Dead Letters

by Caite Dolan-Leach

  So you twiddled your thumbs and kept yourself at arm’s length and just waited for something to happen so you could throw up your hands and say, “Ha! I knew it was doomed, I knew I was right to emotionally protect myself! Shove off, you cad!” Just like our fucking mother, who loved Marlon more than anything but literally drove him off the farm because she was so certain everything would eventually go to shit anyway. Maybe I’m finessing that narrative a little; another email and we’ll do the whole Nadine and Marlon saga. It is useful for our purposes here merely to point out that you were doing the only thing that made sense to you, as a product of that particular shitshow, and I see why you did what you did. But I thought I was maybe helping you (stop scoffing). I thought if you were forced to acknowledge how upset you were that Wyatt was with someone else, you would maybe have to acknowledge Wyatt himself. To acknowledge that whatever was between you wasn’t paper-thin, not anymore, that you’d played along with the game too long and now it meant something. I wanted that for him too. I may not harbor the same repressed sexual longing for him that you have all these years, but I grew up with the boy, too, and he was around quite a bit. I care for the kid, and I really wanted him to stop moping, to either go for it (you) or move on. Not that I’m claiming altruism. I would never. Not ever. And then That Night happened and everything was moot after that, wasn’t it.

  Our birthday is in 10 days. Come home, would you? Or I’ll end up doing something crazy.

  Your Ever-Apologetic, Well-Intentioned, but Deeply

  Fucked-Up Sister,

  Z is for Zelda

  —

  I glare at Wyatt from the doorway of the trailer, my heart skipping in harrowed beats. I haven’t seen him in nearly two years, and he looks good. Dark hair cropped close, pretty brown eyes wide and warm. His biceps certainly haven’t gone anywhere in the last year or two. He’s wearing jeans and a frayed T-shirt; no one dresses well in this part of the world, and Wyatt has always been negligent of anything fashion-conscious. I feel a flash of guilt, thinking of Nico, who always wears trim button-down shirts and pressed trousers. Nico wears scarves, for chrissakes. He owns not just one but multiple scarves, scarves for different occasions, different types of Parisian precipitation. He is nothing like Wyatt, whose substantial arms are already brown and threaded with muscle, even this early in the summer. I swallow hard.

  “Jeez, Ava,” Wyatt says, his hands raised in surprise. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Didn’t expect anyone to catch you over here?” I’d like to be less nasty, but I’m still so pissed. I thought the hurt had faded in Paris, only here it is, raw and weeping pus.

  “No, not really. I thought I’d just come and…look around. See if everything was okay over here. I know Zelda always leaves the doors unlocked, and she’d been hanging out with some unsavory characters.” Wyatt loves noir films. Unironically. He uses terms like “unsavory characters” and “in a tight spot.” I suspect he’s drawn to the notion of integrity, a serious man doing his job without compromising.

  “The cops didn’t even have to break in. Helpful, our Zelda was.”

  He flinches. “She wasn’t, and you know it,” he says shortly, and I can’t help but chuckle.

  “No. The whole thing is rather suspicious. But fuck. It’s…Zelda.” I sit down suddenly, on the steps, unable to stand for another second. Looking at Wyatt, seeing his face lined with grief and alarm, I believe for the first time that Zelda might actually be dead. He looks like he believes it, and he’s seen a bit more of her in the last two years than I have. Wyatt moves toward me, but I glare at him and he stops, awkwardly cramming his hands into his pockets. His shoulders are huge.

  “Will there be a funeral, Ava?” he asks softly, like he doesn’t want to rile me.

  “We have to wait for the death certificate, or the coroner’s report, I guess. She hasn’t been officially ruled dead. I think they’re sifting through the ashes for her teeth, or something. But yeah, as soon as that happens, there will be. My dad won’t want to stay forever and I…” I don’t want to talk about Paris. “And I think it would be better to just get it over with. Not drag this out.”

  “I’d like to help, if I can. With all the details, the food.”

  “Wyatt Darling, always the good guy.”

  “No. Not always.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Ava…it’s really good to see you. Even like this.” I nod. I glance at him, scanning his face and body for subtext.

