point lived in the house.
So this was how Charlie spent her time: feeding a menagerie.
Sam tried to push her sister’s problems from her conscious. She was not here to fix Charlie, and even if she was, there was no way that Charlie would let her.
She closed her eyes. She pinched together her fingers. She considered the broken parts of her mind. The delicate folds of gray matter. The electrical current of synapses.
Rusty slumped in his wheelchair.
Sam could not clear her mind of the image. The way the left corner of his mouth had curved down. The total absence of his spirit, his spark, that had always been there. The sadness she had felt when Sam had realized that he was gone.
The need for comfort.
The need for Charlie.
Sam did not have her sister’s phone number. She was too ashamed to admit this to the hospital staff. Instead, she had emailed Ben, then waited for him to email back. Again, the task of delivering bad news to Charlie had fallen on his shoulders. Her sister had not driven to the hospital, as Sam had expected. Charlie had sent Ben to pick up Sam. She had not come down the stairs when Sam arrived at her home. Sam might as well have been a stranger, though Charlie would never be so rude to someone who was not family.
“Are you having a stroke?” Charlie stood in the open doorway. Her eyes were swollen from crying. The bruises under her eyes had gone completely black.
Sam said, “I was trying to meditate.”
“I tried that once. Irritated the shit out of me.” She pushed off her boots. Hay was in her hair. She smelled of cat. Sam recognized the logo on her T-shirt from math club, the symbol PI with a snake curling around it. The Pikeville Pythons.
Sam adjusted her glasses. They had not been right since the judge had handled them in the courtroom. She stood up with less difficulty than she expected. She told Charlie, “A possum stared at me through the door all night.”
“That’s Bill.” Charlie turned on the giant television. “He’s my lover.”
Sam leaned against the arm of the couch. This was exactly the kind of shocking thing Charlie used to say when she was ten. “Possums can transmit leptospirosis, E. coli, salmonella. Their scat can carry a bacteria that causes flesh-eating ulcers.”
“We’re not into the kinky stuff.” Charlie flipped through the channels.
Sam said, “That’s quite a television.”
“Ben calls her Eleanor Roosevelt, because she’s big and ugly but we still adore her.” Charlie found CNN. She muted the sound. Captions scrolled up. Sam saw her eyes quickly scan the words.
“Why are you watching that?”
“I want to see if there are any stories about Dad.”
Sam watched Charlie watch the news. There was nothing they could tell her sister that Sam could not provide. Without doubt, she knew more than the reporters. What their father had said. What he was likely thinking. That the police had been called. That Rusty’s body had been left in the chair for over an hour. Because he had been stabbed, because his injuries had likely contributed to his death, the Bridge Gap Police Department had been called.
Fortunately, Sam had managed to remove her Kelly Wilson list from her father’s robe pocket before the police had arrived. Otherwise, the girl’s secrets would have been at Ken Coin’s fingertips.
“Shit.” Charlie unmuted the sound.
A voice-over was saying, “… exclusive interview with Adam Humphrey, a former student who attended Pikeville High School with Kelly Rene Wilson.”
Sam watched a plump, pimply young man standing in front of a beat-up old Camaro. His arms were crossed. He was dressed as if for church, a white button-up shirt, skinny black tie and black pants. A smattering of hair suggested a goatee on his chin. His glasses had visible fingerprints.
Adam said, “Kelly was all right. I guess. There were things people said about her that weren’t nice. But she was—okay, she was slow, all right? Up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “But that’s okay, you know? Not everybody can be on the honor roll or whatever. She was just a nice girl. Not real bright. But she tried.”
The reporter came into the shot, microphone under his chin. “Can you tell me how you met her?”
“Ain’t no telling. Maybe going back to elementary? Most of us know each other. This is a real small town. Like, you can’t walk down the street without seeing people you know.”
“Were you friends with Kelly Rene Wilson in middle