by Ania Ahlborn
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To the ghosts that haunt us.
ONE
* * *
WHAT THE HELL was that?!” Dillon bolted upright, his hair a perfect Albert Einstein emulation. She could practically hear his heartbeat thudding straight out of his chest.
Maggie peeked an eye open despite herself. Personally, she wasn’t concerned about the oncoming storm. Having grown up on the Georgia coast, she’d lived through dozens of tropical depressions far worse than this. But Dillon was a different story. A Maine transplant, he was unshakeable when it came to blustering nor’easters. But toss him into the path of a potential hurricane, and the man lost his ever-loving mind.
The sheets were pooled around Dillon’s waist, mimicking the way rainwater was inevitably doing so just beyond Maggie’s front doorstep. There was a divot in the brick walkway, a perfect spot for a miniature lake to form every time it rained. And it was pouring now—diagonal sheets that pounded against the windows like a madman trying to break in. It streaked silver across the light that filtered in through the bedroom window. There was a gas street lamp not more than a few steps from the door, forever casting the apartment in a warm amber glow.
Dillon—bare-chested and undeniably scrawny—scrambled to retrieve his glasses from atop a knee-height stack of Maggie’s magazines: Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, and Discover among the majority, though half of them had yet to be read. The maelstrom continued to beat against glass, plaster, and wood, determined to rouse them both. But Maggie refused to be rattled. No, she wouldn’t move. After all, it was just going to get worse.
A peal of thunder led to a bang against the outside of the building, like God had plucked a giant bird from the sky and tossed it against the exterior wall.
“Maggie!” Her name escaped Dillon in a near squeal. A death grip seized her arm.
Another bang. Perhaps another unfortunate bird. Or Atlas throwing small boulders against the building’s bricks.
“Christ, what is that?!” Dillon was ready to jump out of his skin. He was the polar opposite of the ultramasculine beefcakes who traipsed around campus—biceps flexed, strutting across the concourse in pastel polo shirts and board shorts—but he was still a guy. Maggie didn’t want to bruise his ego. And so, rather than lying there and laughing as her boyfriend squirmed against the rumble of thunder, she rolled toward the edge of the bed.
“Relax,” she said, extended an arm, and snapped on the bedside lamp.
“I know you say it’s no big deal . . .” He was stammering; he always did this when he was scared. “But it sounds like, like . . .”
Bang.
“Fuck! What is that?!”
“Probably a killer.” Maggie sat up, her feet hitting the nondescript raglan rug she’d bought at Target when she moved into the place. When she stood, Dillon’s expletives were immediately silenced. She could feel his eyes following her across the bedroom, his gaze roving along the curve of her backside as she adjusted her boy-short-style underwear.
“Or maybe just a broken shutter.” Turning to the window, she unlatched the pane and opened it wide despite the wind and sideways rain, then yanked the damaged storm shutter inward. She’d complained about that broken latch to the super at least a half dozen times, but the mountain of a Croatian man couldn’t have cared less. You want feex, you feex. Surely his storm shutters at home were fine. If the little American girl got slashed to ribbons by exploding glass thanks to a hurricane, this apartment complex was hot property, especially with those pretty gas lamps and the UNC campus a mere ten minutes away. Her place would be rented out by another student in five seconds flat, probably by one of those pastel ’roided-out dudes with perfect hair and way too many abs. Arms the circumference of her thighs. CrossFit every day after class. Cheat days spent at Momma’s table, filling up on barbeque shrimp and stone-ground grits.
“Y-you should get that fixed,” Dillon stammered.
She turned away from the window, her rear brushing against the sill, and rolled her neck—a habit born of chronic pain that had abated years before, thank God. During her last semester of high school, she was handed an official diagnosis: fibromyalgia. Pain meds had done little, probably because of the stress at home. It was only after she left Savannah that she’d started feeling normal again.
