Their neighbor had already parked his Volvo across the street, a skiff of snow collecting on the windshield. He was nowhere to be seen. Greta fumbled for the key, her fingers slow and stiff. The air inside the basement suite was a relief for just a second, then registered as cold enough to leave her coat on. In the kitchen she reached for the box of matches in the cupboard above the stove. Pulling open the oven door, she turned on the gas and held the match close. Her hand jerked away as the flame ignited. She secretly feared a fireball that would take off her eyebrows. It was Ash who thought of using the oven as a heat source when the furnace still hadn’t kicked in by October and the landlord upstairs never answered when they knocked. The landlord controlled the heat for the basement suite as well, which, Patty announced loudly—on a daily basis—was illegal.
Greta dragged a kitchen chair across the pocked hardwood, parking it in front of the open oven door. The heat teased—welcoming in the front while the cold attacked from every other angle. She stood up to get a blanket.
At the mouth of the hallway, Greta stopped. A light under her dad and Patty’s door. Someone was home? Maybe it had been left on by accident. The sun had dropped low, and the strip of light from the bedroom glowed in the dusky hall. Patty was almost never there when they got home from school, and Roger wouldn’t be home from his daily run between Edmonton and Calgary until after six o’clock.
Greta leaned against the door, listening. Nothing. As she turned the knob in her hand, she heard a clink from inside, like one dish bumping another. Probably Patty. No need to wake the beast. Strange though. The smell of smoke, matches, candles. She cracked the door open an inch. Patty stood with her back to Greta, in front of a vanity against the opposite wall. Greta could see Patty’s face reflected in the mirror, bent over a lit candle on a plate, her eyes two dark holes. Probably prepping for a child sacrifice.
Greta started to pull the door shut, then stopped. She recognized the tattered shoebox on the vanity, having sifted through it a million times herself. It held photos—old school pictures, family snapshots—the only ones not trapped on long-lost hard drives. She waited. Patty picked through them and held one away from her face to see it better, like she always did when she forgot her glasses.
Then she held it above the flame. Greta gasped and let the door fall open. The picture caught fire, curling and blistering at the corner. Patty’s eyes met hers in the reflection—a skull in the dark room and candlelight. She stiffened and dropped the photo to the carpet, stamping out the flame with her foot.
“What are you doing?” Greta scrambled over the bed to reach it.
Patty bent down at the same time, but Greta pushed her arm away. It was a picture of her mother, Diana, with the same chestnut hair and green eyes as her twins. Greta had seen the photo, taken before a Christmas party, a hundred times before. Her mom was smiling, wearing earrings the shape of reindeer. It was Before Mother. Before breast cancer. Before her beautiful hair fell out. Before pain changed her face. Before her body wasted. Greta remembered patting her mother’s leg under the hospital sheet. There was nothing but bone and waxy skin left, not like a living person. Not the same mother. Before Mother and After Mother.
So many times, memories of After Mother drowned out the others. Memories of her gasping for some relief Greta couldn’t bring. She had failed that mother—failed to save her, failed to make her smile, to distract her with pictures, crafts, teddy bears. Already gone, the mother she had known for eight years. Now Patty had burned a picture of Before Mother, a picture that was the only way Greta could remember her some days. The flame had eaten into her face before Patty stamped it out. Half her chin, one eye and one reindeer earring remained. Her smile gone.
Greta staggered to her feet, arms reaching for Patty. Patty stumbled back into the vanity, bumping it hard. The candle swayed and tipped on the plate, into the ashes of other pictures. There were more. More.
Greta choked on every ugly thought, every ugly feeling she’d ever had about Patty. She reached for the worst words, the ones that destroy, but only ended up with a growling in her throat. No escape—no way for Patty to get away from her. Patty cowered against the wall.
“I’m sorry,” Patty sputtered. “It’s like she’s always here. You can’t imagine.”
