Free Killer's Cousin by Nancy Werlin Page A

out: “Aren’t you afraid of me? Don’t you think I’m probably some monster?”
    Raina smiled a little, as if I were far younger than Iwas. “No. Not at all. It was pretty clear what had happened, by the end. Don’t you think?”
    I looked away from her. Was she blind? Stupid? Were they all?
    She said, “More tea?”
    I said, “Yes. Okay.”
    No one feared me—except me.
    I so much wanted to believe them.

CHAPTER 14
    U nless you counted that weird challenge from Frank Delgado, Raina Doumeng was the first new person I’d met with whom I’d had anything approaching a truthful conversation. I was conscious of that, even as we moved on to innocuous subjects. And later, when I mentioned Dr. Walpole’s medieval history seminar, she invited me to go to a museum with her on Saturday, to look at medieval art.
    Not a date, I told myself. Just a museum. “Okay,” I said.
    â€œExcellent,” said Raina casually. “You’ll like this stuff.”
    Saying good-bye to her, going upstairs to the attic, I felt better than usual. That night and for the next few nights, I even slept fairly well, undisturbed by—or perhaps simply used to—the humming shadow. Even Lily’s knowing glance, directed at me whenever I raninto her over the remainder of that week, could not spoil my mood.
    I was amused to notice that Raina had been right about the supermarket card swapping. Once I knew to look for it, I saw it all over the city. A cute girl silently swapped with a guy at a bus stop, and then turned and walked away, swaying flirtatiously. Inside a convenience store, two harassed mothers traded almost absently, by the dairy case: “Swap?” “Sure.” All you needed to do, it seemed, was take out a supermarket card in any public place and dangle it. Within a few days I had swapped ALAN BAWDEN for AMY CONKLIN and then for SUZANNE WERTHEIM . This last swap occurred right at the supermarket checkout; the clerk grabbed my card for scanning and switched it with another so rapidly that I almost missed it. I did, however, catch the barest smile on her lips.
    Friday was my eighteenth birthday. It passed uneventfully, the occasion marked only by a phone call from my mother and the arrival of a massive check from my father. I was relieved that Vic and Julia didn’t know, or had forgotten, the date. I wanted it to be over as quickly as possible.
    On the next day, Saturday, I woke up early and went for a long run through North Cambridge and around Fresh Pond. I was supposed to meet Raina in Harvard Square at noon, in front of the Fogg Museum. “I have to work in the morning,” she’d said. “So let’s just meet there.”
    I wondered where she worked. I wondered if she could possibly be a friend. She was so beautiful. If things were different …
    But they weren’t.
    The fact that Raina and I were meeting in Harvard Square instead of at the house we both lived in gave the outing a clandestine feel. But I was also relieved. For some reason I didn’t want to conduct this …
friendship
with Raina in view of my relatives. Particularly I did not want to expose it to Lily.
    Lily the minefield.
    On the way back upstairs after my run, Vic called my name, so I had to stick my head in the kitchen door. Vic and Lily were at the table with identical bowls of cereal; Lily’s head was bent low over hers as, ignoring me, she carefully drowned individual Froot Loops in milk. Julia stood by the counter with a cup of coffee and the sales circulars; her lips pursed sourly at my greeting. Her eyes were alert.
    She barely waited for Vic to finish speaking. “About Thanksgiving,” Julia said. “Tell your mother that
I
will roast the turkey. And we’ll eat down here. You haven’t enough room for all of us. And also …” She had four or five other things, ticked off on her fingers, that I was to communicate to my