Part 25 (1/2)

Lifting her off her sister, that face violet-shot.

That's how I see it. The way Dusty tells me.

Mr. Shaw's man's arms. I can feel them.

Listening to Dusty, it all shudders into placea”Evie saying to me, He saved me, so I gave him this thing.

”He stopped you,” I say, the recognition rustling against my neck. ”Mr. Shaw.”

”No, no, no. I'd already stopped,” she says, the words breaking to shards. ”I'd stopped.”

”And then he took her away. Then he stole her away,” I say, picturing Mr. Shaw hoisting Evie in his arms. A true rescue. At first, at the start.

Oh, Mr. Shaw, you might have been that knight if you had quit there. You might have been that knight, had you been able to stop your own sick heart froma”

”No, no,” Dusty says, her voice soft. ”He pulled me away. She was on the ground and the sound, thata rattling sound from her throat, and I couldn't look. I couldn't look. We were both breathing so hard, but her breath, like when you put your ear on a seash.e.l.l. Like your ear on aa”

”He took her,” I say, pus.h.i.+ng myself in.

”No,” she says. And she tells me how it was. Evie shaking the breath back into herself, her face stunned, lost. The searing red on her neck.

How he'd started backing away again, like he didn't know what to do now. Like he was afraid to get near either of them. Someone could swoop in at any minute and point the finger at him.

Her face covered in her arms, Dusty hid herself in herself. She covered her face, and buried herself fora she didn't know how long. It felt like forever.

Hearing Evie stumbling to her feet, calling out to him, calling his name. Running to him, her breath that gruesome wheeze.

The car door slamming. The car kicking to life. The car driving away.

”You have to understand. The things she said,” Dusty goes on, her voice splintering and going high. ”They were so awful. Things no one should ever say about anyone.”

Her thumb on the clotting blood on her knee, dancing there, touching the sealing blood.

”Lizzie, she said those things and it was like shea carved them into me. Because now I look at myself,” she says, her hand lifting, nearly covering her mouth, ”and all I see are those words.”

”What words?” I ask, but somewhere in my head I know.

”I can't say them,” she says, darting her eyes at me, her face breaking softly. ”Do you think I can say them?”

”A-a-about you,” I stutter. ”About you?”

”She said, How is it different from the two of you? From you and Dad. And I told her it was nothing like that, that I was nothing like her.”

And Evie said to her, No, you're right. You're nothing like me, Dusty. It's not me you're like.

You're the one out there, just like Mr. Shaw. That's you under the pear tree night after night, wanting things you can never have, those last words like a claw over Dusty's face.

Dusty, she'd said, almost a taunt, but a thousand times sadder, you can want him your whole life and Dad's never going to give it to you.

I look at Dusty now and there's a howl in my head. I can't say anything.

”She made it seem sick,” Dusty says, her voice choking her. ”She made it seem like loving him was dirty. What could be dirty about loving your father?”

”But why didn't she tell on you?” I say. ”Why didn't she tell what you'da” My voice trails off.

”She'll never tell,” Dusty says, her eyes lidding softly.

”She's protecting you,” I say, but even as I say it, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because they were never sisters that way, were they? Only keening rivals, circling each other, marking each other tightly.

A love was in it, I knew, but it was nettled and fearsome.

”It's not me,” she says, shaking her head. ”She's not protecting me.”

I feel something stirring softly inside me. I think of Evie, secrets held close to her chest, and I see it's not about hiding, it's not about sealing herself up, sealing herself away from me.

She is raising the barricade so high, so he will never have to know. He will never have to see what his daughter did to his other daughter. What either of them has done. I think of Evie in the car on the way back from the pool, I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry.

”I never told him about her either,” Dusty says, as if reading my mind. ”I pictured myself, so many times, going to him. Saying, Don't you see, it's all her fault. Everything's her fault. She ran to him. She ran away with him. Even if I had nevera she was going to do it. Go with him. I know it.

”But I could never say it. I couldn't stand seeing the look on his face. I never want to see it.”

She can break his heart, both sisters are saying, but I won't.

”I'll never tell either,” I blurt. ”I'll never tell.”

She looks at me, and it's such a tortured look, full of anger and despair and a flushy kind of warmth I've never seen on her before.

”It's like kids,” Dusty says, and she's almost smiling. ”It's like when we were kids. Blood sisters, right? Remember, in the backyard, all three of us, thumbs to thumbs.”

A memory hazes forth, Evie and me, maybe five or six, stretching our arms before golden Dusty, our thumbs jabbing, waiting for her silvery laceration.

”Blood sisters,” I say.

She might even reach out to me, but she doesn't. She tilts her head, looking down at the tile, dragging her cleat against it.

”That day. The way I was. It wasn't me, you know?” she says, almost shaking her head in wonder.

I think of Dusty on the hockey field, ferocious and biblical, her stick slas.h.i.+ng, saberlike.

”It's a thing to know about yourself,” she says, quieter still.

She watches me.

”Yes,” I say.

Then there's a ripple across her face, and she looks away.