Then she couldn’t speak, as Greta’s forearm pressed against her throat. Patty’s bones against her skin, so frail. Why hadn’t Greta seen it before? She’d grown tall, strong. Patty was puny, weak. Greta could break her. Patty clawed at Greta’s arm, pushed at her face. She was nothing at all.
“Greta.” Ash wrenched her away. Patty gasped for air and slumped against the wall.
“She…” Greta couldn’t say more.
“Just come. Come out of here.” Darkness had overtaken the room now. Ash put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her away. His eyes shone round, black, like a crow’s. The candle still burned on its side, drops of red wax hardening on the plate. A grotesque holiday craft.
Greta broke free to snatch the box off the vanity before letting Ash guide her to the door. She couldn’t look back, not at any of it. The burned ashes of Before Mother, another life. Patty, pathetic and wheezing.
Ash led Greta to her room and shut the door. She fell on the bed, vomit working up her throat, tears scalding her face. The feeling of Patty’s tiny bones still pressed into her arm. Pointing at the box, Greta tried to speak, but Ash said, “Shh. Not now.” He sat near her feet. She wanted to check the box but found she couldn’t move. What if there were no more photos? Would she kill Patty in cold blood?
They sat for half an hour, until the furniture turned to darkened shapes around them. Only the sound of their breathing. Outside her bedroom, not even a creak of the floor. Now she felt the steady draft from the window above her. Rolled in her blanket, Greta concentrated on breathing in and out. Then she found her voice to tell Ash what had happened.
Greta could feel anger bristling from him before he even spoke. He said, “She was lucky it was you.”
Ash turned on a lamp on her nightstand and picked up the box. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back to Greta, he examined each picture. From her blanket cocoon she watched his long neck tilt down, his head shift from the box to each photo. It took a long time.
They heard the back door open, then Roger’s and Patty’s voices. Ash gathered the sloping pile of photos and dropped them back in the box, some spilling over the sides to the floor. Roughly he shoved it all under the bed and stood in front of her.
“There are three left.” Ash’s long arms, hanging near Greta’s eyes, trembled. His fingers curled in, rolling tightly into fists.
She felt sick again. A lifetime in pictures—all that remained of that life—and only three had survived. She couldn’t ask Ash which ones. What if one was a group shot, her mom’s blurry head half covered by another? Or one of her arm and shoulder as she dangled a baby over an inflatable swimming pool? If Ash left to rough up Patty, she wouldn’t move to stop him. She pressed her face into the pillow. “I…” She started to say I hate her, but the words seemed useless, inadequate to describe the monster clawing at her insides.
“It ends now. It’s us or her.” Ash turned and walked out the door, closing it behind him.
Greta let him go fight the battle. She didn’t know herself what she might say or do. No boundaries anymore.
Patty shouted once, but Roger’s and Ash’s voices stayed low. Greta expected something more, like furniture being tossed or full-on wrestling. Ash came back after a few minutes, some tension gone from his face.
“Dad knows it all. It’s in his hands now,” Ash said.
The bedroom door next to them slammed, and then Patty started screaming about his children being killers and maniacs. This time Roger shouted back, maybe at seeing the candle and ashes: What right did she have to destroy something that wasn’t hers? She’d gone too far. Tell her, Dad. Then Patty accused him of loving his dead wife more than her. Damn straight. Roger went on for a while about th
at not being true. Puke. After that their voices dropped low. Greta crept out once to use the bathroom but couldn’t hear them anymore. Their light was still shining under the door.
Ash sat on the end of her bed and listened until Roger and Patty went quiet, the veins pulsing in his neck. When he stood to leave, Greta asked, “Ash, can you stay?” Even with her, Ash so easily became a shadow. “Please.”
He paused for a second and then nodded. After making a trip for blankets and a pillow, Ash brought back a package of Patty’s favorite cookies, which they were never allowed to touch.
“Eat up.” He dropped them on her bed.
