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  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t need to.

  “Jealousy is unbecoming, Mia, especially when it’s directed at your own mother.” She clutched her chest, did her Betty Boop blinking thing that she did when she got this sloppy. She was a couple of hours away from passing out.

  I continued to ignore her. She always wanted to provoke when she was like this, and the only satisfying retaliation was to not let her. Let her writhe. I mumbled, “Whatever,” and tried to pass her in the kitchen, but a soused Mimi meant a moody Mimi, and suddenly she was on top of me, trying to hug me. “Oh, sweetheart, I just hate when we fight.” I could smell the guy on her, felt her fingernails claw into my back. It was a vicious kind of hug, like she was trying to squeeze something out of me that wasn’t there.

  I couldn’t breathe. I pushed her off, harder than I meant to, and it was like she was made of air, her bird bones flung back and she lost her footing and toppled. Her head cracked against the corner of the kitchen counter. Her eyes fluttered shut, a couple of seconds passed, and they flicked open again. A wide, stunned look on her face. She touched the side of her head, under her hair, held her hand out. Blood. I moved to help her but she was already scrambling to stand.

  “I never should have had you. I was only supposed to have one.” Her bloodstained finger pointed upward—one. Only one.

  “You’re a nasty drunk, and I wish you’d never had me either.”

  Mimi grabbed her purse and keys and left. I didn’t try to stop her. I had no idea where she was going, I didn’t care. She always took off like this at all hours of the night. I scooped out some ice cream as soon as her car pulled away and watched TV, happy to be home alone. Lucas stomped in an hour later and went to bed. We didn’t talk.

  It was four in the morning when the police arrived to tell us that Mimi had been in a car accident. It looked like she had passed out at the wheel, driven off the road, and hit a tree. Her injuries were severe enough to put her in a coma. Four days later, a neurologist from Minneapolis informed us that our mother might not make it, and if she did, it was unlikely she would be the same person. When Mimi finally roused, it was apparent that she wouldn’t be coming home.

  Of course I knew that it was me who caused Mimi’s head injury. Not her car’s slow roll into a tree. When Lucas brought it up to the neurologist that Mimi wasn’t driving all that fast, the doctor simply answered, “Head injuries can be funny like that.”

  Some of Lucas’s friends and their parents helped us out financially. (These same people who were probably now damning themselves for having ever given us a cent.) There was a fund-raiser with a silent auction that let us stay in the house until we left for college, then it was put up for sale.

  I never told Lucas anything. I didn’t want him to know. I was afraid I would lose him, the last remaining fully functioning member of my family. I was afraid he would hate me for making us near orphans. For making Mimi a lifetime burden. It was why I lied to Lucas about the cost of her care; he had to feel he was paying his half, because he’d feel bad if he wasn’t.

  I have a hundred choose-your-own-adventure moments that made for a different outcome: Lucas and I sprang an intervention on Mimi that night. She stopped drinking, she worked hard at winning us over (she knew she had to work harder with me), and we’d gone on to have an adult relationship with her that was deep and meaningful and self-aware. Or else, again I didn’t push her and she continued drinking, her liver festered, her face pickled, and I got to hate her. I got to live a life without hauling around this guilt. On her deathbed, a death hastened by booze and an undiagnosed STI, I’d find it in my heart to forgive her and finally have closure.

  But I did push her.

  * * *

  A sleeveless gray tunic, black slacks. It was the only outfit I’d brought with me that was remotely suitable for a press conference. I laid it out on Lucas’s couch, showered, and spent another twenty minutes cursing at myself for not packing a hair dryer. As I pulled my hair up into a severe knobby bun, last night’s headache pulsed a few last dying twangs. Classy diamond stud earrings. Nothing flashy. I powdered on some makeup, glazed my eyes with waterproof mascara and matte eye shadow until I looked like a well-rested, reasonable person. I glossed my lips to cover their redness from chewing them, a nervous habit. I checked myself in the mirror. You’d have to take someone this polished-looking seriously. Some small prideful part of me whispered, Look at me, I’ve made it. I’m not decked out in Kmart. I did not get pregnant and stuck here. A fever that struck down how many Wayoatan girls? Like my mother.

