Outside, the sun is just setting, and a golden glow lingers over the parked cars.
“Listen, Abby.” Brent seizes my hand when I’ve already said good-bye—embarrassed, in the sudden light, that I’ve said anything or called him at all. He takes a step closer to me, and for a second, I’m sure he’s going to kiss me. “I know you’re here for blood, okay? You’re not going to find anything.”
“I’m not here for blood, Brent.” We’re standing so close I can see the veins of color in his eyes. “I’m here for the truth.”
He frowns as if he doesn’t believe it. “I know it sounds crazy, but this town loves Optimal. I love Optimal.” He’s searching my face as if for signs that I believe him. “They’ve done a lot of good. You should see the new community center—you should see the theater they’ve built, a whole arts wing for the school to use. They’ve given life to this town.”
He talks like the converted do about church.
I extricate my hand from his. “If they’ve done nothing wrong, there’s nothing to worry about.”
He shakes his head. “I’m not worried about them. I’m worried about you. I just…don’t want anything to change between us, okay?” he says at last, though I’m almost positive that isn’t what he originally intended. “After all these years…” He sucks in a breath. “I always wanted to see you. I always hoped I would.”
Then he does kiss me. His lips are cold and taste like cheap tequila. A little like metal, too.
Like he’s the one who’s out for blood.
Chapter Twenty
My rental house is dark and humming with recycled air. I punch off the window units and shove open a window in the kitchen and my bedroom, even though I’ll regret it when I wake up sweating. Immediately the sound of country relaxes me. Emptiness punctuated by crickets chirping and the hoot of an owl. For eighteen summers, I fell asleep to that same sound.
It pulls me back to the past, to riding my bike—a salvaged thing my dad found behind one of his job sites and hammered into shape—down the rock-studded path that led to the reservoir. It pulls me back to stripping with Kaycee down to our underwear to swim out in the reservoir, competing to see how long we could hold our breath underwater, and of how she used to float on her belly, letting her hair fan out around her, pretending she was dead.
It was the summer after sixth grade when I found Chestnut—or, rather, he found me. Kaycee got a bad flu, and for a week straight I didn’t see her. I spent hours alone in the woods. I was lying on the ground counting clouds when I heard the whine of something behind me and sat up imagining a bobcat, a bear, or I don’t know what. Instead, a wiry, half-starved dog was eyeing me through the branches in the woods. Crying and wagging its tail all at once.
One of the only things I bothered unpacking is an old wooden jewelry box that used to belong to my mother and still, I imagine, every so often, releases a bit of her smell.
On top of the stained velvet lining that’s peeling away from the wood is a plain red collar, faded with age.
Chestnut Williams, it reads, next to the home phone number my dad still uses.
I begged my dad to take me to the pet store to buy it; he told me I was stupid for trying to put a collar on a stray, that Chestnut was just after a free meal, that he’d disappear soon enough, that I was wasting my money buying him toys and a collar he’d never wear. But when I slipped the collar over his head, his tail perked up. Like he was proud to finally belong to somebody. My dad thought Chestnut would be a burden on us both. But it didn’t take long for my dad to come around and let him sleep at the foot of my bed.
Kaycee couldn’t believe what she’d missed. She’d had the flu for seven days, she said, and I’d replaced her with a mangy animal. She sulked about it, and I thought she was only joking. I told her she would love Chestnut when she got to know him. I told her how he would eat right from my palm, how his leg would play a fiddle when you scratched his belly just right. I told her Chestnut could be our dog.
I’ve always wanted a dog, she confessed to me, in a whisper.
Once she got into the idea, she couldn’t stop talking about Chestnut and all the fun we’d have together, how we could teach him tricks and at Christmas we could dress him like a reindeer and tie him to a sled.
I don’t know what went wrong, exactly. Maybe he was sick. Maybe we’d startled him. Maybe he just took one sniff of Kaycee and knew. But Chestnut started growling at her, really growling, his back arched, all the teeth showing in his gums. I’d never seen him growl like that. I called his name, I tried to soothe him, as Kaycee stood there terrified.
“He hates me.” And that was the first time ever that I’d seen her cry. Two tears—that was it.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s only scared because you’re a stranger,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t true. In an instant, Chestnut lunged for her, snapping an inch from her fingers.
“He tried to bite me!” She was screaming.
I’d never seen her look like that. It was rage, pure rage, like I’d only ever seen on my dad.
“What’s wrong with that stupid dog?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him.”
She looked at me. “Oh, yeah? So you think it’s normal to try and bite somebody’s hand off?”
And then, because I was angry: “Maybe there’s something wrong with you.”
Right away, I wished I hadn’t said it. Kaycee froze. A normal twelve-year-old kid would have cried, or shouted, or insulted me back.
But not Kaycee. She just stood there, very still.
“Maybe,” she said finally. She turned away. Then she added, almost as an afterthought, “Dogs like that should be put down.”
—
Now I ball the collar in my hand. I aim for the trash can, knowing, of course, I won’t do it. For years I’ve threatened to get rid of the collar. For years I’ve pretended that I keep it only to remember him. But I’ve kept it to remember her, and to remember what she did.
She didn’t poison Chestnut right away. I’m not sure why. Maybe she thought that way she’d get away with it.
When I accused her she barely blinked.
He’s so dumb, he probably got into the rat poison all on his own, she said.
Except, she had stolen his collar. So I would know it wasn’t an accident. Even way back then, she liked to turn the truth inside out, to make it look like a lie and vice versa, until you couldn’t know the difference.
The craziest part was that she actually blamed me when I said I would never speak to her again. She actually seemed hurt, like she couldn’t understand why I was being so mean to her.
For the next six years, after she’d grown, after she’d gathered all the subjects she had ever imagined for herself, she never once admitted to touching Chestnut.
And then, on the last day of school, I went to clean out my locker and found Chestnut’s collar hanging neatly from a hook.
She kept it.