Burn Our Bodies Down(70)

It happened to Mom. Just like Tess, pregnant with no idea how. I wanted so badly to keep it apart, but it’s all the same thing, isn’t it? The past and the present, happening at the same time.

I stare at that last sentence, in my mother’s handwriting. Me. That was me. Me she wanted to do right by. Me she kept, even though it scared her, even though she never asked for it. Even though I was only the echo of her sister. Not a father in the world, not for either of us. Just a choice to be made.

And it’s in my hands now. Gram gave it all to Mom, said someone had to take care of it. Mom did her best, but there was so much she couldn’t do. There was more than she could carry. So she passed the rest to me. Told me to keep a fire burning and locked herself away.

I close my eyes. See myself back at the table in Gram’s kitchen. She built her family on sand and did nothing but watch as it fell apart. I won’t do that. I won’t be like that. There’s a way this all happened, and it’s there at Fairhaven, waiting for me to find it.

Okay, Margot, I tell myself. It’s time to go home.





twenty-five





i make it back to the house right as the sunset fades, the photograph of Mom and Katherine in the pocket of my dress. The driveway’s empty, so I plant myself on the back porch and wait. Gram will be home soon. Every second stretching, endless, filled up with Jo and Katherine. With me, the girl with no father. The girl who grew in her mother’s body all on her own. To not have chosen it? More than that, to not know how it happened? I’d have gone to the clinic too. I’m not sure I’d have changed my mind.

In the distance, the Miller house is well lit and shining, and my stomach tightens the longer I look at it. The same thing has happened to Tess. Whatever’s causing this, it’s not just our family. It’s not Nielsen business gone Nielsen wrong.

A sputter, and the rattle of a truck coming in. Gram. But she’s not coming from the highway. Instead, her headlights hit me from the Miller driveway, running along the far side of Fairhaven. I frown, get to my feet. Maybe she brought Tess home from the fundraiser. Or maybe she went over to help her talk to her parents. Maybe she did a good thing, for once.

I wait, listen as the truck swings around the front of the house before settling in its usual spot along the side. The engine cuts, headlights die. I hear the door slam, and Gram mutters something to herself I can’t quite make out.

“Hey,” I call. Part of me hopes I scared her.

A pause. Then Gram sweeps around the corner of the porch, her heels dangling from her hand. The pattern on her dress seems deeper in the twilight. I blink against the shadows.

“What are you doing sitting out here?” she says.

I shrug. “Nothing. Waiting for you.”

She walks past me and pulls the screen door open so hard that it smacks against the wall. Steps into the kitchen and tosses her shoes in the corner. I watch, confused, as she ignores the light switch and bends over the sink, washing her hands in the dark. But I don’t dare touch the switch. If she’s left it like that, it’s because she meant to, and I need her loving me as much as possible when I ask her my questions.

“We won’t even discuss the fact that you left the fundraiser to go God knows where” is what she starts with, voice raised over the water. She says it like I should be grateful. Putting me in her debt immediately. Even seeing it for what it is doesn’t stop the rush of gratitude I have to fend off.

“Very generous of you,” I say.

“Do not talk back to me, Margaret.”

I ignore her. “Tess is pregnant. She’s pregnant just like Mom was with me. And you know that.”

She dries her hands on the dish towel hanging from the oven and turns to face me, her arms crossed over her chest. There’s something caught in her hair, dotted dark along her temples, but with the lights off I can’t make out what. “I don’t accept your premise.”

I do laugh this time. This is ridiculous. This isn’t a debate. This is real, and it’s happening to me, to the dead girl, and to Tess, and I will not let it go.

“What’s happening, Gram?” I step forward. Hands clenched into fists, every moment of the last few days boiling up. “And what happened back then? To Mom? To Katherine?”

“That,” Gram says, a warning in her voice, “is not your concern.”

“How? How is it not mine?” I am so tired of this. Shut out and pushed in at the same time. “I found Mom’s diary. I know what she did to Katherine. I know they had no father and I know there isn’t one with Tess, and that doesn’t just happen. That’s not how it works.”

Gram goes back to the sink and starts washing her hands again, picking carefully at something under her nails. That familiar feeling takes hold of me. Look at me, it says. Look at me now.

“Everything that’s happening comes back to here,” I say. “To you. Tess and Mom and that fucking girl, the one you said you didn’t know anything about.”

She doesn’t even flinch. Just grabs the towel and wets it before dabbing at something on her skirt. “Best to leave all that alone,” she says.

“Why?” I’m shaking, my whole body seized with anger. “She lived here, Gram. She must have.”

“I said, leave it alone.”