  I think we became friends because I never could tell what Wyatt was thinking, I never actually knew. I lived in a house with someone who threw every item of clothing you owned onto the lawn if you spilled iced tea in the dining room. I had been so attracted to someone who just looked at me sleepily and made me wonder what was going on.

  Now the mystery feels old. I look up at him, elbows propped on my knees, trying to think of something to say. The quiet stretches uncomfortably. Wyatt scuffs the dirt with his farm-boy boots, grubby, worn-in, and practical.

  “I’ve really missed you,” he says after a minute. He pauses uncertainly. “Zelda and I…that’s what we mostly talked about, you know, missing you.”

  “How nice that you were able to bond. You know Zelda was fucking with you, right? Or, rather, fucking with me by fucking you?”

  “I thought so at first, yeah.” Wyatt nods agreeably, slowly, not taking the bait. “But the last few months, I started to think maybe not. She was really lonely, your sister.” He’s achingly earnest, and I can’t help feeling a twist of guilt.

  “Zelda didn’t experience emotions like ‘loneliness.’ Jealousy maybe, and certainly revenge.”

  “Revenge isn’t an emotion. Vengefulness?” Wyatt says playfully. I roll my eyes. Wyatt is still standing, with his hands in his pockets, looking like he wants to sit down on the step next to me. I don’t offer.

  “Did you want to get anything in particular?” I ask, waving at the trailer behind me. “Did you leave behind a pair of boxers or something? Boxers, right? You used to wear boxers.”

  “Ava, we hadn’t—”

  “I really don’t want details. I don’t care how many times you fucked. How vulnerable you both felt because I left, or how comforted you were by each other. That is your business, and hers. Get whatever you came for and go,” I snap, my patience gone. Wyatt looks at me, waiting for me to soften. Before everything happened between him and Zelda, this outburst would have shocked him; he would have blushed, ducked his shoulders, and mumbled an apology. Clearly, my sister has had a toughening influence on him. When I say nothing and refuse to meet his eyes, he shrugs and snakes by me to enter the trailer. As his leg brushes my shoulder, I smell his familiar aroma: clean denim, lemon soap, evaporated sweat, grapevines, dirt. I shut my eyes. How have we gotten here?

  I hear Wyatt rustling in the trailer for a few moments, and he reemerges with a big sweatshirt in his arms that I recognize as his, and a puzzled expression on his face.

  “Where’s Zelda’s phone?” he asks. I crane my head to squint back at him.

  “Cops took it.”

  “Both of them?”

  I look up at him sharply. “What do you mean, both of them?”

  “For the past month or so she’d been dragging around a burner phone, you know, one of those cheap TracFones? She mostly texted with it, but she was all secretive whenever she took it out. Refused to answer questions, made coy little comments. I just figured she was baiting me.” Wyatt shrugs again. The boy is too laid-back for his own good: the perfect toy for Zelda. And me.

  “Well, the cops said they took the phone. I don’t know which phone they meant. I didn’t ask. Too busy imagining her skin crisping up as the barn caved in on her.”

  Wyatt just raises his eyebrows, scanning my face. He seems uncharacteristically watchful, as though he’s inspecting me for the first time and finds me strange. Zelda’s iPhone feels gigantic in my pocket, and it’s hard to believe that he can’t see its distinctive shape from where he’s
standing behind me.

  “If you find it, can you let me know?” He peers at my face. “I’d like to check her call history. She was cagey that night. Canceled plans with me. I was supposed to come over to the big house, but she called it off, and sounded all sketchy on the phone. I’m worried she might have been using again.”

  “Again?” I ask, startled. Eyebrow raised, he looks at me with that same scrutiny, so un-Wyatt-like. He’s wary of me, no longer worshipful. I realize in the space of a breath that I have hurt him, that he is looking at me that way because I caused him damage. Zelda’s the destructive one, not me, I feel like protesting. But that’s not true anymore, is it? Wyatt’s face is proof of that.

  “Ava, you’ve been gone a long time. Zelda was getting desperate. Things on Silenus have been, well, rough and she…” He trails off, but I can hear the blame in his voice.

  “She was alone,” I finish. “I wasn’t here with her.”

  “She’s had a weird few months. She needed…someone.”

  “She had you.”

