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The woman smiles, a knowing look in her eyes. She opens her mouth, ready to speak again, when we’re interrupted by a noise behind me. I swing around, my eyes landing on an older gentleman who’s just shuffled through the open door. He looks apologetic for interrupting us, gesturing meekly to the circle of chairs before walking toward them and taking a seat. The smell of cigarette smoke follows close behind him, mixed with the sickly sweet scent of brown liquor.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling suddenly embarrassed, though I’m not even sure why. Maybe just for showing up here, in this vulnerable place. “I should probably go.”
“You’re welcome to join us any time,” the woman says. “We’re here every Monday. Eight o’clock.”
I smile and nod, flashing a grateful wave before stepping outside and walking back toward my car. I’m digging my hand around in my purse now, feeling for my keys, when my fingers wrap around something thin and hard, like a notecard. A business card. I pull it out, my fingertips running across the name embossed on thick, black paper.
Waylon Spencer.
Suddenly, I remember that man on the plane. That was only yesterday, the way he had looked at me and offered his help. It felt a littleslimy then—opportunistic, right on the heels of that conference—but his words are ringing loudly in my ear now, a tempting pull.
“With a podcast, you wouldn’t have to talk to all those people. Not directly, anyway. You’d just have to talk to me.”
I keep walking toward my car, my mind on all the people in my life who take it upon themselves to dissect my every move: Ben, Detective Dozier. The judging eyes of the audience members whose names now sit on my dining room table, taunting me even more.
It would be nice, I think.Not having to convince all these people of my innocence, my pain. Only having to convince one.
I look at Waylon’s business card, scanning his information. Then I pull my phone out of my pocket, before I can think twice, and navigate to my Inbox, launching a new email and beginning to type.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEN
The air has a gelatinous quality to it today, sluggish and wet. It reminds me of gravy dripping from a serving spoon, concentrated and thick, pooling into various creases and settling there. Turning everything damp.
Margaret and I are outside by the water, the thin fabric of our nightgowns sticking to our skin with sweat. We’re sitting on the grass, pretzel-style, trying to savor the little gusts of wind that occasionally find their way to us through the trees. It’s usually breezy out here, but right now it’s painfully still, like even the clouds are holding their breath.
“Tea?”
I look up at my sister, my eyes adjusting to the sudden brightness of the sky above us. She’s arranged the garden statues in a semicircle, a plastic teacup placed before each one. We’re a peculiar party, I have to say, Margaret and I, with our humidity-soaked hair, crimped and wild, and our matching white nightgowns. Necks itchy with ribbons and lace. We’re two years apart, but Mom still dresses us in coordinating outfits, even when we’re sleeping. Like we come in a set: life-sized nesting dolls.
I imagine opening myself up at the stomach, placing Margaret snugly inside. It feels like that sometimes. Like she’s mine to protect. Like without her, I’m hollow.
I glance at the statues: a frog playing the ukulele, a baby with wings. There’s a woman directly across from me, bigger than the others, her mouth hanging open and her stone eyes looking directly into mine. She used to be a fountain, I think, but she hasn’t been hooked up in ages. Instead, there’s some kind of black algae trickling out of her mouth. My gaze follows as it cascades down her chin, her neck. It almost looks like she’s possessed.
“Ma’am?”
I look back at Margaret. She’s holding out a pitcher, her eyes darting back and forth between me and the cup and saucer she’s placed in front of me.
“Please,” I say in my best British accent. I lift the cup and make a show of pushing my pinkie up, sky-high, because I know it’ll make her laugh. Margaret giggles, tilting the pitcher with both hands. It’s too heavy for her, I can tell, and the ice and liquid comes barreling out and overflows out of my cup and into the grass.
“My apologies,” she says, licking the side of the pitcher before placing it back down. For some reason, it makes me smile. The way she says it, like a little adult. She heard it somewhere, I’m sure—Mom on the phone, maybe, or on some TV show—chewing it over in her mind before parroting it back.
She’s always watching, always listening. Always absorbing life like a sponge, silent and porous and malleable in our hands.
“I saw the footprints.”
My neck snaps toward Margaret, still standing above me, her head tilted to the side like a curious bird. I was hoping she hadn’t noticed those—those faint, muddy prints trailing their way from the hall to my bed—but I should have known better. Margaret notices everything.
“Do you go outside?” she asks. “At night?”
I don’t know how to answer that, so instead, I glance back towardthe marsh, my eyes on the water lapping against the dock as I try to conjure up a memory dancing somewhere in my subconscious. Somewhere out of reach.
“I guess,” I say at last.
“What do you do?”
“I don’t know.”
