"Yes, yes I'd like that," she said. "Please."

And in her head she told herself, Don't hope, don't hope for too much.

Libby Day

NOW

Idrove back home through sickly forests. Somewhere down one of those long stringy roads was a landfill. I never saw the dump itself, but I drove through a good twenty miles of float-away trash. To my right and left, the ground flickered with a thousand plastic grocery bags, fluttering and hovering just above the grass. Looking like the ghosts of little things.

Rain started splattering, then got thicker, freezing. Everything outside my car looked warped. Whenever I saw a lonely place-a dimple in the landscape, a copse of whiskery trees-I pictured Diondra buried beneath, a collection of unclaimed bones and bits of plastic: a watch, the sole of a shoe, maybe the red dangly earrings she wore in the yearbook photo.

Who gives a tinker's damn about Diondra? I thought, Diane's phrases again popping into my head. Who cares if Ben killed her, because he killed your family, and it all ends there anyway.

I'd wanted so badly for Runner to give something up, make me believe he did it. But seeing him only reminded me how impossible it was that he killed them all, how dumb he was. Dumb, Dumb, it was a word you used as a kid, but it was the best way to describe Runner. Wily and dumb at the same time. Magda and the Kill Club would be disappointed, although I'd be happy to give them his address if they wanted to continue the conversation. Me, I hoped he'd die soon. it was a word you used as a kid, but it was the best way to describe Runner. Wily and dumb at the same time. Magda and the Kill Club would be disappointed, although I'd be happy to give them his address if they wanted to continue the conversation. Me, I hoped he'd die soon.

I passed a thick, flat brown-earth field, a teenage boy leaning against a fence in the rain, in the dark, sulky or bored, staring out at the highway. My brain returned to Ben. Diondra and Ben. Pregnant. Everything else Ben told me about that night felt right, believable, but the lie, the insistent lie about Diondra. That seemed like something to worry about.

I sped home, feeling contaminated. I went straight to the shower and scrubbed myself, Silkwood-style with a hard nail brush, my skin looking like I'd been attacked by a pack of cats when I was done. I got into bed still feeling infected, fussed around in the sheets for an hour, then got up and showered again. Around 2 a.m., I fell into a sweaty, heavy sleep filled with leering old men I thought were my father until I got close enough to see their faces melt. More potent nightmares followed: Michelle was cooking pancakes, and grasshoppers were floating in the batter, their twig legs snapping off as Michelle stirred. They got cooked into the pancakes, and my mom made us eat them anyway, good protein, crunch, crackle. Then we all started dying- choking, slobbering, eyes floating back in our heads-because the grasshoppers were poisoned. I swallowed one of the big insects and felt it fight its way back up my throat, its sticky body surfacing in my mouth, squirting my tongue with tobacco, pushing its head against my teeth to escape.

The morning dawned an unimpressive gray. I showered again- my skin still feeling suspicious-and then drove to the downtown public library, a white pillared building that used to be a bank. I sat next to a pungent man with a matted beard and a stained army jacket, the guy I always end up next to in public places, and finally got on the Internet. I found the massive, sad Missing Persons database and entered her name.

The screen made its churning, thinking sound and I sweated while hoping a No Data screen would come up. No such luck. The photo was different from the yearbook but not too: Diondra with the mousse-hard curls and the cresting bangs, charcoal eyeliner and pink lipgloss. She was smiling just the tiniest bit, pouting her lips out.

DIONDRA SUE WERTZNER.

BORN: OCTOBER 28, 1967.

REPORTED MISSING: JANUARY 21, 1985.

BEN WAS WAITING for me again, this time with his arms crossed, leaned back in the chair, belligerent. He'd given me the silent treatment a week before granting my request to see him. Now he shook his head at me when I sat down. for me again, this time with his arms crossed, leaned back in the chair, belligerent. He'd given me the silent treatment a week before granting my request to see him. Now he shook his head at me when I sat down.

It threw me off.

"You know, Libby, I've been thinking since we talked last," he finally said. "I've been thinking I don't need this, this pain. I mean, I'm already in here, I don't really need my little sister to show up, believe in me, don't believe in me. Ask me weird questions, put me on the guard after goddam twenty-four years. I don't need the tension. So if you're coming here, trying to 'get to the bottom of things,'" he made angry air quotes, "you know, go somewhere else. Because I just don't need it."

"I found Runner."

He didn't stand up, he stayed solid in his chair. Then he gave a sigh, a might-as-well sigh.

"Wow, Libby, you missed your calling as a detective. What'd Runner have to say? He still in Oklahoma?"

I felt an inappropriate twitch of a smile. "He's at a Superfund dump on the edge of Lidgerwood, got turned out from the group home."

Ben grinned at that. "He's living in a toxic waste dump. Ha."

