I almost blink it away; I almost don’t squint down at it.Because it can’t be.But the handwriting is familiar. Sloped back on itself, loopy, carefree, written by a woman with deceit in her fingertips.
I move closer, staring down at the postcard.
I hear Archer walking up the steps, back through the door.
But my eyes find the return address, landing hard on her name.
Her.
“Shit,” I whisper.
A postcard from Mom.
I start to reach for it—my hands beginning to shake—but Archer is faster, and he snatches it from the table.
“What are you doing?” I try to grab it from him, but he backsteps away, into the living room. “Archer! Let me see it.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
My eyes flatten, confused, but a sharp, thorny memory tugs at me: moments when Archer hid something from me just like this, when he held a letter behind his back where I couldn’t see.
A secret he’s kept.
I lunge forward, and Archer tries to turn away, but I grab his arm and rip the postcard free.
“Lark,” my brother shrieks. “It’s not…” But he never finishes his thought; he must see the color drain from my face.
In my hand I hold a postcard addressed to both Archer and me.
“Why?” I sputter, my eyes clicking to his. “Why were you hiding it?”
His face crushes into a line. “She doesn’t deserve to send usletters. She doesn’t deserve to tell us where she is or pretend she’s part of our lives.”
The postcard trembles between my fingers.
“She sends them as if she thinks we care.”
I feel my eyes widen, the realization sinking heavy through me. “There are more of them?”
My brother shifts from one foot to another, the creek roaring beneath us, filling my ears.
“How many has she sent?”
He turns, staring out the front window. “She’s been sending them since the beginning,” he admits coolly, but there is no regret in his voice. Only bitterness.
“She’s been sending us postcards for three years?”
He nods.
“Archer, what the fuck?” I want to tear him apart. “You’ve been hiding them from me?”
He crosses his arms, closing in on himself like a little kid. “I was protecting you. She left us, Lark.” He finally looks at me, and I can see the tears forming. “She abandoned us. And then she sends us postcards as if she’s just on vacation, like we should be happy for her, living a life out there without us.” He laughs, short and blunt, but it’s an awful sound.
“Where are they?” I grip the postcard in my hand so tight that it starts to bend. “Where are the rest of the letters?”
Archer’s face sinks—he looks like a brother who knows he’s done a very bad thing but it’s something he can’t take back. “I threw them away,” he says to the floor. “I didn’t even read them.”
My blood is fire, my heart a battering ram. I want to step forward and shove him in the chest; I want to shout. Too many hurts are fisting together inside me.