  Like Joanna would have been.

  I tried a stunned headshake. No, no, no. He didn’t.

  Flicked off the light.

  * * *

  The sky was an innocent blue as I drove to the press conference. Something was rattling somewhere in my rental car. I should probably file a police report about being run off the road, but then I pictured the inevitable paperwork and insurance forms and I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with it. Not now. So I turned the radio up and went over what I would say to make Lucas come back. When I saw the media vans crowded around the police station, my hands went clammy and I had to fight a violent urge to turn the car around. The sheer number of them. I’d been expecting a handful of reporters to make the trek all the way here for a press conference, the most exotic being from Minneapolis (I’d even comforted myself with the thought that someone from the Chicago Tribune had only called me; they hadn’t actually sent a reporter for such a flimsy story). Nothing like this. It had broken out of the Midwest and gone national. Of course it would. Lucas was photogenic and on the run. Joanna was an NYC-bound ballerina. The golden boy from Wayoata, circa 2002, had killed the golden girl of Wayoata, circa now. Pruden was already standing on top of a temporary stage, behind a lectern that looked like it had been borrowed from a restaurant. The PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign was covered up with a printout of the Wayoata Police Department insignia. Garrett, in full blues, saw me and jogged over, opened my door, and ushered me past the throng of cameras, microphones, and iPhones. He led me by the arm into the station, like I was frail, or maybe he was worried I would back out.

  “Sorry, Mia. I had no idea it was going to be this big. Do you need anything, bottle of water? We have about five minutes.”

  “No, I’m fine. I mean, I’m not fine. Not at all.”

  Garrett nodded like he knew what I meant, but clearly he didn’t. Or else he wasn’t listening because he was watching Pruden through the window as he delivered the official police statement. The same blah-blah vague person-of-interest bullshit, who just became a whole lot more interesting due to his absence. I glimpsed thwarted ambition on Garrett’s face. He was stuck behind a guy who refused to retire. He probably had visions of himself cracking this case and making police chief before he was thirty. He looked back at me, tried to give me a pleasant smile like he was about to sell me a new car.

  “OK, so just a quick primer. Don’t offer your opinion about whether Lucas is guilty or not. It’ll just confuse the point of this conference. It will upset the family, who are here. All we want is for you to talk directly to Lucas. Offer your support. Appeal to him that turning himself in is the best thing he can do.”

  “If I knew I wasn’t going to be able to say what I wanted, I wouldn’t be here right now,” I snapped. As if he was trying to censor me like some authoritarian thought-cop.

  “I told you this last night.” He gave me a surprised look.

  “No, you did not say I couldn’t offer an opinion about his guilt. Why would I have agreed to do this?”

  “Mia.” His voice went into placate mode. “This really isn’t the place for that. I get why you want to say Lucas is innocent. I get that. I do. And you will have lots of other opportunities to do that, once Lucas is back. But this whole town is on high alert with your brother still out there. People are scared, and if you could for a minute see it from the family’s point of view—”

  “But Lucas is my family.” Fuc
k you. I’ll say whatever I want.

  “You know what I mean.” He thumbed the corner of his mouth. Squeezed my shoulder in a way that I didn’t like. It was too pitiful. “Just remember, talk directly to Lucas. Say whatever you need to say to get him to come in. All that matters right now is that Lucas turns himself in.” A woman came up to us and said something to Garrett. “Ready?” He looked at me. Put his police cap on his head, pulling it down low, making his blue eyes go steely gray. For a second I wanted to feel the weight of his arm around my shoulders again. Wanted to feel weighed down because I was so sure I was at any second going to deflate like a balloon and disappear.

  I shook my head no, but I followed him outside. Took two steps up onto the platform. The crowd looked so much bigger from up here. So many eyes were aimed at me, I thought I would crumple under the weight of them. My cheeks started to burn up.

  Pruden glanced over his shoulder at me, his eyes narrowed to hyphens, then wrapped up his statement. “The police service is requesting the assistance of the public to find Lucas Haas. If you have any information, please call immediately.”

  Garrett nodded at me. “Your turn,” he whispered like we were back in computer club.

