I wade out of the swamp, tear off the waders, and hurl them in the back of the Range Rover, not caring it if swamp sludge splatters on the back of my seat. I see the blanket there, the one I fucked Harper on so many times. The one I wrapped around her body to keep her warm all through winter. A picture of it hugging her curves rises to my mind, the way it slipped off her thick thighs, showing that fucking tattoo…
I climb into the driver’s seat and slam the door, banging my head down on the top of the steering wheel. I’m fucking hard just thinking about her. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I peel out, turn around at the next exit, and drive back toward Faulkner under the bruise-black sky. Harper doesn’t deserve a place in my memory. What she did goes so far past betrayal, a cut so deep it could never heal. She found a way, broke the last pieces of my sanity. All along, I thought I was biding my time until I broke her. But she broke me first.
I pull up behind a shitty little sedan in her driveway and glance up at the gathering storm clouds. Her neighbors are outside, the girl with dingy blue hair and the little kid, who’s prancing around in a hula hoop, wearing shorts and a bikini top that hangs oddly on her flat chest. The doors to their car stand open, and a song that I can only hope the kid doesn’t understand is spilling out from the crackly speakers.
I imagine what my mother would say, and I smile at them as I circle my car to grab the box of Harper’s things I brought, as if this were a normal breakup. The blue-haired girl gives me a dirty look, an unlit cigarette drooping from the corner of her mouth.
The little kid stops dancing, the hoop clattering to the cracked walkway at her feet. “She ain’t here,” she calls. “So you can go on back home!”
The blue-haired girl cuts her eyes at her sister, but she doesn’t say anything. She watches me with sullen eyes and fishes a lighter from her pocket to light up. I should have taken a few hits off a joint before I got here. I could use the calm.
I turn away from them and knock on Harper’s door. After a minute, the knob turns, and my chest caves like someone punched it. But a woman I’ve never seen stares out at me, not Harper.
“Help you?” she asks, looking me over.
She’s average height, with a barrel chest that she shoves out to make it look like she’s got more tits than she does. She’s one of those chicks with a boxy frame and no ass, the opposite of Harper’s wasp-like figure.
“Is Harper here?” I ask. “I brought by some stuff she left at my place.”
“Haven’t seen her,” the woman says. Her voice is rough, like a life-long smoker’s, and there’s an edge of belligerence in it. She must be in her thirties, but the layer of makeup caked on makes her look older. Her platinum hair has seen one too many rounds with a bottle of cheap bleach, and an inch of dishwater blonde shows at the roots. Sucking hard on a cigarette, she lets her gaze move over me again, more slowly this time, her black-rimmed eyes keen with interest.
I remind myself I’m here for my brothers. So they don’t take the fall for what I let them do. I knew better than to let them loose on Harper, but I wanted her to suffer. They made it happen.
“Come on in,” the blonde woman says, pulling the door open further. “Let me get you a drink, look at you for a minute. So this is what’s been keeping Harper away so much this year. Can’t blame the girl, can you?”
I don’t want to go in. My throat is so thick I think I’ll choke, and her house looks like a trap, a smoky dungeon of filth and dereliction.
“I just brought her stuff,” I say, thrusting the box at the woman.
“Nonsense, come ‘ere.” She gestures with her cigarette, not taking the box. “I don’t bite. Unless you’re into that.”
I’m used to the way women look at me, but this time, it makes my skin crawl. “Are you Harper’s… Sister?” I ask, reluctantly stepping through the door.
“Oh, honey, aren’t you a darling?” she says, giving my arm a flirty little push before sashaying down the hall, trying to swing her non-existent ass like an invitation.
My back stiffens at her choice of words, and I only manage a grunt in response.
“Everyone always thinks we’re sisters,” she says. “Looking at me, you’d never know I had a baby, would you? I think it’s ‘cause I had a C-section. Kept everything nice and tight, just the way it was.”
She picks a fleck of tobacco from her tongue and smiles up at me. My stomach clenches, and I look away. If she knew what I’d done to her daughter…
“I ain’t seen Harper in weeks,” she says. “I work days and have fun most nights. We might not cross paths for days. I’m sure she’ll drag her ass home when she’s done with whatever trouble she’s in this time.”
If she only knew…
I try not to look around the place Harper always refused to let me go. The ceiling is low and oppressive, like the roof of a too-small car. The blinds on the tiny windows are closed, and the only light is from the TV. Even in the dim, cave-like room, I can see that the place is a hovel. The coffee table is covered with empty beer cans, fast food wrappers, and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. The carpet isn’t even a color, just a dull collection of stains and matted, cheap fibers. The couch looks like the place crackheads go to fuck.
“It’s okay,” I say. “I just wanted to bring her stuff back. She hasn’t been at school.”
“Not like she ever bothers to tell me what’s going on with her,” her mom says, rolling her eyes. “You’d think with all I do for her, she could shoot me a text.”
“You’d think,” I say, hoping she’ll keep talking.
I could write the book on what she’s doing, but Harper’s the one who summed it up in one sentence when we were done fucking one day and talking about our moms.The narcissistic mother with a victim complex, is what she called it. It was funny, how much our moms had in common, though neither would admit it if they met.
But that doesn’t matter. I need information. As far as I know, Harper didn’t have friends. If she knows we want her dead, who would she hide out with?