by Ania Ahlborn
That night, the storm raged. Their electricity went out, and their mom was losing it, unable to get through to Gram and Gramps’s place in Pensacola. She was nearly inconsolable, which was why their father shooed both Brynn and Maggie upstairs.
“Time for bed,” he told them.
“But the storm!” Maggie protested.
“It’s just rain here,” Dad said. “And your mom needs some space.”
Brynn didn’t argue—she’d spend the rest of the night on her phone until the battery died. But Maggie didn’t have a phone, and the inability to flip on the light at any given moment freaked her out.
“What about Gram and Gramps?” She was near tears when her father folded back the sheets for her to slide into bed. “How come Mom can’t get them on the phone?”
“Because Gram and Gramps only have a landline, Crazy,” Dad explained. “The lines are down. Their power is out, too.”
“But what if it’s really, really bad this time?” She crawled onto her mattress and stuffed her legs beneath the covers.
“Then they’ll go to the elementary school, remember?” Maggie did. Gramps had explained it to Maggie’s mom, once. If the storms hit hard, they evacuate us into the gym. It’s not a block from the house and it’s at a higher elevation. We’ll be fine. Maggie had found the idea of it pretty funny: her grandma and grandpa shooting hoops with a bunch of old folks, their orthopedic shoes squeaking on the court, waiting for the hurricane to pass.
“Are you sure they’re gonna be okay?” Maggie asked, still skeptical. “How will they get there if it’s really bad, Dad? Gram’s walker . . .” Gram recently had had both of her hips replaced. She couldn’t walk on her own if the pain got too bad. And Gramps would never leave her. Not on his life.
“They have that zippy golf cart, remember? I promise, they’re going to be okay. Now, try to get some sleep, would you? I need to deal with your mother.”
“Is Mom gonna be okay?” Maggie blinked at her father. He gave her a goofy look, like, Mom is too nuts to ever be okay. Maggie couldn’t help it; she cracked a smile. “Wait, wait!” She stopped her dad as soon as he turned to go. “What about the lights?” On the way upstairs, her dad had brought two emergency candles along—one for Brynn’s room, and one for Maggie.
“Can’t help you there, kiddo,” he said. “You’re just going to have to act your age. You’re twenty-seven, right?”
“Da-ad.” Maggie huffed.
“Sorry.” He held up his hands. “You don’t look a day over twenty-four.”
“I’m almost ten!” She was pretty sure her father knew that, but she couldn’t help stressing that fact. Sure, she wasn’t a baby anymore, but the wind was howling. What if the windows exploded? Didn’t stuff like that happen during really bad hurricanes? She’d seen it happen in movies, so . . .
“Yeah, almost ten,” he said. “Which, really, it’s kind of embarrassing. I’m surprised you allowed yourself to get so old.” Maggie was trying not to crack up again. Her dad had the art of making her feel at ease down to a science. Brynn was a tougher audience, but he could make her laugh, too, if he really tried. “Now, seriously, Crazy. Sleep. Or at least try to.”
But she couldn’t. Whether it was the hurricane—which the Olsens dealt with by shuttering the windows, making sure they had plenty of batteries for flashlights, and buying up half the Publix canned soup aisle—the idea of her grandparents cowering in a corner of their house out in Florida while their windows blew up around them like bombs, or the marionette that was looming beneath her mattress, she didn’t know. But she was scared, which was dumb. After all, her dad was a native Savannahian. He knew how to handle the weather, and the same went for Gramps. Heck, he used to be in the marines, which meant he wasn’t afraid of anything.
And that thing beneath her bed? Maggie knew it was innocuous, just a fancy toy. But Maggie couldn’t help but wonder exactly why Brynn had hidden the remaining dolls toward the back of her closet like that. Did she just not like them, or was there some other reason for their exile?
Don’t be stupid, she thought. If dolls like that were really evil, they would have killed her by now. She chuckled to herself at the idea of it. Brynn, being chopped up by tiny knives held by tiny doll hands. But her amusement was insincere. The more she thought about those things being able to come to life, the more creeped out she felt.
