We Are All the Same in the Dark - Julia Heaberlin Page 0,68

with half a stick figure, to the old cookbooks crammed in the shelf under the sink.

A familiar red book catches my eye.

Betty Crocker.

My mother used that same old edition, inherited from my grandmother. She was a low-budget comfort food kind of cook—a comfort food kind of person.

Tuna Casserole with Potato Chip Topping. Hamburger Noodles. Brownies with Milk Chocolate Icing.

Get Betty, she’d say, when I was sick or sad or happy.

It almost felt like somebody died when I learned Betty Crocker didn’t exist—that she was just a pleasant dream pulled together by a marketer. The death of Santa Claus was easier to take.

I’d sit with that red book on the gold Formica counter, thumbing through all the penciled notes, sometimes in my mom’s crazy scrawl, sometimes in my grandmother’s elegant cursive: Use half as much sugar! Cook twelve minutes longer! Good for company! Montana’s favorite cake!

The memory is sweet, so very sweet, if I don’t remember the blood.

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One step at a time. One boot at a time. Odette told me that while I sat scared in the back of her patrol car when I was thirteen.

After she let me touch her metal leg, I’m pretty sure I remember every word she said. I certainly remember the six words on that piece of paper. I slept with them under my pillow at the group home and read them every single day to remind myself what kind of person I should grow up to be. Right now I’m choosing resourceful.

I tell myself that Betty is a big welcome sign.

If Odette was with me at the door, she’s gone now. I feel like I’m an after-hours visitor in her museum. The emptiness of these rooms makes it both harder and easier to slip off my shoes and begin to pad through every one of them, assessing, pulling open drawers and closets.

I pause at the closet in the hall, overwhelmed. It’s stuffed. It looks like someone dumped five wastebaskets in there.

Still, nothing immediately says Look at me except the man from another century staring me down from a frame in the front hall. He is so intense. If he could speak, he’d be yelling at me to get the hell out of his house.

He’s the only alarm system. Electricity and water, on. Thermostat set at 85, which is why I’m warm but not sweating too much.

The living room reminds me of Bunny’s mother’s—wood floors, faded prints, little glass objects with no purpose. The only sort-of updated thing in here is a cream-colored leather couch. Are those soft indents on one side where Odette and her husband sat close to each other? There is no TV, just an empty space and a bunch of cable cords tangled up with a wad of dust.

French doors lead off the living room into the biggest bedroom. This is where I enter present day again. A big fuzzy white rug is thrown on dark hardwoods. A plump comforter is all snow against a beat-up headboard. The light on a side table with a sleek blue globe and bendy neck says I read.

Over the bed, Odette put up a huge photograph—aquas and reds, sea and dirt—taken someplace far away. A more personal picture of Odette and her husband sits on the dresser. The frame is warm in my hand.

They look sweaty and happy and in love, like an advertisement for Tinder. Odette is wearing a fancy metal climbing leg. She is exactly how I remember, a beautiful, exotic superhero. Her husband looks like Emily Blunt’s. A valley with hundreds of trees is turning red and gold below them, a carpet that rolls and rolls like life goes on forever.

When I run my finger around, there is dust, a thin layer like I opened a bag of flour too fast. That kind of dust takes zero time to accumulate in Texas, even with the doors and windows shut.

It feels like nobody is living in this house, but somebody is cleaning it, keeping its heart ticking. I’m guessing a housekeeper was here, and not that long ago.

I stand still for a second, listening for a door to open.

That’s because I don’t think Odette’s husband stays away. I think he lies in this bed sometimes, drinks those beers, and cries his own tears. Does he say I’m sorry I left you?

I’m sorry I killed you?

Wyatt Branson was the first person of interest. Finn Kennedy, estranged spouse, was the second.

Hurry. I pull open a dresser drawer at random. Pretty underwear. Lace and color, hearts and