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Gabriel holds ain and fall Maddie waves the flashlight around when she reaches the bottom of the steps Instinctually I reach for the pull cord that will turn on the hanging light, but of course there’s no power

I take the flashlight and point it, first into the corner of the room where the cot still stands My brother and I slept here in hourly shifts, keeping each other safe through the night Then I find the courage to erator, which is eht to yet another corner, I find so than the e everywhere On their backs, on their sides Soness All of the them are rotted stems and wilted flower petals I’m so horrified that I don’t even hear Gabriel’s reaction

My brother had concocted his own poison to take care of our rat problem, but I had only ever seen it kill one or two at a time And then there are the flowers Lilies, shriveled like earthwor I would try again with seeds I bought at various markets in Manhattan, and even from flower shops out of state if my brother’s deliveries took him away

The only seeds I didn’t dare to try were the ones that my ed to her, and I felt I had no right planting thees of one of her notebooks and buried it in the backyard with all the other things my brother and I didn’t want to have stolen

The backyard Iunder the staircase, and I hurry upstairs I run through the living roo not to see the mess that’s become of my father’s desk and wicker chair, or the couch that still, just barely, bears brightness from its daisy print

By the tiht onto the shovel to break the earth He helpsfor, and I can tell, by the way the dirt has been disrupted, that it’s already gone

Chapter 17

MY BROTHER left sos in the trunks we’d buried Probably because they were tooOr because he didn’t think they’d be useful Clothes; htless paper kite I ; yellowed books about war or romance; my father’s twenty-first-century atlas

I flip through all the pieces of my childhood, and the books nore the memories and the pain that fly up with the dust, because there is so for?" Gabriel says He helpsthe jewelry box and finding it elobe necklace is absent I hope s for h hope seems stupid at this point

"Seeds," I say "Myan abandoned wasp nest on the ground

"Maybe we dropped thes around," Gabriel says

"No," I say "They aren’t here And neither are any of my parents’ notebooks, which is where I left the seeds"

I search everything a second and third tiround Gabriel takes the shovel from my hands, and I don’t object when he reburies s so I won’t have to I just stand there, useless,back the e Better not to think

And that’s when thea cake for Rowan’s and my birthday Our ninth birthday And the other side of the sink was full of dishes that I was helping to wash Dinner had just ended, and with his mouth full of food, my brother turned to ed But I won’t be" At first I thought he was trying to compete with me, but then he averted his eyes, and I kneas hurt

Once he had gone upstairs to take his bath, afterthe blue birds, she said to me, "You have to look out for each other"

Look out for each other That was our theme I could almost believe my parents had had twins on purpose, rather than by chance, just so we could each fulfill that proh on that, did I? I left hione, just like he doesn’t knohat happened towe see back

There is so about this person that you won’t admit even to yourself That’s what Annabelle said when she laid the tarot cards beforeabout my own brother that I wouldn’t admit

I stare at the hole I made in the earth, which was already pliable from my brother’s efforts

"He thinks I’, but his voice coh underwater, and I don’tin my ears My blood is waves of hot and cold

When our parents died, my brother became all about survival He took care not to let me sink too deep into that endless cavern of despair He worked us both into a routine of doing and surviving And all that tithe same for him That he needed me every bit as much as I needed him

That, without me, the routine would fall apart

I held fast to the hope that he’d go on here without h the afternoon, setting the traps and sleeping on our cot But I’ve been gone too long, and there are new ashes billowing up froiven up on ether? The answer is the sa ahead ofis tellingThis can’t be all The stairs shudder and creak under ht A separate fire had been lit upstairs; it ate all the doors, charred the walls And though these rooms have been empty since my parents’ death, they see

I don’t kno long I stand there, panting I wait for tears, but they don’t co to cli the stairs "There’s nothing to see up there"

He tries to put his arh the scorched doorway and into the ruined yard