"He says Diondra Wertzner was your girlfriend, that you got her pregnant. That she was pregnant and you two were together, the night of the murders."

Ben put a hand over his face, his fingers splayed. I could see his eyes blink through them. He talked with his face still covered, and I couldn't hear what he said. He tried twice, me asking each time what he was saying, and on the third try he pulled his head up, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and leaned in.

"I said, what the fuck is your obsession with Diondra? You got a goddam bee in your bonnet about this, and you know what's going to happen, you're going to fuck all this up. You had a chance to believe in me, to do the right thing and finally believe in your brother. Who you know know. Don't say you don't because that's a lie. I mean, don't you get it, Libby? It's the last chance for us. The world can believe I'm guilty, believe I'm innocent, we both know I'm not going anywhere. There's no DNA going to release me-there's no goddam house house anymore. So. I'm not getting out. So. The only person I care, to say they know I couldn't have anymore. So. I'm not getting out. So. The only person I care, to say they know I couldn't have murdered my family, murdered my family, is you." is you."

"You can't blame me for wondering whether-"

"Of course I can. Of course I can. I can blame you for not believing in me. Now, I can forgive you for your lie, for getting confused, as a kid. I can forgive that. But goddamit, Libby, what about now? You're what, thirty-some years old, and still believe your own blood could do something like that?"

"Oh I totally believe my own blood could do that," I said, my anger surging up, bumping against my ribs. "I totally believe our blood is bad. I feel it in me. I've beaten the shit out of people, Ben. Me. I've busted in doors and windows and ... I've killed things. Half the time I look down, my hands are in fists."

"You believe we're that bad?"

"I do."

"Even with Mom's blood?"

"Even with."

"Well, I'm sad for you, little girl."

"Where is Diondra?"

"Let it go, Libby."

"What'd you do with the baby?"

I felt queasy, fevered. If the baby had lived, it'd be (he'd be, she'd be), what, twenty-four years old. The baby wasn't a baby anymore. I tried to picture an adult, but my brain kept bouncing back an image of a blanket-swaddled infant. But hell, I could barely picture me me as an adult. My next birthday I'll be thirty-two, my mom's age when she was killed. She'd seemed so grown up. More grown up than I'd ever be. as an adult. My next birthday I'll be thirty-two, my mom's age when she was killed. She'd seemed so grown up. More grown up than I'd ever be.

So if it was alive, the baby was twenty-four. I had one of my awful visions. A might-have-been vision. Us, if everyone had lived, at home in Kinnakee. There's Michelle in the living room, still fiddling with her oversized glasses, bossing around a bundle of kids who roll their eyes at her but do what they're told. Debby, chubby and chattery with a big, blond farmer-husband and a special room in her own farmhouse for crafts, packed with sewing ribbons and quilting patches and glue guns. My mom, ripe-fifties and sunbaggy, her hair mostly white, still bickering pleasantly with Diane. And into the room comes Ben's kid, a daughter, a redhead, a girl in her twenties, thin and assured, bangly bracelets on delicate wrists, a college graduate who doesn't take any of us seriously. A Day girl.

I choked on my own spit, started coughing, my windpipe shut down. The visitor two booths down from me leaned out to look and then, deciding I wasn't going to die, went back to her son.

"What happened that night, Ben? I need to know. I just need to know."

"Libby, you can't win this game. I tell you I'm innocent, that means you're guilty, you ruined my life. I tell you I'm guilty ... I don't think that makes you feel much better, does it?"

He was right. It was one reason I'd stayed immobile for so many years. I threw something else out: "And what about Trey Teepano?"

"Trey Teepano."

"I know he was a bookie, and that he was into Devil shit, and that he was a friend of yours, and he was with you that night. With Diondra. That all seems pretty fucked up."

"Where'd you get all that?" Ben looked me in the eye, then raised his gaze up, gave a long stare at my red roots that were to my ears now.

"Dad told me. He said he owed Trey Teepano money and-"

"Dad? He's Dad Dad now?" now?"

"Runner said-"

"Runner said fuck-all. You need to grow up, Libby. You need to pick a side. You can spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what happened, trying to reason. Or you can just trust yourself. Pick a side. Be on mine. It's better."

Ben Day

JANUARY 2, 1985

10:23 P.M.

They drove out past the edge of town, the road going from cement to dirt, Ben rattling around in the backseat, hands pressed up against the top of the truck, trying to stay in place. He was stoned, real stoned, and his teeth and head rattled. You got a screw loose? You got a screw loose? He had two or three loose. He wanted to sleep. Eat first, then sleep. He watched the lights of Kinnakee fade away and then it was miles of glowing blue snow, a patch of grass here, a jagged scar of fence there, but mostly snow like the surface of the moon. Like he really was in outer space, on another planet, and he wasn't going home, ever. He had two or three loose. He wanted to sleep. Eat first, then sleep. He watched the lights of Kinnakee fade away and then it was miles of glowing blue snow, a patch of grass here, a jagged scar of fence there, but mostly snow like the surface of the moon. Like he really was in outer space, on another planet, and he wasn't going home, ever.