  The Wilkes clan were standing out in front, the four of them. Each in white T-shirts with JUSTICE FOR JOANNA printed above Joanna’s picture, same as the one from her missing poster. A cruel thought jumped into my mind: Well, they certainly had time to get new T-shirts made up; they can’t be that aggrieved. (I knew they were new because others in the crowd were still wearing the BRING JOANNA HOME T-shirt, like they were souvenirs of hope.) The family was holding hands and may have been praying. The eldest son was leaning into his father, who looked as if he would topple over from the extra weight. His eyes hidden behind the glare on his glasses. The daughter, Madison, was staring down at her feet. A high blond ponytail dangled in front of her face. My gaze moved to the mother and … THAT was the mother?! My heart dropped.

  Kathy Wilkes (née Russo). She still had that pageant beauty glint but was now round as an M&M’s candy and coated with an orangey spray tan.

  I knew her, or really knew of her. She was about a decade older than me. Every year at the Corn and Apple Festival parade until I was nine or ten, Kathy was the topper on the Harold’s Grocers float. She’d stand in the middle of a Styrofoam fruit platter, wearing a tiara and a gown that looked like it was made of cotton candy. She’d wave at the curbside crowd like the Wayoata princess she was. Her grandfather owned Harold’s Grocers. He’d opened it in the forties, and it was now a Midwest chain and Wayoata’s claim to fame. Harold’s Grocers and its processing plant employed nearly a quarter of Wayoatans. Lucas was fucked.

  I had to look away from the mics dangling from boom poles and bobbing cameras with lights that were suddenly hitting my eyes like spritzes of bleach making everything go white and stinging. Aware that my mouth had fallen open with surprise, I pressed my lips together. Kathy Russo was Joanna’s mother. It had thrown me off. Lucas really needed me to say something good about him. Of course I wasn’t going to say what Garrett wanted me to. I wasn’t going to coax my brother home like a cat out of a tree. No. Lucas would sense a trap. He’d know I drank the Kool-Aid, and wherever he was, he’d be farther gone. He had to know, really know, that I was on his side. He needed me, more than ever, if he was up against Harold’s Grocers. Jesus. This just kept getting worse.

  I couldn’t talk for a second. My tongue sat thick and useless in my mouth, and when I did speak, my voice sounded strange and very far away. “I would like to state first that my brother, Lucas Haas, is not responsible for Joanna Wilkes’s murder. Lucas is a kind and gentle person, incapable of violence. Whoever did this is still out there and needs to be brought to justice. Lucas, if you’re watching right now, please come home. I promise you, this will all be sorted out.” The mic squealed. I flinched. The Haases’ bad habit of feigning coolness when the world was ending had crept in (years of dealing with an alcoholic parent will do that to you). Immediately I knew my voice had gone too lilted and casual at this will all be sorted out. I cleared my throat, leaned toward the mic again. “Just come home and help find the person who really did this by clearing your name. I love you, I believe in you.”

  I stood there a second, immobilized by the stone-cold quiet that followed. A second passed, then a rush of questions were pelted at me. Is your brother guilty? Why did he do it? Where do you think he’s hiding? Did you know he was having an inappropriate relationship with a child? Did you notice anything growing up that indicated he could be guilty of such a horrendous act? Did he sexually abuse you as a girl? Don’t you think your terminology, “all sorted out,” reflects a blasé attitude to the murder of a young girl?

  “I didn’t mean to sound blasé.” Garrett’s hand was on my shoulder, directing me away from the microphone. His lips pressed into my ear.

  “I warned you. Don’t answer them. Let’s get you out of here. Follow me.”

  As I stepped down behind Garrett, Kathy Wilkes cut me off. It was like she had teleported from the front of the platform to there, poof. Her head was cocked slightly to the side, her eyebrows up in a quizzical expression. A hush fell, and I could hear the air fizz. The earth rippled underneath my feet. An awkward second passed. It looked like she was trying to put together the right words but couldn’t. I took a breath, decided to say something first. I wasn’t going to outright apologize, because that was an admission, but I guessed something equally asinine for a mother who’d lost her daughter would be I’m sorry you think my brother is responsible for your horrible tragedy. When she saw I was about to speak, Kathy’s face morphed into something wild. The cameras buzzed around my eyes. Her hand, the hand that had waved in the parade all those years, came up and connected against my cheek. My head snapped to the side, a keening whistle sounded in my ear.

