by Ania Ahlborn
Arlen eased off the gas, her expression taut, her eyes narrowed, angry at herself for giving in. The minivan cruised up a slight incline and came to a full stop. A road sign pointed them right. Arlen breathed in and out. In and out. Just like how they taught her in yoga class, no doubt. Trying to keep her cool.
In the minivan’s stunned silence, Maggie’s phone buzzed in her hand.
MAGS?
“Mom?” Hayden, calm, as though sensing her mother’s bubbling rage. “I’m gonna have Donald’s now?”
Arlen didn’t answer. Instead, she spoke toward the steering wheel, as if speaking to herself. “I’m glad you’re here, Maggie,” she said. “Because this?” She lifted a hand, made a sweeping gesture toward the backseat. “My plate is full.”
Maggie wasn’t sure how to respond.
“Brynn knew that,” Arlen said. “But she did it anyway, didn’t she? She saved herself and left us to pick up the pieces, because in the end, everything is always about her.”
Maggie swallowed against the lump that had formed in her throat. She couldn’t deny that Arlen was speaking the truth. Brynn always did have a penchant for theatrics. Maggie suspected it was why she had refused to relinquish her share of the house. Not because Brynn wanted to live there, but because not selling was histrionic. A standoff. Something to keep her occupied because she didn’t have all that much going on in her life. But Arlen resenting Brynn for committing suicide? That was cold.
Maggie furrowed her eyebrows, searching for something to say. You shouldn’t hold it against her or Where the hell were you when she needed help? Except that finger was pointing right back at her, because where was Maggie, after all? In Wilmington. Refusing to come home no matter how many times Brynn had asked. Maggie looked down to her lap, frowning at her phone and the fraying knees of her jeans.
I’M FINE. She shot out the text and shoved her phone back into her bag, the sting of tears suddenly threatening to breach the stoicism and strength she was so desperately trying to keep intact. But just as she was sure she’d start bawling right there, another distraction came from over her shoulder.
Hope slid her skinny arms between the two front seats and coiled them around Maggie’s left limb. And then, pressing her cheek against Maggie’s shoulder, she gazed up at her aunt and echoed her mother’s words. “I’m glad you’re here.”
THREE
* * *
WHEN MAGGIE SHOWED Dillon a picture of her childhood home, he called her crazy for giving up her share of the seven-thousand-square-foot pie. But the beauty of that white colonial was as false a front as Maggie’s steady nerves. Sitting in Arlen’s van, she found herself staring out the windshield at the place where she grew up, its banistered wraparound porch dotted with hanging ferns that now swung in the wind, three dormer windows protruding like sentries from a high-sloping roof. It sat lazily on its three-acre plot, beating the Georgia heat beneath a sweeping canopy of oak branches and swaths of old man’s beard.
Maggie swallowed against the ball of nerves that had wormed its way up her windpipe, her right hand involuntarily rising to rub at the back of her neck. Her left continued to clutch her cell phone—a security blanket, her only tether to the life she’d created outside this place.
She didn’t make a move to exit the vehicle, but no one else shared in her hesitation. Harry and Hope noisily climbed out of the car while Arlen struggled with the buckle of Hayden’s car seat, all the kids now tangy with the scent of ketchup and fryer grease. With Hayden finally released from her restraints, she ran after her siblings across a pristine, freshly mowed lawn. Not mowed by Howie, of course, but by a service. That was, after all, the upper-crust Southern way.
Arlen lingered in the backseat while Maggie stared ahead, unsure of how to proceed. The place was appealing with its lovely dark-painted window shutters and white rocking chairs on the front porch—the grouping of rockers once referred to by their still-sober mother as the South Savannah Chapter of the Porch Sitters Union. All of it innocuous. Inviting. All of it a lie.
She nearly jumped when Arlen sighed, then spoke from behind her. “Look,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being a bitch about all of this, but I’m just so angry.”
