“I’ve changed my mind; I think you should kill him now,” Moody tells me from the back seat. I glare at her through the mirror, and there’s a playful gleam in her eye. “I’ll strangle him with the seat belt while he’s driving us. It’ll be fun.”
She’s trying to get a reaction from me, and it’s no matter that I don’t respond because she can read me well enough. When she laughs, I almost lunge into the back to take out a chunk of her hair, but then Edison climbs into the driver’s seat. Moody smiles and says, “Finally, I get to spend some time with the mysterious Edison my sister is always talking about.”
Edison is good at small talk. He chats with Moody about the monsoon season, and Moody, in turn, tells him all about Lisa’s husband. It turns out he’s a lawyer in San Francisco and he’s passionate about the pressing social and economic state of the nation.
Moody has a wild imagination. She can make the most mundane of details come alive. Wherever I was in foster care over the years, when she mailed her journals to me in a manila envelope, it was as precious as receiving a copy of a favorite book.
While they talk, I’m thinking about Dara’s money in the trunk. I can’t get it now, because Moody will see and then she’ll want us to take it, claim a mechanic must have stolen it when Dara asks me. But no—the money should go back to Dara. When I have the car back, I’ll return it to her. With Tim gone, she won’t need to hide it anymore, but she’ll have to be careful about making any large deposits.
When we pull into the parking lot for the mechanic, Moody sees the car, its hood scrunched from where I slammed into the mile-marker sign. “Jesus, Sis,” she says, forgetting, in her shock, to use my fake name. She recovers quickly and says, “Jade, you’re lucky you had a seat belt on.”
In the waiting room, Moody and I sit on a bench while Edison finesses the mechanic at the front desk. It’s clear that he knows him and he’s been here before.
Moody watches him. She studies the profile of his face as he laughs and raps the corner of his credit card against the faux-marble counter. Her green eyes take on that fullness I’ve only ever seen when she’s luring in her own kills. When she’s fantasizing.
What is she seeing in her head right now? What story is she concocting about Edison—myEdison?
I jab my elbow into her ribs so hard she gasps.
In response, she hooks her arm around mine and rests her head onmy shoulder. To anyone who passes by, we’re just a set of twins. One of us bruised and bandaged, the other trying to comfort her. But her nails dig into my wrist, sending stabs of pain up my arm. She brings her lips close to my ear and whispers, “Careful that you don’t fall too far, sister.”
I wrest away from her, and there’s bewilderment in her eyes. But Edison turns to face us, and her dark expression morphs into a sweet smile the moment his gaze touches her.
“They can have the parts here tomorrow, and be done in three or four days,” he says.
“How much?” I ask.
“It’s taken care of,” he says.
Moody is still smiling when she says, “That’s way too generous. We’re going to have to think of some way we can repay you.”
Montana loved my sister madly, but it was a selfish love. The deep and reckless kind—all motorcycle engines and frantic lust. If she’d crashed her car, he would have told her to just leave it. He would have hoisted her up onto the hood and made love to her in the plumes of smoke. And Moody would have wanted it that way.
But deep within, I’ve always suspected that my sister longs for someone who could repair the things that break in her life. She looks at Edison and he ignites some deep need for stability she’s afraid to admit to.
My nails are digging into her wrist.Fuck off,I’m saying.He is mine.My sisters will have me for the rest of their lives, and Edison is only a single bright star in my sky. I love Moody, but if I have to, I’ll fight her for that small bit of brightness while it lasts.
I don’t say any of this because I don’t have to. She can hear it plain asday.
22
In the two weeks following Tim’s absence, I balance my attention between Dara and Edison. My bruises are nearly gone two weeks after the accident. The body has an amazing way of stitching itself back together. My stamina springs back, but even so, the discovery of the trucker’s body has soured things. Edison is nervous.
My sisters are too smart to succumb to paranoia; they don’t run any internet searches for the news, waiting instead for whatever broadcasts play on television. They’re ready to flee at a moment’s notice, and they want a full report of everything Edison and I talk about.
I’m not entirely truthful. I tell them that nobody at church has mentioned the trucker’s murder since the prayer vigil, when in truth I’ve sat through two different sermons about God calling his children home and us not having the capacity to understand why.
On a night when it’s impossible to fall asleep, I’m not sure whether it’s the guilt that keeps me awake, or the worry that my sisters may be right. Edison sleeps with his chest against my back, his arm hooked around my bent knee. He smells like summer and the honey I bought for his coffee.
His breath rustles the small hairs at the base of my ponytail. Is every moment I spend with him putting my sisters at risk? Am I betraying them just by being here? My fingers are woven between his, his right arm and mine stretched out over the edge of the mattress. He has the most beautiful veins, bright and sloping like lines in a map. I imagine covering that arm with dirt and there’s a twinge in my stomach.
There’s a louddingthat makes me flinch. Edison grumbles, and his grasp around my knee tightens. On the bedside table, the screen of his phone lights up.
“Jade?” Edison says.
“Go back to sleep,” I whisper. I don’t move, and eventually his breathing goes even again.
Once I’m sure he’s out, I reach for the phone, quickly dimming the brightness of the screen. There’s a text from a hidden number. An emoji of a clock.