Eventually losing her nerve, she slid out of bed and dragged the blank-eyed girl out from beneath her mattress by the leg, carrying her to her own closet instead. Once there, she paused. She could set up Dolly outside of Brynn’s room, pretend she had risen up and walked herself to the Olsen place under her own “evil” power. Brynn would positively freak out. But however fun it would be to prank her big sis, using the doll as the butt of a joke felt off. Brynn deserved it, sure, but Dolly didn’t.
She cleared a space amid an array of stuffed animals and placed the doll among them. “There,” she whispered. “You’ll be safe in here.” That, and Maggie would feel safer with a door between them. She shut it tight, and eventually, the howl of the wind lulled her to sleep.
. . .
Katrina brought heavy wind and rain to Savannah, but the Olsens escaped relatively unscathed. One of Maggie’s mother’s favorite oaks went down in the front yard, and tree branches littered the property. Men with chain saws arrived a few days later to haul the mess away. Mom finally got through to Gram and Gramps. Pensacola had gotten clobbered, and their house was under half an inch of water—the entire mobile home park was. But Gramps wouldn’t hear of abandoning ship. They had insurance, and he was determined to get started on the cleanup as soon as possible. Mom flew down a few weeks after the storm to survey the damage and help make her parents’ temporary home at an extended-stay motel more comfortable.
And by the time all of that happened, the school year was in full swing. Maggie intended to take Dolly back to her rightful spot but there was always something—homework, a TV show, the occasional fight with Brynn—that kept her from making the trek back to those cemetery gates. Besides, leaving Dolly on top of that tomb felt like a betrayal. And so the doll stayed in Maggie’s closet, tucked away among her other toys.
By the second month of school, Maggie was head over heels for her new friend, Cheryl Polley. Cheryl had moved to Savannah from Atlanta, and they had struck up a conversation over one of Maggie’s Georgia Aquarium T-shirts. “I’ve been there,” Cheryl had said. “Like, a ton of times. The starfish are my favorite.” That’s all it took. Maggie was smitten.
Theirs was an obsessive devotion. They ate lunch together, spent weekends at each other’s houses whenever they could, even ended up buying matching necklaces with a few bucks they pooled together during a trip to the mall; BEST FRIENDS was stamped across both pieces of a bisected silver heart. Maggie cast a glance out toward Friendship Park every time she passed it on the bus, but its allure had faded. She was busy with homework and trying to master the art of tetherball. Then there was the pipe dream: rumor had it Kelly Clarkson was going on tour, and Atlanta would be one of her stops. Maggie and Cheryl spent weekends plotting how to talk Cheryl’s mom into driving them to the city, and how the heck they’d be able to afford it if their mothers refused to buy them the tickets.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the back of her closet, buried beneath dirty laundry that missed the hamper, was Brynn’s doll. Maggie didn’t bother returning it to the cemetery. With Cheryl in the picture, it seemed far less pressing than before.
SIX
* * *
THE MOMENT MAGGIE stepped inside her childhood home, she instinctively reached for her phone, ready to text Dillon about how coming back was too much, how staying in her old place was beyond her limit. But before she could type out a message, she was shot through with that familiar twinge of pain. Not sadness or nostalgia for her lost parents or dearly departed sister, but literal pain.
The agony Maggie had felt
in her neck and shoulders had led to thousands of dollars’ worth of chiropractor visits, hundreds of spinal adjustments, and hours of physical therapy. Year after year, she closed her eyes while doctors cracked her neck, wiggling her toes after each pop of vertebrae, making sure she still could. The possibility of a freak accident had never been far from her thoughts: paralysis by way of a professional. And yet nothing alleviated the crippling knot rooted deep at the base of her skull.
