We Begin at the End

by Chris Whitaker

  Duchess moved then, Robin grabbed her hand tight and pulled her back.

  “Please,” he said.

  She knelt in the grass. “Robin.”

  He went to speak and she smoothed his curls back.

  “What am I?”

  He met her eye. “An outlaw.”

  “And what do outlaws do?”

  “They don’t take any crap.”

  “No one pushes us around. No one laughs at us. I stand up for you. Our blood is the same.”

  Fear in his eyes.

  “You head into class now.”

  She gave him a gentle push and he turned and walked into the building, reluctant, nervous.

  She stood, dropped her bag and stared at Mary Lou. And then she walked toward her. Girls moved, Emma and Kelly and Alison Myers, they parted for her because they’d heard the stories.

  “You want to tell me what’s so funny?”

  Boys came over and fanned out around them.

  Mary Lou did not back off, just carried that same smirk. “You stink of piss.”

  “What?”

  “Your bed. It was you last night. I saw my mother washing the sheet from your bed. You pissed yourself like some retard.”

  Duchess heard the bell ring.

  No one moved.

  “I did.”

  There were murmurs, laughter and a couple of shouts she couldn’t make out.

  “You admit it?” Mary Lou said.

  “Sure.”

  “See. I told you it wasn’t bullshit,” she said to Kelly. Then she turned and the group began to move.

  “But you know why I did it?”

  They stopped, heads turned.

  Mary Lou watched her, uncertain of what was coming but tensing up, ready.

  “So your father wouldn’t touch me.”

  Stone silence.

  “Liar,” Mary Lou said.

  Kelly and Emma inched away.

  “You fucking liar.” She screamed then ran at Duchess.

  Mary Lou was used to shoving matches, maybe some hair pulling, nothing more than that. She did not count on meeting an outlaw in the schoolyard.

  Duchess dropped her with one savage punch.

  Mary Lou crumpled, her tooth in the grass, the other kids hollering as blood spilled from her mouth.

  Duchess stood still and calm, watching her prey, kind of hoping she’d get up and they’d go again.

  When it was done, when the principal and two teachers ran out and took a look at Mary Lou, beaten bloody, tooth missing, the new girl standing over her and smiling, they hauled her inside and called the Prices and Shelly.

  Duchess sat alone waiting, wishing Hal would walk down the hallway and straighten out her mess. Out the window she watched Montana sky and wondered about Walk and the Cape, what kind of sky they saw that morning when everything changed once again.

  Mrs. Price arrived crying, her husband’s arm around her.

  “No more, we’re not doing this anymore,” she said between breaths, glaring at Duchess like she wanted the girl dead.

  Mr. Price glared too, so Duchess flipped him off.

  Shelly got there and hugged her. Duchess stood still and did not hug her back.

  The adults convened in the principal’s office, gold plaque on a door so heavy Duchess could make out nothing more than the odd raised voice. Mrs. Price going off, out of my house, not one more night, safety of my own children.

  Duchess was called in once the Prices stepped out, looking away as they passed her, like she did not live beneath their roof.

  Shelly asked her about what she said, about Mr. Price. She told the truth. She said it to shut Mary Lou up. Shelly backed her as best she could, the losing horse but still she threw support her way.

  The principal was aghast, grave allegations, no place for violence in their school, she would not be welcome back.

  Duchess flipped him off for good measure.

  “You alright?” Shelly said, as they walked from the school.

  “I’m alive.” Duchess did not like leaving Robin there.

  She climbed into Shelly’s car and sat silent as they drove to the Price house.

  Mrs. Price stood in their kitchen, on guard. Mr. Price had run Mary Lou to the emergency room to be checked over and see about her tooth. Threats were made, legal and otherwise. Duchess was ushered up to the attic to pack their belongings. It did not take long. Her case had been ready since the day they arrived.

  She left the house without saying another word to Mrs. Price, who stood on the step, dabbing at her eyes.

