“Hey!” she shouts drunkenly, jabbing her finger in Rocco’s direction as she stumbles toward him. “Hey. When someone is naked on the toilet, you don’t just burst in. That’s rude. It’srude!”?*
Rocco swivels away from me, holding the knife up in her direction instead. She gasps when she sees it.
“Hey,” she says again. “Hey?—”
I yell an incoherent warning as Rocco takes a swipe at her. But her addled state has rendered her slow, and she doesn’t move in time—I watch with horror as the knife slices her upper arm. It begins bleeding immediately, and for a second, Juniper just stares at it in shock.
She blinks once. Twice. And thenshe looks back at Rocco.
“Hey!” she screams—and I do meanscreams. “I am thefruit of your womb!You can’tstab me—give me that. Give me that!” She rushes at him, reaching for the blade with her bare hand, grabbing it and wrenching it from his grasp, which is clearly limp from shock.
Drug-addled Juniper is not the brightest Crayon in the box, but I’ll give her this: she’s fearless.
The whole scene plays out strangely. It’s not like an action sequence from a movie; there’s nothing rehearsed or choreographed or smooth about what’s happening. There’s no intense background music, no theatrical lighting. It’s all chaos and shouts and confusion by the light of my reading lamp. I’m screaming at Juniper not to grab a knife by the blade with her bare hand, Juniper is screaming at Rocco about how good fathers don’t try to murder their daughters, and Rocco is looking more and more confused by the second as his head whips back and forth between the two of us. There’s blood everywhere on Juniper—streaming from her hand, staining her shirt—and tears are streaking down her face.
“You killed them!” Juniper screams, dropping the knife and cradling her sliced hand to her chest. “Peopledied!Get out. Get out! You’re not welcome in this house!”
“Ope,” I say quickly, holding my hands up. Then I look at Juniper. “Absolutely support you in however you choose to involve your father in your life, but we do sort of need him to stay here until the police come.”
“Oh,” she says, blinking at me. “Are the police coming?”
I glance at Rocco, whose face is running a wide gamut of colors and emotions. “I called them when we were bursting in on you in the bathroom.”
“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”
Rocco resembles nothing so much as a cornered animal now. He lunges for the knife on the floor, butJuniper turns and grabs from behind her the bust of Shakespeare that sits on my bookshelf.
My lovely, expensive, very heavy bust of Shakespeare.
I know a moment of both regret and relief—regret for the Bard, relief for my girlfriend—as Juniper brings the bust down on Rocco’s head just as he’s scrambling to his feet, knife in hand. It connects with his skull, giving a sickeningcrunch, and he falls immediately to the floor—still and silent.
“William,” I say faintly to the blood-smeared bust, cracked in half on the floor. “Did you kill my father-in-law?” I’m not sure I’m completely in my right mind anymore; in fact, I can feel my hands and legs shaking. I think I’m probably going into shock.
Juniper falls clumsily to the floor, buries her face in her hands, and begins to sob.
In the distance, sirens sound.
Everything happensin a blur after that.
Sheriff Garrity sends an unconscious Rocco Astor away in an ambulance, handcuffed to a stretcher and escorted by three policemen. Lionel Astor shows up some fifteen minutes later, dressed in suit pants and a white shirt despite the late hour, with several lawyers in tow. I guess he’s keen to keep quiet all news about his little brother.
I didn’t even know he knew where we live.
He bustles around, speaking in clipped tones to the various people who are transforming our house into an official crime scene. I think this must be every single officer the sheriff has; I’ve never seen this many people with him. They all watch Lionel with looks of mingled irritation and respect as he does his thing, probably stepping on toes left and right.
Juniper and I sit on the stairs, watching the hubbub in decidedly different states of mind. She’s somehow half crying, half dozing, so I’ve got her propped against me, her head on my shoulder. I’ve already talked to Garrity, and Juniper has spoken to him too, though she didn’t have a ton to offer. I’m not sure how much she’ll remember of this when she wakes up and the sleep medicine has worn off. For now I think she just needs to rest. Turn her off and then turn her back on again in order to get her functioning again. Maybe put her in a vat of rice if she can’t stop crying.?*
When Lionel finally approaches us, though, I nudge her with my elbow. “Juniper,” I say.
“Hmm?” she says into my shoulder.
“Wake up.”
She sits up slowly, her eyes bleary as she looks at me. I point to Lionel, who’s standing in front of us at the base of the stairs.
One of the men behind him passes him a large manila envelope, which he in turn holds out to Juniper.
“You are, I’m sorry to say, my niece,” he says.
