Not a Happy Family

It is Easter Sunday, and the Merton family gathers for dinner. Dan and Lisa Merton prepare to head to his parents’ home. They are uneasy, anxious. Dan, once groomed to take over the father’s massive robotics company, now faces an uncertain financial future because his father sold the company for a tidy profit without consulting Dan. Dan dreads dinner—he knows he must ask his father for a loan.

His older sister, Catherine, a successful dermatologist, and her husband, Ted, a dentist, get ready. Ted does not relish another Merton family dinner, as it comes with too much stress, too many grudges.

Jenna, the youngest, is an aspiring artist who lives in Aylesford but commutes to the city with its robust art scene. She heads to her parents’ house accompanied by her current boyfriend, Jake Brenner. They smoke a joint. Her parents provide her a generous monthly allowance that allows her to pursue sculpting, her passion. Jenna looks forward to shocking her parents with Jake’s sexy unkempt appearance and bad-boy attitude.

Rose Cutter, an attorney, stews over “something stupid” she has done (8), though it is not yet specified what “something” is. She is having Easter dinner with her mother, Ellen Cutter, a friend of Audrey Stancik, Fred Merton’s sister. Audrey had begged out of dinner with Fred—she is getting over a nasty spring flu, and “[h]er nose is running like a tap and she’s achy all over” (10). She consoles herself with the thought that soon, very soon, she will be rich.

Catherine and Ted arrive at the Merton home. Catherine takes a moment to appreciate the spacious and beautiful home. She assumes when the time comes that she, as the oldest, will inherit the family home. Sheila mentions “something important” she wants to talk about, but the doorbell rings as Dan and Lisa arrive. Jenna and Jake show up shortly after.

As they drink champagne, Dan asks his father whether they can talk after dinner. He resents his father’s actions with the company: “It’s because of his father he’s in this mess” (18). His father, guessing it is about money, curtly says no.

The roast turkey dinner is prepared and served by Irena Dabrowski, the family’s part-time maid. Irena raised the Merton kids as their nanny and now feels almost like a mother to them. Irena loves the children, but they do not need her now. After dinner, Fred stands up and makes a stunning announcement: “Your mother and I have decided to sell the house” (22).

Catherine immediately objects, but Fred dismisses it—the house is too big for two people. He tells the children they should not have had any expectations, because none of them have met his. He sold the family business because of Dan’s incompetence; he feels Jenna lacks dedication toward her artistic ambitions; and he thinks Catherine does not need the big family house because she has not given him grandchildren.

Shocked and angry, Catherine departs, then Dan. Jenna and Jake remain.

Catherine and Ted bicker on the way home about Fred’s decision. As Dan drives home, Lisa bitterly complains about what a “shit” her father-in-law is (29). Now Dan understands there will be no loan forthcoming from his father.

Dan cannot sleep. He pours himself a strong drink and thinks that “something drastic, something final” needs to be done (31). He regrets taking out a huge chunk of his and Lisa’s investment portfolio and putting it into a high-risk private mortgage deal that promised a high rate of return. With his job gone, he cannot get that money until the mortgage term is up. He could use his inheritance now. Unable to sleep, he tells Lisa he is going for a drive. Lisa has tried to be patient with Dan, knowing that he is trying to find a new job. But after he leaves, she happens to check his open laptop, where she sees his calendar does not reflect all the job interviews he tells her he has had. She wonders if he’s been lying.

Catherine, also unable to sleep, decides she needs to talk to her mother; she never found out what “important” thing Sheila wanted to talk about. Ted tries to talk her out of it, but he knows she won’t listen. He feels she is sometimes “obsessive,” especially about their attempts at conceiving a child. Catherine calls her mother, who doesn’t answer. Rather than wait for the morning, she heads back to her parents’ house, leaving her cell phone behind.

