Even in the dark, Montgomery is beautiful.
I have no choice but to hate it. It’s the set of a movie brought to life. The houses here are gorgeous, lined neatly along each street, all of them tastefully decorated and immaculately landscaped. American flags hung with quiet pride. Cars in driveways that probably cost as much as much less impressive houses. On the main street, it’s shop after shop boasting an earthy, artisanal aesthetic that screams we’re local! Local or organic or both. Craft beer. A yoga studio. A weed dispensary. A little café hawking wheatgrass shots. There’s a poster for an outdoor concert in the park come weekend; some band I’ve never heard of. One of the streets is closed off, filled with stalls for a farmer’s market in the morning. I pass the empty high school awaiting fall term and imagine a bunch of white-teethed teenagers—Kendall, Noah, Carrie and Javi among them—pouring out of its doors and they’re all in school colors because what else would they be wearing? At one side of town, there’s a playground with a climbing wall and a splash pad and the slides and swings look so … new.
I know better than to let myself want, but whenever I got weak and gave in to the urge, the trailer I grew up in turned into a house, the lot turned into a backyard with more than enough room to lay in the sun without witness of creepy neighbors. An empty fridge turned itself full. In the summer, every sweltering room was suddenly cool and in the winter you didn’t need to bury yourself under a hundred blankets for warmth. Cold Creek’s main street would transform into a street lined with store after store after store where everything was in the miraculous price range of You Can Afford All This and More. Montgomery is almost more than I can understand because it’s so much more than it ever occurred to me to want. I hate it. I hate the people who live here. May Beth always told me I can’t do that; I can’t hate people for having more than me, but she’s wrong. I can. I do. It’s the perfect wall between myself and the kind of longing that poisons your guts and turns your insides right out.
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.
It’s a mile before I find a spot to park, a small clearing in front of a gate with a NO TRESPASSING sign leading to who knows where. If Silas Baker passes this way, he’ll see my car but it’s a gamble I have to take. I pull the keys out of the ignition, shove them in my pocket and let myself out, hastily locking the doors. It’s already warm out, one of those days you can tell is going to end in air thick enough to choke on. I take a deep breath and then I run, I run the mile back to Silas’s turnoff. By the time I’m just about there, my shirt is soaked through with sweat and I can smell myself. I need a shower. I’ve needed one, but I’ll figure that out later. I creep up the lane, where the Mercedes is in the distance, parked next to the house. Silas isn’t in the driver’s side anymore. My heart beats warily. I don’t know what this is. It’s an easy path up to the house, but I stumble into the long grass and crouch there. Bugs hover at my face, arms and legs before landing on my skin and taking a bite. The grass tickles and scratches my shins. I start forward, my feet moving clumsily along ground that feels as dry as my throat. I keep my ear out for sounds of him, movement, a car starting, but there are none.
I move so slowly it’s an eternity before I’m at the house and the best word I could use to describe the place is rotten. It’s got be over fifty years old. It’s a two-story with a screened-in porch that’s ready to fall in on itself. The front door is barely hanging on its rusty hinges and most of the first-story windows have been covered in particle board, save for one that’s empty, offering a clear view in. The windows on the second story are all uncovered and broken. The house has long been tagged with beautiful and ugly graffiti. Joey loves Andy. A naked woman stretched across the space between two windows. Painted ivy along the bottom of the foundation climbing as far as it can reach. Satan and his forked tongue. A series of watchful eyes. Carrie hates Leanne. Cocksucker.
I reach the broken window and peer in. It’s worse inside than outside, giving way to nature, weeds poking through the floorboards. There’s a hint of a threshold to another room full of garbage creeping out. I don’t see Silas but if he comes through the front door, he’ll only have to turn his head to have a clear view of me.
I listen. Nothing. I move from the window and look for the best place to position myself. I strain my neck upward to the second story and realize that just because I can’t see Silas doesn’t mean he can’t see me. Shit. I shouldn’t stay in one place long.
I’m slowly making my way to the side of the house and I’m almost there when I hear the front door open. I lose all sense of self, safety, and throw myself around it, hear my body collide with the corner of the house at the same time the door falls back into place. I bite my lip, feeling the splintered wood siding dig into my shoulders. He’s there. I know he’s there. The heaviness of the pause that follows lets me know he knows he’s not alone. And then:
“Who’s there?”
His voice is deep, a cool authority running through it and I wait, my palms pressed against the ground. His footsteps sound into all this emptiness—one step, two steps, three steps—and I realize how alone I really am. That if Silas Baker found me here, he could make me scream and only the two of us would hear it.