  Shelly drove in silence, back to the office, where she worked the phone madly while Duchess sat on an old wooden chair and watched hours pass by.

  At three Shelly headed out and left Duchess under the watch of a couple of older ladies who smiled her way every ten minutes.

  Shelly returned with Robin. He’d been crying.

  At five they got a place. Shelly spoke without emotion, tired and beaten by a hundred other files, other cases, other lives just as lost.

  “It’s a group home,” she said.

  36

  THE HOUSE WAS GRAND, GREEK revival, Doric columns so tall Duchess felt small beside them.

  An acre of tended grass ran to quaking aspen bold green against spring sky. Duchess sat on a bench with Robin while planes wrote tracks into the sky. Shelly was inside, meeting with a large black lady named Claudette, and she seemed to run whatever it was that needed running. Youth Guidance Home.

  Robin was quiet, resigned as they arrived at the house but nervous enough to keep hold of his sister’s hand.

  “I’m sorry.” She said it with such sadness in her voice that he leaned his head on her shoulder for a moment.

  There were other kids and they played a game of something complex, a ball and three hoops and a bat. Duchess watched for twenty minutes and couldn’t figure the rules. She knew the look in their eyes though, kids like her, the damned. They didn’t offer smiles or nods, just went about their day like it would be a miracle if they made it through. There was a lady outside on the street, holding on to a girl no bigger than Robin and staring at the house. She had the wiry strung-out look of a user.

  A half hour later they ate together in a dining room that smelled of a hundred dinners choked down by a hundred kids. Robin pushed his food around.

  There was a communal lounge, a TV in the corner running a movie. A couple of girls sat on a brown sofa and watched, eating popcorn but mostly ignoring each other.

  In the other corner was a chest spilling with toys, ranging from stacking cubes to puzzles.

  “Go play.”

  Robin walked over, head down, and picked up a storybook far too young for him. He sat cross-legged on the floor, turning the page now and then, miles away from his sister and that room.

  In the hallway she found Shelly.

  “I know what I did. I know I fucked up too bad …”

  Shelly went to rub her arm but Duchess stepped back. “What will happen now?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just say, Shelly. Just tell me what will happen to me and my brother.”

  “This home is for girls.”

  Duchess shook her head.

  Shelly raised a calming hand. “Claudette will let you stay with Robin, on account of his age.”

  Duchess breathed again. “What about Peter and Lucy?”

  Shelly swallowed, looked away, at Robin, at anywhere but Duchess.

  “Did you tell them?”

  “I had to. Peter … he’s a doctor. And Lucy, at the school. They, what you said about Mr. Price. They can’t risk the—”

  “I get it.”

  “We’ll keep looking. We just need to find the right fit.”

  “I don’t fit anywhere.”

  The look in Shelly’s eyes almost broke her.

  Robin came out, they walked along the hallway and up the stairs.

  They passed bedrooms with kids inside, a girl reading a story aloud and her sister lis
tening intently. The walls were colored, pastel shades of pink and yellow. Pictures tacked to corkboards, family shots of fallen families.

  Their room had white walls and the corkboard was bare, their time there unwritten. Two beds Duchess would later push together, the covers striped with rainbow colors. An empty closet and chest, a wicker basket for their washing. The carpet was squares that fit together like puzzle pieces, easy to lift out if they got stained.

  “You want me to help you unpack?” Shelly said.

  “I got it.”

  Robin stood in the center of the room, looked up at the window then pulled the drapes to cut falling light. He switched on the lamp and then climbed on the bed and curled away from them.

  “When will Peter come?” he said.

  Shelly looked at Duchess and Duchess told her alright, she should go now. Shelly said she would be back the next day to see them settled.

  Duchess went over to him and put a hand on his back. “Peter and Lucy.”

  He turned then, sat up and stared at her.

  She said nothing more, just shook her head.

