Dead Letters(88)

“Fuck,” Wyatt swears softly, shaking his head. “I thought she was just screwing with us. You, mostly. I’m not sure she ever really cared enough to screw with me.” A note of bitterness is audible in his tone. I can’t help feeling a similar surge of frustration. How dare he love her, after everything? How could he not?

“I did too. But our little Zelda is growing up.”

“What do we do?” he asks helplessly. “Go to the cops?”

“Would you believe us? I have a couple of emails and an elaborate theory. They have a body, forensic evidence, a murder suspect already in jail, and a case that’s pretty well closed.”

“Still, we could check with the airlines, see if anybody using your passport has traveled overseas in the last few days, check the border. That would be proof.”

“Proof that someone has my passport, not that Zelda does.”

“Seriously? Only someone identical to you could travel with it.”

“Or change the picture, sell it to professional forgers. It would be suggestive, not conclusive.” I shake my head.

Wyatt is silent for a moment, looking at me. “You don’t want her to get caught,” he finally says in disbelief. “Holy shit. You’re still on her side.”

I balk. “It’s not that—”

“You’re protecting her!”

“She’s my twin sister! No, I don’t want Interpol to track her down and arrest her for murder and fraud and God knows what else.”

“That’s what she’s counting on! She’s counting on you never telling her that this shit is too far, too much! She’s fucking manipulating you, Ava. She always has.”

“I know that, Wyatt. I’m not an idiot. But what can I do?” I shrug helplessly. I want Wyatt to think that my loyalty to Zelda is what prevents me from turning over everything I’ve got to the cops. But that’s not exactly it. Not entirely. What I want is to get to the end of the alphabet, the end of Zelda’s story. I want to know the ending, and I’m willing to suspend sensible decision making to reach it. My narrative desire is greater than my need to see her stopped.

Wyatt stares off the deck, leaning on his knees. He’s clearly not happy with me. “Ava. There’s something I need to say, and I’m going to just come out with it.” He pauses. Looking down. “Your idea of yourself—and of Zelda—I think sometimes you get it wrong. This whole dividing-up-the-world thing that you’ve always done, I mean, do you think maybe you’re sometimes just, well, off?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like you don’t want to compete for space. So Zelda is the bad, wild twin. And you’re the good one. And you have these ideas of who you are that fit into those boxes. But do you ever think that maybe it’s not that simple?”

I consider what he’s said, and I know there might be some truth there. But those boundaries are so important, so necessary, that I can’t let them be fictions. Right now, they need to be real.

“I’ll think about it,” I say. I don’t know if he believes me, but he leans forward on his elbows, staring off into the trees. “Wy.” He meets my eyes. “Zaza said you loved me because of my vulnerability. Is that—I mean…”

Wyatt smiles. “Ava Antipova, are you asking me why I love you?”

I turn pink and glance at him bashfully. “Maybe.” What I’m asking might more accurately be: Why do you love me and not my sister?

“Your vulnerability might be part of it, I guess,” he admits.

“Really?” I find this disappointing. “I guess I don’t think of myself as very vulnerable.”

“Well, exactly. You’re tough as nails and you take exactly no shit from anyone. But beneath that, you’re full of love and affection. You care so deeply about the people you love, and getting a glimpse of that loyalty, that fierceness is…well, a privilege. And if you feel even for a second that that love might be directed at you, well…”

“I guess I don’t really see it that way.”

“Because you’re so tough and perfect and, like, together, all the time! That’s what makes it so powerful to see when you actually, honestly feel something. Like I’m being allowed into a tiny private universe. Most people are an open book, but not you.”

“Zelda isn’t either.”

“No, but she’ll always let you know if she’s angry, or hurt, or jealous, or pleased. She’s just more…demonstrative. With you, the first time you told me you loved me was this, like, revelatory experience. I literally felt like I’d won the lottery or something. Struck by lightning.” He gives me one of his sweet, slow smiles.

“You remember that day?”

“Ava, it is etched in my memory forever. You wore a blue dress, and I’d never seen you so tongue-tied in my life. It looked like it physically pained you to tell me.”

I can’t help laughing at the memory. “I was rather uncomfortable, yeah.”

“The lilacs were in bloom, it was full spring….”

“Christ, what a romantic,” I groan.

“I don’t know if I’d ever been so happy.”

“Well. It needed to be said.” I, too, remembered that day vividly. We were on the back deck, and the long winter had finally loosened its grip. The frozen edges of the lake had thawed; the lawn was green. For months, I had seen Wyatt’s skin only in bed, warm and protected beneath the sheets, and out there, as he sat in shorts and a T-shirt, his chalky flesh seemed unprotected, exposed. I felt nearly as naked. I was so young, and scared, and happy. The raw relief of spring made me brave. I don’t know if I’m now capable of feeling so limitless. Or so afraid.