“We don’t kill anyone without discussing it. Isn’t that the rule?” I don’t let my voice betray a single thing. I speak to my sister as though we’re going over the rules of a simple board game, but inside I’m alight with rage. If Iris hurt that girl—the stepdaughter Edison is at home crying for—I don’t want to think about what I’ll do.
Iris slams the brakes and we both lurch violently forward. There’s nobody on the road, but even if there were, I don’t think it would matter to Iris. She’s the center of the universe when she’s riled up enough about something.
“Sissy, you are on dangerous ground. Tell me that you understand.”
All four doors lock with a loud click.
“Iris.” I’m not sure whether I’m warning her or trying to save myself.
“Think carefully about the next words that come out of your mouth, little sister,” she says. “Moody and I are the only ones who will protect you. You think that boyfriend of yours wouldn’t go to the police if he knew what you are?” A car comes up behind us and wailsangrily on the horn. Iris doesn’t take her eyes off of me. After a few seconds, the car peels off with a loud squeal, horn blaring anew. “He doesn’t love you, Sissy. He doesn’t know you. He’s never even heard of you.”
She’s right. He doesn’t know the nickname my sisters call me—the very one I call myself in my own head. He doesn’t even know the legal name that’s on my birth certificate—the one I sign on bank statements and tax forms. He doesn’t know about the child I was, the nightmares I’ve clawed through, the messes I’ve cleaned. He doesn’t know one thought in my head.
He fell in love with Jade. Uncomplicated, clean, churchgoing Jade, who would make a great wife and mother someday. There have been hints at a darker side. That day in the church when he tasted me, his fantasy about the lake. But still, I know these are innocent games to him, that he would never harm a hair on my head. That the real me would frighten him.
“I know,” I say, because I want Iris to stop looking at me in that way I’ve always hated. She can see the real me, and in this moment, I hate that person.
“Sissy.” She touches my cheek, giving me a taste of that motherly approval I’m secretly desperate for. “You think I don’t want this life for you? I do. But it isn’t us. It just isn’t.”
I nod, and then I force my thoughts to turn numb the way that I learned to do when I was small, when there was no use working myself up because there was nobody to console me.
“Just tell me if she’s alive,” I say.
There’s a candlelight vigil at eight o’clock, and Edison will need me. He’s not strong enough yet. His sobriety is on the line, and I’m the only one who can make sure he doesn’t ruin everything he’s worked for. I want him present with me at the end, not drowning inJack and weeping over Sadie’s grave. I want the memories I keep of him to be strong and whole.
“You know what you need? A nice walk,” Iris says. She resumes driving. “We’ll get some fresh air into your lungs. Give you some time to think.”
“Iris.” I put a lifetime into those words. It’s as close as I’ve ever come to begging with her.
She smiles, bright enough to make up for the absent sun on this dreary overcast day. “We’re going to take a walk, Sissy.”
Only after she says this do I realize that I’ve missed a critical detail. She’s not wearing Lisa’s wedding band. She would never make a mistake like that. Iris is smart and deliberate, and if she didn’t leave the house as Lisa, it’s because she already planned to take me someplace where we wouldn’t be seen.
The thing inside me seems to know that we’re in danger. A wave of nausea overwhelms me, and Iris says nothing when I roll down the window. She doesn’t even slow down as I hang over the frame and vomit onto the street that speeds below us.
I don’t ask Iris where we’re going. I don’t plead. I have been in the back seat as she’s led her kills to their destinations enough times to know that it will do no good. I’m not one of the men she’s loved. I want to believe that she won’t harm me, but for the first time in my life, I’m not sure.
“Dara?” I make myself ask.
“Dara killed herself.”
“Bullshit, Iris.”
“I know you don’t want to hear it, but she didn’t have the stomach for what she did,” Iris says. “You could clean the blood, but you couldn’t fix what was broken in her head.”
Iris didn’t know Dara the way that I did. The Dara I rememberwas strong. She stands tall in my memory, defiant. She withstood everything Tim dealt her, and when she at last realized the danger she was in, she plunged a knife into his chest.
But Iris’s words give me pause. I cannot remember a time when my sisters have ever lied to me. I have seen my sisters at their ugliest. I’ve picked up their broken pieces, just as they’ve done for me. And Iris is right—Dara did turn fragile at times. It took only the slightest reminder of Tim for her eyes to fill with tears. Guilt for killing such a vile man, I couldn’t relate to. All I could do was remind her that she was strong. Sit with her as she downed cup after cup of black coffee and held her cigarette in trembling fingers.
Believing that Dara took her own life means admitting that I failed to stop her.
Iris senses my grief, even though I haven’t said a word. She can just feel it, the way I’ve felt hers since we’ve come here. She picks up the bottle of water that’s sitting mostly empty in the cup holder and hands it to me. “You’ll feel better if you drink something,” she says, in that placating way that makes me remember she loves me.
The water is lukewarm, the plastic heated from being in the sun, but it’s better than nothing. For thirty minutes, neither of us speaks. I know we’ve left Rainwood when I no longer recognize the horizon. Storm clouds roil overhead, and very faintly a voice in the radio sings “Dream a Little Dream of Me”...
Iris pulls over at a stretch of barren wilderness that leads to a mountain trail.
“It’s going to rain,” I tell her. I don’t know why I expect this to change anything, as though we can turn around and go home if the weather is bad, and she won’t show me whatever she’s dragged me out here to see.