Maggie looked away from the house and to the tree that had once been home to a swing. After their father’s accident, Maggie had locked herself in her room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring down at an object Brynn had insisted had been nothing but a game. Brynn, on the other hand, spent a lot of time outside. She’d sat out there on that swing, completely clad in black, for hours at a time. One afternoon, she had pumped her legs hard, pushed herself as fast and high as she could, the branch overhead groaning against the strain. And then, at the apex of that arc, one of the ropes unraveled. Years of humidity, rain, and heat had Brynn flying toward the lawn with a garbled scream. Maggie, who happened to have been spying on her sister through her open bedroom window, watched Brynn soar through the air before landing hard against the ground. She twisted her ankle and dislocated her left shoulder attempting to catch herself on the grass. But it could have been worse. She’d hit the ground less than a few inches away from one of their mother’s many flowerbeds, the concrete garden edging jutting upward in anticipation of lethal contact. It could have ended her right then, seven years ago.
“I guess it’s just . . . despite all of her ridiculous death stuff, I never thought she’d take it this far,” Arlen said. “How was I supposed to know that she was depressed even more than usual?” She paused, as though considering her own words, searching for their truth. But she was right. Maggie couldn’t remember a time when Brynn hadn’t prided herself on being weird and impossible to decipher. After Dad was gone, Brynn’s black band T-shirts and slashed-up jeans graduated to caked-on makeup and pale contact lenses. And what had once been their mother’s outright horror over her daughter’s goth phase then shifted from quips and nags to radio silence. Maggie, on the other hand, had nearly lost touch with her lifelong love for the ocean. The fact that she had been out on Hilton Head Island when the accident had happened, that she’d been enjoying a sunset while looking out onto an endless expanse of water while her father—less than an hour away—was living out the last few moments of his life . . . it had nearly been too much to bear. And as for their mom? Once Dad was out of the picture, all three of the girls became invisible, as though they had perished right along with him. Alive, but dead. Ghosts unto themselves.
Maggie pulled her gaze away from where that swing used to be, nothing left but a piece of jute tied high up on the bough, like someone had hanged a body there, cut it down, and not bothered to cover their tracks.
“You’re going to blame me for this, aren’t you?” Arlen said. “I mean, we weren’t close . . . but Brynn wasn’t close with anyone, you know? You of all people know that she’d always been that way. She never liked me to begin with . . . so just how was I supposed to influence her, help her? What could I have possibly done?”
“It’s not your fault,” Maggie finally spoke, half expecting Arlen to breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn’t Arlen’s fault because Maggie was the one to blame. But rather than soothing her big sister’s nerves, Maggie’s attempt at compassion seemed only to ignite Arlen’s anger.
“Well, of course it’s not my fault!” She huffed, sweeping crumbs out of the cracks of Hayden’s car seat with the palm of her hand. “I invited her to join us for dinner every night, Maggie. Every night, at least up until a few months ago.”
“What happened a few months ago?” Maggie rubbed her phone screen against a patch of her jeans, cleaning off the smudges, if only to give herself something to do.
“She stopped coming down. I’d make enough for everyone, and her plate would go cold on the table. So I stopped offering. A waste of food. You try not to take offense, but . . .”
“Did you ask her what was going on?”
“No,” Arlen murmured. “I figured i
t was just Brynn being Brynn.”
Maggie winced. Brynn being Brynn. Their mother’s words, but rather than a drunken slur, they were annunciated with a distinct Southern drawl.
“You two talked every now and again, isn’t that right?” Arlen asked. “Did she strike you as upset about something? Did she say anything?”
That was the problem with Brynn. Suicide had always been the hazy overlay of every conversation, a fashionably subtle suggestion coloring her every word. Maggie couldn’t count the times her middle sister had thrown herself down onto the couch or into an armchair like a distressed damsel, exhaling an exasperated I’m going to kill myself or I wish I were dead. Brynn being Brynn. And Brynn was always upset about something. Lately, it had been about Maggie’s refusal to come home. About politics. About the fact that Arlen was a staunch conservative and had almost certainly voted Republican. You know she did, Mags. Ugh, I could just die! But that was Brynn’s typical stagecraft. Suggesting that she was genuinely suicidal? Maggie shook her head. “No.” At least not that she had known.
