Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

Did she
know? Did she help?
I’d expected her to come home that night, brimming
with curse words and fury, but all I got was an embarrassed
smile as she slipped past me to her room in the house she
had double-mortgaged to cover Tanner’s retainer.
I had put my sister in financial and legal jeopardy
because of my shitty decisions. The whole situation made
Go feel resentful and me ashamed, a lethal combination for
two people trapped in small confines.
I tried a different subject: ‘I’ve been thinking about
phoning Andie now that—’
‘Yeah, that would be genius-smart, Nick. Then she can
go back on 
Ellen Abbott
—’

---

‘She didn’t go on 
Ellen Abbott
. She had a press
conference that 
Ellen Abbott
carried. She’s not evil, Go.’
‘She gave the press conference because she was
pissed at you. I sorta wish you’d just kept fucking her.’
‘Nice.’
‘What would you even say to her?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You are definitely fucking sorry,’ she muttered.
‘I just – I hate how it ended.’
‘The last time you saw Andie, she 
bit
you,’ Go said in
an overly patient voice. ‘I don’t think the two of you have
anything else to say. You are the prime suspect in a murder
investigation. You have forfeited the right to a smooth
breakup. For fuck’s sake, Nick.’
We were growing sick of each other, something I never
thought could happen. It was more than basic stress, more
than the danger I’d deposited on Go’s doorstep. Those ten
seconds just a week ago, when I’d opened the door of the
woodshed, expecting Go to read my mind as always, and
what Go had read was that I’d killed my wife: I couldn’t get
over that, and neither could she. I caught her looking at me
now and then with the same steeled chill with which she
looked at our father: just another shitty male taking up
space. I’m sure I looked at her through our father’s
miserable eyes sometimes: just another petty woman
resenting me.
I let out a gust of air, stood up, and squeezed her hand,
and she squeezed back.
‘I think I should head home,’ I said. I felt a wave of
nausea. ‘I can’t stand this anymore. Waiting to be arrested,
I can’t stand it.’

---

Before she could stop me, I grabbed my keys, swung
open the door, and the cameras began blasting, the shouts
exploded from a crowd that was even larger than I’d feared:
Hey, Nick, did you kill your wife? Hey, Margo, did you
help your brother hide evidence?
‘Fucking shitbags,’ Go spat. She stood next to me in
solidarity, in her Butthole Surfers T-shirt and boxers. A few
protesters carried signs. A woman with stringy blond hair
and sunglasses shook a poster board: 
Nick, where is
AMY?
The shouts got louder, frantic, baiting my sister:
Margo, is your brother a wife killer? Did Nick kill his wife
and baby? Margo, are you a suspect? Did Nick kill his
wife? Did Nick kill his baby?
I stood, trying to hold my ground, refusing to let myself
step back into the house. Suddenly, Go was crouching
behind me, cranking the spigot near the steps. She turned
on the hose full-bore – a hard, steady jet – and blasted all
those cameramen and protesters and pretty journalists in
their TV-ready suits, sprayed them like animals.
She was giving me covering fire. I shot into my car and
tore off, leaving them dripping on the front lawn, Go
laughing shrilly.
It took ten minutes for me to nudge my car from my
driveway into my garage, inching my way slowly, slowly
forward, parting the angry ocean of human beings – there
were at least twenty protesters in front of my home, in
addition to the camera crews. My neighbor Jan Teverer
was one of them. She and I made eye contact, and she
aimed her poster at me: