No One Knows Us Here(5)

“It’s not like I blame you,” Wendy said.

“But you should.” I turned toward her, gripped her hands in mine, clasped her fingers.

“He did it,” she said. “He did it to both of us.”

“No,” I cried out. I was hysterical by then. My entire face was wet, slick with tears.

“Calm down.” Wendy tried to free her hands from mine, but I wouldn’t let her. I held on tighter. I’d crush her fingers in mine before I let her go.

“I did this to you,” I whispered. “Don’t you see that? I never should have let this happen. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” I picked up another wine bottle from the balcony floor and unscrewed the lid. It was some sort of cheap rosé, as warm as the night air. Wine sloshed out of the bottle and into her cup, then mine, spilling over the rims and onto our fingers.

“I don’t blame you for what he did,” Wendy said, her voice raised. “I blame you for leaving.”

“I thought you’d be happy.” My voice came out small. “You, Mom, him. One perfect little family.”

“Yeah, right. Like the wicked fairy.”

“You remember that?” I opened my eyes wide at her, trying to focus on her face. It was getting blurrier and blurrier by then.

“You only told the story to me every night for two years straight.”

“You were just a little kid.”

There was once a beautiful young queen, it began. A beautiful young queen and her wicked little fairy. The wicked little fairy was a burden to the queen, tying her down. Every night the story would be a little different. The wicked fairy would do slightly different wicked things—funny things, outlandish things, little inventions to make Wendy laugh.

It always ended the same way. The queen would meet her handsome prince and they would have a beautiful baby princess and the wicked fairy would see how much happier the queen was, just the three of them. The wicked fairy would fly away, to join the other wicked fairies, so the three of them could live happily ever after.

It wasn’t the most creative fairy tale. A mash-up of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Where the Wild Things Are.

Wendy leaned in. “What if the wicked fairy wasn’t wicked after all?” she said. “What if she was a princess, too? What if the handsome prince was the wicked one? He was the one who needed to get banished to another kingdom, torn apart by dragons or something.” Wendy gave a sad little smile. “That would have been a way better ending.”

I could only nod. “You’re right,” I said.

The sky was lightening around the edges. Soon the sun would rise. I was due to drop Wendy off at the airport in three hours. We were silent for several minutes, watching the sky, listening to the sounds of the early morning. Leaves rustling. Cars in the distance, on other streets. “I could have stopped him,” I said. Wendy’s eyes were closed. Maybe she’d fallen asleep. The words rushed out of me then, a confession. “I could have stopped him, but I didn’t. I didn’t.” I topped up my wine again, took a gulp. It didn’t taste bad anymore. I’d grown used to it. I tilted my head up, imagining it, imagining my life without him in it, connecting the plot points of my life, how it would all add up. “Mom would still be alive.” My voice cracked on the words. “They never would have driven over that cliff—”

Wendy’s eyes opened. Her head rolled across the back of the chair so she could observe me. “You’re drunk,” she said.

“Think about it,” I said. “If I’d done it—”

“Done what?”

“Killed him,” I said. I had thought that was obvious.

Wendy let out a laugh, a single “Ha!”

“I could have done it. I was this close—” I was crying again. “Everything would be okay now—”

“You’d be in prison.”

“Think about it. Think about it—some people deserve to die. Imagine if all the rapists, all the child abusers, all of them—imagine if they were just wiped off the face of the earth. The world would be a better place, right? I mean, I believe that. Sometimes, killing someone is the responsible thing to do. Sometimes, it—”

“No one asked you to kill my dad,” Wendy interrupted. “I asked you to maybe shoot me a text every once in a while.”

I stared down into my cup, swirled the rosy-pink wine around and around. It looked so beautiful in there, the dimming streetlights bouncing their amber hue off the liquid. It was so, so beautiful, a sunset in a glass. “I’ll make it up to you, Windy-girl,” I said. That was what I used to call her sometimes, when she was little. I don’t know where it came from, or who started it—me or my mom. We both called her that. Our little Windy-girl.

“Let me live with you,” she said.

I looked back into the apartment. Soon my roommates would be awake, puttering around the kitchen, setting the kettle to boil, eating cereal out of mismatched bowls. “I’d need a new place,” I said. “A new job.”

“You owe me,” Wendy said, pleading. “Isn’t that what you said?”

We locked eyes. Wendy tried to dab at my tears with the end of my blanket. She nodded slightly. A tentative smile formed on her lips. “You owe me,” she repeated, until I could do nothing but bob my head up and down and tell her I’d give it a shot. At the very least, I’d try.