They ate every cookie. Ash smiled while he chewed, like he was personally swallowing all of Patty’s hopes and dreams. Then came the wait. It felt like the time their mom had a biopsy on her tumor and they had to wait for results. Whether positive or negative, the results would change everything from that point on. Good news would make life clear—they’d never spend another second being sad or fighting over the TV remote. Bad news would twist them all into something unrecognizable—characters in a tragic story that happens to other people.
“If they call a family meeting,” Greta told Ash, “I’m not going.”
But they didn’t call a family meeting. Nor did Roger come to her room, apologizing or babbling in rage. He must have seen the burned photos of Diana. He used to tell Greta and Ash the story of how he’d chased her—the trucker who fell in love with the hippie. They seemed mismatched in every way. Diana was even an inch taller than him. It took him three years to show her that they worked. Ten years of marriage and two children. He fell to pieces when she died. What was he saying to Patty behind that door?
“What did Dad do when you told him?” Greta asked after they had turned off the light, Ash on the floor beside her bed.
He thought for a second. “He looked mad, but he didn’t say much. Not when I was there anyway.”
She drifted off but woke frequently—listening, waiting. What would Roger decide in the morning, Patty or them? She stared at the dim circle of her ceiling light at 3:00 AM and knew Ash was awake too. His breath made no sound, shallow in his chest. Neither of them spoke.
Her alarm jolted her awake at 6:30 AM. For one second it was just another morning. Then the memory rolled over her. Ash shut off the alarm before she could. Had he slept at all? He stood, still wearing a rumpled black T-shirt and jeans, and waited for her to pull herself out of bed. She hovered at his shoulder as they walked to the door. When he pulled it open, she reached for his hand and squeezed it tightly. The first day of kindergarten all over again. As the cooler air of the hallway touched her skin, Greta fought the urge to retreat, slam the door, roll up in the blanket again. She wasn’t ready for the results.
Ash motioned her past their door, to the living room and kitchen first. A strip of sky, as dark as the middle of the night, showed through the low basement windows. Greta felt the cold on her bare arms, an icy hand pressed there, but her body disconnected from it. Smoke hung in the air. Greta could sense the ghost of Patty, leaning against the doorframe with a cigarette between her fingers, flicking ashes through the open crack.
Greta led the way back to Roger and Patty’s door. She examined it, but the varnished wood gave no clues. Ash stepped beside her and knocked. They waited five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. He knocked again. Still nothing. He swung the door open. No one. The bed was unmade, with two dents in the pillows and the blanket twisted in a knot at the foot.
They stepped inside. All normal, except that Patty and Roger weren’t usually gone by 6:00 AM. Especially Patty. Something else seemed off too. Greta ran her finger over the vanity where the plate and candle had stood. Despite the unmade bed, it looked too tidy. No—bare. It looked bare. She pulled open the dresser drawers. Not quite empty, but nearly. Some panty hose and summer shorts left behind.
“Ash, the closet.” He swung open the door and pawed through the hangers. The same. Roger’s suit still hung there, and a dress Patty wore once to a wedding.
The results. She couldn’t look at Ash.
In eight years, Dictator Patty had never, ever lost a battle.
THREE
“I did something,” Ash said. Greta opened her door in the morning and he filled the frame, like he’d been standing there all night.
“You’re a little creepy sometimes, Ash. What have you done?” They had waited a day to see if Roger and Patty would miraculously reappear. They hadn’t.
“You know how you told me a couple of weeks ago you thought Dad might take off?”
“And you didn’t believe me?”
Ash’s head dropped to his chest. “Well, I didn’t want to believe you.”
She hadn’t wanted to believe it either. Behind Ash Roger and Patty’s bedroom door hung ajar, a dark space. “Anyway. What did you do?”
“I put one of those locator apps on Dad’s phone when he left it charging on the counter.”
She let this sink in. “You’re saying we can find out where Dad is.”
Ash nodded. “If he hasn’t discovered it already. It’s in his app folder, but he doesn’t go in there a lot. We’ll be able to use your phone to find out their location.”
