It was raining when she came.
Dark skies had threatened a downpour all day, claps of thunder intermittent but the rain itself had held off until nightfall, until after we had gotten home, tucked into pj’s and sheltered from the storm.
Hearing the door chime didn’t surprise me, but it should have.
My home is not central to anything. You need to travel dirt tracks and winding roads.
Unless you know where you’re going, I’m very hard to find.
I wasn’t expecting anyone, but still I rose from where I’d been sitting on the couch, trying to unwind after a long day.
I wasn’t psychic or anything, but I had a peculiar feeling all day that something wasn’t right and hearing the knocking had cemented that for me.
She was dressed in a green sundress, sandals, a very strange sight considering the weather. And as the wind and rain danced violently around her, whipping her long, wet, dark hair around in every which direction, she simply looked possessed, like a crazy person.
But still, I didn’t flinch. Instead I opened the door, taking a step back to allow her inside.
She glared at me as she stepped inside, dripping water onto the wooden floorboards, and making squelching noises with every step she took.
“I’m not here to play games, Thomas. Where is he? Where is my son?”
For a moment, I’d had hope.
Despite how she had arrived, despite the look in her eyes.
I took a long breath, trying to compose myself, to keep my voice from breaking as I told her the news she had never been able to accept.
“Ava, your son’s gone, he’s in heaven now. You.. You killed him.”
The rage in her eyes broke me, sending shivers down my neck. She screamed like a wild animal caught in a trap, running to find the first thing she could grab hold of - my glass coffee table - and lift it and throw it as hard, and as far as she could against the wall.
We were silent, breathless, as we listened to the glass shatter into a million pieces.
I’d never been close to my sister.
She had been born years after me, after my mother had passed away and dad remarried, I was 15 when Ava came into the world.
I remember holding her awkwardly, feeling something between love and contempt for this scrunched up, pink skinned and blue eyed little human.
I was moved out, living my own life by the time she learnt to ride a bike, by the time she started school.
I saw them occasionally, holidays like Christmas and we would make awkward conversation over the phone on birthdays, but as time passed it was like they all were strangers to me, we had nothing in common, my dad and my step mum were busy with teenager Ava, and I was busy trying to start a family of my own.
Life just got busy, I guess.
When I got the phone call saying dad and my step mum had been killed in a car crash, I was devastated. I kicked myself for not spending more time with them, and then my thoughts went to my sister, to Ava, 16 years old and now, all alone.
I got on the phone and told her I was on my way to her, ready to help my little sister in any way I could.
I realised I was about to become a guardian of a teenage girl who I basically knew nothing about, a teenage girl who was grieving the death of the only family she had ever known.
I needn’t have been so rush in my decision to jump in the car, by the time I arrived it was clear that Ava was basically fine. It had been less than 24 hours since her parents death, but she was sipping on a daiquiri by the pool when I arrived.
I cried to her and she held my hand in cold disdain. I never saw a tear.
It was only a mere few weeks later that I got another call, this time from a worried neighbor.
The police tape cautioned off the childhood house I grew up in, a dozen or so officers roamed the yard and trailed in and out of the house, bringing out bags marked as ‘Evidence’.
I wasn’t sure what was going on. I knew dad and my step mum had been killed in a car accident, I wasn’t sure if it was protocol to search the home of a deceased accident victim, I had no idea.
So when I eventually saw little Ava sat in the back of one of the patrol cars, my heart dropped into my stomach.
I went over to the car to talk to her. To ask her what the heck was going on, but before I can get a word out, a beefy officer is standing between me and the car, his arm outstretched in a stop signal.
“Sorry, I just wanted to talk to my sister. This is my parents house and -“
The cop looked incredulous, shaking his head slowly then quicker with every word I spoke. He didn’t respond to me in anyway once I finished talking, just started me in the eyes as he took his walkie talkie off his belt, and spoke into it.
He asked for his boss, Stat.
I’m lead into a cop car myself. Although I’m not arrested, or cuffed, I still feel anxious getting inside. I wonder how scared Ava must be, and the thought makes me mad. Why the hell are they interviewing us in the back of a damn cop car?
I fired my question at the Sargent and the cop in the front seat, and watched as they passed a look between themselves.
“I’m sorry no one’s explained the situation to you, sir. Your sister isn’t being interviewed. She has been arrested, and once the boys have finished up with the evidece bags, she’ll be heading down to lock up. She is being charger with murder, so if you have a lawyer, how will probably be the time to get in contact.”
“Mm-murder? What are you talking about? I was told my parents had been killed in a car accident and now you’re telling me my little sister had something to do with their death?”
