Something collides with my window.
Thud.
My eyes fly open and my head jerks up, my neck protesting the unholy angle it’s been stuck in with a quick succession of alarming cracks. My body is halfway across the backseat before I’ve got a grasp of the situation. Two kids, boys—around ten or eleven years-old—standing about five feet from the car. They’re both so underfed May Beth would’ve declared them ragamuffins. One has a basketball in his hands. He’s glaring at me. I glare back. He throws the basketball at my window. Thud. It bounces back in his hands. He takes aim again and anger surges through me. I reach across the front seat, my palm flying to the horn of the car. I press down and keep my hand there.
They run away.
I continue to let the nasal blare of the car horn fill this desolate section of neighborhood as I watch the boys’ gangly legs propel them down the street. When they turn a corner, I let it go and it’s completely silent and still. I’m parked in a cul-de-sac lined by houses in various stages of development, a large billboard advertising a community completion date that seems impossibly close. There’s a swampy-looking pond just across the way from me, little ripples in the water made by hovering bugs.
I turn the car on briefly, just to get a look at the clock. Eight a.m. Jesus. May Beth says it’s rude to bother anyone before nine a.m. and even then, dropping by at nine isn’t all that decent either, unless it’s an emergency. I rub the back of my neck and then I grab my backpack off the floor, rummaging around until I find a half-empty bottle of water, my toothbrush and toothpaste. I brush my teeth, throw open the car door, lean out and use what’s left of the water to rinse and spit. My stomach growls. I could eat. I’ve got half a bag of salt and vinegar chips stuffed in the glove box. I’ve only just grabbed it before it’s empty and I’m licking my fingers clean of the salty, sour dust. Mattie would be pissed if she saw me doing this, tell me I’d never let her get away with such an unbalanced breakfast because anything I did, she wanted to do on principle because little sisters are like that.
It’d stunt your growth, is what I’d tell her. Don’t want you to be a shrimp forever.
But Mattie would’ve ended up taller than me. You could tell just by looking at her legs. They were so much longer than the rest of her and if you stared at them a while, the rest of her started looking really strange. Arms too skinny, waist too short, hands too big. She was always looking forward to the moment she’d finally get to stare me down and Mom always warned me it was coming, always said it when Mattie and I were giving each other grief because Mom always sided with Mattie about everything. We could’ve been fighting about whether or not the sky was blue and Mattie could’ve said it was purple and Mom would’ve told her she was right just for the look on my face when she did. I can’t even put to words what it’s like to swallow down a moment like that, but I can tell you exactly how bitter it tastes.
I get dressed, swapping out my stale Henley, underwear and jeans for a rumpled pair of black leggings, a fresh pair of underwear and a T-shirt that’s clean enough. I’ll have to find a place to do laundry soon, if I can bring myself to part with the cash. I grab my brush and run it through my knotty hair slowly, just trying to pass the time, and then I pull it into a ponytail. I lick my thumb and smooth my eyebrows down. I run my tongue over my teeth and pick a flake of dead skin off my bottom lip and then I start the car and make my way through Wagner.
Wagner reminds me of a phoenix just before it dies and is reborn. The developing subdivision I spent the night in speaks to the place it’ll become after the rest of it bursts into flames; some quaint tourist hot spot rising from the ashes. For now, everywhere I look I see the kind of cracks that remind me of Cold Creek. People fighting to carve out a space for themselves that’s a little better than the one beside it, but none of it’s actually any good.
I park the car at a sorry-looking elementary school, wander across its lot and round the building to the playground at the back because across from the playground there’s a house. I shove my hands in my pockets and brace myself as I move forward. There are people on the swings, their backs to me. A man and a girl, side by side. When the man reaches his arm around the swing’s chain to put his hand on her small, bony shoulder, I slow my pace.
“You okay?” the man murmurs to her, his feet scraping across the ground from the slow drag of the swing. His voice is soft, silky with kindness. “I know it’s an adjustment, but I’m an okay guy to have around … and if you ever need to talk, I’m right here for you.”
