Page 48 of The Family Plot
Now he leans back on the couch, brows pushed together, as if remembering Dad is like pressing a fresh bruise. And I know that pain, of course I do. Except my memories of Andy aren’t bruises; they’re seeping, open wounds.
“I don’t understand,” I say, and Charlie grunts.
“For Dad,” he explains, “there were two options: we leave the deer to age and die and rot—by which its beauty lessens—or we freeze it in the prime of its beauty; we mount its head on our wall.” He gestures out the doorway, in the direction of the dining room. “We eat and appreciate its meatwhile it’s still delicious. His words, not mine. I, for one, hate the taste of venison.”
He grimaces dramatically, then hunches forward again, attention back on his typewriter. As he pecks at the keys, I shift closer to read:Daniel Lighthouse’s Hunting Rifles. I look at the guns in the corner of the room. To me, they’re still just weapons, not tools with which to preserve beauty.
“What else was he into?” I ask. “I know he liked to cook—or at least hedidcook, but—”
“Dahlia, what is this?” Charlie cuts in. “You’re starting to sound like Kraft with all these questions. Next thing I know you’ll be pulling out a warrant.”
He glares at me, a challenge in his eyes, but the mention of the warrant jerks me back to last night, his hand clasped with Tate’s, their gaze tight and anxious as footsteps thudded upstairs.
“Why were you so worried when they were searching your room?” I ask.
The twitch beneath his eye is immediate. The thin skin spasms.
“I wasn’t worried,” he says. He yanks the card from the typewriter and drops it on top of the others, upsetting the tidy pile.
“I saw Tate mouth to you that they were in your room, and you were staring at each other like you were scared they’d find something.”
He shakes his head. “You must’ve been seeing things.” He sets another card into the typewriter, twisting the knob to get it perfectly in place. He rests his fingers on the keys, but he doesn’t type. “Makes sense, after the day you had.”
The day I had. As if my discovery in the shed was devastating to me alone.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” I push.
He exhales slowly, scrutinizing the blank white card.
“This is exactly what Kraft wants,” he says. “For us to turn on each other.” Behind Charlie, the living room windows rattle in their frames, jostled by the wind. “Better for us to stick together, don’t you think?”
Right now, the skin around his eyes is crinkled exactly like Andy’s. The resemblance is so remarkable that, for a moment, I struggle to breathe. But then I blink and he’s Charlie again—skinny, smirky Charlie, the corners of his lips quirked in private amusement.
“We have to trust each other,” he says. “You have to trust us. Me, Tate, Mom—we’re all you have left.”
In a way, he’s right. Without Andy—without the possibility of Andy—I’m painfully untethered, no cord around my waist to tug me through my days. It would be nice, maybe, to feel like I’m still a part of something, an essential piece of a greater whole. For so long, I’ve pushed my family away, angry that they never looked for Andy,that they left me alone in my bleary pursuit of him. But now I know: from the moment I started searching, he was already gone. Their help wouldn’t have mattered. We still would have ended up here.
Now, I wince against a rush of images: the police tape, the grave, the photographs in a concrete room. It seems impossible that I could ever stand in this house, on Lighthouse land, without feeling utterly haunted. Even harder to imagine: sharing a life with my remaining family, unshadowed by the darkness that, for years, crept unnoticed in our own backyard.
As Charlie types, the bones in his hands flick beneath his skin, same as they did when he squeezed Tate’s fingers last night. No matter what he says, I’m sure of what I saw: they stared at each other, their mouths set in grim, identical lines.
“You do trust us,” he says, shifting his eyes from the typewriter to me, “don’t you?”
I watch him for a while, waiting for a flash of Andy in his features again. Finding none, I turn to go, unable to answer him yet.
There’s a shattered eggshell on the kitchen floor. Its yolk, glossy as sunlight, oozes between the tiles. A rack of unburnt cookies cools near the oven, edges perfectly golden.
Mom’s slumped over the counter, silent and motionless, arm on the marble, forehead on her arm. I watch for the rise and fall of breath, listen for a moan or cry. When she remains as still as a grave, I step over the egg to approach her, stretching out a tentative hand.
As soon as I touch her, she jolts. “Dahlia! Oh!”
I jump back, palm pressed to my chest.
“Here!” she says.
She pirouettes toward the cookies, scoops one up with a spatula, and places it on a napkin that she pushes into my hand. I look at the chocolate chips studding the top of it, and the scent that wafts toward me is sweet and familiar, whiffs of Greta’s café. For the first time since returning home, my mouth waters; my stomach churns with hunger.
“Thanks,” I say, and I take a bite. The cookie is soft and buttery and warm. I give an appreciative groan as I lick the chocolate off my teeth. “Wow. It’s good.”