  He reared fast, cursed her with every word he knew. He lashed out and caught her cheek hard. She kept her hands down, just closed her eyes as he yelled and screamed the kind of truths that no longer hurt her. She knew them already. She was a bad sister. She was a bad person. He cried so much he shook, his face in the pillow, screaming for a life so close that for a few, blissful weeks, he had it in his grasp.

  Duchess waited for him to cry himself out. It took a long time. She felt blood on her cheek where he had caught her.

  When he finally slept she took his sneakers off and covered him over, and worried she had not brushed his teeth.

  That night she heard noise, someone as new as them, across the hall in the small room. Crying, then Claudette and calming words.

  Duchess scooted over into her brother’s bed and watched him. She thought of Thomas Noble and how he would not be able to find them now. She did not know his address to write him. She could ask Shelly but she knew she would not. She was nothing more than a footnote in his life, in Dolly’s, in Walk’s. She left no lasting impression, her impact ugly but mercifully brief.

  “Duchess,” Robin sat upright.

  “It’s alright.” She stroked his hair.

  “I had a dream. That dream again. I can’t work out what the voice is saying.”

  She lay him back down.

  “Sometimes I forget where I am.”

  She placed her hand on his heart till he calmed.

  “But you’re here.”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  He reached up and touched her face. “Did I do that mark there?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You never need say that to me.”

  Spring drifted toward the promise of summer. As Walk and Martha prepared for trial the Radley children started at yet another new school, rode the bus with the other kids from the home and settled into the rhythms of another, fettered life. Duchess still tended to Robin, cared for him like a mother but did so without fuss, setting about her tasks like it was all she was good for. She tried her best to smile for him, to push him on the swing and play his games, run around the big yard and help him climb the oak. But she could not outrun her mistakes, feeling they were destined to sink not only her but now her brother too.

  Shelly still made her visits, Robin smiling when her hair changed from pink to a cobalt blue. He asked after Peter and Lucy at every visit, even asked for their address so he could write. Duchess helped him with the letter. He told them he knew he and his sister were not the right fit for their family, and that it was okay. He asked after Jet, asked how hot it got over in Wyoming and how Jet kept himself cool. He signed off with love, then drew a picture of the group home, and of him and Duchess. Stick figures with wide bubble heads and straight mouths, as if deep in contemplation of what might have been. He made Duchess sign her name too. She scrawled Duchess Day Radley, Outlaw before he made her cross the last word out.

  She received a postcard from Walk. He’d been in touch with Shelly and she’d filled him in. He wrote her about Cape Haven, how it was all quiet without her, his writing so small she almost could not read it.

  The card was a shot of Cabrillo, Bixby Creek Bridge, the arc in Big Sur, the water below breaking so hard she could hear it. She tacked it to their corkboard, along with a letter that arrived from Peter and Lucy a week later. They said everything and nothing, told Robin it was hotter than Hades and Lucy had got sunburn tending the yard. Robin had made her read it five times, each peppered with questions she could not possibly know the answers to. They signed off with a drawing of their own, Robin and Duchess, from memory. Lucy was a decent artist, but she made the smiles a little too wide. Along with the letter they enclosed a photo of Jet. That night Robin slept with it by his nightstand, waking a couple of times and checking it was still there. The next day Duchess tacked it to the corkboard and their collection grew a little.

  Duchess began to tentatively think of the future, not her own, but Robin’s. Her grades fell again as she drifted toward the lower end of her class. The other children left her alone, knew she was from Oak Fair so might well be gone soon enough.

  And then one day a boy named Rick Tide began to seek her out. It turned out Rick’s cousin was Kelly Raymond, Mary Lou’s sidekick. Rick heard the story, then he gave it a dressing and sent it on its way. By the time it made it back to Duchess she’d been responsible for Mary Lou losing an eye. For her part Duchess let it slide, even when Rick tripped her in the lunch line and sent her and her food to the floor.