“Yeah, I should,” she said. But Croatia. Apparently, there was some sort of language barrier. Feex. Whatever. It wasn’t worth the hassle. She let her hand fall from her neck and cast a glance Dillon’s way. He was staring, and he was scrawny. The first movie they’d watched together was Particle Fever, about the origins of matter. He only ever indulged in three shows: Cosmos, of which he was currently on his eighth viewing cycle; Dexter—sometimes Dillon would do the monotone soliloquy thing, which she found both odd and sexy; and Bob’s Burgers, which he quoted on an unconscious loop. Annoying, but endearing. Nerdy, but hilarious. He kept her grounded, stopped her from losing herself inside her own head, especially when that nagging guilt hit her hard. Because Dillon knew about Maggie’s parents, and she assumed that was why he belted out made-up show tunes on her worst days. He even bought a tiny domed barbeque grill for her miniature patio so that he could make burgers and dogs when their research papers got to be too much. He was, as her mother would have put it, a fixer. (You feex, ha-ha.) And yet, Maggie was still surprised he’d stuck around as long as he had.
She moved back to the bed. That shutter would loosen itself again before sunrise, sooner if the wind kept up, but it currently held its place. Dillon was still staring, because Maggie’s tank top was lying crumpled on the floor on his side of the bed. He had tossed it aside a few hours ago, during one of their romps. He’d been talking like Dexter again. Sometimes, she couldn’t resist.
“Better?” she asked once she reached the mattress.
“Uh-huh.” His response was dazed, a pubescent boy at a topless variety show.
“That’s good,” she said, one knee pressing into the sheets, then another. Before he knew it, Maggie was doing a slow crawl toward her skinny-armed beau. Sultry. Seductive. Dillon leaned back while the ends of her hair traced a trail across his chest. “Know why?”
“Nuh-uh.” She hated it when he responded in grunts—it seemed that even the smartest boys regressed to Cro-Magnons when aroused—but she let it go. He was studying to be a mechanical engineer, not a poet laureate.
“Because I have an exam tomorrow,” she said, ignoring the fingers that were now grazing her right breast. “First thing. And unless Wilmington floods overnight—”
“Which it might,” he cut in.
“—which I doubt,” Maggie continued, “I have to pass my phytoplankton exam.”
“Phytoplankton,” Dillon echoed. Talk dirty to me.
“And you know how I’m going to make that happen?”
“By clearing your mind and gaining new focus?” He grabbed her hips and pulled her down against the bulge beneath the sheets.
“By sleeping until the sun comes up,” she said. “Like a baby. Because these storms? I love ’em.” She rolled off him, snapped off the light, and pretended she didn’t hear the muffled awh man escape his throat.
“Fi
ne,” he said, relenting. “But can you at least flip your cell onto its screen? It’s been lighting up the place for the past half hour.”
“What?” She’d been sleeping while Dillon had clearly been wide-awake, probably anticipating the moment Maggie’s apartment was torn from its foundation and flung up into the sky, Wizard of Oz–style. Maybe, if she had been as jumpy as he was, she would have noticed the room light up bright blue, but she’d been sleeping like a baby. The sound of the rain comforted her. The louder, the better. Louder meant she couldn’t hear herself think.
Reaching over, she grabbed her cell off the bedside table and squinted at the screen. Nearly four in the morning and three missed calls. One voicemail. Her phone was set to automatically go silent at midnight, so she hadn’t heard them come in.
Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she brought up the call log.
ARLEN OLSEN-DORMER, MOBILE, 13 MIN. AGO.
ARLEN OLSEN-DORMER, MOBILE, 19 MIN. AGO.
ARLEN OLSEN-DORMER, MOBILE, 22 MIN. AGO.
Her eldest sister’s photo smiled out at her from a list of previously made and received calls: a high and messy ponytail, a stretched-out Reebok tank with a faded graphic of a pink ocean sunset, Arlen posing with a group of strangers in what looked to be a yoga studio. Maggie had snagged that photo off her sister’s Facebook page years ago, mesmerized by the visage of a woman she felt she hardly knew, secretly delighted to see Arlen looking like a real honest-to-God sweaty human being rather than the uptight perfectionist Maggie had grown to know. Real Housewives of Savannah, Brynn, Maggie’s middle sister, had snorted. Stepford Wives two-point-oh.
