Chapter One
IT’S IN THE STRETCHES OF SILENCE that I wonder if she’s dead.
My window is open, its wooden shutters thrown wide to welcome a breeze that doesn’t exist. I suck in air thick with humidity and look at the night sky. Heavy clouds, no rain.
Mother Nature, you’re such a tease.
Our town waits on rain to ease the drought. Rain to wash away the sweat that clings to our bodies each day as soon as we step outside. Rain to pummel the hard, dry dirt beneath withering crops in the fields. Rain is life. Rain is forgiveness.
Rain washes away sins faster than a priest can.
I hear it again: a deep, rumbling noise. Don’t be fooled; it isn’t thunder. His voice is as loud as God’s and as mean as the Devil’s. I try to ignore it, but then I hear the soft padding of feet on the hallway carpet. A moment later, my bedroom door opens, and the girls come in. The three of us sit under my window, one sister huddled beneath each of my arms.
As if I can protect them.
My arms curl around their shoulders. “It’s okay,” I whisper, to them and myself.
A scream fills the house. It isn’t Mom. It’s the opening shriek of a classic rock song. When the bass drum hits, the door to my room quakes.
It’s a full-volume night.
There’s a slight rush of air from the open window above us; the thin lines of muscles in my sisters’ arms tighten in fear. The dark silhouette of a bird appears on the far wall of my room.
“It’s just Joe,” I say, and untangle myself from their grasps. I turn to face a fierce, shiny black eye. His beak looks wickedly sharp this close. He doesn’t usually come to the window. He likes to sit on the mailbox. Or on the fence near our bus stop at the corner. Or on the lowest branch of the tree in our front yard. Joe is singular among other black birds, distinguished by the gray feathers on his abdomen and back. Distinguished as well by his dedication to being near us, always.
Joe caws. He shakes his wings in a show of bravado and turns.
“Bye, Joe,” Juniper says as he flies away.
Something crashes downstairs.
“Mom,” Campbell says. I imagine Mom hurt. Crying. I look into Cam’s eyes, and my own terror is reflected back at me.
“I’ll go check on her.” There’s no such thing as whispering over the music, so I almost shout it. I squeeze their bony little hands, a single drumbeat of reassurance, and rise.
When I get to the stairs, he’s playing Guns N’ Roses’s Greatest Hits so loud my teeth ache, and yet I can still hear him. I steal a glance over the banister, and I find him in the kitchen. If I weren’t used to the sight, I’d wonder if the dark red tone of his skin was the sign of a medical emergency. But it’s rage. The powder keg tonight was an upcoming mortgage payment. The spark that lit him up: an energy bill twice the normal amount. It was a dry, hot August, and the AC worked too hard.
I can barely see the rounded gray metal on top of the fridge. He keeps his gun where it’s easy to reach. He says it won’t be much help if he has to go find it during a home invasion, but it’s the thing I think about every time he gets like this. It’s always the same question in my mind: Is tonight the night he reaches for it?
Mom comes into view. Her long red hair is loose, disheveled. She heads for the stereo.
He runs after her, each footfall a tiny earthquake in the old house. He’s a solid wrecking ball, and he tears across the room after Mom when her hand touches the volume dial.
He shoves her into the door of the entertainment center, and it flies back into the wall. A chunk of plaster breaks off where it hits. Mom rubs her shoulder, says nothing.
My fear is trapped in the cage of my chest. It flaps its futile, frightened wings as I sneak upstairs.
“She’s okay,” I tell the girls. “But I need to call the police.”
“The phones are out,” Campbell reminds me. When it starts, he rips the phone cord out of the wall. He hoards it on the kitchen table—in plain sight but rendered useless.
“I’m going for help.” I eye the window, and Cam notices.
“It’s not too high?” she asks. If she’s scared, she masks it. Even at thirteen, Campbell is the picture of control, her face calm, her voice even. She understands the danger we’re in. She also knows how to hide it from Juniper.
“Not at all.” I climb out my window, onto the roof that covers our porch. The air is still heavy, laden with things it cannot hold much longer. I know how it feels to carry something that isn’t yours. Soon the sky will break.
Outside I pause, assessing. Maybe he won’t find them out here. At least not right away.
“Come out here,” I tell them, and point to the far corner of the roof, where it meets the house and forms a little nook. “It’s okay. It’ll be an adventure.”
Campbell swings her legs over the windowsill and crawls to the corner of the roof.
Juniper hesitates.
“Leighton, I’m scared,” she says. Some twisted little part of me is grateful she’s scared. That she could spend so many nights of her nine years tucked into shadows like this, and still know it’s not normal.
“Hey, babe, look at me. It’s gonna be okay. You are just going to snuggle up with Campbell for a few minutes. Here, take Ava-bear.”
I move into the room again, doubling over the windowsill and reaching for the foot of my bed. Soft down fuzz fills my hand when it finds the toy. I lean out the window and offer my beloved stuffed bear to Juniper.
She shakes her head no.
Something rumbles downstairs besides the music, and my stomach tightens in response. He’s so angry tonight. I drop the bear and crouch at the window, finding Juniper’s dark eyes filled with tears.
“How big is your brave?” I ask her.
I’ve stolen it, right out of our history. I’ve cannibalized it from my own gentler early years, when Mom would use the phrase to get me on a bike or a roller coaster. And I’ve brought it here, into this awful night. But I need it, for Juniper.
“So big,” Juniper says, and climbs out the window. I walk her over to Campbell.
The tree in our yard sways, though there’s no breeze.
Crows.
Birds fill the branches. There must be a hundred of them. More. Juniper’s soft whimper forces the crows from my mind. I swing my legs over the edge of the roof and drop before I can think about it. It’s a short fall, but I hit the ground hard and lose my balance. My hands scrape the walkway where I catch myself, drawing blood. I look up and find Campbell peering down. “I’m fine,” I say. “Get back.” I melt into the shadows of our yard, just as he passes the kitchen window.
When he turns away, I run. There’s only one other house on our road. If we always felt safe in our home, I might call it scenic, with the mountains as a backdrop and nothing but idyllic Pennsylvania farming hills for miles.
But we don’t feel safe, so instead I’d say it’s isolated. Detached.
Alcatraz.
But there is one neighbor. Mrs. Stieg. Just a few hundred feet away in a farmhouse that’s easily a half-century older than our house, but meticulously maintained. Racing across the road, I steal a backward glance at my house. I check for two shadows on the porch roof, but my gaze is drawn higher.
Crows cover the top of our house. Dark shingles shrouded in even darker feathers.