The girl’s shoulders tense, every one of her muscles tightening at the feel of those calloused fingers against the barest parts of her body. She doesn’t say anything and she won’t say anything and I know why she won’t, why her tongue keeps itself quiet. She doesn’t trust him. His is a kindness that doesn’t reach his eyes and she might only be a meatless eleven-year-old, but she’s smart. She knows about the calm before a storm, a quiet building toward a greater chaos. Everything about this okay guy doesn’t fit quite so well into the landscape of their lives. He’s too sober, too concerned, too everywhere when she thinks she’s alone. He’s too many other things she can’t put the words to, like the way he’s touching her now, which is more familiar than it has any right to be and more intimate than should be allowed.
“It’s gonna be fine, Sadie,” the man says.
* * *
Marlee Singer.
That was the name Caddy gave me when my knife was pressed against his throat, his belt undone, hanging limply against his jeans. I felt his words against the blade. Marlee Singer. And more: Lives in Wagner. She can tell you something about Darren Marshall. I made him push his pants all the way down before I let up, just to give myself time to get away.
The gravel shifts beneath my feet as I walk the pathway leading to Marlee’s front door. There are no signs of life beyond it, no curious fluttering of curtains in the window. I knock and wait. A car goes by. I run my hand through my hair and turn back toward the road. It was 9:45 last I looked but maybe she’s still in bed. I turn back to the house, hoping for something from the second story, but there’s nothing.
I creep around the side of the house and peer into the first window I see.
A living room. I lean closer, my hands gripping the edge of the windowsill. There’s a couch. Coffee table. There are baby toys on the floor and … distantly, I hear the front door of the house open and moments after that, someone approaching. I feel the weight of their gaze on my body, sizing me up the closer they get. Sweat pearls against my forehead and under my hair, beginning its leisurely slide down the back of my neck and when I turn around, I face the woman I’m looking for.
Marlee.
“Who the hell are you?”
I’d put her close to forty, or maybe not quite. Her white-blond hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, her mouth a gash of red lipstick. High cheekbones. Her eyebrows must be white too, either that or she doesn’t have any. She’s bony, almost in the way that Mattie was bony, but not because she’s growing—from drugs or an eating disorder or not having enough money. I recognize all of these things, but I can’t always tell them apart. She’s wearing cut-offs and a T-shirt with vintage Mickey Mouse on the front and it’s knotted just under her breasts. Silver stretchmarks line her pink abdomen. I don’t see any marks on her arms, not like Caddy.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She’s got a flinty kind of voice, one I can’t imagine as a whisper or a song.
“—”
A rope around my throat. I lock on nothing for far too long. She looks like she’s a minute away from calling the police. Spit it out, I think. Just spit it out. Keith used to snap that at me when he got tired of waiting. If I was close enough, he’d grab me by the face with one hand, like he could force the words out of me if he just squeezed hard enough.
“Hello?” She waves a hand in front of my face. “What the hell are you doing sneaking around my house? Give me one reason I shouldn’t call the cops right now.”
I exhale sharply. “I’m l-looking f-for s-someone.”
Marlee puts her bony hands on her bony hips. I think I could wrap my fingers around her wrists once, twice, three times. Maybe I could break her in half, but there’s something about her that makes me think I wouldn’t get too far in the attempt, like my throat would be slit before I even knew what was happening. It’s hard not to respect that.
“In my house?” She steps forward and I resist a step back. “Let’s try this a question at a time, real slow: who the hell are you?”
“L-Lera.”
Sometimes I wonder how my mother came to put Sadie Lera together. When I asked her she’d always say, I had to call you something, didn’t I? But there has to be more to it than that. I want there to be. Even if it’s just that she liked them both enough to mash them together, despite the fact they don’t sound nice together at all.
“Lera…?”
