Page 18 of Drowning Her

After dinner, I took my SUV—one of the many wedding presents from my husband—making up a lie aboutneeding something from the store. I parked in an empty field off of the Feldman Farm property, in some vacant lot with aFor Sale!sign, hoping that the tall grass and the darkness hid my car.

His SUV pulled onto the road, then passed me. I started the engine.

A flash of jealousy coursed through me. I knew what this was. The way he acted—refusing to touch me, knowing that he wanted me, and never doing anything about it—made me think hewascheating. That I was somehow not good enough, and that always pissed me off. I had gotten enough crap like that from everyone else; how could he be like that too?

He parked outside of a hardware store. I pulled into a gas station parking lot, waiting for him to emerge. Once we started driving again, my heart thudded in my chest, though I didn’t know why at first. The white trunks of birch trees, the short brick houses. A ringing coursed through my head, increasing in volume as I figured out where we were. He was driving to my parents’ house. It had been over five years since I had driven down the street.

He slowed as he passed, then parked near the playground. I circled a few times before parking too. Our house was against a grove of trees, separating us from an empty field. I hid in the back, searching for Wilder’s form, and found him nestled in the top of one of the trees: a grown man studying my family like a hawk. I quietly climbed a tree too, a bird fluttering away.

A beat-up oval table was in front of the sliding glass door. Cards and paper money were scattered across the wooden surface. It was well past ten o’clock. Dad hit the buzzer, and Mom and Fiona, my older sister, cheered. Dad laughed and moved his yellow marker across the board. Hewas still choosing yellow. A bowl full of mixed nuts was off to the side. Mom had an iced tea next to her hand, always in the threat zone of being spilled. Fiona moved the glass away from Mom’s flailing hand without missing a beat in her turn. Wasn’t she supposed to be in medical school right now? She pushed a lock of loose hair behind her ear, then gestured at the board. Dark brown hair. Topaz eyes. One little freckle on her cheek. Like a beauty queen.

I shifted toward Wilder. Heat boiled inside of me. Was he using me to get to my sister? That had happened before, and it would happen again. But it didn’t make sense. It would be too much work to get to her through me, when Forrest could have obviously asked my sister to marry him instead. Fiona might have been a goody-two-shoes, but she wasn’t a fool; medical school was expensive.

A coldness swept through me. Even if I wanted to leave the Feldman Farm, there was nowhere I could go home to. They were better off without me.

Fiona pouted to the side. Mom shoved her marker down, lecturing her. Fiona hung her head, her eyes in her lap. Dad held his head in his hands. What was going on now?

I glanced at the neighboring trees. Wilder was gone. I had lost track of him. But I was here now, and I knew why he wasn’t telling me where he was going: because it had to do with me.

Now that I was here, I was going to use my time.

I went closer. Once I saw Fiona was alone, washing the dishes in the kitchen, I came out of the trees, hopping over the fence, waiting to see if she noticed me. She had never seen us sneak out when we were kids, but time could have changed her.

But it didn’t. Her mind was lost in a fog, like it alwayswas. But when she headed toward her bedroom, we caught eyes and she threw a hand against her chest. She slid open the door.

She mouthed,Maisie?

I shrugged my shoulders.Hi,I mouthed back.

She stepped outside, then slid the door closed behind her.

“Where have you been?” she whisper-yelled. She threw her arms around me, smelling like dish soap. Fresh. Like home. “You look—” She tilted her head. “The hair is different. Red?”

“I prefer to call it cherry.” I pointed at my dyed hair, then I motioned at the roots. “Drizzled in chocolate.”

“It looks good on you,” she said.

Liar,I thought.

“Why aren’t you at college? I thought you were supposed to be in medical school or something.” Though we weren’t friends on our real social media profiles, I had made a fake account to keep track of her. After undergrad, she had taken two years off, and the last time I had checked, she was in medical school now. “Why are you?—”

“Mom and Dad would love to see you,” she interrupted me. “Let me?—”

I grabbed her shoulders before she could move back to the house. “Don’t. They hate me.”

“That’s not true.” She grabbed my hands. “We love you. We still do. ”

I ripped my fingers out of her grip. I wasn’t a child anymore. This was irritating. She was my older sister, but I was twenty-three, not the teenager who had left years ago. I had probably done more thanshehad. “No one loves me,” I said, raising my voice. “Idon’t even love me. You’re the perfect one. They’ve got everything they need in you.”

“I hate it when you say that,” she said. I could hear it already:I’m not perfect, Maisie.Like it was a curse that Fiona could never get rid of. “Please. I can’t keep doing this alone.”

Now she was making fun of me. My cheeks flamed. “You’re fine,” I said.

“I’m not who they want me to be either,” she said. “They miss you, Maisie.Imiss you.”

“Stop,” I whispered. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Stay,” she begged. “For a little bit. Please.”

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