In the chair between us, Uncle Elliott drinks beer from a can in a koozie. He has a cooler of beer beside his chair, which he and Nolan share, stacking their empties on the concrete deck, seeing who can stack theirs higher before it falls, as if it’s Jenga, as if this isn’t the most redneck vacation ever.
Earlier I looked over to find Uncle Elliott staring at me, and I didn’t know if he looked when I looked or if he was already looking, but he smiled and there was something a little cocky but also guilty-looking about it, like he got caught red-handed, leering at his teenage niece in her bikini. It’s gross, though every family has that one slightly pervy uncle and Elliott is mine, which isn’t the worst thing in the world, because he’s also hot.
He says now, “Hey. Can you bring me back something to eat?”
But Emily tells him, “We’re going to have lunch soon,” as if she planned the whole day’s agenda and no one’s allowed to deviate from it.
“What do you want?” I ask, ignoring her.
He smiles, crinkles forming around his brown eyes. Aunt Courtney sits on the edge of the pool, her legs dangling in the icy water, though she doesn’t go in because Aunt Courtney can’t swim. Imagine being like forty years old and not being able to swim.
Instead, she tosses some pool toy for Mae and Cass to race to, as if they’re dogs playing fetch. She glances back over her shoulder, catches Elliott’s eye and smiles. Aunt Courtney and Uncle Elliott are anit couple. They’re both cool and hot, so that I find it impossible to believe that she and Nolan share the same genes. She teaches preschool, he’s an attorney, which feels so dead-on for them, like they couldn’t have picked more fitting careers if they tried. They live in a big house. They’re relationship goals, like Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds or Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. They’ve been married exactly eleven years, which I know because I was their flower girl when I was six, the summer before kindergarten. There are pictures of it, of me in my little white dress scattering red rose petals down the aisle of some big, fancy church, which feels perfect and fairy tale–like in my memories, except that Uncle Elliott was married before. He had a wife when he met Aunt Courtney, which is another one of those things I shouldn’t know, but that I do.
“I don’t know. Why don’t you surprise me,” Uncle Elliott says, and I glance down to find him still looking up at me from his pool chair, shirtless, smiling though his sunglasses now cover his eyes. His abs are ripped. I try not to look at them as I walk away.
Some guy in another chair who I don’t know says to me as I pass, “Hey. Can you bring me something to eat too?” his voicelow and throaty. He’s grinning when I look, like he’s pleased with himself, like he thinks he’s funny. Except he’s not looking at my face, he’s looking somewhere lower than that. My throat tightens. I can’t think of anything to say and so I stay quiet, smiling awkwardly and praying he doesn’t follow me when I leave.
I push my way out of the squeaky pool gate. There are trees between the cottage and me, dozens if not hundreds of them blocking out the sun, darkening the world around me. I take the path through the woods, the temperature dropping so that I’m instantly cold, goose bumps cropping up on my arms, making me wish for a towel, which I left on the pool chair so that I’m just in my bikini and slides.
I haven’t gone far when my brother Wyatt’s voice comes to me, disembodied from somewhere in the woods. I inch closer, crouching down when I see him. I pull back on a tree branch to get a better view, peering through the leaves.
On the other side of the trees, Wyatt stands less than twenty feet away, talking to some guy I’ve never seen before, their voices dulled down as they speak. The guy, who looks like he’s forty, shoots nervous glances into the woods, over his shoulder and then back again at Wyatt, making sure they’re alone. That no one can see them. Wyatt looks like my brother, but he doesn’t sound like him, he sounds like someone else, like someone older than he is and less of a bot. He slips the guy something. The guy gives him something back. The guy shoots another glance over his shoulder before taking off, and then Wyatt stands there, counting his cash. I shake my head in disbelief. He’s an entrepreneur. Always figuring out ways to make money, though never in the normal sense, like getting an actual job. Instead, blackmail and now this: being someone’s plug. Wyatt doesn’t use drugs. His body is a temple and all that. But just because he doesn’t use them doesn’t mean he can’t sell them. Weed is easy enough to get back home. It’s legal. You just need someone old enough towalk into a dispensary and get it for you. Wyatt also has a prescription for Adderall because, supposedly, he has ADHD, because he probably faked his way through some test for a doctor to say that. Last I checked, he doesn’t take the pills. He stockpiles them and sells them for fifteen or twenty bucks each. Kids get especially desperate around final exams.
I wonder how he even does it, what the initial setup looks like and how he goes about finding random people to sell drugs to.
I think I underestimate him sometimes.
Wyatt slips the cash in a pocket. I turn around to go back. But as I do, I realize there’s more than one path through the woods. I pick one, figuring either will take me out of the woods and to the cottages. I walk faster now, looking back over my shoulder, for Wyatt. I don’t want him to find me here, because I don’t know what he’d do to me if he did. I’m cold. The mosquitoes are thicker in the trees. There are clouds of them that I have to walk through, that buzz close to my ear. I shoo them away, feeling the sharp bite of one on my thigh and I slap at it, coming up with a dead, bloody mosquito on my hand. I lean down to wipe my hand on the dirt because I have nothing else to wipe it on, and it’s then, when I’m bent down low, that I hear footsteps approaching quickly, moving in on me faster than I can react.
I turn, jerking upright, my eyes searching the woods for Wyatt’s ugly face. I hear people laughing in the distance, the sound of them carrying from the pool.
I wonder if I screamed, would anyone hear?
My heart beats fast. I see his shadow on the ground first.
“It’s okay,” he drones, becoming visible in the trees. “I didn’t mean to scare you. You don’t have to be scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Courtney
I stand at a distance, watching out the window as Detective Evans speaks to Elliott. Elliott’s back is to me so I can’t see his face, but the detective leans against the deck railing, an inch or two taller than my husband and broader, with his arms crossed. He nods, says something, then nods again, and I wonder what he’s asking and what Elliott is telling him. My jaw is clenched, though I don’t know I’m doing it until I feel the pain radiate up the side of my face and into my temple.
“What did he say?” I ask when Elliott returns, turning his back to me to close and lock the door.
He turns back, lets his gaze run over the kids before meeting my eyes. Everyone is quiet. Mae has barely moved since Detective Evans was in here speaking to us, her body wilting over the arm of the sofa, her eyes empty.
“That we should shelter in place in the cottage while they decide if it’s safe to be outside,” Elliott says.
I nod, but that’s not what I meant. That’s not what I was asking. I take a breath. “But what did he ask you?”
Elliott shrugs. “What time I left to go fishing, if I saw or heard anything unusual outside, if I caught anything, what my relationship with Nolan and Emily was like.” He pretends not to care. He pretends that line of questioning doesn’t bother him, but I can see in the tautness of his face that it does.
“Did you?”
“Did I what?” he asks, defensive as if I’ve just asked him if he killed Emily and Nolan.
“Catch anything,” I say.
He shrugs, nonchalant. “Couple bass.”