They turned down some road, trees sucking them in, tunnel-like on all sides and he realized he had no idea where they were. He just hoped whatever was about to happen was over soon. He wanted a hamburger. His mom made crazy hamburgers, called them kitchen-sinkers, fattened up cheap ground meat with onions and macaroni and whatever else crap was about to go bad. One time he swore he found part of a banana, glopped over with ketchup-his mom thought ketchup made everything OK. It didn't, her cooking sucked, but he'd eat one of those hamburgers right now. He was thinking I'm I'm so hungry I could eat a cow so hungry I could eat a cow. And then, as if his food-prayer worked, he refocused his eyes from a gritty stain on the backseat to the outside and there were ten or twenty Herefords standing in the snow for no reason. There was a barn nearby but no sign of a house, and the cows were too dumb to walk back into the barn, so they stood like a bunch of fat assholes, blowing steam from their nostrils. Herefords were the ugliest cows around, giant, rusty, with white crinkled faces and pink-rimmed eyes. Jersey cows were sort of sweet looking, they had those big deer faces, but Herefords looked prehistoric, belligerent, mean. The things had furry thick waddles and curvy-sharp horns and when Trey pulled to a stop, Ben felt a flurry of nerves. Something bad was going to happen.

"We're here," Trey said as they sat in the car, the heater turned off, the cold creeping in. "All out." Trey reached over Diondra into the glove compartment-here grazing Diondra's baby belly, them both giving weird smiles again-grabbed a cassette and popped it in the deck. The frenetic, zigzag music started scribbling on Ben's brain.

"Come on, Ben," Trey said, crunching down on the snow. He pulled up the driver's seat to let Ben out, and Ben stumbled to the ground, missing the step, Trey grabbing hold of him. "Time for you to get some understanding, feel some power. You're a dad soon, dude." Trey shook him by both shoulders. "A dad!" His voice sounded friendly enough but he didn't smile. He just stared with his lips tight and his eyes red-rimmed, almost bloody. Deciding. He had a deciding look. Then Trey let go, cuffed his jean jacket, and went around to the back of the truck. Ben tried to see across the hood, catch Diondra's eyes, flash her a whatthefuck look, but she was leaning down into the cab, pulling another baggie out from under her seat, groaning with one hand on her belly, like it was really hard to bend down half a foot. She came back up, hand crooked on her back now and began digging around in the baggie. It was filled with foil gum wrappers and she pulled three out.

"Give it," Trey said, stuck two in his pocket and unwrapped the third. "You and Ben can share."

"I don't want to share," Diondra whined. "I feel like shit, I need a whole one."

Trey gave a frustrated sigh, then shot one packet out at her, muttering Jesus Christ Jesus Christ.

"What is that stuff?" Ben finally asked. He could feel that warm trickle on his head, knew he was bleeding again. His headache was worse too, throbbing behind his left eye, down his neck and into his shoulder, like an infection moving through his system. He rubbed at his neck, it felt like someone had tied a garden hose in knots and planted it under his skin.

"It's Devil rush, dude, ever had it?" Trey poured the powdery stuff into one palm and leaned into it like a horse to sugar, then made a shotgun of a snort, threw his head back, stumbled a few steps backward, then looked at them like they had no business being there. A ring of deep orange covered his nose and mouth.

"The fuck you looking at, Ben Day?"

Trey's pupils jittered back and forth like he was following an invisible hummingbird. Diondra sucked up hers in the same greedy, animal snort, then fell straight to her knees laughing. It was a laugh of joy for three seconds, and then it turned into a wet, choking laugh, the kind you give when you just can't believe your shitty luck, that kind of laugh. She was crying and cackling, lowering herself onto the snow, laughing on her hands and knees and then she was throwing up, nacho cheese and thick strings of spaghetti that almost smelled good in their sweet vomit sauce. Diondra still had a string of spaghetti hanging out of her mouth when she looked up. The strand hung there for a second, before she realized, then she pulled it out, Ben picturing the noodle still half down her throat, tickling its way up. She flung it to the ground still crying on all fours-and as she looked at it, she started in on that scrunched-face baby-bawl his sisters did when they got hurt. The end-of-the-world cry.

"Diondra, you OK, ba-?" he started.

She lurched forward and threw the rest up near Ben's feet. He got out of the way of the spatter and stood, watching Diondra on all fours, weeping.

"My daddy's going to kill me!" she wailed again, sweat wetting the roots of her hair. Her face twisted as she glared down at her belly. "He will kill kill me." me."

