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I find her in the master bedroom. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, her wet clothes stripped off and hanging on a clothes rack set up in the corner, and a pair of some strange woman’s sweats cinched up around her waist. She’s staring at a wedding photo of them: an older black couple from the sixties, smiling and happy and young.
“Can you imagine having a place like this?” Kady asks without looking up. “A vacation house near a lake?”
“I can’t imagine having a regular house near the lake.” I hesitate a second before finding my own pair of sweats and stripping down. “We’ll leave the clothes and a note when we’re done.” I don’t know why I say it. Maybe to make myself feel better. “There’s a washer and dryer in the garage. I’ll clean our stuff.” I start gathering it all up.
Before I can leave, Kady says, “Cora, you’re gonna have to talk about it sometime.”
I don’t turn back to look at her. “I know.”
“It might as well be now. Let’s get this out in the open, okay?”
“I’m not ready.”
“Cora—”
“You dropped something heavy on me, Kady. You have to give me some time to think about it.”
She sounds on the verge of crying again. “I need your help right now. I’m really scared.”
“We’ll get through this, but I’m not ready to talk about it.” I leave her there and throw our stuff into the laundry.
What am I supposed to say to her right now? Am I supposed to tell her I understand and everything will be okay? There’s a part of me that wants to do exactly that—because it would be easier, because I love her and I think she’s torturing herself enough for both of us, because I’m so desperate to hang on to my last family members that I’d overlook something as heinous as what she did.
And yet I can’t do it. Momma was right to ask her not to tell me. Rationally, I know what Kady did was a mercy, but it still feels like the worst betrayal imaginable.
She killed Momma.
She pulled the trigger.
The cancer might’ve killed Momma eventually—
But it didn’t.
Kady did.
I sit alone in the living room and she stays in the bedroom. No lights, like we agreed, and I sneak outside for a few minutes to make sure there’s no visible sign that we’re in there. I stare out the window thinking about what I’m going to do now until I get restless enough to hunt down a phone charger.
I plug it in the kitchen, turn on the phone, and call Nolan.
He answers right away. “Are you safe?”
“Yes,” I say and a strange intense desire wells up in my chest. I want him so badly it’s like a wound and the only way I can heal is to feel him pressed against me again.
“Where are you?”
I fill him in on what happened since we last talked. “Now I’m sitting in the kitchen while our clothes get clean and our shoes dry out.”
He lets out a long breath. “That was smart, Cora. Really smart. I doubt Craig’s going to go house to house searching for you, but you’ve got to be careful, okay? If you hear bikes, you lock the doors and fucking hide, no matter what happens.”
“I promise, I’m not going out there.” I stare down at the chipped kitchen table and wonder how many happy memories happened right here in this room. “I need to talk to you. It’s about Kady.”
“Is she okay?”
I close my eyes. “Nolan, it’s about Kady, and it’s about Momma. And how Momma died.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. I can hear the sound of the wind outside of the car. “What did she do?” he asks softly.
I tell him everything. It pours out. I lean forward and talk into the receiver and admit to him Kady’s confession and all my feelings about it, speaking quietly enough that she won’t overhear, but I have to get it out. I can’t hold it all inside, and who could handle this better or understand it better than Nolan? He knew Momma and she always treated him well when he came around. He also knows pain, and mercy, and violence in a way I never will.
“Well, fuck,” he says when I’m finished. “God damn, Kady, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop thinking about it and every time I look at her, I see Momma’s body and the blood and—” I groan as I clutch at my head. “Tell me what to do, Nolan.”
He’s quiet again. I don’t know what he’s thinking, but it’s agony sitting here knowing she’s in the other room likely going through the same thing I am, but doing it alone.
Finally though, he says, “Do you still love her?”
“Of course I do, she’s my sister.”
