“Hey, you.” Edison’s voice is swooning and soft, and it sends a flutter between my legs. Last night changed something between us. We know each other in a new way. I hope it will be like this right up until the end—meaningful glances across a crowded room, a particular thrum in his voice when he’s thinking of how I felt in his arms.
Moody lowers her eyebrows and looks at me with a mouth full of sour-cream-and-onion chips.
“How’s work?” I ask him. My tone is light, upbeat. I’m happy to hear from him. I want the mundane details. “Did you make your meeting in time?”
“The meeting was... great.” He packs so much relief into that word.Great.He’s back on the wagon, on the mend, falling in love with me. “And listen, I’m sorry about Sadie showing up like that. It must have been a shock.”
Sadie. The name freezes me, fills me with overwhelming sadness, because there is no way to undo her. Even if she returns to her father and stops coming around. Even if I bury her beside the ill-fated trucker, she would be present. Edison will love her. Miss her. Worry for her if she disappears. She is worse than a dead wife or an ex-lover or a best friend. She radiates purity and innocence and no matter what I may do, I will never be the only love in Edison’s heart.
Moody sees my expression and rushes in to save me. She grabs my phone, holding it closer to her face. “Not at all,” she says, mimicking my inflections perfectly. Unconsciously she begins to twirl her ponytail the way that I often do. “This month makes a year, and she’s so young. Poor kid.”
I can hear Edison’s smile when he says, “Thank you.” And then, “I haven’t been able to think straight all day, I’m so worried about her. She should be spending time with her dad. He and I had a long talk after Sheila’s... passing.” The hesitation in his voice tears open my jealousy anew. “He thinks it’s for the best that she stops coming around as much now.”
Good. Do that. Tell her to go home. She’s not your daughter. Let her family handle it.I start to speak, but my sister reaches out and clamps her hand over my mouth.
“Oh God, Edison. How do you feel about that?” says Moody. Brilliant, amazing, wonderful Moody, who is rescuing me from my own bitter emotions.
There’s a pause. A sharp breath. Edison’s voice comes with great strain, and I realize that he’s holding back tears. “I don’t want her to think I abandoned her,” he says. “She just wants to feel close to her mom.”
Edison. I want to go to him. I want to speed out of this parking lot to the construction site and find him where he’s huddled in the shadow of the new development, cradling his phone. Take his face in my hands, kiss him, draw his head to my chest, and let him cry. Tell him to let all of it out, to hold on to me, I’ll fix this, I’ll make it better.
“I was thinking about leaving work early to pick her up,” Edison goes on. He’s pulled it together again. “I don’t want her walking home in this heat. It’s supposed to get well into the hundreds.”
I pry Moody’s hand away from my mouth and say, “I’ll get her if you want.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” All my effort to sound like I haven’t given Sadie any thought at all, that I haven’t been stalking her all morning while thoughts of her demise filled my head. “I was just dealing with the attorney for my aunt’s estate. I’m free the rest of the day.”
“That’s—that would be great, Jade. Thank you.”
I’ve made him happy and my heart sings. I see what his little love means to him and I will treat her with care, like the valuable thing she is.
“Maybe we should have her over for dinner tonight, if her dad is fine with it,” I say. “One little meal couldn’t hurt, right? We can take out some photos if you have any. Maybe watch a movie.”
“Wow,” Edison says. There’s a long silence. Moody glowers at me.Too much, Sissy.But I know what I’m doing. I am the best liar of us three, and there’s no great secret to it. If you want to be convincing, say the exact opposite of what you believe, and say it emphatically. It will sound like the truth.
“That would be—wow—yes,” Edison says, and I square my shoulders and give Moody a triumphant smile.
“Where’s Sadie’s school?” I ask him. Her name is sandpaper in my throat. My own body seems to know I shouldn’t be saying it.
Edison gives me the directions and I pretend I’m writing them down. After we hang up, I shove Moody out from behind the wheel.
“Don’t speed,” she warns as I make our way back to the condo. “We can’t afford to get pulled over.”
We have the world’s cleanest records, we three. Not so much as a parking ticket. In our group homes, while the other children got into fights that tumbled from bedroom to hallway and down the stairs, we bided our time. If someone wronged us, we waited. We got them when they were alone and put the fear of God into them so they would never tell a soul. Once you know how to play by the rules, you can get away with anything.
I’m at the junior high ten minutes early. I can’t risk the little lightning bolt already being on her way home. It’s a small square building. White with small windows, all of them open, with box fans spinning furiously. An unremarkable place in an unremarkable town where nothing ever happens.
When Edison is dead, it’s my every intention for nobody to find him. It isn’t that I’m worried his body will bear some clues and I’ll get caught. It’s because I want him to be left to rest, to hear the happy lives thrumming above him. He’ll be forever interred beneath the pavement of a cozy new subdivision where children will chase one another, shrieking giggles, and young loves will excitedly take the keysfrom their real estate agent. He’ll be near neatly culled gardens, window boxes, the gentle murmurs of music wafting from backyard parties on clear summer nights. He’ll be at peace.
If Sadie is good, I’ll take her there. I won’t tell her what for. I’ll pretend to get lost on the way to a restaurant and pull in to turn the car around at the cul-de-sac. I’ll stop for a minute, roll down the windows, and close my eyes like I’m smelling the breeze. She’ll ask me what I’m doing, and I’ll say that it’s nothing.
The double doors open and the small crowd of children files out. Awkward, lanky, pimply, rotund. There is only one boy here with beauty and Sadie has found him. They emerge last, smiling and talking without looking at each other, his braces glinting. She has him wrapped around her finger. She’ll break his heart, though, because young love never lasts. Love—especially the adolescent kind—is a form of murder. It lures, it promises, and then it destroys.
“Sadie!”
Her head whips in my direction, and her eyes are two sharp blue stones. She turns wary, and the boy at her side says something to her. She shakes her head.
