Silas Baker lives in a house on a hill, of course. I wouldn’t believe he was Marlee’s brother if she hadn’t told me herself. I guess there’s no straight line from one person to another, no matter what you think you can or can’t tell just by looking at them and least of all by whatever comes out of their mouth. It’s strange to think of Silas choosing Keith over his sister. I can’t imagine choosing anyone over Mattie. Ever. I wonder how much Marlee told Silas about Keith. Either way, there’s no suggestion of her kind of poverty here. Sometimes, no matter how successful you get, it leaves a stain on you that you can’t get out but Silas Baker scrubbed it good, covered it in his wealth. His house is a large-two story, all modern angles, with huge windows allowing for a view inside if you can get close enough to look. The roof slopes down and is covered in solar panels. There’s a smart-looking blue Mercedes in the driveway.
I drive slowly past, parking far enough away to be invisible but close enough for a view of the driveway and front door in my rearview. I rest my head against the window. About an hour later, a behemoth of a red truck—the kind you’d need a step ladder just to get a foot on the running board—drives past on the wrong side of the road. It pulls into the Bakers’ driveway, narrowly missing the Mercedes. After a long minute, Noah stumbles out. He rounds the truck and drags his sister from the passenger’s side. They’re a lot drunker than they were when I left them. I wonder if Javi’s as bad, if he stupidly drove himself home. They make an ugly lurching walk to the front door and it’s painful, watching the ten-minute attempt to get their key in the lock. And the whole time they’re doing this, my sister is dead.
“She’s dead,” I whisper and I don’t know why this is the thing I choose to say out loud because it hurts to say it, to feel the truth of those words pass my lips, to have them be real in this world. But She’s dead is the reason I’m still alive.
She’s dead is the reason I’m going to kill a man.
How many people live with that kind of knowledge inside them?
But I wish Mattie was next to me instead. I wish she was gazing bored out the window, looking so perfect and still it’d steal my breath away. I’d do something like muss up her hair because it drove her crazy. Mattie could never stand when the fine, stringy strands got tangled because it would take every single one of a comb’s teeth and thirteen Hail Marys to get it straightened out again. She’d push at my hands and I’d grab her by the wrists and marvel at how small she was and how much smaller she used to be. When she was little, I loved taking her tiny fists and cupping them into my palms and that only felt like it was yesterday. I don’t know where the time went between then and now. Thirteen years. That’s a long time and I lived it.
Thirteen, Mattie.
I kept you alive for thirteen years.
Waking her up in the morning, making her meals, walking her to the school bus, waiting for her at its stop when the day was over, grinding my bones to dust just to keep us holding on and when I lay it out like that, I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know where, underneath it all, you’d find my body. And I don’t care. I’d do it all again and again for eternity if I had to.
I don’t know why that’s not enough to bring her back.
I remember when she was born. Mom never looked better than when she was carrying Mattie. Not healthy—she still had that junkie’s pall—but Mattie made her seem like she could amount to something. When she started having contractions, she sent me over to May Beth’s and I stayed there until she came back with a baby in her arms. She handed Mattie to me first, then locked herself in May Beth’s bedroom for three hours because she needed to “rest.” I was so happy. I wanted to be a big sister so bad, I didn’t even need to be sold on it. May Beth was scared I wouldn’t like the interloper because most kids hate that sudden division of parental attention, but Mattie couldn’t take away what I didn’t already have. Here was the promise of something. I knew that I could be her world. I knew she was definitely going to be mine.
I just wanted to matter to someone.
I roll the window down and keep my eyes on the Bakers’ house. The first signs of life arrive with the break of dawn, which is still far earlier in the morning than I expect anything to happen. The sky is barely pale with the thought of sun and I’m half-dozing, a trickle of drool trailing from my chin to my shirt collar when I hear the chirp of a car door being unlocked. I jerk awake, the blurry scene before me slowly coming into focus.
Silas Baker is more than the picture online made him out to be. Blond as Marlee, but healthier, clearly not held back by little things like oh, rent. Food. Raising a family on nothing. He’s big. He has broad shoulders and the kind of business-casual style that’s dressing down the muscles that are surely underneath. There’s something distractingly polished about him. He’s almost a Ken doll and I feel if I were close to him, I wouldn’t see a line on his face.
He takes a look around the quiet street and then gets into the Mercedes and there’s no question of whether or not to follow him because whatever’s happening here has created a surplus of questions in me, the primary one being what the fuck? I bring my hand to the keys but then I worry that would be too obvious. He doesn’t seem to have noticed me yet. My fingers hover over the ignition while I try to figure out how to do this. Didn’t think I’d be tailing anyone today. Also, I’ve never tailed anyone before. I mean, I’ve seen it done—in the movies.
The Mercedes pulls out of the driveway and there’s no way around starting my own car if I want to follow his. The clock on my dash says it’s a quarter to seven. My palms sweat as the two of us drive down the road. When he makes a turn that puts us on the main street, there’s a small amount of congestion that takes some of the heat off me. Vendors arriving for the farmer’s market. Two cars end up between mine and his and that makes it even better. By the time we’re on the highway leading out of town, I feel less conspicuous, even though the sun’s fully out now, and there are no places to hide. We drive another five miles or so when Silas makes an abrupt turn onto a dirt road that seems to stretch forever nowhere. I stop at the turn, count to sixty, and follow. The gap between us makes me worry I might lose him, so I press my foot on the gas but then I worry that’s going to call too much attention to myself. I ease off.
Farmland surrounds me; untended fields on either side. A world at the end of the world. That’s what this feels like, driving into nothing. I don’t know what the hell he could possibly be doing out here. His car turns left and seems to just disappear, and I almost make that same left, but I get this feeling in the pit of my stomach and I slow down just a little instead. The Mercedes is parked on a side road that’s leading to—a house. From the brief glimpse I get, I can tell it’s abandoned.
Silas is waiting for me to pass.
Fuck.