The Almost Sisters(63)

Her hand stayed on my head, like she was blessing me, and her large brown eyes were solemn and serious. I wanted to ask her a thousand questions, but she’d made it plain that I was not allowed. It was like I heard the echo of a distant door closing, so far away that the sound had had to travel years and years to come to me.

She was right. I would never know what her life had been like eighty years ago, or seventy, or fifty. Or even now. My arms went around myself involuntarily, holding a brown boy I flat adored, though he was only a bump inside me.

“Get some sleep, Wattie. You’re exhausted,” I said.

She chuckled. “Baby, I’m more than that. I’m nigh on drunk. For the third time in almost ninety years, Jesus forgive me. You go to bed, too, and don’t fret, hear me? Things feel hard now, but it will pass. Everything passes, and something new comes along to fill the space.” As she spoke, her tone shifted. She wasn’t talking about me anymore. “You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias.”

She turned away and went on up to bed.

I sat in a slump at the table for a moment. It felt like 3:00 a.m., but my watch said it wasn’t even time yet for the nightly news. The whole house was quiet and still. We had all shifted to little-old-lady hours. Early supper, early bed, up with the sunrise to spend time with Birchie at her best. She needed the house quiet after eight.

I got up and went back to my sofa in the sewing room, feeling shipwrecked as I changed into my pajamas and brushed my teeth. I lay down, but I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know how long I lay there before the chime of a text landing in my phone roused me.

The noise reminded me that about a thousand years ago, back when I was telling myself that the bones were some kind of Civil War archaeology, I had called Jake and let him have it with both barrels. He was a known jackass, certainly, but on the other hand he hadn’t murdered anyone. Not anyone I knew about.

I roused myself and reached for the phone.

It wasn’t Jake, though. It was Batman. Still up?

I was in no shape for stalking the father of my secret baby.

I’m dealing with a family thing, I texted, which was true, but the stark words read harsh. I added, Looking forward to Wednesday as a softener. He sent me back a thumbs-up emoji.

I didn’t put the phone away, though.

Lavender had living-father problems, and I had sworn to fix them. That was a lifetime ago, but it still mattered. I was hoping against hope that Jake had done something that resembled the right thing. At the very least, he could have sent his daughter a cute frog emoji waving a sign that said hello. He could have texted, I do love you, or maybe, Sorry you won shit-all in Dad Lotto.

I shook my head. Parenthood shouldn’t work this way. Fathers shouldn’t get to decide if they wanted to father or not, thirteen years in. Fathers who weren’t dead should do their damn job. Assuming they even know they have a kid, I thought, but I shoved that away for later. This was about Lavender right now.

It actually felt lovely to think about Lavender’s problems, to meddle hard in the forbidden lands of Rachel’s troubles instead of thinking about terms like “no statute of limitations” and “premeditated.” Now, thanks to Blanton’s, I could add Wattie and “accessory after the fact” to my concerns.

There was no way to reconcile my long-loved Birchie with a person who could do what Violence did. See a bad man? Take him out. Remove him while he sat sipping his port and reading his newspaper. All I could do was twirl my new black mustache and protect her anyway. Jake, with his money problems and his cowardice, was altogether easier, because I was squarely in the right. I could try to fix that and not think about—

Wait. Was this what it felt like to be Rachel?

Maybe so. I was pregnant with a secret mixed-race baby, carrying on an investigative flirtation with my in-the-dark baby daddy, and I honestly had the least fucked-up life of any adult in the house. At this thought I started giggling. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. This was what it felt like to be Rachel. This right here, perched in the catbird seat of least fucked up. It was not a thing I’d ever understood before. God, but it was a good seat. No wonder she didn’t ever want to share it.

When I finally got myself in hand, I texted Jake another message:

Call your daughter. I will go full Bloodaxe on you if you don’t. Do not doubt me, Jake. I’m capable of anything at this point.



It sounded true, because it was. Blood in my history, murder in my genes, Violence in my heart. Wattie had shared the how, but no one on earth except for Birchie knew the why.

I wondered how long we both had before the Lewy bodies took that answer, too.





14




I hadn’t realized I’d been sleeping, but I had, and very hard. There was drool on the pillow. A sound had woken me. Something like a click.

The sewing room shared a wall with the kitchen. Was it morning and someone was making breakfast? It was so dark. I peered at the clock, disoriented. It was 2:04.

Then I heard footsteps pittering down the wooden stairs that led down to the backyard garden.

I sat up. Holy shit, the click had been the door. The back door shutting.

All at once I was fully awake. In my mind’s eye, I could see Birchie trying to navigate those long, steep stairs with her tottery balance, imaginary rabbits winding in and out between her ankles. Less than a second later, I was kicking at the tangled quilts, trying to get up and over to the window.