The Almost Sisters

  I hoped it had been. I hoped it had been there for a century or more, a bad legacy passed down to Birchie from someone long dead. My storyteller’s brain was hunting narrative. Ellis Birch was by all accounts an overprotective father, and also overproud. Perhaps these were the bones of Birchie’s missing suitor, the one who was supposedly run off to the state line. Maybe they were older still, the remains of a Yankee soldier, killed during the throes of Reconstruction. They could have traveled in this trunk with Ethan Birch, the real reason he fled Charleston and founded Birchville. If this was only a box of bad history, then it would all be over soon. Remains that old required anthropologists, not cops.

  All I had to do was wait. Let Frank get the story. He would tell me, and tell the police, too, in the best frame possible. The bones were something Birchie knew of, that was clear, but I could not believe for even a breath that they were a thing that Birchie did.

  The kids were still in the kitchen. I could hear the clatter of dishes and the buzz of young voices. Birchie and Wattie were alone in the living room. They sat primly side by side on one of the Victorian love seats.

  “Are you okay?” I asked Birchie, going right to her and kneeling.

  “I suppose. Such a mess!” she said. “I’m so sorry. I never thought—”

  “Hush, now.” I kissed her. “Don’t apologize. Don’t talk about it at all. Frank says not to even talk to me, okay?”

  She nodded, but I looked into her bright blue eyes until I was sure that she was there and hearing me. I turned to Wattie, taking her hand in mine. I could feel her own live bones, intricate and frail, and they seemed more fragile than her weathered skin.

  “You and me, we have to get on the same page now,” I told her.

  “I’ve been on your page since the day that you were born, sugar,” Wattie said, but then she added tartly, “Though all this week I wondered if you might be illiterate. Don’t worry. I’m not going to let her say a word.”

  “Good,” I said, though my heart sank. If Wattie didn’t want her to talk, that meant Birchie had plenty more to say. I wasn’t asking questions, and I was still learning too much.

  Keeping Birchie quiet would take both of us. The Fish Fry proved that Birchie’s illness had progressed past Wattie’s powers to thoroughly contain it; Birchie might at any minute say the world’s least convenient truths. Or worse, she might say self-incriminating nonsense. She did have Lewy bodies. She saw awful rabbits humping all over the town. What if the Lewy bodies made her remember things that never were?

  I fixed Wattie with a stern gaze and said, “That trunk belongs to Birchie?”

  “I thought we weren’t going to talk about this,” Wattie said.

  “I’m making sure we’re protecting the right person. Is it hers?”

  Wattie’s wide, full mouth compressed, and her sparse, white eyebrows knit, but after a moment she ducked her chin in a nod.

  “Okay. Hear me now,” I said, sounding just like Frank. “If the police ask, you say you only helped Birchie move the trunk because she asked you. I’m sure she was very agitated due to her illness. The illness that means she can’t be held responsible for anything. So you probably agreed to help her move that trunk with no idea what was in there.”

  Wattie’s nostrils flared. “My mother didn’t raise me to be a liar.”

  “Well, you’ve gotten pretty good at it all on your own, then,” I said sharply, but my heart sank. Of course Birchie had told Wattie what was in the trunk. She told Wattie everything. “Okay, that was cheap, but I had no idea Birchie was ill until last week, so maybe I was owed that shot.” She looked away, but I saw that my words had landed with her. “For the record? My mother didn’t raise me to be a liar either. Lucky for you, I don’t always take her good advice.”

  “Hmf. The world would be a better place if we all listened to our mothers—and our grannies, too,” Wattie said.

  “Maybe. Did your mother teach you how to keep your mouth shut?”

  “You’re a caution, girl,” Wattie said, smiling a little in spite of everything. “You spent half your childhood in that attic, and you never knew he was up there, did you? It’s fair to say that I know how to keep things to myself.”

  I shook my head. “Hush, now. We let Frank talk, and we sit tight.” But the information sank in anyway. He. The person in the attic was a he. A he was so much more human than an it, and worse, Wattie knew that the remains were male. Still, it didn’t mean she had known the him personally, or that she had had anything to do with his death or his interment in a sea trunk. “Don’t say another word. Frank believes it’s better if I don’t know who’s in there.”

  “I told you already,” Birchie piped up, agitated.

  “Birchie, please, please, please stop talking,” I said, reaching across Wattie to pat at her.

  “I told you the first night you were here,” Birchie insisted. “I told you at dinner.”

  It was morning, Birchie’s best time, and she sounded so certain. Nevertheless, I was pretty sure we hadn’t discussed who might or might not be dead up in her attic over the roasted game hens and fresh tomato salad.

  “I can’t remember how to make that cornbread,” Wattie said, sudden and loud. Birchie started and looked at her, blinking. “I can’t remember how much flour and how much cornmeal.”

  “Two to one,” Birchie said. “Two to one, you know that. And three good-size fresh eggs.”

  Wattie shook her head. “You better start at the beginning.”

  Birchie seemed to sink back into herself. “I need to get your mother’s bowl, because in that bowl we can eyeball how high to put the flour and such. I keep it second bottom cabinet, left of the stove. . . .” As Birchie walked us through the process of making her signature dish, I realized that Wattie had done this before. It was a coping mechanism for Lewy bodies, taking Birchie step by step through something that was second nature. Something she remembered in her hands and nose and mouth, not just her mind.

  Lavender came in with a tray full of hot cocoa and a worried face.

  “Where are Hugh and Jeffrey?” I asked.

  “Eating fifty more cinnamon rolls. They are going to puke if they don’t stop.” She set the tray down. “Can we have the laptop back? We were doing something.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  It was still sitting on the coffee table. She picked it up and turned to go, saying, “And when you get a second, can you call my mom? I told her you were busy with the cops, but she’s having kittens.”

  “You called Rachel?” I said. I didn’t need Lavender’s confirming nod. When things went to shit, girls called their mothers. My own mom smelled like chamomile and honey, and I half wanted to run home, crawl into her lap, and abdicate all pretense of adulthood. Instead, I had to call Rachel. She must be foaming. “Jesus, please us.”

  “Leia! Mind how you use the name of our Lord,” said my grandmother. Who had kept a dead body in her attic for God only knew how long.

  “How much grease goes in the skillet?” Wattie asked, insistent, pulling Birchie’s attention.

  “A goodly scoop. Use the spoon I keep right by the coffee can,” Birchie said, back on track.

  I touched Wattie’s shoulder as a thank-you and then went upstairs. I had to explain to Rachel how it was I’d brought her only child to a house that had a body hidden in the eaves. An old, old body, I would need to emphasize. Just bones, really. When did a person stop being a body and become a piece of history? Perhaps when there was no one left alive who loved them. How long was that in a town that had a memory as long as Birchville’s?

  I didn’t know.

  I didn’t want to know.

  I closed my bedroom door behind me, braced myself, and dialed my stepsister.

  8

  Kittens was an understatement. Rachel was having Bengal tigers, and she fired a barrage of questions at me in a high, tight voice. I didn’t have answers, but it hardly mattered. She interrupted every other second, railing and gobsmacked at the injusti
ce; she’d evacked her kid from a marital war zone only to land her bang in the middle of a crime scene.

  When I could get a word in edgewise, I asked, “Are you going to tell Jake?”

  A small silence.

  “Have you talked to Jake at all?”

  “No. I guess I have to, if you’re going to be finding corpses stashed right above his daughter’s bedroom,” Rachel snapped. As if I habitually dug up human remains all willy-nilly and now I needed Rachel to bring me in hand before I turned up Jimmy Hoffa in the zinnias. The fact that Rachel might call Lavender’s dad was the only silver lining I could find here. I was not a Jake fan by any stretch of the imagination, but he was the only father Lavender had.

  “So what now?” I asked.

  “Lavender’s coming home, is what now,” Rachel said, in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “Okay,” I said. “You want me to call Delta?”

  “I’ll handle it,” Rachel said, and finally let me off the phone.

  I took a fast shower, and I was barely out when my phone started ringing again. It was Mom, calling compliments of Rachel, wanting to know what the hell was going on at Birchie’s. Of course my parents needed to know what was going on, but I’d wanted to be the one to tell them. Gently. With a lot of context. I hadn’t felt so tattled on since Rachel and I were six and she ratted me out for accidentally flushing Mom’s emerald-chip earring down the toilet. And after I’d kept my mouth shut about Jake!

  I stood dripping, wrapped in a towel, for a good ten minutes, assuring my mother that there was no reason for me to come right home with Lavender. I gave her my Yankee-soldier-bones theory and told her that anyway, with Birchie sick, I was pretty much the adult in charge here.

  “Maybe so,” Mom told me, fretful. “But you’re still my baby. That never changes.”

  That made me put my free hand over my pregnant belly, wondering what the hell I had signed up for. As soon as I could get off the phone, I threw some blush and lip gloss at my face, hoping it would land in a way that made me look less fraught. I tried to get dressed, but my very fattest emergency jeans chose today to be insufficient to hold Digby. Perfect. I threw them in the corner.

  As I turned away, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Even at my fittest, I wasn’t what you might call willowy. I was built thick, with stubby muscle legs and hardly any boobs to speak of. But these days my body was looking different. I’d gained a cup size, and my hips had rounded out along with my belly. I was heavier than I’d ever been, but I liked my body in the mirror. I looked lush and very, very female. Maybe even sexy. I stared at myself for a good ten seconds before I realized what I was doing.

  “What is wrong with you?” I asked my reflection, then went to dig through my small store of packed clothes.

  I knew the answer. My judgey preggo book said this was common in the second trimester. It was sex hormones, showing up all uninvited to the crazy hormone party already raging in my legitimately panicked brain. I put on a long Indian-print skirt, an outsize T-shirt that I sometimes slept in, and a lightweight baggy cardigan. When I checked the mirror again, I looked fat and maybe homeless, but not pregnant. Good enough.

  By the time I got downstairs, the yard was innocent of bones, boxes, neighbors, and policemen. Frank was sitting in the breakfast nook, eating a cold cinnamon bun and waiting to give me an update.

  “Did you talk to her?” I asked with no preamble.

  He gave me a brief nod, but his face was grave. “I tried. Birchie was frazzled, and she didn’t make a lot of sense. Wattie says she got up too early. Her routine is off. They’re both lying down now. Be patient, okay?”

  “Well, at least you kept that moron from filling up the yard with crime-scene tape,” I said, grateful. The last time that yellow tape had so much as seen the light of day was when Movie Town put the tanning beds in the back room. Their little stash of rentable porn moved to a corner with an 18+ sign posted until a high-school boy got caught walking out with a copy of Good Will Humping stuffed down his pants. Cody—of course Cody—had then roped the corner off in glaring yellow, both to indicate a major crime and to try to keep teenagers out of the section. “Did Chief Dalton ask you a lot of questions?”

  “Not much, once I agreed to let him take the bones off to be analyzed. He’s being as careful as I am. This is Miss Birchie’s house, after all. He knows where most of his salary comes from.”

  “That’s excellent,” I said, suddenly starving. I sat down across from him and chose a roll from the tray myself. I took a huge bite and asked around it, “Can’t we tell them we came across the chest by accident? That we were pulling things of sentimental value down for Birchie and found it buried deep? Maybe Birchie saw the bones and panicked. Maybe she was even driving the chest down to the police station?” That was the polite title for an office about the size of a good walk-in closet tucked into the square by Brother’s Café.

  “You mean flat-out lie,” Frank said, regarding me gravely.

  “Yes. Hell yes,” I said, vehement but still very, very quiet. The house was full of teenagers holed up someplace whispering about their own concerns and exhausted little old ladies having naps. My Birchie was ninety years old and grievously ill. Whatever she knew or witnessed or was party to, I forgave her. If she even needed forgiving, which I wholeheartedly doubted.

  “Morality aside, that story won’t wash,” Frank said. “The trunk was locked shut when they tried to run off with it. Martina Mack saw you break that lock out in the yard, and she was trumpeting the fact so loudly I suspect they know it over in Georgia.”

  “So what do I tell people?” I asked.

  The lawn and the street in front of the house were clear for now, but I knew Birchville. All over town, hot chicken casseroles and Bundt cakes were being assembled, and soon neighbors and members of First Baptist would be standing on the porch bearing food, hungry for information.

  “Nothing,” Frank said. “Less than nothing. Don’t lie, for God’s sake, just keep your mouth shut. Don’t let your niece or Miss Birchie or Miss Wattie talk either. Tell everyone who shows up here that you aren’t allowed because it’s an ongoing investigation. I’ve already told Hugh and Jeffrey not to yak on pain of death or fifty hours of yard work, whichever they’d hate more. We’ll let it play out. See what Chief Dalton does next.”

  “Do we need a criminal attorney?” I asked Frank. I thought we might, but Frank shook his head.

  “Not yet, I don’t think. I’ll tell you if we get to that point.”

  I found this answer reassuring.

  The doorbell rang, but I stayed in my seat. I was exhausted, and all this week I’d had a new kind of pregnant hungry that seemed to start in my very bones. I’d finished the roll, but I still felt like I had nothing in my stomach. Neighborly mac and cheese and avid curiosity were waiting for me on the porch, and I was almost willing to brave the latter to get to the former. Almost.

  “Fucking fuck,” I said, and buried my face in my hands.

  Frank stood up. “I’ll tell whoever it is that Birchie’s asleep and to come back later. Can you find Hugh and Jeffrey and point them toward their gramma’s house? They’re late already, and I don’t want to give Jeannie Anne an excuse to text me.”

  “Deal,” I said, happy to exchange problems. “But if whoever that is has brought a casserole, please bring it in. I want to stress-eat about half of it.”

  Upstairs, I heard young voices, pitched low, coming from the tower room. The door was shut, and the tower room was technically Lav’s bedroom. Not cool. Worse, I heard only two people talking. Lavender and one boy or another. They were being too quiet for effective eavesdropping, and I didn’t want to be a sneak with my niece anyway, but I heard Lavender say the word “daddy” as I came to the door. So they were bonding over their newly smashed families, sitting in a closed room with a bed in it. Not cool at all. I knocked once and threw the door open immediately after, hoping I’d find Jeffrey.

  It was Hugh, of course, who had br
oad shoulders and was almost capable of growing a mustache. Poor Jeffrey was still downy-cheeked and sliver thin. Hugh and Lav were pressed close, side by side on the neatly made daybed, heads bent over my laptop. They looked up as I came in, but they did not move away from each other.

  “Where’s your brother?” I asked Hugh, casual.

  “I sent him to Gramma’s. Mom texted. She’s pretty freaked about . . . you know, the . . . um, you know,” Hugh said.

  So the news had already left the square and spread to the very edges of the town. Super.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you should head on over, too,” I said, stern enough to make Hugh rise.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Hugh said as Lavender set the laptop aside. “Bye, Lefty.”

  As soon as we were alone, I said, “Hey, Lefty, how’s about you don’t close the door when you have a fella in your bedroom.”

  “It’s not like that. We weren’t doing anything,” Lavender said, and then she changed the subject. “Is Mom making me come home?”

  “Of course she is,” I said. No way Rachel was leaving her in a house where a body had been unearthed. Or untrunked, as it were.

  “Aunt Leia, no! You were supposed to talk her out of it. It’s stupid. It’s not like we found a pile of freshly murdered teenage girls under the stoop. I’m not in danger.”

  I sat down in the overstuffed reading chair, pulled a throw pillow into my lap, and hugged it to my Digby tummy. “Sorry, Lav, but it’s a done deal.”

  Lav said, “This is probably the single most interesting thing that ever happened to me, and I don’t want to go before we even find out who got murdered.”

  “Don’t say ‘murdered,’” I warned her instantly. “No one said anything about a murder.”

  Lavender looked at me, fond and skeptical and patronizing all at once, the way I used to look at her when she was eight and still reverently setting out baby teeth for the fairy. I’d been almost sure that at that point she was in it for the money. But only almost.