“Sorry, sir. I should have been more clear. You’re correct, your father and his wife were killed in a motor vichele aciident. This is relating to something… Ah, someone else, entirely. Now I need to ask you a few questions while we’ve got you here, if we aren’t done by the time the others are ready to leave, we can continue this down at the station. That okay?”
I nod numbly, not taking in what they’re saying.
The first question he asks me, is if I knew my 16 year old sister had been pregnant.
I look out the window and catch Ava’s eye. She smiles and waves at me, and even though I feel sick to the stomach, I plaster on a fake smile and wave back, as well.
Now, in this moment, I make Ava tea.
She has showered, now warm and dressed in one of my old dressing towns.
She cries as she sips the tea, saying she’s sorry she’s sorry she’s sorry.
She didn’t do it. She didn’t do it. She didn’t do it.
I give her a look of comfort and tell her it’s okay, it’s all going to be okay.
She eats the lemon biscuit I brought out with the tea, between mouthfulls she tells me about living in the psychiatric ward, about how the people there scared her and the medicine she took made her feel sleepy and dull.
She asks me if she can stay here for a while, and I tell her of course she can.
She’s my little sister and I love her, no matter what.
I tuck her into the spare bed, telling her things we be better in the morning, but she’s already snoring by the time I finish my sentance.
I close the door, sliding the lock behind me.
As I prepare the evenings snack, I am feeling relived.
I knew Ava wouldn’t be having a great time in that place, but whenever I called up to see how she was going, she would only ever say things were fine, opting to always end our conversation before the allocated time was up.
I could hear the sadness in her voice, the desperation to get out, and it broke me.
I would offer to come visit, bring her anything she felt like but she said with the contraband ban, there was no point.
She never felt like having a visitor, refusing my requests and when I asked the nurses about it, they told me she spent most of her time staring off into space, they couldn’t force her to accept visits, and that was that.
She would be out when she turned 23, after serving the 7 year sentence for the manslaughter of her newborn.
Everyone said she was lucky to not get jail, but after hearing her voice in the psychiatric ward, I wasn’t so sure I agreed.
Now she’s here, out of that awful place.
I’m going to really take care of her, something I should have done all those years ago.
I’m her big brother after all, and it’s up to me to make sure she’s looked after.
I go down stairs, this time carefully carrying a tray, with warm milk and few of the infamous lemon biscuits.
Karl is sitting up cross legged in his race car bed, concentration vivid on his little face as he plays a game on his Xbox.
A moment later he let’s out a little whoop, and I can’t help but to smile at his excitement.
“Kicking everyone’s butts still, I see.”
Karl laughs at my comment, blushing but pleased. I can tell he’s chuffed, and it makes me happy seeing his genuine joy.
I place the tray on his desk, and sit next to him to watch him play for a while.
He offers me the controller and asks if I want to have a turn?
I shake my head, and thank him, telling him its time for this old man to be getting to bed. He grins at me when I call myself an old man, and shakes his head laughing as he calls me silly.
“Milk and biscuits here when you’re ready. Remember, lights out in an hour. I love you, son.”
“Okay, thanks dad. I love you, too.”
As I walk out of his room, I ponder for a moment, wondering and hoping it wasnt, if it was possible he had heard any of that commotion upstairs, but eyes still glued to the screen, Karl seemed as happy as ever and basically impervious to anything apart from the car racing game he was playing.
It was me who’d asked her to babysit.
Begged her, really.
Told her how much Jennie and I had been fighting, how hard the baby was on our relationship.
She said she really wanted to help her big brother out and she even said it would be a welcome distraction from the finals she was studying for. No mention of the parents she had recently lost.
She told me she felt a bit nervous about it all, but she felt it would be good for her, as well. I agreed.
We organised a time for an evening a night away, and that was that, my plan was in motion.
Done all over HiddentextApp of course, so there was no trace of our conversation.
It was all the rage with the kids these days, according to Google, so when I suggested it to my sister, she hadn’t batted an eyelid.
I knew she had been having trouble sleeping, and honestly, for the both of us, it seemed like the easiest way.
There would be no one to blame, it would be a simple, cruel act of nature that no one would even consider questioning.
She could of said it was an accident, and everyone would have believed her.
I didn’t think she would do what she did.
I asked her if she was still okay to babysit, feigning guilt and worry, and she had nodded. Our fathers and her mother’s death had not seemed to greatly affect her. She seemed bored of talk of them.
“A distraction would be great.”
I thanked her with a close, tight hug, and told her I’d brewed her some green tea and made a batch of an old recipe my mum used to make me while I was growing up, lemon biscuits.
Once Ava was settled on my couch, Netflix on the tv, with her snacks and mug of green tea. She had baby monitor on hand so she was ready to hear the cries that would never come.
I expected silence when I got home.
I expected Ava, sleeping peacefully, still on the couch where she had first sat down.
