“Do you think we can make it better?” she pleaded, bringing it higher in the air.
“Put—put that down,” I said immediately, pointing to the gutter.
“What is that?” Oliver leaned in and then jerked back.
She was calm as she stroked the feathers. “It was still alive.”
“Marlow . . . what happened?” I asked in a low voice.
“I rescued it, though. See?”
Sawyer stepped closer. “Are you sure it was still alive?”
She remained quiet.
I placed my hand on her shoulder. “We can’t take that with us, Marlow. Do you understand?”
She shook her head.
“Marlow. Put it back where you found it,” I ordered.
Her hands seemed to squeeze the bird, as if that would make it better. As if that was how it would become hers.
The others turned away as she knelt and returned it to the ground. But I watched. I watched as she gripped its body tighter, her hands shaking with force.
Shaking with perhaps grief or rage, either way becoming hers to own.
CHAPTER 16
ISLA
1996
I would often watch Marlow in the morning. Her face always looked so clean. Maybe that was because she was covered in dirt when she was found. Her skin perpetually appeared as though it had been scrubbed, a sheen that never went away. Sometimes I would find myself wanting to reach out and poke her cheek, creating another dimple next to the two she already had. I would let my finger sink into it like a wooden dowel into fresh dough.
She would catch my gaze across the kitchen table at breakfast. Face still marvelous, still full of a secret I could never quite catch. A few slurps of her cereal and then a sip of orange juice before she would look away.
When Mom and Dad’s backs were turned, her hands became flashes. Quick to move and create a secret commotion, then retreat back.
A bite of Dad’s toast.
A fork would go missing, its new spot under a napkin where no one would find it.
Mom’s pancake drenched with syrup.
The butter knife flashed while she stared at me, the glint of it a lighthouse signal. A pretend slice across her forearm before it was hidden in an instant.
My mouth would remain closed. I would say nothing. I was witness to nothing.
When Dad got home in the evenings, his dress shirt rumpled and the skin around his eyes just a little bit weary, he would pull her into his lap. Like a doll that he had misplaced, he would hold her in and then turn to me, asking me how school was. Whether I did well on that math test he helped me study for.
I answered his questions dutifully. All while watching her lean in, her head tucked perfectly near his shoulder. She would watch me as if she had asked the questions, too, and was waiting on my answers.
Where had my spot near his arm gone?
I tried to remember if I ever did that. Crawled into his lap like that. I must have.
I watched her on the playground when our recess periods overlapped. The sidewalk from the school went down a slight hill, and as I marched in our line I would spot her almost immediately, the curls bouncing, her smile dazzling even from a distance. She was the darling. The Shirley Temple of her class.
You would think I was envious. The jealous older sister of the cheery younger one. The one who drew everyone in around her, a storm cloud that sneaked in and wrapped around anything in its path. But that wasn’t the case. I admired her.
I admired from afar.
She would make her way to my room some nights. I would fall asleep, only to wake up to find her tucked in next to me as if she had always been there. Sometimes she would talk out loud, her eyes still closed.
“We’re sisters, right?”
I would nod and then say, “We are now.”
This would make her press in closer to me. The top of her head felt damp from her bath; the baby shampoo smelled strong. I would look up at the glow-in-the-dark stars dotted all over the ceiling, and count them. Rearrange them in my head until I fell asleep again.
Sawyer began coming over to our house before and after school. Ada had started taking late and early shifts at a poultry processing plant outside the Twin Cities.
“Extra cheddar for me and the boy,” she would say, laughing.
She said most things while laughing. A woman who liked to lessen the vinegar of life with her own sugary insertions.
Sawyer would shift a little when she said this. As if it were his fault his grandmother was working again. I never asked about his dad. But his unwillingness to talk about him said enough.
