It was a mystery, or an omen, and Boyd disliked both, about as much as he disliked bloody hangnails and all of Devil’s Lake. He’d never been particularly good at guessing the truth, or what terrible thing was coming next.
WAITING
BY KATHERINE MALLOY
Devil’s Lake is only half what its name indicates—
more like a pond, more mossy than sheer,
hidden in the preserve past Route 28,
covered in slick green slime all year . . .
except when it freezes over in winter.
But it isn’t frozen yet, not when my story starts,
the tale of my own thawing: ribs like the tinder
of an unseen fire, burning not just in our hearts
but without and around—consuming the forest,
coating the trees with smoke black as ink,
making ash of all that was August.
The lake winks, like it knows I’m on the brink,
like it can see this invisible spark:
I’m waiting for you. You’ll be here by dark.
Chapter Two
Now
FEBRUARY 7
THEY’D BEEN SHOVELING DIRT OVER the coffin for what felt like hours.
The priest said they couldn’t have an open casket, or maybe it’d been the coroner. Her body was too . . . blue. Her lips, her fingertips.
Tessa never saw it—her, Kit—that way, only heard the facts listed in a bland sequence, each one contained and separate: a dot unconnected to any other dots.
The torn clothing and lacy bra.
The truck, abandoned at the edge of the nature preserve out on 28.
Lilly’s frantic confessions, her babbling, all adding up to what the woman in the fitted suit called “a formal accusation,” “a potential testimony.”
And, of course, Boyd’s name, on repeat, in hushed tones, in voices of shock and anger.
It was only the first week of February, and last week had seen some of the coldest nights in years. But winter out here had a funny way of shifting underfoot, and this weekend the ground had started to thaw and the snow to melt—like it remembered its past as disconnected, unwhole, just a collection of molecules that had stuck together for a while and were now content to part.
And so the service, taking advantage of this brief reprieve from the frigid temps, would be held outside, where Kit would have wanted it. She wasn’t outdoorsy per se, but she always talked about the beauty of nature, wrote poetry about it. Still, they should have thought it through first. Tessa had never realized before how these things are planned in such a rush. All the details—the flowers, the chairs, the music—coordinated in a sickening daze within hours of the worst moment of your life.
They should have realized it would be way too cold for this. Tessa couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t feel much of anything.
Maybe that was for the best.
The fog, winding its thick, lazy way along the mud and frost, nearly muted the minister’s voice, calling her name. Tessa. Tessa.
It was time.
Her hand plunged into her pocket . . . but the speech she’d written—about what a perfect older sister Kit had always been—was nowhere to be found. She dug her hand deeper, feeling a small hole in the satin lining of her navy peacoat, the width of a couple of fingers, big enough, she realized with a sudden jolt of panic, for a note that’d been wadded up over and over again in her sweaty palms to have fallen through.
A string of alarmed curses flew through her brain and she froze, unable to come forward. She’d never been a good writer anyway—that had always been Kit’s job. And she never wore this stupid peacoat—it smelled like the musty walls of the hall closet. She’d forgotten how beaten-up it was, full of tears and holes—mostly on the inside, where no one could see.
Okay, stay calm.
But after fishing around in the other pocket, it became clear: the note was definitely gone.
“Tessa.” Her name rang out again, and she shivered, feeling everyone’s gaze turn her way. Now would be a great time to perfect her disappearing skills.
Yet another area where Kit had her beat: this time, she’d pulled off the kind of disappearing act where you never, ever come back.
Tessa swallowed the lump in her throat. She should probably be crying now, but her eyes remained a stinging dry and her chest tight, trapped under a thick layer of ice. All she could think was how weird this felt, everyone staring at her.
Most of the time, people overlooked her—and she was fine with that. In between her two sisters, she was the least remarkable. People who didn’t know the Malloy sisters often saw them as variations on the same theme. After all, they were each born only a little over a year apart and shared an uncanny resemblance in the eyes and cheeks. But the differences outshone the similarities when you looked closer.
Lilly: the unpredictable one, the selfish one, the baby of the family—all brawl and tears and flash and fire—hated discord and caused nearly all of it. Kit, to the contrary, was—had been—the good girl, the oldest, the one to whom everyone turned in a time of crisis. Kit was butter melting into toast. She was light through a high stained-glass window or a cat curled on a lap. Everything comforting. When they were kids, their dance teacher called what Kit had “grace.” But it didn’t just appear when she danced. It lived in the way Kit moved through the world—with ease, like she had some sort of privileged arrangement with gravity.
Then there was Tessa, known for tripping on her own feet, a clumsy shadow in Kit’s wake. Not a shadow, actually, but a negative, all bleached out and odd to look at. She had Kit’s blond hair, but paler, and Kit’s big eyes, but wider spaced, one blue and one green, more alien than pretty. Even down to the cells, Tessa was a kind of genetic mash-up. She had this thing called chimerism—which meant that some of Kit’s DNA had slimed off on her when she was still developing in their mom’s womb, left over from Kit’s stay in there. She was mostly Tessa, sure—that’s what the doctors had told her when they discovered the condition, more common than most people think. But she had real hints of Kit within her, too—strands woven through, making Tessa not really, wholly Tessa, but a mess of her and not-her.
Right now, she wished she was anyone but herself.
She pulled her traitorous peacoat tighter around herself and stepped in front of the first row of plastic chairs, turning to look at the crowd gathered in the graveyard behind the church—her mother’s tear-streaked face, Lilly wrenching her threadbare beanie down around her ears.
You can still take it back, Tessa wanted to shout at her.
Lilly’s best friend, Mel, sat beside her, shaking in the cold and looking pale as the snow. Tessa glanced around for Patrick Donovan—she would have expected him to be here, but then again, she didn’t know him that well. He was Lilly’s problem. And he wasn’t here.
Next to Mel came several of Kit’s teachers—her Spanish teacher, Ms. Luiz; her English teacher, Mr. Green, and some pretty woman who must be his girlfriend. A few neighbors.
Incredibly: Innis Taylor, Boyd’s dad. Red-eyed and openly weeping.
And the notable, gaping absence beside him: an empty spot where his son should have been. Would have been, if he weren’t, right now, sitting in the county jail, awaiting trial for Kit’s murder.