Greta turned to grab her phone but swiveled back around. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?” It took him all night, standing outside her door?
He sighed. “It’s stupid, but I thought they might come back on their own.”
“Yes, that is stupid!” Snatching her phone off the dresser, she sat on the edge of the bed.
Ash came in and sat next to her, peering at the screen. “Take it easy. I’m telling you now, aren’t I?” Greta opened the app folder. “I can do it,” Ash said, reaching for the phone.
“I’ll do it,” Greta said, gripping the cracked screen. She pressed on the app and selected Roger’s phone, the only choice listed. “They’re in”—Greta squinted at the map—“White-court?” The smallest feeling of relief. They were in a place with a name, in the same province. A fixed point on a map.
Ash took the phone from her hands to look for himself. “That’s a couple of hours northwest of here.”
“Should I tell him we know where they are?” Greta asked. She had already called and texted him at least ten times—Where are you? When are you coming home?—and he hadn’t replied or picked up.
Ash shook his head. “They might take off. We’ll have a better chance face-to-face.”
“How do we see him face-to-face? Aunt Lori’s in Arizona until the end of March, so she can’t drive us.” They sat on the bed, looking ahead at nothing. “The bus. Do you have any money?”
“I have about a hundred bucks left from cutting lawns all summer,” Ash said.
“I have twenty.”
They reclined against the wall, their heads bumping to see better as Greta brought up the bus website. She typed in the leaving-from and going-to information.
“There’s one leaving this afternoon.” Greta saw it first. “You’re right—about two hours each way.”
Ash pulled the phone from her hands. “It would take almost all our money for both of us to go there and back.”
“What if he leaves before we get there? We need a car,” Greta said. “Is there even the slightest chance we could rent one?”
“Being under eighteen, only having our learner’s permits, no credit card and a hundred and twenty bucks between us? No chance at all.” Ash dropped the phone on the bed and sighed. “I guess we take the bus.”
“Do we have any friends who drive?”
Ash gave her a look. “Do we have any friends?”
Greta shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone.”
She stood up and moved toward the shower. “Okay, you and I both come down with the stomach flu at lunchtime and leave. That will give us an hour to get to the bus depot and buy tickets.” Standing in the doorway, she turned back to Ash. “There is someone.”
“Who?”
She drew a deep breath, procras
tinating. “Our neighbor across the street—that guy from your English class.” She felt a stab of anxiety at the thought of being trapped in the car with him—a stranger—but then reminded herself that Ash would be with her. She didn’t take back the words.
“We don’t know that guy!” Ash protested.
“No,” she said. “No, we don’t, but it seems like he’s always trying to get to know us. And I bet he’d do it for half the money. We could offer him fifty bucks.”
“Could you skip school to drive us—total strangers—to Whitecourt and back for fifty bucks?”
“Well, yeah. Pretty much.”
“There’s no way he’ll say yes.”
“Then we’re right back where we are now. We have nothing to lose.”
Ash shook his head.
“I’ll do it,” Greta said. “I’m going to take a shower, get looking human and go knock on his door in half an hour.” She’d stand on the porch, out in the open, and say no if he asked her inside.
“I’m not sending you by yourself.” He sighed. “Fine.”
Fifteen minutes before Ash and Greta normally left to catch the bus, they stood on their neighbor’s porch across the street. His house looked like a better-kept version of theirs, with no basement suite. Their shoes left tracks in the icing-sugar snow that had fallen overnight, revealing the brown paint of the porch steps. Ash rang the doorbell and stepped back behind Greta’s shoulder.
A man—probably the guy’s dad—answered the door. Greta struggled for words. They hadn’t factored in parents. He looked like he should star in a How to Be a Lumberjack video, or at least be wearing a kilt and tossing a caber or two. He had a bushy red beard and ruddy cheeks, with a bathrobe pulled tight around his wide chest.
“Yes?” He leaned out the door and looked back and forth between Greta and Ash.
Ash spoke first. “Is your…son…here?”
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