Now, standing in the open front door of the home her mother had designed to reflect an issue of Southern Living, Maggie reached around to the back of her neck, pressed her fingers against the bumps in her spine, and sucked air in through her teeth. She hadn’t felt that pain in so long, and yet there it was, that all-too-familiar tension collecting at the top of her spine. Strange, but she supposed it was befitting of the circumstance. It was all the stress. Besides, she deserved the discomfort. After her dad had passed, she had grown numb. After her mother’s death, the emotional part of her brain had, for the most part, closed up shop. And now, with Brynn gone, Maggie wanted to cry, wanted to mourn the loss of the person she had been closest to in life, and yet the tears refused to come. At least the pain that was settling into the muscles of her upper back was just that: suffering, a cheap stand-in for the biting anguish she couldn’t manage to feel.
She dropped her duffel bag in the foyer next to the stairs, hesitated at the base step, and finally allowed herself to meander down the house’s main hall. A gallery of photographs lined the area, ending at double French doors. Those pictures had once been of her, Arlen, and Brynn, but were now replaced by Harrison, Hayden, and Hope. She stopped just shy of the French doors, her fingers flexing and relaxing at her sides like twin hearts. Had it not been so overcast, the watery iridescence of the swimming pool beyond the doors would have splashed dancing light onto the ceiling overhead. But now, it simply looked like an angry ocean, disturbed by the intensifying wind. She thought about going out there, daring to graze the flagstones with the soles of her shoes. But why? To remember the awful night Uncle Leon had roused her from sleep during what should have been a fun summer adventure at Hilton Head with her cousins? To recall the drive back to an empty house, the pool cover torn away from its rails? To see if Brynn’s shadow was lying there, like a stain refusing to come clean, so much like her father that it was as though history were repeating itself? She turned away, moved toward the kitchen, and stepped into the room with a wince.
“You’re still having trouble with that neck?” Arlen glanced up from a laptop upon the kitchen island. A large digital SLR camera sat next to it. Next to that, Arlen’s phone, the same one she’d used to call Maggie two days before. There’s been an accident. You have to come home.
“I didn’t think so, but . . .” Maggie continued to rub, but the more she jabbed her fingers into the tight muscle, the more it hurt. “Stress, I guess.”
It occurred to her that she hadn’t texted Dillon back. She would, though, just as soon as she settled in.
“Or the plane. They’ll do that,” Arlen said. “Those neck doughnuts look ridiculous, but they’re worth the humiliation. You don’t have one, do you?” She jabbed the enter key on the keyboard, giving flight to a freshly composed email.
Maggie tried to shake her head, but only managed another cringe.
“You should know better,” Arlen said. “The last thing you need is another picture-perfect CT scan. Even with insurance, it’ll cost you a small fortune.”
The scan, along with a spinal tap, had been done when Maggie was just shy of fifteen. It had been the chiropractor’s idea—one that had triggered the strangest emotional response from their mother. Stella Olsen, a woman who approached child rearing with what could only be described as a lackadaisical hand, was positively horror-struck at the mere mention of such a test, let alone the idea of there being something genuinely wrong with her youngest child. She started throwing around theories as fast as a coked-up med school dropout. WebMD became her obsession, and by the time Maggie’s appointment for the scan arrived, her mother was sure of her armchair diagnosis: brain cancer, maybe spinal meningitis, possibly both. But Maggie’s tests came up clean.
“Anyway, I’ve got some photos I need to edit or the client is going to lose her damn mind.” Arlen raised a hand, waved it over her head like an injured bird. “Total bridezilla. Absolute nightmare.”
“You’re working?” Maggie looked to the computer. A photo stared out at her from the screen. The bridezilla in question was wearing a crazy-eyed expression, trying to hold a near-manic smile. I’m so very happy right now!
Maggie hadn’t managed to complete more than a quarter of her exam the morning she had received Arlen’s call; the questions she had answered, she’d probably flubbed. With her head down and her shoulders slumped, she had walked her test to the front of the lecture hall—all eyes on her because she was the first—and slipped it onto her professor’s desk without a word. She managed to make it to the restroom before bursting into tears. Maybe she had been weeping for Brynn, but at that moment, it had felt more like frustration than grief.
