“Zelda’s not dead.”
“What do you mean?” He looks at me with genuine alarm. “Ava, I know grief…er, one of the stages…”
“I’m not in denial. She’s not dead. She’s been sending me emails since I got home.”
“I know how hard this has to be for you—”
“Damnit, Wy, I’m not crazy. She’s been toying with me this whole time. Look.” I show him the date and time of Zelda’s last email. He glances at it, swerves onto the shoulder, and throws the truck into park.
“Jesus.” He breathes out in a huff and gets back onto the road. “Jesus Christ.”
Soon he pulls into my driveway. I can see that his hands are shaking as he turns the wheel. “I mean, I know Zelda can be twisted. But this…” The truck crunches down the hill of the drive. He turns the ignition off and stares blankly through the windshield. I know it’s not funny, but I can’t help smiling at his distress. I do know how he feels.
“Want to come in for a drink?” I ask with a wry expression.
“Yup,” he says without hesitation. “And I want you to tell me just what’s going on.”
“Let’s go sit on the upstairs deck,” I suggest in a whisper once we’re inside. Marlon is asleep on the couch, the fan directed toward him and turned up full blast. The sound muffles our steps. Opal has claimed the guest room, where I assume she is now.
“What about your mom? Won’t we wake her?”
“Are you kidding? We could go sit on her bed and she wouldn’t notice we’re there.” I gesture for Wyatt to head upstairs to the library and I head to the liquor cabinet, where we keep the decent but not cellar-worthy wine. It’s still shut with the combination lock; I realize I haven’t opened it once since getting home. I have to think for a bit before I remember the combo. The lock clicks open, and I take it off the clasp as quietly as I can. I don’t want to wake up Marlon and risk him and Wyatt bumping into each other. I can only imagine what fun that would be.
It’s too dark to see well, so I use my cellphone to hunt out a bottle of red, since that seems to be what Wyatt prefers—and since I assume my progenitors will have polished off any white wine that’s been in the fridge, even the bottles I hid in the crisper. I leave the Silenus labels where they are, untouched, and search behind them, hoping for something French or Italian. Instead, my phone illuminates a slip of paper taped to a bottle. It reads, For Wyatt, darling, in Zelda’s handwriting. I pull the bottle out, and on the label is a sketch of a tormented-looking man, his arms crossed in front of his chest and shackled to two unseen objects. His feet are in irons, and his face is shrouded by a formidable beard. Underneath the engraved illustration, the wine is labeled “The Prisoner.” I pull the note off the bottle; on the back, Zelda has written, Caught between the two of us, as ever. Hope you can taste the poetry, and that Ava likes the flavor too.
I climb the steps with a bottle of wine and two wineglasses for the second time that night, thinking of the repetitive patterns of home. How many times will I climb these steps, bottle in hand? In the library, I slide open the door onto the deck, where Wyatt is standing, staring out at the ruined remains of the barn. His shoulders are broad, his back muscular, and I feel a flicker of unease as I realize what this looks like. I ask myself what Nico would think if he were to witness this scene: starry summer night, lightning bugs winking in the tall grass, a bottle of red wine shared with my first love, my bedroom just a few steps away. The glimmer of guilt makes me swallow thickly, and I tug self-consciously on the low neckline of Zelda’s caftan, where I know that the slight curves of my breasts are visible. The wineglasses chink together, and Wyatt turns at the sound.
“Note for you,” I say casually, setting the glasses and the bottle down on the rail and handing Wyatt the scrap of paper addressed to him. His face turns white.
“Jesus. Zelda…” He trails off helplessly. “You just found this?”
“Yep. But she probably planted it before the fire. I hadn’t looked in the cabinet for the good stuff yet, as she could have guessed. She knows my rituals. And she would have had a hard time slinking into the house to leave it during the last few days.”
“Unless she pretended to be you,” Wyatt points out. True.
“Who knows. I’m not sure what she’s really trying to accomplish. I expect she will slowly reveal herself.” I’ve got a corkscrew with me this time. I open the bottle and pour. “Do you know the wine?” I ask. Maybe it’s another clue.
“No.” He drinks a big gulp. “So. She’s been writing you.”
“At first I thought she just wanted to fuck with me,” I say.
“She doesn’t?”
“Oh, she does.” I laugh. “But it’s not just that. She’s playing a game. It’s a puzzle. She’s laying little clues, for me to figure out where she is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever play any alphabet games when you were a kid?” I ask.
“Like in the car? That game with the license plates? Where you have to point out cars that have licenses that start with each of the letters of the alphabet, in order?”
“Yeah, like that. Our father used to tell me and Zelda, when we were kids, that we were the whole alphabet to him, A to Z, and we contained the whole world between the two of us. It was a nice idea. And it spawned a series of alphabet games. Zelda loved them.”
“Okay…”
“She’s playing one now. Look.” I hold out Zelda’s phone. “She left this for me to find in her trailer, and she’s been sending me clues and emails on it. Oh, look. She’s just sent another email.” I open it.
I’m not where you think I am
“Jesus. You just got this from her?” Wyatt looks alarmed.
“Yep. She’s been sending me clues. This was the first one.” I show him the photo of her in front of Bartoletti Vineyard.
“But that’s for…B,” Wyatt says slowly.
“A is for Ava. It always is,” I explain hastily. “B is for Bartoletti. I found out about her loans and went straight to the Community Credit Union, where we opened up bank accounts when we were little. C. D is for debt, which Zelda has lots of, and E is for…eulogy.” I show him the email beginning with the capitalized E and explain about the newspaper obituary. “F is the photo that Holly posted and captioned on Facebook, ‘Fucked-up Family Fun’—I think F is for all those things, including Facebook. Like Holly told us, Zelda asked her to post it ahead of time. Then G…” I pause, thinking. “I don’t know what G is for,” I say with a frown. Wyatt squints.
“Could G be for…Grandma? Opal?” he suggests. My eyes open wider.
“It could be. She showed up before I saw the photo, but it could have been a timing issue. Zelda can’t control everything, after all….”