WEST McCRAY [STUDIO]: Darren Marshall’s room looks like it … exploded, for lack of a better term. The air is thick, stuffy, attesting to the fact that he hasn’t been here for a long time. But whenever he was here last, he apparently tore the place apart. There are clothes all over the bed, the floor, every available surface. The bed has been stripped of its sheets and the furniture has been upended and pulled away from the walls. Every drawer in the place is open, except for the fridge. Joe wanders over to it first. When he opens it, the stench of spoiled food fills the room.
JOE PERKINS: Oh, goddammit …
[SOUND OF A DOOR SLAMMING SHUT]
WEST McCRAY: What happened here, Joe?
JOE PERKINS: It looks like a fuckin’ crime scene … Jesus … [SOUND OF A DOOR OPENING, CRUNCHING GLASS] Oh, Christ, don’t step in here! The bathroom window’s fuckin’ broken.
WEST McCRAY: You didn’t notice that until now?
JOE PERKINS: You seen this place? How’m I supposed to notice one more broken window? Jesus.
WEST McCRAY: So this isn’t how Darren usually left the place?
JOE PERKINS: I hope not … but I honestly don’t know. He didn’t want cleaning in here, and I trusted that he’d look after it and I didn’t have a reason to doubt that, you know? But this … looks wrong. It looks like there was a fight or something … is that blood?
WEST McCRAY: There are a few suspect stains on the floor, but it’s hard to tell what exactly they might be. I move carefully around the room, taking photographs of it with my phone. The first thing that catches my attention is the matchbook. It’s sitting neatly on the nightstand. I pick it up because it’s familiar to me, but at that moment, I’m not sure why. It says Cooper’s on the front. Before I can think too hard about it, there’s something else: A photograph on floor, half-hidden under the bed.
I know the place it was taken. And I know the people in it. There are four of them, and the first one I recognize is Claire. She’s younger, sicker. She’s standing next to a man who is holding a small child against him. Mattie. To the right of the photo, at its very edges, is Sadie.
She’s about eleven years old.
WEST McCRAY [TO JOE]: Hey, Joe, is this Darren?
JOE PERKINS: What’s that?… Well, I’ll be damned. That’s him. And that’s— That’s not the girl you’re looking for, is it?
WEST McCRAY: Yeah, it is.
JOE PERKINS: What the hell is going on here?
WEST McCRAY: Excuse me a minute, Joe … I’ll be right back.
WEST McCRAY: I step outside and send the photograph to May Beth over text. She calls me back immediately.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: Oh my Lord, that’s the picture. Where did you find it?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: What?
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: That’s the photo that was missing from my album … when I was showing you those pictures of the girls, remember, I got to the page with nothing on it? A photo was missing. That was the photo that was on it. The girls, and their mother and— WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: Darren.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: What?
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: That’s Darren.
MAY BETH FOSTER [PHONE]: No, it’s not. It’s Keith.
sadie
When I was seven, and Mattie was one, she whispered my name.
I was her first word.
When Mattie was seven days old, and I was six, I stood over her crib and listened to her breathing, watching the rise and fall of her tiny chest. I pressed my palm against it and I felt myself through her. She was breathing, alive.
And I was too.
Langford is miles behind me, a place called Farfield in my sights. Keith is there, Ellis told me. Last I heard from him, he was there. I don’t know if he’s called the police or warned Keith since I left, but any head start I had for myself is gone by now. I lost it when I realized I’d left my photo in Keith’s room. My stomach turned and then it turned again and next thing I knew, I was jerking the car onto the shoulder and then I was out of the car and on my knees, on the ground, throwing up bile into the dirt.
I can’t seem to get back inside the car.
I crouch back on my heels and wipe my mouth on my sleeve. I dig into my bag and find the IDs, the tags, and sit there with them, spread them out on the side of the road. It feels wrong to have them together. I separate his faces from their names.
I don’t want to take them with me.
They’re too heavy to carry.
When I was eleven, and Mattie was five, I didn’t sleep for a year. Keith and Mom would come home so late from the bar—him sober, her wasted—neither of them trying to be quiet, but her especially. I’d listen to her shuffling steps to the bedroom, to the clatter of Keith tidying up the kitchen, and when all that sound was gone, I knew what would happen next and I knew what would happen if I refused. If it wasn’t me, he’d go to Mattie unless I said, W—wait …
Wait.
Until one night, I couldn’t.
And I’d had the knife that night, had it tucked under my pillow, my fingers clutched around it and instead of doing what I should have, I sent him to her. The next morning, Keith was gone, and the dirty shame of my weakness was all over me and I think Mattie sensed it somehow, that there was some part of me that had given her up, that I couldn’t protect her.
I held on tighter to prove myself wrong.
I felt her breathing, alive.
And I was too.
When Mattie was ten, and I was sixteen, Mom left and took Mattie’s heart with her. Mattie spent every night crying herself awake and was it really so bad, Mattie, just the two of us together?
And then that postcard—
Mattie came back to me with her heart in her hands, there, breathing, alive …
And I was too.
When I was nineteen and Mattie was thirteen, Keith came back.
Guess who I saw, she’d announced, still angry, always angry for the lengths I wouldn’t go for Mom, and never seeing the ones I went to for her. I told him about Mom. He said he’d take me to L.A., to find her. And I asked her who she thought raised her, because in that moment, it couldn’t have been me.
When Mattie was thirteen, and I was nineteen, she crept away into the night, to the truck parked under the streetlight on a corner in Cold Creek, and climbed into the passenger’s side. I don’t know what happened next. If, when the apple orchard appeared on the horizon to mark the growing space between us, she finally felt the distance and changed her mind. If Keith wouldn’t let her change her mind, and dragged her, kicking and screaming out of the truck and between the trees, where he had her, breathing and alive, until she wasn’t.
And I wasn’t.
I am going to kill a man.
“I am,” I whisper into the ground, over and over again.
I am, I am, I am.
I have to.
I’m going to kill the man who killed my sister.
And I’m not leaving the side of the road until I can make myself believe it.
I sit on the ground, feel the gravel press into my jeans. It’s windy, air pushing my hair from my face. I listen to the way it moves the world around me; the trees off the road, leaves rustling their soft song into the night. I stare up at the sky, its stars. Small miracles.
I get to my feet.
Looking at the stars is looking into the past. I read that once. I can’t remember where and I don’t know much about it, but it’s strange to think of the stars above as from a time that is so far removed from Mattie and me, from Mattie being dead.
From the thing I am about to do.
THE GIRLS
EPISODE 6
[THE GIRLS THEME]
ANNOUNCER:
The Girls is brought to you by Macmillan Publishers.
WEST McCRAY:
Keith is Darren. I share the photograph with Ruby and she tells me it’s the exact same one Sadie showed her when she came to Ray’s Diner, asking after the man she said was her dad.
RUBY LOCKWOOD [PHONE]: That’s it. That was the one.
WEST McCRAY [PHONE]: And you still doubted her?
RUBY LOCKWOOD [PHONE]: Was I wrong?
WEST McCRAY [ON PHONE WITH MAY BETH]: There’s no possibility whatsoever that Keith is Sadie’s father?