It is Tuesday. Detectives Reyes and Barr arrive at the Merton house to “what’s been described as a bloodbath” (38). The housekeeper, Irena, found the bodies of Fred and Sheila, although they had been dead for a while. The marks around Sheila’s neck suggest strangulation. Fred’s pajamas are soaked in blood from multiple stab wounds. There are no signs of forced entry. Although the rooms have been ransacked, the detectives doubt this was a robbery—the killings are too violent, too intimate. This was personal. Outside, several turkey vultures circle the house; Reyes comments that “[t]hey probably smell the blood” (43).

Irena talks to the detectives and tells them she has been with the family for years. She also tells them that the children and their significant others attended Easter dinner on Sunday, but that Fred’s sister, Audrey, couldn’t come. She says the kids will be “absolutely devastated,” but Barr, examining the expensive house, is doubtful. Irena tells them that when she got to the house, she smelled blood. The bodies sickened her. The detectives ask her to inventory the house to see if anything had been stolen; they then ask her for the children’s contact information.

Irena notes that Sheila’s two diamond rings are missing. Some other things from around the house are also gone. However, the detectives decide what little is missing—a few credit cards and some jewelry—is not enough to explain the savage killings.

The detectives drive first to Catherine’s dermatology office to tell her the news; they say “[i]t looks like a robbery gone wrong” (51). Catherine takes the news quietly. The detectives ask about Easter dinner, but Catherine lies, assuring them it was uneventful. She says she left the house at seven o’clock and denies seeing her parents again after that.

Catherine closes her office for the day and calls Ted. She says she will call Jenna, and asks Ted to meet her at Dan and Lisa’s house. She tells him that when the police ask, he needs to tell them she did not leave the house Sunday night; she promises to explain later.

Catherine’s call to Jenna wakes her up. Jenna is shocked: “Fuck […] for real?” (56). Catherine tells her to head to Dan’s for a family meeting. Jenna finds a note from Jake telling her she’s welcome to stay in his apartment. She decides to call him.

Catherine heads to Dan’s. Dan is taking the news badly. As he struggles to understand the implications, however, he tells his sister that now at least they are all “free of him” (59). Catherine warns him against saying such things; Lisa, who is watching them, thinks Catherine thought the same thing when she heard the news.

Catherine mentions that the detectives will want to talk to them; Dan is startled, saying, “Why? […] I didn’t do it” (60). As he sits on the couch, Dan cannot help thinking that now there will be no more tense holiday get-togethers, no more trying to please his father. When he thinks of his inheritance, “[Dan] can feel his chest expand with happiness” (61). Now, he gloats internally, he stands to inherit millions. Dan is convinced that everyone is just as happy about Sheila and Fred’s death as he is.

Ted watches the Merton siblings, wondering whether they’re feeling secretly relieved. He knows that they had “[a] childhood of privilege and pain. Of their parents withholding love and playing favorites” (62). Ted knows that it’s possible to “be glad when someone dies” (63)—he remembers being relieved when his father, who was abusive and had an alcohol addiction, died in his sleep. Dan suggests calling Irena and having her join them; he mentions that it’s odd Irena didn’t call them first. Dan says Irena can update them on what the police are saying.

Ted suspects Dan, who he knows is struggling financially. He also wonders about Catherine’s secret; she’d told him in the morning that she and her mother had talked about Fred potentially cutting off Jenna’s allowance. It occurs to him that Catherine might have just missed the murders.

Audrey Stancik finds out on her car radio about the murders. She immediately heads to her brother’s house and is shocked by the scene. She realizes that “she’s going to get her windfall a little sooner than she expected” (67). She tries calling Catherine, then Dan, but no one picks up, so she decides to go to Dan’s house.

At the crime scene, the detectives determine the knife used in the attack had been cleaned and returned to the wood block in the kitchen. Bloody footprints point to Irena as the likely culprit. When they go through the bathroom medicine cabinet, they find a prescription for Xanax for Sheila. They check the old bedrooms of the siblings but find each one uncluttered, nothing about the kids. “Not exactly sentimental” (71), Detective Barr surmises.