“Important?” Dillon asked.
“Maybe,” Maggie said. But certainly was more like it, because a text every now and again was as close to communication as she and Arlen ever came. Neither one blamed the other for lack of trying. Maggie and Brynn had been close as kids, but Maggie and Arlen? Never. A nine-year difference was as good as kryptonite to a sisterly bond.
Seeing those missed middle-of-the-night calls made Maggie’s heart twist in her chest. She vacillated for half a second—she could leave it until after her test; that damn ecology class had given her hell all summer.
Just turn it off, avoid whatever’s going on.
But her gut instinct overrode her desire for a stress-free morning. She dialed into her voicemail. The message was breathless, heaving, aggravated, straight out of Georgia.
“Goddammit, Maggie . . .” Arlen’s Southern drawl. “I know it’s late, but answer your phone!”
No explanation. No assurance of not needing to panic. Just a demand, and then an angry hang-up.
Maggie sat motionless, her cell in her hand, the wind heaving another blustering roar. The broken shutter vibrated against the gale, threatening to come loose once again. If this storm—they were calling it Florence—turned into a full-blown hurricane, she’d have to nail a board across the outside to keep it in place—you want feex, you feex—and even then, she doubted class would be canceled. Her professor was relentless. It was a summer course, and if she didn’t pass, she’d be shy of graduating by three measly credits. All those applications she’d put in for grad school would be rendered useless. A total waste of time. But . . .
“Hey.” Dillon. “You okay?”
“Sure.” No.
She looked back to the now-sleeping phone in her hand. Maggie hadn’t texted her oldest sister in at least half a year—Christmas, she thought, or had it been New Year’s Eve? But actually spoken? More than three years ago, the day Maggie’s niece Hayden had been born. That day, she and Arlen had exchanged pleasantries and congratulations. I bet she’s adorable, Maggie had said, and even that had been awkward, because Arlen knew: Maggie wasn’t a fan. She had made a point of letting the world know she would never have a snot-nosed kid of her own. And yet, there she was, trying to scrounge up at least some enthusiasm for her sister’s thirdborn child.
Another gust blasted against the side of the building. The broken shutter escaped its latch, flew open, and slammed hard against the exterior wall. Maggie winced at the crash, then nearly jumped out of bed when the phone lit up bioluminescent blue. Her big sister smiled out from its screen. Arlen Olsen-Dormer, glistening with sweat, perfectly imperfect.
A lump formed in Maggie’s throat. Something was very wrong.
“What the hell!” Dillon scrambled out of bed and pulled on a T-shirt as he made a beeline for the window. “You need to call your super, Maggie. This is bullshit.” His footfalls were a little too aggravated, loud enough to rouse the neighbors if they weren’t already awake from all the noise. But she said nothing, too preoccupied with the memory of the midnight call she had gotten from Brynn years before.
She’s gone, Mags.
She meaning their mother. Brynn hadn’t been crying, but Maggie heard the ragged edge to her otherwise stoic sister’s voice.
But this time it was Arlen, the sister who wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency. Unless it was something devastating.
The room suddenly felt devoid of air. Dillon pulled open the window and yanked the shutter back toward its ruined latch. She almost yelled for him to leave it open, nearly tossed the phone aside and bolted out of bed toward the wind, the rain, and the thunder that was inside her apartment rather than outside where it should have been. This place had always felt safe, an asylum from her otherwise grim and mournful past. A salvation to her pain. Except, now, that sense of safety was gone. Her phone was still ringing.
It’s bad. So bad. It’s happening again.
Maggie’s jaw tensed. Her fingers tightened around the rubber case that protected her cell.
