diane asked, roughly grabbing my arm and then releasing it when she felt how spindly it was. I used to haul a twin around under each arm and now she could have snapped me like a breadstick. Getting old is the pits.
“Bingo. Hey, parents can surprise you,” I said, feeling a surge of energy. I had spent seventy years telling lie after lie and it was exhilarating to stop pretending.
“Oh Jesus Christ! Mother, what have you done? Do you know howhumiliatingit is to be the daughter of a serial killer?” Diane asked, her voice rising to such a shrill pitch that I thought the mirror would crack.
“No, darling, I don’t,” I said serenely, and gave her my most pleasant smile. “My mother never hurt a fly.”
“Everyone is talking about us. I’ve canceled our membership to the club, because God knows, I can’t show my face in there. Harper’s heartbroken—she loved the tennis there,” Diane said.
“I really don’t mind,” Harper piped up. She was sitting cross-legged on my bed, reading a Harry Potter book with a stern look on her face. “I hated the club. All the other kids just wanted to take selfies and make TikToks. It’s so boring.”
I smiled at Harper. She was my favorite grandchild. It had taken a while for me to get one that I loved. I had to wait for Diane’s second marriage and a surrogate pregnancy after nature told her no more. To my generation, a baby at forty-eight was unheard of, of course, but late-in-life babies seemed to be a status symbol among my daughters’ friends, the Birkin bags of the new millennium. It made me miss the good old days, when rich women embraced old age by swanning around in fur coats and pearls, surviving on a steady diet of cigarettes and Manhattans and passing out at 4 p.m.
Unfortunately, Harper didn’t inherit my looks. She had thick glasses and gray-brown hair that hung limply around her face like boiled spaghetti. Her front teeth were also curiously long and rounded, like a rabbit’s. But she was smart, and even at her age, she got the joke. And you don’t have to be beautiful when you’re born rich.
“Don’t you understand what this could do to Reid’s political career? Why did you have to confess before an election?” Rose demanded. Her husband was a senator, just another boy who was born on third base and thought he’d hit a triple.
“Yes, I suppose you all really are the biggest victims in this,” I said gravely.
“Well, at least you understand that,” Diane muttered.
“Girls, don’t worry. Tomorrow some politician—now I’m not saying it will be your husband, Rose—will be caught with his pecker out and the newspapers will forget about me.”