Dead Letters(89)

We sit quietly, and I’m unsure of what else to say. We are in dangerous territory; we could reminisce, savoring these memories of when it was good. Get lost in what it was like to be young and stupid in love. But that would overwrite how things became, and how we left them.

“Look. A hummingbird,” Wyatt finally says, pointing toward the red bush. I squint, looking for the telltale colorful blur. After a moment, I see it, buzzing from one blossom to another.

“There are two.” I point to a companion a couple of feet away. “A pair.” We watch them quietly.

“Are we making a mistake, Ava?”

“We won’t know for a little longer,” I say, patting his knee. At the sudden sound, the birds flit away, disappearing into the shadow of the pine trees.

“So what do we do next?”

“Solve the puzzle,” I answer, leaning back in my chair. “Her last note said that I was holding the answer in my hand. She must have meant that the answer was in the letter. How did she put it? Something about how underneath something or other we conceal our missing pieces?”

“Underneath. Christ, underneath what?”

“Our careful constructions, duh,” I say, smiling, pulling the letter from the pocket of my dress, scanning it, and handing it to him. “Are there any U words, aside from that last paragraph?”

Wyatt reads through it quickly. “Just ‘untied’ and ‘untethered.’?”

“Okay. That could be…a reference to the barn doors?” I suggest. “How they were locked from the outside?”

Wyatt tilts his head skeptically. “Maybe, but that’s kind of thin…”

“Maybe the most important thing to figure out isn’t the next letter, though. We still don’t know who was in that barn,” I point out.

“How will we figure it out? I mean, we’re sort of assuming it was Kayla Richardson, right? If it’s not her…”

“It could be any number of people. It could be some homeless guy.”

“She could have dug up a body and set it on fire first,” Wyatt says.

“I think the fact that I find that the most comforting hypothesis of the morning is a sign of how generally fucked up this is,” I say with a smile.

“Yeah, I prefer that theory too.”

“Well, I’m not about to head to the cemetery and check every single fresh grave,” I say. “She could have gotten a body from a morgue or a medical school. I mean, maybe if you fuck the right person, bodies are easy enough to procure.” I wonder if that’s true. Things I never would have asked myself before today. “Come to think of it, maybe she was fucking the right person. Kayla? Who works at the funeral home?” Wyatt’s eyes widen, and we both contemplate that possibility.

“Okay, so we’re left with the letter U,” he finally says. I sigh in frustration.

“Fuck, Wy. I got nothing. Do we just wait for another clue?”

He grits his teeth. “I don’t know.”

“Let’s go look for my passport. That will at least confirm my theory.”

“Before we put the cart in front of the horse.”

“Right. Maybe we’ll think of something on the way. Or Zelda will send us another hint.” I stand up to leave.

“You’re the boss,” Wyatt says agreeably, and he playfully scoops me up in his arms and spins me. I shriek like a little girl and am momentarily, incandescently happy.

—

In the truck, Nico finally texts me back: I search u at urs. No one there. Y? I tell Wyatt that Zelda isn’t at my place, or at least isn’t currently at my place. I can see her there, though, flicking through my infinitesimal closet, chuckling over some of my new Parisian clothes. She’ll have found the bottle of Cognac on the shelf over my sink and will be sipping it while she tries on my things, playing some of my music. She’ll smoke a cigarette out my window, and then she’ll scoop up my keys and wander out my door, into the city. All my neighbors will recognize her, and the bartender at my favorite café will offhandedly slide her a coupe of Champagne. I wonder if she’s bothered to learn any French.

I look at Nico’s text unhappily. I haven’t called him back, and I’ve been cagey and secretive in my texts. I haven’t even told him that Zelda is technically dead. In fact, if someone were watching me, I might look sort of suspicious. I’m behaving weirdly. If someone had a warrant for my phone, I’d have a hard time explaining my last few messages. Things I should be thinking about. I can smell Wyatt’s peculiar blend of scents on my skin and in my hair, and it makes it impossible for me to call Nico, even to formulate what to say to him. He is an abstraction. I look at the abbreviations in the text, all pretty standard messaging. But I find myself reading into things, constructing outlandish scenarios, based on the presence of a solitary U, a lonely Y. Could Nico be involved, wrapped around Zelda’s finger? Paranoid thinking. But isn’t that legitimate?

We’re at the house before I know it. Marlon’s rental is there, and I can see the whole family up on the deck. I sigh inwardly, wishing to spare both myself and Wyatt, but we have to go inside.

We climb the stairs to the second story and join my parents and grandmother on the sunny balcony. Mimosas are half empty on the table. Mom stares glassily out at the vineyard, Opal is flipping through an address book (how quaint), and Marlon is typing on his iPad.