  “I’ve helped a bit with the vineyard side of things, but she needed something else. She knew that I—” He pauses, considering his words. “She knew that I wanted you, always have and always will. And having me around sometimes made it worse for her, that you weren’t here,” he finishes simply.

  I don’t know what to say.

  “Anyway,” he goes on, “I’m glad I found you here. I was going to stop by your house next, make sure you were okay.”

  Again, I say nothing.

  “Well, Ava? Are you?”

  “I’ll be fine.” I wave my hand dismissively. I can’t talk to Wyatt about how I am. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  “You’ve always been tough,” he answers. “I just was thinking—well, I can’t imagine what it’s like for you. To lose her.” His throat sounds raw, and as I look at those beautiful brown eyes of his, I realize he’s been crying recently, and may resume doing so shortly. He’s grieving. I’m suddenly, savagely jealous. He has spent the day weeping over my sister, missing her, imagining a life without her. Irrationally, unforgivably, I want him to still think only and always of me.

  “Will you be okay? You seem rather distraught,” I snipe.

  “Jesus, of course I’m distraught! I’ve known that girl most of my life. She was there during—everything. Christ, I thought we’d maybe be family someday.” He shakes his head as though he can’t really believe me. I don’t like being judged by Wyatt. Not having him on my side.

  “And of course, you were sleeping with her for a while there.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Ava! How many times do I have to say it? We didn’t want each other that way. It was just…a mistake,” he finishes weakly, as though he physically can’t keep trying to convince me. He seems so heavy, so sad. I want to comfort him, but also to punish him. Once upon a time, if I had seen him in this much pain, I would have wrapped my arms around his ribs, kissed his temple, said anything to make him smile. Now I do nothing, unable to go toward him.

  “You should leave that here,” I manage, pointing at the high school track sweatshirt. Wyatt ran the thousand meters at Watkins Glen High, and I know the back of the shirt will say “Darling” in white letters, and the front will have “Senecas,” the name of the team, scrawled across it. There is a racist drawing of a Native American in a headdress beneath the letters. This sweatshirt reminds me, of course, of our first time together.

  —

  It was a chilly day in early, early spring. We were in twelfth grade. Wyatt had pulled a muscle at track practice and was staying home from school, sprawled on the couch watching movies. I texted him during the midmorning break to see how he was, and he responded, Lonely. Come visit me? I nearly wrote back with my usual deflection, something sarcastic or insincere, but as Zelda and I milled around the hallway before the third-period bell rang, I paused.

  “I’m going to go over to Wyatt’s,” I said, almost testing the idea out.

  “Oh?” Zelda responded archly. “To take his temperature and tend to his wounds?”

  “Something like that.” I texted him back: Ok, will dodge the rest of my classes. Be there in a bit. Zelda stared at me, trying to determine whether I was joking. “I’m serious. I’m going to go check on him.”

  “The Ice Princess caves at last!” she cooed. “I sincerely thought Wyatt Darling would expire from blue balls before you ever allowed him to even hope.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. True, I had been keeping Wyatt pretty solidly in the friend zone for years now, redirecting his amorous intentions just enough to prevent him from abandoning all optimism. But suddenly, I was tired of it. Tired of just being wanted. I wanted to want.

  “Go, skedaddle, ye wee harlot!” Zelda shrieked.

  “What about my classes?” I paused, already talking myself out of it.

  “I’ll figure it out. Just scram, before you change your mind. God bless, that boy can finally wipe that hungry look off his face and we can all have a minute of peace.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Completely! Go!” Zelda shoved me toward the parking lot, thrusting her recently acquired truck keys into my hands. “I’ll cover for you.” I broke into a silly grin and legged it out the front door of the high school.

  I let myself in through the front door of the Darlings’ and climbed the stairs to his room. We had spent hours in that room, listening to music, talking, watching movies. Sometimes with Zelda, sometimes just the two of us. Wyatt was propped up on pillows in his bed, his bum leg elevated. He wore only his pajama bottoms, and I couldn’t help staring at his hard abdomen.

  “Hi,” I said, lacking inspiration.

  “Hi,” he answered softly. I went and stood next to the bed. I reached out and put my hand on his chest, and Wyatt closed his eyes and swallowed noticeably. I pulled my T-shirt over my head and unhooked my bra, so that I stood there in just my jeans.

