“How can they not know at this stage? It’s been days. Honestly, I may have to hire someone to make sure everything’s being done right.”
“I’m not sure you can hire someone to bring Zelda back from the dead, Grandma,” I say sharply, instantly realizing that this may not be true. I think a decent PI could probably find my sister, wherever she’s hiding. But I’m hardly going to suggest that.
“I know that, doll.” She comes to stand behind me and strokes the nape of my neck in a way that is supposed to be comforting. I do my best not to flinch at the feel of her papery skin brushing my own. “Ava, it’s okay to let go, to let down your fa?ade. Everyone knows what Zelda was to you, even if you two hadn’t spoken for a while. I know she would forgive you for that.”
“Forgive me? For the shit she pulled before I left?” I shake my head in disbelief. If Opal knew the whole story, which I’m certain no one does, she’d probably still take Zelda’s side—but I’m not the one who needs forgiving. Zelda had our grandmother, and everyone else, wrapped around her finger, figuring that I was off having some temper tantrum in Paris. “You have no idea what was going on here, Grandma.”
“I know there were some childish jealousies, some sort of disagreement over a boy, but really, Ava, you can’t walk away from your twin sister because of some high school crush.”
“He wasn’t a crush. It was—Jesus, why am I even arguing with you? Zelda manipulated you into feeling bad for her, and that’s fine. I don’t have to justify every fucking move I make to everyone in this family!”
They are all toxic. I fling a coffee cup into the sink. It cracks into satisfying shards and the noise is immediately comforting. I reach for another, but my grandmother grabs my arm and looks me in the eye. She has our eyes, Marlon’s too-green eyes. “That’s enough, Ava. There’s no need to be unnecessarily destructive.”
I snort and raise my arms in surrender, prepared to flee the room.
“I brought coffee,” Marlon says from the doorway, looking back and forth between his mother and daughter with a harrowed expression. He’s holding a few bags of groceries and some to-go cups of coffee, and I’m almost weak-kneed in relief at seeing him. This is how my father gets away with his perennial negligence and failure to come through: He shows up at just the right moment, with exactly what you need. And because it’s so unexpected, you feel this surge of gratitude toward him, like he’s accomplished something superhuman. I know this, deep in the marrow of my bones, which are made of the marrow of his, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m momentarily choked up at the sight of the coffee that I will not have to make myself and the groceries that I will not have to buy and put away. How we’ve idolized that man, that mythological figure who had bequeathed us his ruinous genes and extricated himself from his paternal role, vaulting off in pursuit of his next jaunty lark.
“Thanks, Dad,” I say, crossing the kitchen to relieve him of his gifts. I give him a meaningful look with my back turned to Grandma Opal, and he smiles in acknowledgment.
“Ma, I got one for you too,” he says, handing her a cup.
“I don’t drink coffee anymore, Marlon. It leads to breast cancer. You know that.” She looks over at me pointedly. “And you know it’s bad for you too,” she adds, clucking at her son.
“Great,” I say. “I’ll give it to Mom. She’ll appreciate it.”
Marlon sets the bags on the counters and starts opening cupboards, trying to figure out where everything should be put away.
“Well, Marlon, what did you learn from the police?” Opal asks. My dad clears his throat uncomfortably.
“Well, they found some, uh, human remains,” he says. I almost drop my coffee.
“What? What do you mean?”
“There are some, I guess, bones? A skeleton? They have to do DNA testing to make sure it’s Zelda.”
I’m speechless, totally without words. Sweet Jesus, Zelda, who was in that barn?
“Ava, did you hear what I said?” Marlon prompts me. “They’d like you to come in. They want to use your DNA to confirm whatever they find. They say it may take a few days before they have any results, but they need a family member to confirm. I offered mine, but they said yours would be better.”
“Okay,” I say blankly.
“They, uh, also want to ask you some questions.”
“What on earth for?” Opal says.
“They say they have reason to believe that there’s been some kind of…foul play?” Marlon sounds deeply unsure that he should be telling us this. Opal and I are both silent. I wonder if we’re thinking the same thing.
“They think she was murdered?” I ask.
“Apparently, there were a few, well, red flags. The doors seem to have been chained shut, and the fire was very intense. If it had been started by natural causes, it should have been slower, they’re saying. Something about an accelerant.”
I want to sit down. I want to get drunk. I want Zelda to walk into the house this second with a silly grin on her face saying, “Surprise! I just wanted us all in the same room, a family again! LOL!”
“So they’re investigating a murder,” Opal says slowly. “My granddaughter was murdered.” She is settling into the role, writing a script for herself as an entirely different kind of bereaved grandmother. Cooking up her own story.
“They don’t know for sure yet. They say the first thing is to confirm that it was her. They say she had a text message, before she died? Saying she was going to be at the barn?” Marlon directs this last part at me.
I nod. “That’s what they told me.”
“It seems she was also caught up in some, uh, unpleasant stuff. She has a drug dealer friend? Do you know anything about that, Ava?”
“Zelda’s always been wrapped up in ‘unpleasant stuff.’ It wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” I answer. “Do they think it’s related?”
Marlon shrugs. “I don’t know.”
We all look around the kitchen silently, thinking. I sip my coffee, which is now room temperature, the way I like it. Marlon clears his throat.
“There’s something else.” Opal and I both turn to look at him. “Did you write this, Ava?” He tugs a newspaper from one of the shopping bags and hands it to me. It’s open to the obituary page.
Zelda Antipova passed away this summer solstice in a fiery blaze that prematurely claimed her young life. She was incomparable. She was a shooting star in a darkened sky. She was a cascading waterfall in a lush hidden glen. She was the full moon and the summer sun, a brilliant flower that faded too soon. Of faults we shall not speak but, rather, forgive all those small shortcomings and missteps and bid her farewell with a desolate heart, void of recrimination and blame and, indeed, anything but bitter anguish that she was taken from us so soon. She will be missed, she will be remembered, she will be mourned. She was very special, very loved, and treasured by everyone she touched with her short, too-short life. Etc. Etc.