Trey was only looking at Ben, tuning Diondra out entirely, and he made a gesture with a single finger, a flick that meant Ben should stop stalling and take the Devil rush. He put his nose down near it and smelled old erasers and baking soda.

"What is it, like cocaine?"

"Like battery acid for your brain. Pour it in."

"Man I already feel like crap, I don't know if I need this stuff. I'm fucking hungry, man."

"For what's about to happen, you need it. Do it."

Diondra was giggling again, her face white under the beige foundation. A nacho crumble was floating toward Ben's foot on a runny pink stream. He moved. Then turned away from them, toward the watching cows, poured the powder into his palm and let it start to float off on the wind. When it was down to a pile the size of a quarter, he sniffed it, loud and fake as they had, and still only took part of it up his nose.

Which was good, because it shot straight into his brain, harsh as chlorine but with even more sting, and he could picture it crackling out like tree branches, burning the veins in his head. It felt like his whole bloodstream had turned to hot tin, even his wrist bones started to ache. His bowels shifted like a snake waking up, and for a second he thought he might crap himself, but instead he sneezed up some beer, lost his sight and tumbled onto the ground, his head throbbing open, the blood pulsing down his face with each squeeze. He felt like he could run eighty miles an hour, and that he should, that if he stayed where he was, his chest would crack open and some demon would bust out, shake Ben's blood off its wings, crook its head at the idea of being stuck in this world, and fly into the sky, trying to get back to hell. And then as soon as he thought he needed a gun, shoot himself and end this, came a big air bubble of relief that spread through him, soothed his veins, and he realized he'd been holding his breath and started gulping air, and then felt fucking good. Fucking smart to breathe air, that's what it was. He felt he was expanding, turning big, undeniable. Like no matter what he did, it was the right choice, yes sir, sure thing, like he could line up all the skyful of choices he'd need to make in the coming months and he could shoot them down like carnival animals and win something big. Huge. Hurray for Ben, up on everyone's shoulders so the world can fucking cheer.

"What the hell is this stuff?" he asked. His voice sounded solid, like a heavy door with a good swing to it.

Trey ignored him, glanced at Diondra, pulling herself up from the ground, her fingers red from where she'd buried them in the ice. He seemed to sneer at her without realizing it. Then he fished around in the back of his pickup, swung back around with an axe, glowing as blue as the snow. He handed it out toward Ben, blade first, and Ben let his arms go tight to his sides, nononno can't make me take it, nononno can't make me take it, like he was a kid being asked to hold a crying newborn, like he was a kid being asked to hold a crying newborn, nononono nononono.

"Take it."

Ben gripped it, cold in his hands, rusty stains on the point. "Is this blood?"

Trey gave one of his lazy side glances, didn't bother answering.

"Oh, I want the axe!" Diondra squealed. She made a skip over to the truck, Ben wondering if they were fucking with him as usual.

"Too heavy for you, take the hunting knife."

Diondra twisted back and forth in her coat, the fur-trim of the hood bouncing up and down.

"I don't want the knife, too small, give Ben the knife, he hunts."

"Then Ben gets this too," Trey said, and handed him a 10-gauge shotgun.

"Let me have the gun, then, I'll take that," Diondra said.

Trey took her hand, opened it, folded the Bowie inside of it.

"It's sharp so don't fuck around."

But wasn't that just what they were doing, fucking around?

"BenGay, wipe your face, you're dripping blood everywhere."

Axe in one hand, shotgun in the other, Ben wiped his face on his sleeve and came away woozy. More blood kept coming, it was in his hair now, and smeared over one eye. He was freezing and remembered that's what happened when you bled to death, you got cold, and then he realized it would be crazy not to be cold, him in his thin little Diondra jacket, his entire torso prickly with goosepimples.

Trey pulled out a massive pick-axe last, its blade so sharp it looked like an icicle sliver. He slung it over his shoulder, a man going to work. Diondra was still pouting at the knife, and Trey snapped at her.

"You want to say it?" he said. "You want to do it?"

She pulled out of the sulk, nodded briskly, set her knife in the middle of the accidental circle they were standing in. But no, not accidental, because then Trey put his pick-axe next to the Bowie, and motioned for Ben to do the same, gave him this impatient gesture like a parent whose kid has forgotten to say grace. So Ben did, piled the shotgun and the axe on top, that pile of glinting, sharp metal making Ben's heart pound.

Suddenly Diondra and Trey were grabbing his hands, Trey's grip tight and hot, Diondra's limp, sticky, as they stood in a circle around their weapons. The moonlight was making everything glow. Diondra's face looked like a mask, all hollows and hills, and when she thrust her chin up toward the moon, between her open mouth and the pile of metal Ben got a hard-on and didn't care. His brain was sizzling somewhere in the back of his consciousness, his brain was literally frying, and then Diondra was chanting.