  “Oh, God. Ava,” Wyatt managed, and reached for me.

  “No, you’re unwell. You’d better let me do the work,” I said, pushing him back and then unbuttoning my jeans.

  Afterward, I lay on his chest, absently flicking his nipple with my fingernail.

  “Careful, girl, or you’ll start something up again,” Wyatt said into my snarled hair.

  “Maybe that’s what I have in mind.”

  “Lord, you have to give me a minute to recover.” He laughed. “I’m a poor, sick man! I need sustenance.”

  “Very well. I’m here to care for you, after all. Florence Nightingale, that’s me.” I rolled across his naked torso, slowly, and stood stark naked in his bedroom. I fished his sweatshirt off the floor and pulled it over my head. It came down nearly to my knees.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Wyatt whispered. I twirled around and skipped out of the room to go forage for something downstairs, returning with some sort of homemade cheese (compliments of Dora, Wyatt’s mom) and cold beers. We spent the rest of the day in Wyatt’s bed, watching from beneath his blanket as the March sleet splattered the windows. Cozy, warm. And whole.

  —

  “I’ll put it back,” I say, pointing to the sweatshirt. “The cops said they were going to come back and search the trailer again. It might look weird if you remove, you know, evidence.”

  Wyatt looks surprised. “Do they think there might be foul play?”

  “Isn’t there always foul play, with Zelda?” I say wearily. He smiles his old lopsided smile, and it hurts me. I need him to leave. He hands me the sweatshirt wordlessly and bounds down the trailer steps. He unthinkingly skips the last step, which is too close to the ground and always makes for an awkward dismount if you don’t expect it. He’s climbed these stairs a few times before. Zelda fucked up the measurements and never went back to fix it. I’m the perfectionist, not Zelda. I hold the sweatshirt in my arms as Wyatt walks back toward his truck, parked next to Zelda’s. The trucks look like twins.

  “Ava, you call me, okay? We’re not done talking.” It sounds almost
like an order, chiding. That new note of judgment. I nod. I manage to wait until he has turned the truck around and driven off before I burst into frenzied, racking tears.

  —

  I sit on the steps of the trailer, going to pieces in a theatrical display that would make Zelda proud. I cried when I got my mother’s email, but in delicate, ladylike shudders, while Nico held me and rubbed my back like I was a sleeping cat. Those first tears were tears of dismay at my family: my demented mother, who chose to get ahold of me that way; my absent father, who should have been there; my lunatic sister, who was fucking with all of us. But now I cried out of guilt. Because I had left, twice now, and with disastrous effect both times. I cried because I had left Zelda stuck here, tethered to the vines and to our mother like some maiden sacrifice, while I had flounced across Paris, happily bumming Gauloises cigarettes all the while. I had left her with a failing vineyard and an ailing parent, and I had refused even to speak to her. Wyatt was right; she had needed me, and I’d been off having a hissy fit because she’d slept with someone I had. And what if I had now lost both of them?

  I had always cared about possession; as a girl, I’d hoarded the few dolls and stuffed animals I owned (my mother thought most toys were tacky and amounted to bribery, and she felt that it demeaned her to have to bribe a five-year-old). I was obsessed with their being “mine.” I would stack them on my neatly made bed, and anyone who wanted to touch them would have to ask my permission, which I only occasionally granted. Zelda, on the other hand, barely cared. Our grandmother Opal gave us American Girl dolls when we were seven or eight; I chose Josefina, who was a recent addition to the American Girl family (a gesture of racial diversity after the dazzling whiteness of Kirsten, Samantha, and Molly), because she most closely resembled me and Zelda. Amazing how “vaguely Slavic” and “Mexican” looked the same in the American Girl universe. Zelda went for Addy, the escaped slave doll, whose story Zelda immediately replaced with that of “Amazon warrior queen.” When Zelda and Addy kidnapped Josefina during a tribal raid, I took every one of Zelda’s stuffed animals and brought them outside (I had seen my mother do this with our belongings countless times—leave a sweater on the floor, it ends up in the yard). I dug a hole in our front yard and buried them all in shallow graves under the sparse grass, a plushy cemetery.