Page 70 of Succubus

“We could finally redo the kitchen, put in one of those hoods so we don’t have to open the front door every time you cook a steak.” She sounds hopeful. “Stupid smoke alarm.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

She lowers her voice. “Remember Ella? ‘Is it a real fire this time?!’ For like two years.”

We both smile.

“And a back deck.”

“I need to get back there and weed.”

“I’m thankful for you, T.”

“I’m thankful for you.” I squeeze her hand for a moment. She squeezes back.

“Life is sort of terrible,” she says, catching me off guard again. “You feel safe for a second, and then something crashes in and fucks it up.”

I blink. Dee doesn’t talk like this very often. She’s too busy charging through life. Sometimes I forget where Ella’s anxiety comes from. Sometimes I forget that Dee used to climb into my bed almost every night when she was little. The nightmares, the closet door that couldn’t fully shut, the things that might happen if she wasn’t vigilant, the small cruelties of her friends waiting for her at school in the morning.

Sometimes I forget that I was the confident one, the one who let stuff roll off, who could keep it in perspective, whose mind measured the right proportions.

“I lie there in my bed and think about how you’ll die,” she says. “How Mom will die. And Ella—I’m so scared for her.” We both look at Ella and she glances up, her polka-dotted sweatshirt healthily dirt smudged, one doll held aloft as though about to fly or fall. “I just want her to have a good life. A good little life where she can feel loved and look at flowers and stuff.”

“Learn to code?” I tease.

“Are you talking about me?” Ella calls.

“Nope!” we call back.

“She might love coding!” Dee retorts, playfully defensive. “What if she wants to go into tech? She doesn’t have to wait around for college or something. She doesn’t have to wait for things. And be poor. And scared. And dependent on some loser.”

“I know, I know,” I say. “You made a good choice. She’s happy.”

“You’re the one making it happen,” she says, tearing up. She flicks a sheaf of braids over her shoulder, swallows.

“Both of us,” I whisper. “We’re a team. All of us.”

“Even Mom a little,” Dee says, and we smile at each other. We are silent for a minute, and pale yellow leaves helicopter down from our neighbor’s willow oak.

I am annoyed at myself for how irritated I’ve been feeling with Ella, how on edge.

“We’ll always be a team,” Dee says with the tone of someone circling purposefully back to her original point, “but maybe when life gives you a chance at someone you care about, even though it’s so scary, you can just . . . maybe talk to him again? I mean, I know he really messed up. But I also know you really, really liked him. And I don’t think you’d like him if he was a bad guy. I have this feeling, like there’s more to the story.”

So that’s what the little talk about life being short and bad was about.

“I don’t know, Dee. . . .”

“It’s so hard to open yourself up,” she says quickly. “I know it’s so hard. But I want you to get everything you deserve.”

A shiver runs through me. I stand up. “Sorry. I just remembered, I should— ”

“It’s okay,” she interrupts.

For a second, we just look at each other. My beautiful little sister, gold beads glinting in her braids, lipstick game as fierce as ever. I want to tell her, but this time make it the actual truth.

I turn and go into the house.

Everything you deserve. I hear her words in my head.