  “How dare you? My daughter is dead,” she wailed.

  I stumbled back, a flash of pain and a sort of schoolyard embarrassment at having my ass handed to me in front of so many people. Kathy’s husband made a grab for his wife, but she shook him off like a bear.

  Garrett and another officer quickly intervened.

  Madison, too, had somehow wrapped herself around Kathy’s nonslapping hand and whined, “Mom, don’t. Everyone’s watching.” Kathy was about to come at me again.

  The other officer guided her away, and Garrett walked me to my car, his arm out trying to protect me from the microphones and telescopic lenses thrust in my face.

  “Any comment on being slapped?”

  I peeled out of the lot.

  * * *

  Around the corner. I sat in my car. Stunned. My hand pressed against my stinging cheek. I could still see the police station. The Wilkeses were surrounded by more people in white Joanna T-shirts. A woman was passing out candles. It was clearly the beginning of a prayer vigil.

  I was talking to myself—“What the fuck, Lucas, where are you? What the fuck”—when a woman knocked on my car window. I rolled it down, just a crack.

  “I’m Vanessa Lee. I’m a reporter from the Minneapolis StarTribune.” She was short with shampoo-commercial hair and spoke incredibly fast. “I know you’re going to get a lot of offers, but I really want to deliver three-dimensional coverage here, not get sidelined by the juiciness of the teacher-on-student aspect of this story. I want to delve a bit deeper into who Lucas is and would like to do a more extensive interview with you about him. It could be your chance to really share Lucas’s side of things. Right now, it’s assumed he’s guilty. You could maybe turn that around, put some reasonable doubt in our readers’ minds.” She took a breath, then proudly stated, “We’re the most read out-of-state newspaper in North Dakota, and number one in Minnesota. I write an opinion column and make it a point to take a contrarian point of view, to investigate behind the headlines.”

  I didn’t say anything. I white-knuckled the steering wheel; my hands ached. I didn’t know Lucas’s side of things.

  She twit
ched at my nonresponsiveness. “Here.” She dropped her card in the open slit of my window. It fell into my lap. “If it’s any consolation, if Lucas had been a woman and Joanna a sixteen-year-old boy, the media attention would be far worse.”

  “Well, at least there’s that,” I answered sarcastically. I made a point to toss her card into the backseat.

  * * *

  It was the first time I’d regretted not maintaining a friendship with anyone in Wayoata. I wanted to sit at someone’s kitchen table, have them press a cup of tea into my hands and agree with me that this was just a misunderstanding. But my friends had been girls like me, ambitious and anxious to leave Wayoata behind. And it wasn’t like I could call any of my friends in Chicago. Where would I even start? Hey, you know that family I never really talk about? Yeah, well, my brother might be a murderer. It would require too much backstory. Take too much explaining. I’d have to reveal too much. I was alone.

  The makeup bag started calling out to me (For no good reason, when a craving set in and my makeup bag started talking to me, I always heard Seth Rogen’s deep, gravelly voice), Hey, hey, hey, I’m here for you, just dip in. Take a chill pill. Relax. Its zipper mouth grinning up at me from my purse.

  No. I better not. My left eye twitched with the struggle not to take a pill.

  I guess I lied. I tend to do that when it comes to pills. Lie to myself. The past two years, while I’d been relatively sober, I hadn’t won every single battle against my triggers. There were just so many of them. That smell of burning dust and dead skin when the furnace was turned on for the first time in my building put me right back in Wayoata. Back in that shitty house, in my upstairs bedroom, feeling all that powerlessness biting at my skin.

  Listening to a mother and daughter chatter amiably while waiting for a prescription (the mother actually asking questions and listening to the answers like her daughter was a gift). Talking to my twin, the one person who knows me better than anyone else, and feeling like a liar. An entire day of listening to cranked Muzak and knowing I could do better than retail pharmacy, that I should go back to school for my Pharm.D. and work in biotech. Invent the most blissful pill on the planet and name it after myself.