  A day later she popped Rick hard enough to send him to the nurse. Shelly was called and it was smoothed over. The principal knew enough about Rick Tide to keep it from spilling further.

  She was excused for the day and Shelly took her into Main Street, where they sat outside a burger joint and drank shakes while the traffic crawled past. The road was coned for an upcoming parade. Flags were strung and a banner crossed from one building over the street to the opposite side.

  “Berry Parade? Sounds about the shittiest parade I ever heard of.”

  Shelly smiled. “You know what today is?”

  “I’ve been following.” The first day of the trial, she’d been on the computer when the house slept and read all she could.

  “You alright?”

  “Sure. Hal said it’d be over quick. They’ll put him to death.”

  Shelly sighed, her head tilted a little.

  “Spill it,” Duchess said.

  “What?”

  “Whatever it is you want to say.”

  Shelly hid her eyes behind sunglasses. “I never split siblings. They’re always better off together.”

  “Jesse James and his brother Frank, they robbed banks from Iowa to Texas. Cops got their gang at Northfield, only the brothers escaped. They looked out for each other.”

  Shelly smiled. “I’ve been doing this job twenty years now. Worked all over. I’ve seen all sorts. They pass through, on their way out, on their way back in. I’ve placed hundreds, each time … I cried. I made it my life, and it should be. But—”

  “There’s no such thing as a bad kid, right?” A trace of panic on her voice.

  “You’re not bad, Duchess.”

  A truck pulled up, the same color as Hal’s. Duchess felt the pain in her gut.

  “Robin is six. That’s a good age. That’s a real good age, but it doesn’t last. Hard as that is to say, and to think even.”

  Duchess set her milkshake down and stared into it.

  “Do you know what I’m saying, Duchess?”

  “I know what you’re saying.”

  Shelly fished a tissue out of her bag, lifted her glasses and dabbed at her eyes. She looked older then, like the years had run her down, the weight of such privileged, abject responsibility night and day.

  “I would die before I let go of my brother.”

  “It�
�s not about letting go.”

  “It’s about trusting his care to someone I’ve never met. And I’ve not met many decent people in my life. I don’t like the odds.”

  “I get that.”

  “Is it a selfless act?”

  Shelly looked up at her.

  “Is it?” Her eyes desperate now. “Is it a selfless act to do that? He’s so sweet, you know, he’s so good and sweet and he needs a better sister than me. Can you give him that, Shelly? I’m losing him, he’s turning hard. I can’t let that happen. He gets up in the night and he needs me. He calls out. And if I’m not there—”

  Shelly pulled her in and held her tight.

  “Fuck.”

  “It’s alright.”

  “It’s not. None of it is.”

  “I would never do it to you, Duchess. I wouldn’t do anything without talking to you first. And I can see this isn’t right. Siblings need to stay together. I’ll keep looking. We’ll find the right fit. I promise I’ll keep looking.”

  37

  WALK AND MARTHA DRIFTED THROUGH three days so torturous they drove back to Cape Haven and lay awake in Walk’s bed, unable to clear the painted picture, the prisoner that spent thirty years planning revenge on the girl he could not have.

  Opening statements were brief, plans laid out, seven minutes for Martha, eighteen for the District Attorney, Elise Deschamps. Deschamps was impressive, lengthy list of credentials, smart clothes, black hair framed a pale face. Sincerity poured from her as she applauded the jury, told them she worked for them, for the state of California, and for Star Radley and her orphaned children. She was their voice, their justice. Proof would be overwhelming, premeditated, cold-blooded. Vincent King was a murderer. He took the life of a child, then the life of a fellow prisoner. Killing came easy. They would see they had no choice but to find the man guilty, and, in doing so, pass on a sentence of death. It would not be easy, but she needed them. The Radley children needed them.

  Deschamps was skilled, alumna of Yale Law, flanked by two associates who watched and scribbled and nodded at the right times.