“Maggie . . . ? You getting that?” Dillon was watching, concerned, suddenly striking her as ridiculous in his wrinkled white T-shirt with a roaring T-rex riding a Segway printed across the front. If she didn’t answer the call, he’d ask what was wrong. She’d be left floundering, suffocating, squelching the emotions she worked so hard to ignore. I don’t want to talk about it, okay? It would lead to an argument. Angry, Dillon would do what he always did when he was pissed—stomp off into the tiny living room and stream another round of Cosmos until Maggie was ready to relent. Way too much drama for a casual relationship. Hell, they didn’t even live together. Dillon only slept over whenever he had an early morning because his apartment was miles away. This was more convenient. Maybe that’s why he was sticking around.
She tapped the green answer button, then pressed the phone to her ear.
“Arlen?”
There was no reply, at least not for a while, but she could hear people in the background. The blip of what sounded like a walkie-talkie. She clutched the phone. Began to tremble despite the apartment’s muggy heat.
Finally, Arlen spoke. “Maggie.” She paused, as if carefully considering her next few words. Maggie looked up from the pattern of her bedsheets—tiny cartoon dolphins that, upon purchase, had struck her as adorable but now only made her feel sick. She thought about hanging up, but it was too late to deny the inevitable.
She knew.
On the line, Arlen pulled in a breath, and Maggie braced herself for what was coming.
“There’s been an accident.”
She wanted to scream.
“I’m sorry, Maggie . . . but you have to come home. Right now.”
TWO
* * *
BY THE TIME Arlen pulled up to the arriving flights area, Maggie had fielded a dozen texts from Dillon—HOW DO YOU FEEL? HOW WAS THE FLIGHT? DO YOU WANT TO TALK? MAYBE YOU CAN GET A RETEST. She had sweated halfway through her T-shirt despite the storm clouds overhead, and had streamed the entirety of Depeche Mode’s Violator on her phone, trying to keep her mind off the exam she had surely failed—if only Dillon would stop bringing it up. She glanced up from her phone when a new red Chrysler Pacifica pulled up along the curb, the minivan’s side door slid open, and the nerve-rattl
ing screech of children poured out onto the pavement.
GOTTA GO. She typed out the message rapid-fire and hit send. She could only handle one thing at a time, and Arlen was—and always would be—an undivided-attention kind of gal.
Out in the van, two kids whined at each other, seemingly at the tail end of a bitter argument. A toddler screamed in the background. And there, in all her perfect Southern glory, was Arlen: pink chino capris, a white silk pussy-bow blouse, her blond hair done up in a bouffant. If there ever was a spitting image of Maggie’s mother before she’d gone off the deep end, it was that woman’s firstborn child. Maggie only hoped that Arlen would never see such a bad end. Pills strewn everywhere. A bathroom rug tangled around bare feet. An overflowing bathtub washing the blood away.
Arlen carried herself as though her minivan were a limousine. She flashed Maggie a dazzling smile—one that was far too wide, all things considered.
“Maggie.” She came in for a hug, hesitated upon noticing the glisten of sweat across her baby sister’s arms and neck, but eventually offered a curt embrace regardless, leaving her youngest sibling enrobed in a wave of sweet perfume. Arlen had always been the girly one, the prom queen, the stereotype every girl who wasn’t head cheerleader loved to hate. And nobody had hated a Mean Girl more than Brynn.
“Hey,” Maggie greeted, returning Arlen’s half-hearted embrace.
“Sorry I’m late,” Arlen twanged, then took a step back and gave Maggie a bereaved look: Jesus, why did I have so many kids? “It never stops,” she said, tossing a look over her shoulder at the cacophony behind her. “But God bless them, they’re mine.”
Maggie forced a smile toward the car. There, inside its confines, were a boy and two girls. Harrison was the firstborn son and pride and joy of Savannah’s own Howie Dormer, quarterback extraordinaire. Maggie didn’t know a damn thing about football—hell, she hardly knew anything about Howie, come to think of it—but from what she’d heard, he’d been Mr. Incredible on the college gridiron, so good he should have gone to the NFL but didn’t, because wasn’t that always the case?