Dead Letters(31)

“Of course you have your reasons. I was very sorry to hear about Zelda. It really is…unbelievable.” I narrow my eyes, wondering if she has her own suspicions, but there’s no glimmer of double meaning in her face. “She emailed me the day she died, you know. We’d spoken a lot this last year, she was so lonely.” Grandma Opal looks at me meaningfully, and I know that she considers this my fault. “She wrote saying that she loved me and had always appreciated me. It was the sweetest thing.”

“How unlike Zelda,” I say flatly.

Grandma Opal hardens her jaw. “She was tough on the outside, dear, but a real softie when it came down to it. You’re the one who’s like your mother.” This is an easy shot, but it still hurts.

“Have you seen Nadine yet?” I ask. “I might need some help looking after her, while you’re here. There’s a lot I have to do still, and I wouldn’t want you to have to deal with it, in your condition.” She can needle me all she wants to, but Opal hasn’t been able to drive herself anywhere since failed cataract surgery a couple of years ago. And in this part of the world, that means she’s pretty well stuck. I know being trapped in the house with Nadine will make her reconsider being nasty to me.

“Old age isn’t a condition, Ava. It’s something only the lucky few get to experience.”

“Grandma, could you just let me be for a second?”

“You’re fine when you just unclench and relax, Ava,” she says, unable to resist having the final jab.

“A popular opinion.” I rifle through the cupboards, looking for coffee. There’s only a little left, and I sigh in exasperation. I will have to go grocery shopping for the four of us today, plan a menu beyond Betsy’s unappreciated casserole. I’ve gained another dependent. “Where’s Marlon?” I ask. “Probably not out working the fields.”

“He’s gone to the police station, to talk to someone official over there. He said you were sorting it out yesterday, but I told him that was no job for you. He needs to go and take charge, make sure it’s done right.” The implication being that I can do neither, presumably. But he’s welcome to the job. “He’s her father, after all. He’s the head of your family.” Ha.

“They told me yesterday there was no official ruling yet,” I inform her. “Maybe they’ll have one this morning.”

“How can they not know at this stage? It’s been days. Honestly, I may have to hire someone to make sure everything’s being done right.”

“I’m not sure you can hire someone to bring Zelda back from the dead, Grandma,” I say sharply, instantly realizing that this may not be true. I think a decent PI could probably find my sister, wherever she’s hiding. But I’m hardly going to suggest that.

“I know that, doll.” She comes to stand behind me and strokes the nape of my neck in a way that is supposed to be comforting. I do my best not to flinch at the feel of her papery skin brushing my own. “Ava, it’s okay to let go, to let down your fa?ade. Everyone knows what Zelda was to you, even if you two hadn’t spoken for a while. I know she would forgive you for that.”

“Forgive me? For the shit she pulled before I left?” I shake my head in disbelief. If Opal knew the whole story, which I’m certain no one does, she’d probably still take Zelda’s side—but I’m not the one who needs forgiving. Zelda had our grandmother, and everyone else, wrapped around her finger, figuring that I was off having some temper tantrum in Paris. “You have no idea what was going on here, Grandma.”

“I know there were some childish jealousies, some sort of disagreement over a boy, but really, Ava, you can’t walk away from your twin sister because of some high school crush.”

“He wasn’t a crush. It was—Jesus, why am I even arguing with you? Zelda manipulated you into feeling bad for her, and that’s fine. I don’t have to justify every fucking move I make to everyone in this family!”

They are all toxic. I fling a coffee cup into the sink. It cracks into satisfying shards and the noise is immediately comforting. I reach for another, but my grandmother grabs my arm and looks me in the eye. She has our eyes, Marlon’s too-green eyes. “That’s enough, Ava. There’s no need to be unnecessarily destructive.”

I snort and raise my arms in surrender, prepared to flee the room.

“I brought coffee,” Marlon says from the doorway, looking back and forth between his mother and daughter with a harrowed expression. He’s holding a few bags of groceries and some to-go cups of coffee, and I’m almost weak-kneed in relief at seeing him. This is how my father gets away with his perennial negligence and failure to come through: He shows up at just the right moment, with exactly what you need. And because it’s so unexpected, you feel this surge of gratitude toward him, like he’s accomplished something superhuman. I know this, deep in the marrow of my bones, which are made of the marrow of his, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m momentarily choked up at the sight of the coffee that I will not have to make myself and the groceries that I will not have to buy and put away. How we’ve idolized that man, that mythological figure who had bequeathed us his ruinous genes and extricated himself from his paternal role, vaulting off in pursuit of his next jaunty lark.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say, crossing the kitchen to relieve him of his gifts. I give him a meaningful look with my back turned to Grandma Opal, and he smiles in acknowledgment.