Dead Letters(17)

Our birthday is in 10 days. Come home, would you? Or I’ll end up doing something crazy.


Your Ever-Apologetic, Well-Intentioned, but Deeply

Fucked-Up Sister,

Z is for Zelda



—

I glare at Wyatt from the doorway of the trailer, my heart skipping in harrowed beats. I haven’t seen him in nearly two years, and he looks good. Dark hair cropped close, pretty brown eyes wide and warm. His biceps certainly haven’t gone anywhere in the last year or two. He’s wearing jeans and a frayed T-shirt; no one dresses well in this part of the world, and Wyatt has always been negligent of anything fashion-conscious. I feel a flash of guilt, thinking of Nico, who always wears trim button-down shirts and pressed trousers. Nico wears scarves, for chrissakes. He owns not just one but multiple scarves, scarves for different occasions, different types of Parisian precipitation. He is nothing like Wyatt, whose substantial arms are already brown and threaded with muscle, even this early in the summer. I swallow hard.

“Jeez, Ava,” Wyatt says, his hands raised in surprise. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“Didn’t expect anyone to catch you over here?” I’d like to be less nasty, but I’m still so pissed. I thought the hurt had faded in Paris, only here it is, raw and weeping pus.

“No, not really. I thought I’d just come and…look around. See if everything was okay over here. I know Zelda always leaves the doors unlocked, and she’d been hanging out with some unsavory characters.” Wyatt loves noir films. Unironically. He uses terms like “unsavory characters” and “in a tight spot.” I suspect he’s drawn to the notion of integrity, a serious man doing his job without compromising.

“The cops didn’t even have to break in. Helpful, our Zelda was.”

He flinches. “She wasn’t, and you know it,” he says shortly, and I can’t help but chuckle.

“No. The whole thing is rather suspicious. But fuck. It’s…Zelda.” I sit down suddenly, on the steps, unable to stand for another second. Looking at Wyatt, seeing his face lined with grief and alarm, I believe for the first time that Zelda might actually be dead. He looks like he believes it, and he’s seen a bit more of her in the last two years than I have. Wyatt moves toward me, but I glare at him and he stops, awkwardly cramming his hands into his pockets. His shoulders are huge.

“Will there be a funeral, Ava?” he asks softly, like he doesn’t want to rile me.

“We have to wait for the death certificate, or the coroner’s report, I guess. She hasn’t been officially ruled dead. I think they’re sifting through the ashes for her teeth, or something. But yeah, as soon as that happens, there will be. My dad won’t want to stay forever and I…” I don’t want to talk about Paris. “And I think it would be better to just get it over with. Not drag this out.”

“I’d like to help, if I can. With all the details, the food.”

“Wyatt Darling, always the good guy.”

“No. Not always.”

“Maybe not.”

“Ava…it’s really good to see you. Even like this.” I nod. I glance at him, scanning his face and body for subtext.

I think we became friends because I never could tell what Wyatt was thinking, I never actually knew. I lived in a house with someone who threw every item of clothing you owned onto the lawn if you spilled iced tea in the dining room. I had been so attracted to someone who just looked at me sleepily and made me wonder what was going on.

Now the mystery feels old. I look up at him, elbows propped on my knees, trying to think of something to say. The quiet stretches uncomfortably. Wyatt scuffs the dirt with his farm-boy boots, grubby, worn-in, and practical.

“I’ve really missed you,” he says after a minute. He pauses uncertainly. “Zelda and I…that’s what we mostly talked about, you know, missing you.”

“How nice that you were able to bond. You know Zelda was fucking with you, right? Or, rather, fucking with me by fucking you?”

“I thought so at first, yeah.” Wyatt nods agreeably, slowly, not taking the bait. “But the last few months, I started to think maybe not. She was really lonely, your sister.” He’s achingly earnest, and I can’t help feeling a twist of guilt.

“Zelda didn’t experience emotions like ‘loneliness.’ Jealousy maybe, and certainly revenge.”

“Revenge isn’t an emotion. Vengefulness?” Wyatt says playfully. I roll my eyes. Wyatt is still standing, with his hands in his pockets, looking like he wants to sit down on the step next to me. I don’t offer.

“Did you want to get anything in particular?” I ask, waving at the trailer behind me. “Did you leave behind a pair of boxers or something? Boxers, right? You used to wear boxers.”

“Ava, we hadn’t—”

“I really don’t want details. I don’t care how many times you fucked. How vulnerable you both felt because I left, or how comforted you were by each other. That is your business, and hers. Get whatever you came for and go,” I snap, my patience gone. Wyatt looks at me, waiting for me to soften. Before everything happened between him and Zelda, this outburst would have shocked him; he would have blushed, ducked his shoulders, and mumbled an apology. Clearly, my sister has had a toughening influence on him. When I say nothing and refuse to meet his eyes, he shrugs and snakes by me to enter the trailer. As his leg brushes my shoulder, I smell his familiar aroma: clean denim, lemon soap, evaporated sweat, grapevines, dirt. I shut my eyes. How have we gotten here?