Mattie, in that orchard, screaming.
A light breeze moves through the grass. It almost sounds like the ocean. If I closed my eyes I could see myself there. I won’t close my eyes.
“Hello?” he asks again. Quieter now.
The wind just—stops.
And then it’s too still.
Footsteps again. The soft crunch of his shoes … working their way toward his car. I don’t exhale until I hear the engine and I don’t move until long after I’m sure he’s gone to wherever it is he goes after this. I stand slowly, the blood rushing back to my numb joints. I lean against the house for a long moment before facing it.
What were you doing here, Silas?
I make my way to the front of the house and carefully climb onto the porch, sidestepping the most rotted-looking parts of it. I hesitate before gripping the door handle, imagining it still hot from his touch even though I know that won’t be the case. I pull it open and step into the house, startling as it rattles closed behind me. I press my fist to my chest, willing myself to calm down.
Only a little daylight manages to reach the first floor, from that one broken window I was looking through. The place is musty, dusty and smells of decay. I sneeze eight times in a row, which makes my eyes water more than I can see through. I wipe them and squint into the darkness and begin my trek from room to room, stepping around and through the garbage and debris, some of it recognizable, most of it not. I’m tense. The small noises I’m making seem too loud and I keep glancing over my shoulder, worried he’ll reappear. But he doesn’t.
So far.
I spot a Coke can that looks like it could’ve been from the eighties by the design. If not then, at least some time before mine. I float through the ghost of a kitchen, a dining room and a living room before I find myself in front of a mostly intact set of stairs leading to the second floor. Sunlight pours through the broken window at the top and highlights a palm print in the dust on the old wooden banister.
This way, it whispers.
The stairs have collapsed halfway up, leaving a gap wide enough it’ll be tricky getting across it. It was probably easy for a guy as tall as Silas, who looked to be over six feet. I stretch my right leg across the gap, get my foot on the closest remaining step and use the banister to hoist myself onto it. It shakes back and forth alarmingly and the small effort takes more out of me than it should, leaves me feeling nauseous and shaky. I better get a decent meal in me soon. I know what it’s like to be hungry and I’m better at it than most people, but I’m tapping into the last of my reserves. I’m not in the habit of making myself useless.
The stairs make disconcerting noises as I trudge up the last of them, finally getting two feet on the landing. It’s much smaller up here than it looks on the outside, and a little cleaner than downstairs. The collapsed stairway is too much of a deterrent to vandals, I guess.
I look around. I don’t know where Silas would have gone from here; there are no tells like the palm print. In one bedroom there’s an empty brass bedframe and moldy sheets, broken pieces of furniture. The other looks empty but for a wall where a small painting of a forest hangs. It’s somehow survived being in this place for who knows how long. In the bathroom, the sink has been ripped out of the wall and there’s shattered glass from the mirror of a broken medicine cabinet all over the floor. A stained, cracked porcelain tub with no feet holds a broken toilet inside it. The floor looks like it’s absorbed years of water damage. I’m afraid to step on it. I rub my sweaty forehead because it’s hot in here, stifling. I pull at my shirt collar.
Why the hell would someone like Silas Baker be out here?
The painting.
I go back to the empty bedroom and stand in front of it. It’s an oil painting, unsigned, and it looks wrong. It’s too … intentional. I press my finger against the canvas’s bumpy surface and then trace it along the frame’s immaculate edge.
It’s not even dusty.
I grab the picture by its corners and set it on the floor. Behind the picture, there’s a perfect hole dug out of the wall and in the hole, there’s a small metal box with a padlock on it. I reach inside and it surprises me, how light it is. I shake it and the rustling sound my ears are met with puts me in mind of money. Is that what this is?
Silas Baker, squirreling away cash … for what?
Does it matter?
I’d take his money. I always need that.
I leave the house with the box in my hands, making that perilous jump over the gap in the stairs and step outside. When I’m outside, I search for a rock to bust the lock with because anything is breakable if you put enough force behind it. I finally find a nice, gray, jagged one with some heft, curl my hand around it and give the box a good thwack. The rock hits the lock, then hits the ground. The impact tears the skin away from my knuckles and brings tears to my eyes. I clutch it against my chest and it takes everything not to cry out.
I try again.
And again.
And again.
The sun gets farther and farther up the sky. My stomach turns, sick from the heat. The heat makes my head feel foggy. My shirt dries of sweat and soaks itself through again. The lock never breaks, but the hinge holding the lock does, and when it happens, when it tears off, I don’t even realize it. I hit the metal box again and it flips on its side, its contents spilling out.