Page 20 of We Already Dug the Grave

“Oh look.” I smiled at my sister, dumbly trying to break the tension. “Bunny brought your favorite.”

Frances shot me a scathing look before swinging open the passenger door and storming across the yard and around the corner of the house. Probably to the woods. To our place by the creek, I imagined. I sighed before sliding out of the vehicle, Bunny’s eyes trained on me. Her hot-pink lips curled into a grin. “I thought that was you behind me. Frances still pissed?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yep.”

“Eh. Don’t worry. She’ll come around. Always does.” Bunny tottered toward the porch, the spiked heels of her fuchsia peep-toes sinking into the ground with each step. She held up the bucket of chicken and joked, “Anyway, thought I’d cook for everybody. Why don’t you help me set the table? Your aunts will both be home soon enough.”

“Sure.” I smiled. I’d met Bunny the same day social services had dropped us off, and often turned to her for advice when I thought gruff Aunt Ruth or old-fashioned Aunt Hattie couldn’t understand. In that moment, faced with Bunny’s lighthearted smile and the sense of ease that seemed to roll off her in waves, I wanted nothing more than to blurt out all my problems: Casey, the kiss, homecoming, even how my attempt at the chin-length bob had been a horrible mushroom-shaped mistake. She must’ve sensed it.

Her brows arched. “You got something you need to get off your chest?”

“Uh, well,” I stammered. “I just…”

Bunny and Ruth were opposites. Aunt Ruth was all sharp angles and lived in Wrangler jeans and flannel shirts. She kept her dark hair cut short, which suited her cheekbones and wide-set brown eyes. Meanwhile, Bunny was infamous around Puddle Creek for her curve-hugging, electric-hued outfits and talon-length nails. Aunt Ruth had a temper, sure, but was also quiet, reserved. The only thing bigger than Bunny’s hair was her personality. And possibly her boobs. The women made no sense on paper, but they were the best example I’d ever had of a healthy relationship. Which is why the words died in my mouth.

Bunny and Ruth didn’t keep secrets from each other, and the very idea of Bunny later talking over my personal problems with Aunt Ruth—specifically Ruth hearing I’d kissed Casey—made my cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“No,” I said finally. “I’m good.”

“You got that thinking look on your face.”

I scratched a bugbite on my arm, glancing away. “It’s nothing.”

“If you say so.” Bunny shrugged, and I followed her into the house, the screen door banging shut behind me.

That thinking look. It’s what she said when she caught me daydreaming.

I hadn’t been daydreaming this time, but it wasn’t a rare occurrence. My mind often drifted away to scenes of what life could’ve been, if everything had turned out differently. Me and Frances in our own bedrooms, in our old home in Lundinville. Family portraits hanging on the walls, scented candles burning on the counters. Instead of this drafty snake-of-a-house, with its hidden nooks and creaky floors and walls covered in sketches of flowers and bloodthirsty trees. I pictured Frances, Mama, and me sitting down around the table to eat dinner, Wheel of Fortune playing in the background, talking about something boring. I pictured never knowing about the Sight and what that might all mean. It was all so…normal.

But would I trade the Sight for that dream? If it meant having Mama back, would I give up being able to recognize that gaping thing inside me without being afraid? For opening that door, seeing seeing seeing, and not feeling so alone? The answer always pained me, because it wasn’t so clear cut, and depended on when the question wormed its way through my mind.

Because I missed my mama every single day. God, I missed her. I’d never been angry at her over Daddy’s death. She must’ve felt so desperate, so alone, to go so far as to take his gun and end his life. It hurt me deeply, the way she refused to allow us to visit or write, and I told myself it was because she wanted to spare us the knowledge of what her life had become. But on the darkest nights, when I lay in bed thinking of her and us and how our life could’ve been, her refusal to see us stung like a fresh abandonment.

And other times, when I was especially low, I remembered that flash of intuition, the fireworks, the metal in my palm, and I worried that maybe the whole thing was my fault. If I’d refused to go to school, if I’d made Mama understand, then everything would be different.

And on those nights? Yes. I’d make that trade. I’d give everything back, I’d take the heartache and worry and fear and never knowing myself, just to have Mama and the life that should’ve been ours.

But other times? Well. I felt guilty even admitting it, but the thing is, the Sight is…invigorating. What once felt like trying to claw my way out of a deep pit now was like a phantom ache in my molars when I thought of something sweet. It was the scent of rain days before a storm blew in. It was plunging beneath waves, knowing that because of my aunts, I had the strength to kick my way back to the surface. It was feeling myself whole and complete.

I didn’t have Mama, but I had family. My aunts and Bunny loved me and Frances, and I’d been raised to be strong, with none of the delusions of the world being a kind place, at least not for us. And it wasn’t like a normal life was forever out of reach.

If we followed our plan, Frances and I would both go on to bigger and better things, to the life in my daydreams, outside of Puddle Creek, and maybe one day Mama would be free and could join us.

But not if Frances doesn’t follow the damn plan. Not if she messes around and gets us both stuck here forever. It was complicated both being proud of my family and wanting so much more for myself.

I pulled a stack of mismatched plates from a kitchen cabinet and sat them on the table, next to where Bunny had deposited the containers of fried chicken and mashed potatoes.

“Can I get you to read for me when you have a chance?” Bunny walked to the kitchen sink to wash her hands.

“Sure,” I said. An open newspaper sat on the kitchen counter. I mindlessly flipped the page. “Everything okay?”

“Oh, everything’s fine. Just got to do some hiring at the Lickety Split, that’s all. I’m thinking that…”

My eyes caught on one of the newspaper articles, and Bunny’s voice faded away.

Archie Baker, beloved husband, grandfather, and great-grandfather, passed away in his sleep in his South Puddle Creek home. He is survived by his wife, Earline Baker…

The words hit me like a freight train. Front and center, in a black-and-white picture twice as large as the rest, was an old man with a bald head and wire glasses. Next to him the wife I knew well.