“I don’t have a choice, Maggie.” Arlen exhaled a dramatic sigh, falling short of a full explanation. Maggie didn’t need one. Ask a wedding photographer about the worst possible time of year for sibling suicide, and each one would scream: Wedding season! “Brynn’s car is in the garage,” Arlen said, sliding over a bundle of keys. “I don’t know if it’s filled up, and I don’t know what she left in there, so proceed with caution. Maybe you can clean it out if it’s full of junk. I don’t know what we’re going to do with it; probably get the title changed over and sell it . . . unless you want to drive it up to Wilmington.”
Maggie shook her head that she didn’t. She already had a car. Having two made no sense.
Arlen yanked open a kitchen drawer, tossed out a Post-it pad, and scribbled a name and address. “This is the mortuary we’re using.” It was the same one they had used for both parents. “And this is Father John’s number. You can call him anytime. He remembers you.” Odd, considering Maggie only remembered Father John from officiating Olsen family funerals. Even after all that death, Maggie never was one for praising the Lord or shouting Amen. Science had overridden her faith. “I’ve taken care of most of the details, but just swing by, okay?” Arlen gave Maggie a pleading look.
“Swing by?” Maggie offered Arlen a blank stare.
“The mortuary,” Arlen clarified. Yes, that place, where men in snappy suits attempted to look sympathetic while trying to upsell caskets that cost as much as Cadillacs. Nothing quite says I love you like satin lining and high-gloss veneer.
“Can’t you come with me?” There was something about that place—the pressure, the options, the memory of their mother sitting zombielike and unblinking as the funeral director turned his attention from the unresponsive adult to her three children, searching their faces for signs of life. Arlen, who had been twenty-two at the time, scribbled her signature where their mother’s should have gone. She’d handled their mom’s funeral, too. And here she was again, at death number three.
“No, Maggie, I can’t. That’s why I needed you here, to help me deal with this. We talked about this . . .”
“But I don’t even know the budget,” Maggie protested, and that was true. Hours after she had bombed her test and regained her composure, she had called Arlen to ask about arrangements. She had offered to pay for some of the expenses, but Arlen had declined the help. Just get here, she had said. That’s all I ask. And so Maggie had paid a small fortune for a next-day flight and come home, despite it being the last thing in the world she had wanted to do.
“They have the budget,” Arlen assured her. “And if you really need me, I’ve got my cell.”
Another zing of pain. Another wince. Maggie hissed through her teeth as she leaned against the island, jabbing her fingers against muscle and bone. Arlen pulled open another kitchen drawer and
placed a bottle of Tylenol onto the counter in an unspoken admonishment. I don’t have time for this.
“Should I take the kids?” That was desperation talking. The last thing Maggie wanted was to shuttle a trio of children around town for any reason, for any amount of time. But at least she wouldn’t be alone in a room full of empty coffins, wondering which one Brynn would have hated the least.
“. . . to the mortuary?” Arlen widened her eyes, as though the mere suggestion was as good as a slap across the face.
“Right,” Maggie murmured. “Dumb idea.”
“There are fresh towels in the upstairs bathroom, as well as some shampoo and stuff I picked up at the store, in case you want a shower before you go.”
Maggie watched her sister from across the island, Arlen’s eyes fixed on her computer screen, her maternal instincts so strong she no longer had to think about the things that came out of her mouth as she spoke them. Autopilot mothering, an inherited trait.
She wondered how Brynn had felt about losing a maternal figure only to have another one immediately take her place. Brynn would have been happier if she had moved out; God knows Arlen had asked her to do so more than half a dozen times. I mean, honestly, Arlen had complained. I have kids, a family. Brynn continuing to live with us, it’s just . . . weird. The money would have been good for her: the girl who couldn’t keep a steady job to save her life, claiming she didn’t like humanity enough to cope with a nine-to-five; the girl who had to wear all black all the time as though any other color would result in her breaking out in an aggressive form of hives. She could have taken the cash, moved out of Savannah—a town where she had never fit in, would never fit in. Unfit to be a country-club debutante sipping mimosas with her girlfriends every weekday afternoon. Hell, unfit to be the girl serving the mimosas. Where they came from—unless Starbucks or McDonald’s was looking for help—Brynn Olsen was virtually unhireable, and her doom-and-gloom outlook didn’t help. Not around these parts.