APRIL SKIES WERE clear, luminous as an aquarium, with an occasional cloud sighing across sugar-sweet blue. The Mississippi was calm as we drove into Jefferson Parish. It shimmered through the windows on our way to the airport.
“How do y’all know one another again?” Theodore asked, gesturing toward Candy.
Fritzi flung her hair out of her eyes and threw him a dull scowl from behind her sunglasses. “I already told you.”
“Shoot me, I forget.”
“She knows Connie,” I said. Fritzi was disagreeable. She had to keep readjusting the bandage on her leg, continually shifting around in discomfort before slumping, flustered, against the backseat next to me.
A month had gone by since we sat in the police station with our mother and father, but still we found ourselves jumping at the rustle of squirrels or springing laughter, a ball rolling by in the breeze. A storm sat with Fritzi; it was nearly identical on the surface to her usual broods, only absent-minded, distant, clumsy. I would come upon her standing still at the sink with a dish and cloth in her hands, heavy-eyed with daydreaming, as if her mind were stumbling into one gaping hole of thought after another.
Most days after class I slept through dinner and into the soft heat of evening. I would go about my chores in the dark, eat my meals in the dark, do my homework with the lights turned low. I read Swift and Brontë and Dickens and Tolkien, well past sunrise, bundled under weak lamplight in the den. Stories of adventurers and brave, grubby heroes.
There was unreality in the dark. In the day the stage lights all flashed on, and I could see it stripped bare, the blooddeep toxin that I now knew existed in Fritzi and me. It had swept over us, propelled us through what we had endured, and what we would be willing to endure again, for Connie.
Candy was quiet in the passenger seat. She held a giant floral canvas purse on her lap, gripping the bag’s handle, her disparaged disposition unwavering no matter how often Theodore offered her a friendly nudge as he sang off-key with the radio.
“Turn here, please, Theo,” Fritzi said.
Theodore swung the car around a curb and soon the airport arched into view. We parked and gathered Candy’s suitcases out of the trunk, while she watched from underneath her floppy sunhat, dour scarlet hair over her face. She was not taking much to Reno with her, but the bags she did pack were so heavy that we had to lug them with both hands. Fritzi insisted on helping despite needing crutches to walk, so I gave her Candy’s book bag to hoist over her shoulders. I could not help wondering what Candy had decided to take, what she could have even wanted to take from that dolled-up jail cell. I imagined she had filled her bags with marble busts and family jewellery, ceramics and brooches and unopened nineteenth-century wines, all to sell to shoddy little pawn shops, or give to casual friends in passing — dissipating the poison vapour of her family’s history in whatever small way she could.
“Your grandparents will be excited to see you, Candy,” I said.
She smiled, faint flash across her face. “It’s been a long time.”
“Too bad you can’t take your cousin with you, get him out of our hair,” Theodore said, laughing.
We entered the massive polished linoleum of the airport. A flock of stewardesses in matching uniforms streamed past us like fluttery bluebirds.
“Emma Lasalle is taking him for now,” Candy said. “For the company. Mr. Bellrose is off to Morocco with Amy. They’ll be gone for years.”
We stood on the glossy tile and watched Candy join the crowd of travellers. I took in her frail frame, her timid steps and long tawny hair. It could have been Connie standing there, passport in hand, with her head tilted up to see from under some too-big hat she had found at the flea market and loved because it reminded her of a character from a period piece movie, or made her feel like she could disappear beneath the shadow-veil of its wide brim.
Most of the time I missed Connie so much, it was like my skin was turning inside out. Even when I was not thinking of her, I was. She moved through my blood like a bird flying down the river, following my trail, a dark reflection out of reach.
On our way back to the car, Fritzi stopped.
“Could we sit a moment?” she asked. Her hand was flat in a salute against her forehead as she squinted from the bright midday sun.
“Of course,” I said. Theodore hustled ahead to bring the car around. “Does your leg hurt?”
She shrugged.
Nestled on the ground, we looked out over the parking lot gleaming with cars.
“I’ve been writing to her,” Fritzi said. “In her old journal.”
“You mean letters?”
“Thoughts. Books and movies she would like. Stuff about Mama and Daddy and you.”
“Like what?”
“Well, Mama’s wearing makeup again. And Daddy cooked breakfast yesterday, too.”
“He did? I don’t remember him doing that.”
“You were still asleep.”
My breeze-blown hair fell over my face as Fritzi reached over and took my hand. She folded it on her lap. I touched my chest in search of Connie’s necklace, before remembering that it was not there. It was a gesture of habit that I struggled to break, and each time I recalled the stone’s absence I pictured it lying in the burned-down greenhouse, alone and out of place among the charred debris.
That afternoon, when we were home and Fritzi lay on the lawn scribbling into a sketchbook, I stuck my hand under the mattress and dug out Connie’s old journal. I did not read what Fritzi had written. I grabbed a pen from the decorative inkwell on our desk, and sat cross-legged on the floor beside my and Connie’s bunk bed, its linens damply fragrant from disuse, and began to write what would be the first of many letters:
Dear Connie,
I saw a bird you would have liked by the oak tree. Yellow-gold, puffy little chest, all bravado and making lots of noise. He was tinier than his friends and a little funny, poking around on the outskirts. I named him Carnaby and crumbled some bread for him on the windowsill above the nook. I bought seeds, too, so I hope that he comes back. I’ve been checking each morning.
Broken beats knocked from the centre of my heart like a second pulse, a heart within a heart. I carried my sister’s presence, or absence, wherever I went; it was a part of me now. Another person soft around my bones.
My letter went on, unending, day after day, detailing for Connie what Fritzi said that made me laugh, how we were catching up in summer school, how Daddy was staying home more and Mama was going out. At times the letter grew angry, following a night where Dorian trespassed into my dreams and I woke up screaming, Fritzi cradling me to her chest and letting me squeeze up next to her despite the burn of skin-on-skin in the city’s worst heat.
There were sluggish entries. Mornings, many mornings, when I woke up to enormous mountains which had assembled over me while I slept, and that I slowly had to drag myself out from under. But some days the mountains were smaller, and one day I was so sure — for hours and hours — of Connie’s safety, that they fell away from my shoulders and let me walk with ease. That day the sun rested warmly on my face, and I sat on my bedroom’s uneven hardwood floor as dinnerware clattered in the kitchen directly beneath me. My hand was cramping, my penmanship beginning to slant and loosen.
I see you all over the world, wandering under shifting skies. Rumbling grey, and pristine blue, and twilight skies glassy with rain and the static-sparkle of lightning. I see you under a Tennessee sky, where smoky violet clouds rain out faded hurricanes. Or snow-starred New York, with some new name (you’ve always loved Margot), and some new look about you, living some new life. Maybe you’re far off in California (we talked about travelling to Venice Beach). Clear desert plains and a dry sun that bakes your hair citrusy gold, and where there are groomed lagoons and waterfalls by busy beach coves, and we could play make-believe, and be pirates or mermaids or draw pictures in the sand like when we were children. Fritzi said you should move somewhere dark and cold, like Alaska. She said it to be helpful. I can see it, too. No more heat headaches. Night-glitter raining across the sky.
I don’t know if it’s cruel to think like this, Connie. There’s a sagging feeling that comes with it — and a twist of pain, like your hand is tight around my heart. But sometimes I can’t help it. In the back of my mind at night, I hear a voice chugging along — any day, any day we could find her — and I see you staring into the same sky that I’m looking at, too. And you’re smiling up at a flock of birds, their fleeting rush of movement in all of that blue stillness, and you’re happy, and you’re calm, between two rustling fields, on the side of whatever road you’re taking home.