“C-Caddy Sinclair g-gave me your n-name,” I tell her. Her eyes flash in a way I don’t like. “He said you c-could help me.”
“Did he now? Who is it you’re looking for?”
“Darren M-Marshall.”
She laughs, a brittle, unpleasant sound that makes my spine crawl.
“You’re fucking kidding me,” she says. It’s not a question. She sniffs and runs an arm across her nose. The vaguely muted sound of a baby crying inside floats out onto the street. She spares me half a glance before making her way toward it.
“Go home, girl,” she says and then she’s gone.
I hear her front door slam shut.
But I didn’t come this far to go home.
I round the house and I sit on her stoop, legs stretched in front of me and crossed at the ankles, my bag by my side. I stare at the sky and watch its forget-me-not blue deepen into something a little more, what’s the word … cerulean. I stare until the sun puts itself directly in my line of vision and forces me to look away. I let my skin bake, then burn, let my mouth dry. Is this self-harm? Feeling the pain happening to you and letting it happen?
I could die, I think, and it feels like nothing.
It’s just after three when Marlee’s door creaks open, pulling me from a hazy stupor. I don’t raise my head until she says, “Get your ass in here.”
The door slams shut behind her and I begin the painstakingly painful task of rising to my feet, my body stiff, my skin sore and sunburnt. I force myself to draw my shoulders back and walk into Marlee’s place like I own it. The house smells stale and smoky, like someone made a point to close every window just before opening a pack of Lucky Strikes.
I stand in a dim hallway before the stairs leading to the second floor. It offshoots in two different directions, the living room—which I’ve already seen—and a kitchen. That’s the room Marlee steps out of, wearing something different now, a pair of jeans with such artistic rips in the legs I can’t tell if they’re on purpose or not and a red tank top that grants a full view of her collarbone, where she has a tattoo of a knife surrounded by flowers, daring me to look at it.
“Didn’t suppose there was any other way to get you off my stoop,” Marlee says and I nod in agreement, crossing my arms. She crosses hers. “You’re all sunburnt.”
“Y-yeah.”
“That’s gonna hurt tomorrow.”
It hurts now.
“L-likely, yeah.”
She squints. “Why do you talk like that?”
“N-never heard a st-stutter before?”
“Course I have. I wanna know why, is all.”
“Just l-lucky, I guess.”
“And you’re looking for … Darren,” she says and I nod. She sighs and heads back into the kitchen. “Well, don’t just fuckin’ stand there.”
I’m in pain, my skin too tight against me. I have to force myself to a mental place past the sun’s sear just so I can move. When I finally get into the kitchen, Marlee’s there, leaning against the counter. The place is a mess, but it’s not disgusting. It just speaks to a woman who can’t be expected to wash the dishes and look after the kid she’s got at the same time. The sink is piled high with plates and bowls and glasses and sippy cups. Across from it, there’s a small kitchen table against the wall underneath a window that gives a full view of the schoolyard across the street. There are two chairs on either side of it. The stuffing is coming out of one’s seat. Everything’s sort of retro, but not by choice. It’s too hodgepodge for that. The floors are peeling laminate and the walls are beige. The window curtains are a deep forest green. It’s ugly.
“N-nice p-place.”
She knows I’m lying, but she doesn’t care. Marlee scrutinizes all there is of me to scrutinize, from the tips of my toes to the top of my head. I dig into my bag for the photo and then I hand it to her. Her fingers are long and when the scene on the eight-by-six registers, her hands shake just slightly enough to leave me wondering if I imagined it.
“Jesus,” she murmurs.
“I’m his d-daughter.”
I don’t know if I need the ruse, but I don’t want to find out I did when it’s too late. Marlee laughs, that same brittle sound I heard earlier. She hands the picture back to me and opens a drawer, pulls out a pack of smokes. She lights up, relishing that first hit of nicotine. When she inhales, all the lines around her mouth are cast in sharp relief.