“You’re sure?” Arlen said, pressing. Maggie shifted her weight in the front seat to meet her big sister’s gaze, but as soon as she did, Arlen looked away. She plucked Hayden’s sippy cup off the backseat. “I’m just glad the kids were asleep when it happened. I mean . . .” Her words trailed off, but it was too late; Maggie couldn’t help but imagine it.
Harry and Hope decked out in their swim gear. Hayden toddling behind them, her floaties forcing her arms outward like the straw arms of a cornfield scarecrow. And there, between the house and the pool, Auntie Bee. Neck broken. Arms and legs ragdoll akimbo. Shattered glass catching the light like jagged diamonds in the sun. Music slithering out the broken window and up into a pristine summer sky. She pictured Hope and Harry parting just in time for Hayden to catch sight of the body, a toddler’s laughing face skipping like a record, flickering like bad reception, hesitating before finally twisting into a mask of fear. A scream bubbling up her esophagus—one her siblings would hear faint traces of for the rest of their lives. T is for Trauma . . .
“No, you’re right,” Maggie said, pushing the thought away. “It wasn’t right of her to do it the way she did.” Brynn had done it after dark, but Harry could have gone downstairs for a glass of water. He could have seen. Yet if it hadn’t been the pool at midnight, it would have been Brynn’s room some other time—a place where she might not have been discovered for days. Maybe one of the kids would have found themselves wondering where their aunt was, knocking on her door, pushing it open to discover . . .
“I suppose it’s silly to expect someone to consider such things at a time like that,” Arlen mused. “I’m just sorry that I couldn’t have . . .” A pause. A frown. “Anyway.” She discarded her own remorse. “Don’t sit out here all afternoon.”
“Len . . .” The old nickname came tumbling past Maggie’s lips before she could stop it. Arlen paused midretreat, palms against the seat and half out of the car, waiting for Maggie to speak. “I don’t know if I can go in there.”
Arlen pulled in a breath, as if preparing for a record-setting deep-sea dive. Maggie chewed the inside of her bottom lip, waiting for Arlen to spout off reason after definitive reason as to why Maggie would not be allowed to waver. The funeral. Arlen’s need of assistance in dealing with this whole crazy screwed-up thing. No, this time there would be no ducking out. But rather than launching into a laundry list of why-nots, she exhaled the air she’d drawn in so deeply in a smooth and steady stream. “I’ll see you inside,” she said, and slipped out of the car.
Maggie listened to the sliding door of the minivan hiss closed, then watched her sister make a brisk line through the whipping wind toward the open garage door. Inside that garage, two bikes were propped against one of the walls. Not Harry and Hope’s, but Maggie and Brynn’s. Childhood relics their dad had wanted to keep, that their mom hadn’t bothered to get rid of, and that Arlen was too busy to bother with. Streamers of black and silver hung from Brynn’s handlebars. Maggie could still vividly remember how they fluttered as she rode, streamers that Maggie used to stare at as she trailed her sister—onward, to the cemetery gates.
FOUR
* * *
THE FIRST TIME Brynn had ushered Maggie to the neighborhood cemetery, Maggie had been nine years old. She had pedaled ferociously behind her older sister in hopes of keeping up. When they arrived at the gates, Maggie only blinked at the massive wrought ironwork before riding through its wide-open leaves. The overhead arc was adorned with the name of the graveyard in coiling, intricate script: FRIENDSHIP PARK.
“Do you know why they call this place Friendship Park?” Brynn asked after they snaked along the gravel paths, eventually reaching a particularly shady corner of the lot. When Maggie didn’t respond, Brynn jumped off her bike and let it fall on its side with a crash. “Because all of these ghosts wanna be your friend. It’s lonely as heck being dead.”
It was warm in the sunshine, but Maggie’s bare arms sprouted goose bumps under the branches of a grouping of oaks. Brynn motioned for Maggie to follow, and Maggie did—leaving her bike next to her big sister’s, though she propped hers against a tree. Maggie liked her bike too much to let it lie on the ground like that.
