But the ability to ignore time has now dwindled.
I close all the windows and draw all the shades. I check the dead bolt on the door twice, then once more. I sink back deeper into the cushions. I sit in darkness, and it calms me. The remote is slippery in my hands as I slide it down and grip the buttons. I focus my attention on the latest story.
There is a brief mention of my name on CNN, but no new developments or leads. It is a stagnant and dead part of the story, but they keep running it. Bringing it up like some mandatory prerequisite, the warm-up to mentioning Marlow Fin.
I switch to NBC to see lead-up promos for the interview. Older clips of Jodi Lee as an anchor followed by shots of Marlow being chased by a media mob. She ducks into a car, then they roll footage of her at the last movie premiere she attended. Posing regally on the red carpet, one ankle crossed over the other, her hand on her hip. She is a professional.
She is a professional liar.
You can’t trap a tiger just by catching him. You have to make him think he has won.
Isn’t that what modeling and acting are? Pretending to be anything but what you are in that moment? I don’t see it as deceitful. I see it as a talent. An endowment of having all your faculties together, right there, ready to execute on cue.
I am ready to watch her.
Come on, Marlow. Let’s see that beautiful face.
My knees bounce and I steady them, but there is nothing steady about the rest of me. I need the interview to begin, to hear the familiar intervals of her voice, her pauses and hesitations.
Marlow, the wild one. The unpredictable one. Always full of surprises.
Always one step ahead.
CHAPTER 53
ISLA
Labor Day: September 7, 2020
She looked like the ghost she could become and the ghost I wanted her to be.
I stood on the bottom of the steps below her, making her Amazonian in height, a warrior who blocked my path.
“What are you doing here, Marlow?” I heard Dad say.
The straps on my backpack were damp from the falls. They cut into my shoulders as I gripped them hard. I put my head down and brushed past him as I walked up the stone steps to the cabin.
“Isla. I’m here to talk to Isla,” she replied, looking only at me.
I would not reciprocate. I would not breathe or make a sound. I would not acknowledge her presence.
“Please, Isla. I need to tell you something. You have to know—”
“Marlow,” Dad cut in. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
I shut the door behind me, drowning out any more of their noise. I looked up to my old bedroom and walked with purposeful, shuffled steps toward it. I stared down at the bed and fell in. I had never felt so exhausted, so drained of all energy. My arms and legs turned to solid tree limbs. Stiff, rooted. I slept into blackness.
There was no dreaming. No lingering memories of images in my head. I woke up to nothing. I saw the door to the lake was open downstairs as I leaned over the railing.
Murmurs, low and strong, came through between sounds of the water kissing the shoreline and distant boats turning in for the day.
The words were undecipherable, the tension of them palpable.
I appeared before the two of them and they stopped. There was an eerie pause in their exchange and everything around us halted.
Dad stood up from his chair and smiled as though we had been there for days, a course of uneventful, enjoyable ones at the lake filled with swimming and s’mores and what any other happy family would do. A family that we were not.
“You’re up. Did you sleep okay?”
I nodded.
He acted like there was nothing abnormal about his charade of cheerfulness as he rubbed his hands together.
“You know what we haven’t done in forever, girls? Dockside fishing. What do you say? You want to join Dad for a little sunset fishing?”
We deliberately looked at each other, as if a magnetic field drew us together, and followed him down the steps to the dock, briefly united against his unnerving, enthusiastic front. We had no control over our bodies, drones that submitted to commands, our autonomy briefly gone. For there was no other option. He retrieved the poles from the shed, the fishing knife nested in its brown leather sheath on his waistband.
We sat down next to each other on the dock. The wood felt surprisingly soft, as worn as we were. I felt her eyes rove over me and I shook my head, casting out a line.
“No. Just let it be. For now. Let it be.”
I gazed out over the water to show her. It had become a mirror as the light left us, the rows and rows of liquid metallic ridges that shone for us. The hues of the sun bruised the top of it, dark blues and pinks that glistened together.
She nodded as if to say she understood.
We couldn’t talk. Not now. Not in front of all this.
Dad yanked a walleye up out of the water. It flopped twice on the dock before he pulled the line and slid its mouth off the hook. We watched as he gutted it right there. The knife made ripping sounds as he cut through its flesh. Pinkish liquid dripped down his hands. He caught a second and did the same.