“You’re telling me Darren Marshall’s got a daughter.” Her lipstick leaves a mark on the cigarette’s filter. I see the struggle on her face, the words not sitting quite right. She takes two more puffs and then coughs and I swear I can hear whatever it is she can’t shift out of her lungs settling there, accumulating. “And that’s you.”
“Sure.”
“The little one too? She belong to him?”
“N-no.”
“You want a drink or something?”
I nod. I want something to drink and more than that, something to eat. She opens her fridge and hands me a Coke. The shock of cold aluminum against my palm is the best thing I’ve felt for hours. I pop the tab open with a satisfying hiss and listen to the fizz.
“He must not have been in your life long,” she says.
“L-long enough.”
“He’s really your father?” She waits until I’m mid-drink before she asks. I let the carbon bubble in my mouth, a nice, fleeting sensation. “… Darren.”
“Why d-do you say his n-name like th-that?”
It sounds alien on her tongue, something her voice is fighting against.
Before she can answer, that soft child cry I heard earlier fills the house from upstairs. Marlee says shit, tosses her cigarette in the sink and runs the water over it. She points to one of the chairs. “Park your ass there. I’ll be right back.” And she doesn’t move until I park my ass. She hurries out of the room and tells me don’t even think about taking anything over her shoulder as she goes. That kind of warning is enough to make me want to reconsider the whole place because up until she said that, nothing here struck me as worth taking. There are bills on the table, though. Past-due notices. Seeing them puts a knot in my stomach the size of a grapefruit. That sort of dread you don’t ever forget once you’ve known it. The crushing panic of needing money you don’t have.
She comes back a few moments later with a baby boy on her hip. He’s got the same white-blond hair as his mama, shaped into an unfortunate bowl cut. His eyes are bluer than the sky outside and he’s got a button nose planted on the roundest face I’ve ever seen. Pudgy arms and legs. I guess he’s where all the grocery money goes. He’s squirming all over the place until he sees me and buries his head in Marlee’s side, suddenly stranger-shy. Marlee points to the high chair folded in the corner.
“Unfold that for me?”
Five minutes later, the baby’s in his chair and Marlee’s rooting around her fridge again. Her son keeps his eyes on me and it’s creepy in the same way those evil kids in Village of the Damned are creepy. The only baby I’ve ever really liked was Mattie. In all my days, I’ve never seen one as cute as she was. She was so round and soft and sweet. She had a little tuft of blond hair right at the center of her head, and that was all the hair she had for the longest time. It looked just like a toupee. Made me laugh. And her tiny hands were always in fists, like she was spoiling for a fight, waiting for the day she’d be old enough to hit something. She loved clutching each of my fingers in this surprisingly strong grip. She was so strong.
She was perfect.
“W-what’s his n-name?”
“Breckin.”
She gets him settled in and then grabs some applesauce and spoons it into his mouth. He burbles and half of it ends up down his shirt. This makes Marlee laugh, but it’s different than the laughter I’ve heard so far. It’s indulgent, kind. It’s the nicest her voice has sounded to me since I got here. She murmurs some nonsense at him.
“Where’s D-Darren?”
May Beth said I can be off-putting sometimes, the way I cut straight through the bullshit and right to the bone when I’ve got my sights set on something—that I don’t spend enough time on the lead-in to make things comfortable, I guess. I’ve decided the only thing someone can do about that is either love it or hate it because I’m not changing it. From the look on her face, I can’t tell if Marlee hates it. Her smile fades, but she keeps her eyes on Breckin.
“Kid,” she says, and I really wish people would stop calling me kid. “I don’t know the first thing about you and you think I should tell you anything I know about him?”
“M-more or less.”
She spoons more applesauce into Breckin’s mouth.
“What you want him for?”
“I w-want to k-kill him.”
The spoon freezes an inch from Breckin’s face and his confusion is immediate. He slaps his hands on his high chair tray, calling Marlee’s attention back to him. She dips the spoon into his mouth and then sets it all aside.
“It’s a j-joke,” I say.
