“Why do you know that?” I asked. Lulu had money. A lot of it. It wasn’t like they needed to know ways of making more of it.
Lulu’s cheeks colored, and they crossed their knees primly under the ruffled skirt of their sundress. “I wasn’t always an accountant,” they mumbled.
“Incoming!” Elliot called, then threw the rusty metal thing into a mostly-empty stall with a loud clatter.
“What were you?” I asked Lulu.
The flush deepened. “I grew up on a pig farm,” they answered softly. “In Iowa.”
I blinked. “Do you want a goat or two?” I asked. “Or some chickens?” I should have thought to ask earlier, even though I was almost certain that neither Noah nor Lulu had any interest whatsoever in animal husbandry.
“Oh,God, no!” Lulu sounded genuinely horrified. “Ineverwant to farmanythingthat doesn’t flower and smell nice ever again.”
“Don’t give away my goats!” Elliot called from the loft as he rummaged around in the hay again.
“I’m not!” I called back.
I wokeup the next morning stiff and sore, my back aching, my knee throbbing, and the steady pound of Elliot’s heart under my ear. I’d spent too many hours sitting awkwardly on a wooden kitchen chair in the barn, knowing I was going to have to do it again today, just in the house.
To quote both Hart and Elliot:Fuck.
Under the creaky floorboard in Rachael’s room, we’d found her diary.
She’d talked about everything Father had done to her—nothing quite so bad as what he’d inflicted on me or Noah, thank God, since Rachael seemed inclined to want to be a wife and mother one day—and all of her hopes for her future.
She’d wanted out.
Desperately.
She knew both our names—mine and Noah’s deadname—and how old we would be. She dreamed of leaving the Community and going to the big city—Charlottesville or even Richmond—to find out what life was like outside the little enclave where she’d been controlled and diminished. She wanted to find out what she was capable of.
She’d never gotten the chance.
When I read it, sitting on the edge of the bed that had been Noah’s, I was dimly aware of the tears slipping down my cheeks.
Noah had taken it from me, read it, and then cuddled up next to me, his arms tight around my waist. I couldn’t count thenumber of times we’d sat like that in this very room, me holding him and trying to shield him against the world.
This time, I wasn’t sure who was shielding whom. Not that it particularly mattered, but I was at least grateful that we’d at least had each other.
Without Noah, I don’t know that I’d have made it through childhood. Or that Noah would have made it without me.
I’d hoped that Rachael had not suffered as much as we had. In the ways that we had. And while it arguably hadn’t beenasbad for her, it was pretty clear that she’d hated this house and this family as much as Noah and I ever had.
As we sat there, holding each other, Elliot and Lulu downstairs packing up the dregs of our childhood, I couldn’t help but wish Rachael had been born sooner—that we’d been able to save her the way we’d saved ourselves.
I hoped that wherever she was now, she’d get some peace.
But I know better than most that the dead don’t always lie easy.
19
Seth Mays
Humbolt just called.
They’re releasing Momma’s body.
Elliot Crane
