I reach the living room, and something about the silence stops me. A three-wick candle burns low in its jar, nearing the end of its life, the glass blackened by the flame. The kitchen is clean, one cigarette butt rumpled in the ashtray on the coffee table. A blanket is neatly folded on the couch; she’s told me that she hasn’t been able to sleep in their bed since it happened. After we disposed of his body, she fluffed the pillows and made sure the comforter was even, and she only walks by to get to the bathroom.
I have heard this particular silence before, and I understand that something has changed.
“Dara?” My voice is soft now. The bottom step creaks as I ascendthe stairs. With each passing breath, I’m sure. This is the silence of Iris’s dead lover. Of Moody’s first kill. The blood on the tiles and the wood grain.
My legs are moving too slowly. My ears pulse with the rush of air and blood and dread. When I reach the landing, the bedroom door is open, and I can see the flicker of candlelight on the bathroom wall.
“Dara?”
Her silence is its own answer. I know, somehow, that she’s here. That if I’d come earlier, if I hadn’t slept for so long, today would be very different. Dara and I would be in her car, speeding down the interstate as I tried to steel myself for what I was about to do. She would be singing along to the radio, and I would see glimpses of the real Dara in her spirit. The girl I know is still in there, under all the guilt and sorrow. The girl who still has a thousand tomorrows left to squander.
I see her even before I’ve stepped onto the tiles. I hear something—a breath—hers? Mine?
She’s slumped against the rim of the tub, chin-deep in the water. Her eyes are half-open, dark, and as empty as they are full. I bridge the space between us before I realize I’ve moved, and her body is so heavy, so uncooperative, as I pull at her. She slides over the edge of the tub and onto the floor with a heavy sound like an overripe fruit falling off the vine.
She’s wearing a green version of the pajama set she wore the night she killed Tim. A tank top that’s plastered to her stomach, shorts that are bunched against the seam where her thighs meet her torso.
There’s no blood. That’s my first thought. No bruises. I lay her flat on her back and I take her face in my hands. Cold, but not stiff. She’s still in there. I can bring her back to me.
The world is shaking. Someone is crying, murmuring uselessly,even though it’s just us in here. I bring my mouth to hers and I force air down her throat, over and again, until finally I taste the metallic tang of vomit. It’s all over her chest, floating misty in the water.
You didn’t. You wouldn’t.
The empty bottle has rolled under the sink, and I catch the translucent orange gleaming in the candlelight, winking at me. The cap is gone, not a single fentanyl pill left.
I scream. It comes out as I press my palms into her chest, trying to coax her heart into beating even though I know it’s been too long. She’s too cold, too still. It’s not my loss that makes me so desperate to save her, but all of hers. Liam, gentle and warm, who might love her. Cigarette smoke wafting up into the night. Sunlight in her hair as she speeds across the Arizona state border to start over somewhere new. Meeting her little brother at the airport, his hug nearly bowling her over.Don’t leave us, Dara. Don’t you dare go out like this. I won’t let you.
Her body jolts under my efforts the way that a rag doll would, and I don’t know how long I try before I stop. I can hear the finality of it. Not a single breath, or a sob, but just the small sound of water leaking around the drain plug.
—
THE AMBULANCE ARRIVES WITHOUTa siren, all its lights flashing. I stand in the parking lot, watching them carry the gurney down the stairs. They didn’t even try to save her. They knew, just like I knew. The only difference is that I was stupid enough to hope.
Moody wraps her arms around me, her skin sticky in the late-morning heat. Neighbors peek out from their blinds or stand on their porches and pretend they’re outside to read or to talk on the phone or to catch some of the sunlight.
“Oh, love,” Moody whispers. “She wasn’t strong enough to live with it. She wasn’t like us.”
Don’t you think I know that, Moody?I wrest myself out of her grasp, and I can feel that I’ve hurt her, but I don’t care. The paramedics are taking their time loading the gurney into the ambulance, and they talk in low voices about something to do with how ungodly hot it is. The doors slam shut. There’s one blip, the start of a siren, and then the rumble of the engine as they drive off.
I look up the stairs. They’ve left her door wide open, all the cool air escaping.
I have to close it, I think. I have to lock it so that nobody comes in and disturbs her things. But my legs won’t move. She wasn’t like us. That was why I loved her.
There was a note, typed up and printed, in the sink, its edges warped with water. She confessed to what she had done to Tim and what he’d done to her. She said that she still loved him. She said that she was sorry to her mother and to her brother and to Tim’s family.
It will be her word against his; their families will argue. Dara had been so good at hiding the bruises at her throat, the broken fingers, the sprained wrist. I think I was the only one who ever saw.
“Sis—”
I’m already climbing the stairs with such force that the boards shudder under my weight. Iris is coming into the living room when I step inside, and I come at her so fast that she doesn’t have time to brace. She falls back and her head bounces against the staircase.
“You!” I cry. She grabs for me, but I snare her wrists, pinning them, forcing my knee into her stomach. It’s a move she’s made on me a dozen times. I have never hated her—never hated anything—this much.
I’m distantly aware of the door closing behind me and Moody coming after me. She peels me away from Iris, and I jab my elbow intoher ribs. She doubles but doesn’t let go. “You killed her,” I shout at Iris, who is wiping the blood from her mouth.
“Sissy.” Moody’s voice is placating, and in this moment, I hate her too. I hate both of them and this life they’ve created for all of us. I hate that I’m so much like them, and nothing at all like Dara, who I thought was stronger. Who I thought I could save.
Moody is still holding my arms when I slump forward. She comes with me as I fall into a pile on the ground, screaming, my weakness laid bare. I tried for so long to hide my friendship with Dara from my sisters. I tried to hide what she really meant to me, beneath the act, just as I do with Colin.
