If I were still at home, Emma would be at school. I might be pushing a loaded shopping cart through the produce aisles at H-E-B or accepting a sample of chicken salad. Maybe I’d be at home with the washing machine and the dishwasher both running while I wiped down the counters and swept the kitchen floor. Or I could be playing hooky with Felicia over a cup of coffee and a kolache, the soft yeasted roll giving way around sharp sausage-and-jalapeño filling almost as spicy as our gossip. If I want another morning like that, I will have to be strong now.
There’s a sun-room jutting from the back of the house, a kind of glassed-in porch. That door is also locked. I take a step back to scan the windows, a little surprised to be standing here, battling a growing sense of despair. All the ground-floor windows are shut tight. Then I notice it. A dormer window set in a corner, facing east. Open. And somehow I know that has to be Ava’s study.
Ava always used to open a window in her room. Our parents hated it. They complained that she was wasting money and electricity, making the AC and heat inefficient. That even with screens, insects were getting inside. That it was an unnecessary security risk. What if it rained while we were out, and her floor and curtains got wet and rotted? Once my father even unearthed a hammer and nails from somewhere and nailed the window shut. Ava’s fingers were red and raw the next morning, and I knew she’d gotten that window open again.
Now that she has her own house, I bet her window is never shut.
Even if there is an alarm system, it can’t be armed without every window closed. All I have to do is get up there. But I don’t see a ladder or step stool around, and the pine trees are too far away from the house. Even if they weren’t, they don’t look easy to climb. I walk across the yard, considering. There’s no way to spider-crawl up the wall, and when I step closer and give the drainpipe a shake, I can see it’s too flimsy to be any use either.
I have almost given up when I turn the corner to the side yard. There, someone—surely not Ava—has planted a little herb garden with brick paths in a simplified, miniature labyrinth. In addition to the plants, all dulled by the end of summer, there’s a sundial, an opalescent gazing globe on a stone pedestal, and a wrought-iron bench big enough for two people to sit.
Tall enough, I think, for my purposes, if I stand it on end.
This is reckless, crazy, the kind of thing I thought I’d never do again. I’m a nice suburban mom now, not some loony who uses garden furniture to break into a house. I almost give up. Then I remember. If I don’t do this, if I don’t find Ava, I’m going to lose Emma and Andrew. If I can’t clear my name, that life is lost to me.
It’s hell to drag the bench over to the sun-room, and I leave deep gouges in the lawn. There’s not going to be any way to cover that up. My lungs and legs are desperate for oxygen, and my fingers are on fire with the weighted edge of the iron as it cuts into my hands. I have to be careful at the end. I want to prop the bench against the house, but if I slip, if it veers too close to one of the huge glass windows, this could be a very literal break-in.
When I think it’s mostly stable, I take a deep breath and brace my hands against the wood of the house, trying to make myself as light as possible. My stomach feels hollow with fear. If I slip, I could kill myself. Worse, I could knock myself unconscious and wake when Glenn pokes me with his foot or when the police show up. My insides cringe at their imagined contempt.
As I stretch upward and start to lever myself off the second armrest, I feel the bench shift, and I leap. For a moment I’m not on the bench or the house, but then the roof of the sun-room catches me under my arms, and I lean into it.
I refuse to fall.
Pushing and scrabbling through sheer force of will, I am on the broad roof of the sun-room. Below me the bench has fallen on its back, thankfully not through a pane of glass. As I lie on my belly, I am close enough to touch the open window just in front of me. My whole body is shaking.
The gray shingles are rough and warm under my hands and cheek. I push up a little, aware of how high this is. Anyone could see me. Is someone calling the cops right now? I reach out for the windowsill and scramble through.
As my feet scrape across a table set right beneath the window, I knock books to the floor. I land heavily, loudly, and hold my breath for a beat, waiting for someone to come storming up the steps and find me. But the house is silent. My heart is pounding so heavily it’s hard to believe it makes no sound.
I was right—this is Ava’s study. There’s a straight-backed chair in front of the table, so she must use it as her desk. No drawers to search, but bookcases line three of the four walls. The fourth has a door and Ava’s mood board. At least, that’s what I guess it is. From floor to ceiling the wall beside the door is covered with bits of paper—newsprint clippings, postcards, photos, notes written in Ava’s bold, spiky script—and a few are even affixed above the door itself.
I haven’t seen her handwriting in years, but it’s burned into my memory. The open window, the familiar shapes of each letter—it’s strange to consider that some of the things I knew about her are still true. People think sisters know each other better than anyone else. Ava and I don’t have that kind of relationship, but we aren’t strangers either. Seeing her handwriting now gives me a jolt of recognition, followed by a gut-tingling sense of foreboding.
Looking around the study, I know I shouldn’t touch anything. If by some remote chance Ava really is missing and they dust for prints in here, I don’t need them finding mine.
A quick dig through my shoulder bag yields those new socks I bought at the drugstore. I didn’t let myself admit it earlier, but I was preparing for this moment. I will do whatever it takes to get my life back. Feeling ridiculous, I pull them over my hands and wipe down every incriminating surface. Just to be safe, I’ll leave these makeshift “gloves” on while I snoop around.
Straining my ears, all I hear is the eerie silence of an empty house.
I pick up the books I knocked onto the floor, but they are nothing special. Two oversized paperbacks marked as “Advance Readers,” neither of them by Ava, and an Audubon field guide to the birds of North America. I drop them back onto the desk. There’s no computer here, and I wonder if the police have taken it.
I approach the wall covered with notes. Ava was always collecting bits of paper, even as a child. Some she tore from magazines or envelopes, some she covered with words or phrases in her own scrawled handwriting, or little sketches, unintelligible to anyone but her.
Seeing this fills me with resentment. I don’t know why I come across as the crazy one. From a distance, this wall has a freaky Beautiful Mind vibe. In addition to the torn paper and Ava’s black writing, there’s the impression of the colors she chose: forest greens, Valentine reds, and rich gold tones. Once I get closer, I see things grouped together that don’t make sense.
It’s almost like two sections. The lower part is blanketed with a swirl of words and pictures that seem to go with Bloody Heart, Wild Woods. I see snippets of fairy tales, pictures by Arthur Rackham and Trina Schart Hyman, and bits of sheet music for old folk songs. The top half is less colorful, mostly black-and-white printed text and handwritten notes. I step closer and read “a psychiatrist, a lie-detector expert, and a hypnotist,” “Mindszenty,” “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape,” and “MK-ULTRA.”