Summer 1996
I wake up covered in sweat from a dream in which I’m standing across the street, watching a fire tear through the houses on Point Pleasant. The Souzas’ dogs are howling in a window, trapped, pawing at the glass.
It takes me a few seconds to realize that I’m in our living room, not my bedroom. I must have fallen asleep watching television. The running water I hear is coming from the kitchen faucet; in my dream, it was the sound of a gushing fire hydrant.
I recognize Gretchen’s footsteps in the kitchen. She lets the faucet run for a long time while she splashes water onto her face.
She opens a nearby cabinet and fumbles in the dark for a glass to fill with water. Everybody else is asleep. It’s the middle of the night.
“Hurry,” someone whispers to Gretchen. It’s Abby.
My sister starts to cry softly. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“Shh.” Abby murmurs something I can’t quite hear.
“I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” Gretchen babbles, her voice growing dangerously loud. Our mom is a light sleeper.
“We’re almost finished.”
“I’m so scared.”
“Don’t be. I’m the one who should be scared.”
Gretchen’s voice grows raspy and frantic. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Nothing can hurt me.”
Gretchen gulps down water. She struggles to calm her breathing. The ice maker in our freezer rumbles to life, startling them.
“Let’s go,” Abby whispers. “We’re going to wake someone up.”
They don’t move. Neither of them says a word for at least a minute. I peek over the edge of the sofa and see Abby leaning against the counter. Her arms are wrapped around Gretchen. My sister’s face is buried in the space between Abby’s neck and shoulder. Abby’s eyes are closed. Her makeup is streaked with tears. She reaches up with a trembling hand to touch my sister’s short hair.
“Shh,” Abby says again, repeating the sound over and over into Gretchen’s ear like a mother trying to calm her fussy child. Then she opens her eyes and looks straight at me. I expect her to yell or to walk over and smack me, but she doesn’t react at all. She just closes her eyes, smoothing Gretchen’s hair while my sister cries, and it occurs to me that Gretchen might not love any of us as much as she loves Abby.
After the two of them slip out the back door, I count to fifty in my head before slowly getting up and tiptoeing toward the kitchen. Without turning on the light, I look around the room for any clue to what they might have been doing in here.
My mind understands before my eyes can fully recognize the sight. It swiftly knocks the wind out of me, as if I’ve been shoved into a deep, dark hole and I’m still falling. Nothing else in the room seems to exist: only the stuffed bear on the table. His eyes are flat and black against his white, furry face. His torn ear is mended with a thick scar of purple thread.
His name is Boris. He was Turtle’s teddy bear, and he was in her arms when Steven took her away.