“Right,” she says back.
I pick at the tab of the Coke can, letting it catch under my nail before pinging back into place. She says, “I want another cigarette.”
“S-so have one.”
“I don’t smoke around the baby.”
But in the end, she does. She moves herself to the corner of the kitchen and lights up again, carefully turning her face away from Breckin every time she exhales, like it will make a difference. She says, “He hasn’t been around in a couple years. Used to always be around.”
“At R—at Ray’s.”
“Sometimes.” She fidgets, bites her lip. “Where are you from, anyway?”
“D-doesn’t matter.”
She rolls her eyes. “Come on, kid. Give me something.”
“—” I set the Coke down. “I-I’m not a—I’m not a kid.”
She brings the cigarette to her mouth, chewing on her knuckle while smoke drifts lazily around her face. Breckin doesn’t seem put out over the impromptu end of snack time. He’s babbling to himself, enthralled with the sound of his own voice.
“They’re tearing this whole town down,” she says after a minute. “They got this new development coming.” She takes another drag, inhales so deeply, I fleetingly imagine her cancered future. “It’s stupid. I don’t know what they’re trying at. This isn’t like the rest of the state, you know? Fuckin’ … Whole Foods and yoga … and if they pull it off, I can’t afford to live here when it’s a shithole. I don’t know where I’d go.”
“C-Cold Creek.”
“What?”
“W-where I’m from.”
“Never heard of it.” She squints. “You know what he’s about?”
“Y-yeah,” I say. I know it better than you.
I take another sip of the Coke and it’s starting to taste too sweet. I wish the air were moving around in here. Marlee takes another drag of her smoke and Breckin waves his hands around and I feel like this has happened a hundred times before me, that I’ve seen all there is to see of their lives. I look down at myself and the fire-red parts of my chest overwhelm me with the feeling that I want to be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
“You know his name’s not Darren?” she asks. I nod. “I mean, that’s what he went by when he was living here, but I never got used to sayin’ it.”
“W-what’s h-his real name?”
“We’ll just keep it Darren for now,” she says.
“He was K-Keith w-when I knew him.”
“Huh.” She chews her lip. “That’s not his name either.”
“H-how d-d—how do you know?”
“Because my brother used to go to school with him. I was seven years behind them both. Time I finished, they were long gone. I moved out here, got hitched, got divorced and my brother, well. He was making a whole lot more of himself.”
“H-how’d he d-do that?”
People around here hardly ever seem to do that.
“My parents had enough money for one kid and ended up with two.” Marlee shrugs. “He was the boy. He was the one they pinned all their hopes on, so he got more. He got college.”
“W-what was … he like?” I can’t seem to resist asking. “B-back then?”
She looks away. “He was poor as most of the rest of us. But he was quiet. Sort of dirty too, like he didn’t look after himself, like hygiene-wise. He was weird … he did some weird shit, and he got his ass kicked a lot for it. Bullied, I guess. And his parents—they were a mess. His dad would drink and go at him with a belt.”
“Oh,” I say.
She clears her throat. “By high school, my brother—thing you have to understand about my brother is he was a golden boy in every sense of the word—he took Darren under his wing, sort of, just started making a point of being nice to him. When I asked why, he said it was important to set that kind of example because we’re no better or worse than the people we walk amongst.” She pauses. “He was a real asshole, my brother, in case that didn’t make it obvious. Anyway, the other kids, they eased off and Darren and my brother became inseparable … it was sorta like—you’re probably too young for that cartoon about the little dog chasin’ after the big dog? Hell, I am too. But it was like that. Darren was always at my brother’s heels. We’d have him at our house for dinner all the time…” She trails off. “He gave me my first kiss. I was ten and he was seventeen. That’s what Darren was like back then.”
“H-how’d he end up here in W-Wagner? How long ago was th-that?”