Brynn’s steps came to a stop when she reached a peculiar set of plots. Her knee-high purple-and-black-striped socks and new boots—a pair of Dr. Martens she’d been pining over for months, finally purchased by their father as an early birthday gift—looked spooky next to the headstones. Each marker had a little fence around it, not more than a foot or two high. Some were made of wood: tiny picket fences for fairy gardens made up of plastic flowers and occasional sun-bleached toys. Most, however, were made of wrought iron like the main gate the girls had passed through only minutes before.
But there was one grave site that was different from the rest—not a headstone, but a tomb with the name and date worn away, the epitaph nothing more than a faint impression of what it had once been. The top was cracked and slightly caving in, seemingly as ancient as the trees that surrounded it. And there, atop the waist-height stone box that held death inside, was a doll. It didn’t look particularly antiquated; the doll’s frilly white dress and matching bonnet looked clean, in perfect shape. But that didn’t make the doll’s pallid and expressionless face any less creepy. Its eyes were wide-open, staring out at anyone who dared to meet its gaze.
“You know who’s the loneliest after they die?” Brynn asked, not swayed by her younger sister’s backward shimmy away from the vault before her. “Kids. Because most people who die are old and boring. Really old, like that cranky guy down the street who gives us dirty looks when we ride by his house.” The neighbor in question always seemed to be watering his lawn, bent over at a painful angle, one hand clamped down on the trigger of the hose nozzle, the other at the small of his back. And his looks were dirty. Glares, really. Anytime Maggie and Brynn rode by his place—which they did often—Maggie pedaled as hard as she could.
“And you know what old people hate?” Brynn continued.
“Grass?” Maggie was distracted by the doll atop that tomb. Perhaps the old guy wasn’t watering his lawn to make it grow. Maybe he did it so often because he was trying to drown it instead.
“What? No, dummy. Kids.” Brynn delivered the news matter-of-factly, as though anyone who knew anything knew that single detail to be true.
“Really?” Maggie squinted at her big sister. “But what about Gram and Gramps?”
“Gram and Gramps don’t count,” Brynn explained. “Besides, even if they liked kids while they’re alive, they’re gonna hate ’em after they’re dead. You know why?”
Maggie blinked away from that strange sarcophagus just beyond Brynn’s shoulder. She imagined Brynn jumping on top of it, causing that fractured slab of limestone to collapse in on itself. And what would be inside? A coffin, or just the skeleton of what had once been a little girl? Maggie st
ared at her sister, finally managing to shake her head no in reply to Brynn’s question, holding fast to her silence.
“Because dead kids remind dead adults of what it used to be like to be young, and they don’t wanna remember that stuff. It makes ’em mad. That’s why even alive adults bury kids in the corners of graveyards, like they did here.” Brynn turned, motioning to the plots of smaller-than-usual headstones and tiny fenced-in rectangles of land like a fancy lady presenting the Showcase Showdown. Their gram loved The Price Is Right. “All of these are kids, see? And they’re way back here to keep all the adult ghosts happy. Except . . . you know what?”
“What?” Maggie asked, looking back to that doll. It seemed impossible for it to have been sitting there for long, undisturbed. Wouldn’t someone have taken it? Wouldn’t the rain and wind have knocked it over? Wouldn’t it have been moldy and rotten and falling apart by now?
“Dead kids are never happy because nobody wants to play with ’em. And this kid in particular?” Brynn kicked the box with the toe of her boot. “Just look at her grave, rotting away. You can’t even read her name. Nobody wants to take care of her now, just like nobody wanted to play with her when she was alive.”
“Why?” Maggie asked, though she wasn’t sure she really wanted to know. Regardless, Brynn would tell her anyway. That was Brynn’s way; if she had a story to tell, Maggie was going to hear it whether she wanted to or not.
“Because she was evil.” Brynn’s mouth curled up in a smile. “Born bad. She ended up killing her little sister—”
“Oh, shut up, Bee! What a load of baloney!”
“Baloney? You wanna bet?”
“Yeah!” Maggie scoffed. “You’re just trying to freak me out again.”
But Brynn’s smile shifted to something far more serious—stern enough to give Maggie pause. “I’m not lyin’, Mags. She killed her little sister. Poisoned her dead.”