She shrugs. “It was a couple years. He was just passing through. He knew I lived here because he and my brother keep in touch. Anyway, he stopped by and he seemed different, little more put together, nothing like he was when he was…” She looks at the floor. “He was only supposed to be here for dinner and he ended up staying a lot longer.”
“Mama,” Breckin says plaintively, and Marlee moves to him, resting her hand on his head. She turns to me. “Once he knew he was staying, he told me he was going by Darren Marshall now and if I could play along, that’d be swell.”
“H-he say why?”
Breckin giggles. She shakes her head.
“And you st-still l-let him stay?”
I guess I don’t do so well keeping the disgust out of my voice, because she tenses, raising her hand from her son’s head. She waits a minute, like she expects me to push it, and part of me feels young enough to want to. I used to be an age where I believed I could talk my mother out of her worst decisions, the drinking, drugs, certain men she’d bring home to bed. Keith. Sometimes, I think about that Sadie, begging her mother to save her from … her mother.
I hate that version of myself.
“I don’t gotta answer to you. But yeah, I did.” She shakes her head a little, her brow furrowing. “You know, all the time I was with him, Darren never said he had a kid. My brother never mentioned it either. He would’ve known.”
“I’m n-not lying t-to you,” I lie. She just looks at me and I’m afraid if she does that for too long, she’ll see the truth somehow. “So w-what h-happened?”
“We were together a few months. He’d sit right where you’re sitting, every morning, and he’d have his coffee looking out that window.”
I follow her gaze to the schoolyard. There are a couple of women at the playground now, pushing their kids, or their charges, on the swings. I imagine that place during the school year, the grounds teeming with children, running, playing, laughing, under the watchful eye of the man at the kitchen table.
“I was doing the laundry,” Marlee says. “Cleaning out his jeans pockets before I threw ’em in the wash and I found this picture … this old, worn picture—an old Polaroid. It was…” She closes her eyes briefly and her forehead creases, like she can see it there, behind her eyes, and she wishes she could see anything else. “I don’t want to get into it, but it was the kind of thing you can’t explain or defend.” She takes a shuddering breath out and opens her eyes. “People don’t change. They just get better at hiding who they really are. I turned him out the same day. I wanted nothing to do with it then and I want nothing to do with it now.”
She lifts Breckin from his high chair, pressing her face into his baby neck. I scratch at my chest and immediately regret the abuse of my own gentle touch. My skin is on fire.
“You h-hear of him since? Where he m-might be?”
“No.”
“W-what about your b-brother?”
“I don’t talk to my brother anymore,” she says tightly. “He’s of the opinion that how I treated Darren was wrong and we haven’t spoken since.”
“P-please—”
“Look, I’m sorry for whatever it is brought you here,” Marlee says, “and I feel bad enough for you that I was willing to tell you that much. But I got a kid and I can’t afford to get mixed up in whatever…” She waves her hands. “Whatever this is.”
“—”
She watches me struggle.
“P-please,” is all I finally manage.
She closes her eyes and Breckin sits between us, oblivious.
“Jack Hersh. That’s his real name. Do something with that.”
“H-he d-doesn’t go by it! That’s n-not gonna get me anywhere!”
“Maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world,” she snaps. “You shouldn’t be chasing after someone that fucking sick in the soul, father or not.” She eyes go wide. “Did he hurt you?”
“Yes,” I say, flat and clean. “And m-my sister.”
“Well, I’m sorry.” She pauses. “But I can’t help you.”
It should earn me something but it doesn’t. You can’t buy people with your pain. They’ll just want away from it. I pick up one of her past-due envelopes and turn it slowly in my hands.
“Hey—put that down,” she says. “I told you. I don’t know where he is now.”
I slip the bill out, take a look at the number and she can’t stop me because her arms are too full of baby. Not that one. Too high. I reach for another bill, this one outside of its envelope and take a look at the number. That—that’s a number I can do.
Just because you can’t buy people with your pain—well. It doesn’t mean you can’t still buy them.
I hold it up and try again:
“W-what about y-your b-brother?”