But she wasn’t. And the house was not silent, instead the sound of an electric saw penetrated the halls.
Maybe the shock of losing both parents, perhaps she felt bad for the fact they were out on the roads that night, they would have been safely tucked up in their bed if it had not been for their teenage daughter needing to be picked up. I don’t know, seeing the baby like that.. Well, I guess that honestly would’ve broken anyone’s soul.
At the start, I tried to explain to her, calmly and using soft voices, but she was beyond contemplating my words.
It was as if what I was saying to her, she just simply could not comprehend.
I tried to stop her, honestly I did, but she was a force that could not be reckoned with and truly, Ava had basically already finished when I arrived home.
The walls were painted red.
My hacksaw now lay disgauardrd to one side of Ava, who was just as red as the walls. I didn’t notice the noise had ceased. All I could hear was the hammering of my own heart in my chest.
She cradled something white and rubbery to her chest, blood making it slippery to keep hold of, and once I realised what it was, I’m throwing up and crying and screaming as well.
When I catch my breath I ask what the fuck she has done and she tells me it’s her son, her son, her son.
She loves him. She loves him to pieces and she’s never going to leave him. She was fixing him. Fixing him. Fixing him.
She laughs and smiles.
I take her home, with what’s left of the baby wrapped up in a towel. She holds the towel as we drive, singing to it, cooing.
The scene is stuck in my memory, a picture I have tried hard to forget, but it greets me every time I close my eyes.
I sit in the car and watch as she cradles the bundle in one arm, still singing softly to it, and let’s her self inside my empty, parentless childhood home.
Now she is back, and this time she is a threat to my family. To my son, who can never ever know what this woman has done.
She’s still sleeping when I go back into the spare bedroom.
I am not surprised, because I did give her enough sleeping pills in her green tea to knock out a grown man. But, I had no choice really.
If only she stayed away..I sigh to myself as I place the pillow over the top of her head. She could have started her life all over again. But no, she couldn’t.
As a good big brother, it was my responsibility to help her, in whatever way that meant.
I knew she would never accept that her son was dead or that she had been the one to kill and dismember him.
I knew her life would be a constant battle of heart break and pain. I was doing her a favor. And keeping my family safe, as well.
It’s almost daylight when I return home.
I am straight into the shower, dressing quickly for my day before I head into the kitchen and get started on Karl’s favorite breakfast - banana pancakes with maple bacon on the side.
He beams as I pass him his plate and thanks me for being the best daddy in the whole world.
It’s always the moments like this that I feel a pang of guilt.
I wonder if his brother would have the same opinion, had he still been around. In my mind I picture the two of them, identical twins, sat side by side with me at the table.
Would Rory had liked maple bacon?
I ruffle Karl’s hair as he finishes eating, telling him he better get a move on if he doesnt want to miss his bus again, and he laughs and goes to get dressed for school.
Before he left, he flashed me a grin and crinkled his green eyes with happiness.
I think of last night, of Ava, those same green eyes staring up at me in panic when she woke up, managing to push the pillow off her.
She glared at me, opening her mouth to scream, or maybe ask me why, but I placed the pillow back in place and leaned down before she could speak.
Her eyes were open when I eventually took the pillow off again, this time the green eyes were bloodshot and vacant,staring at nothing.
The exact same eyes I had seen on Rory when I walked into the twins bedroom to check on him.
He was blue, his eyes that blazed green were open, unblinking.
I stared at him for a long time, until Karl’s crys woke me up, brought me back to reality.
I took Karl down for his bottle, placing a blanket on his brother, who was cold to the touch.
I knew it was too late. I knew it didn’t matter anymore.
But to me, it would always matter.
I was a good dad, really I was. I had wanted to be a dad for so long, that when I heard my baby sister was pregnant at 15 years old, I felt sick with anger and disappointed. But my dad and step mum had pleaded for me to take the babies, to raise them. Ava didn’t want them, she wanted to get rid of them, but it was too late in the pregnancy.
They told me Ava had her whole life ahead of her. They told me I could have what I had always wanted, to be a dad.
We didn’t have to tell anyone. It would be a family secret. Just better for everyone that way, my dad had said.
So I agreed.
I had never wanted to hurt Ava.
I had given her sleeping pills so she wouldn’t go searching for her son.
So she could simply fall asleep, and I’d come home later that evening, and together we would discover the absolute heart breaking news that baby Rory had passed away in his sleep.
Which is what had happened, just a few hours before.
She had questioned why their would only be one baby to look after, but when I explained that Karl had been a bit under the weather and we wanted to keep a close eye on him, she didn’t give it another thought.
She never even asked why Jennie wasn’t around, given we were supposedly heading off for a mini getaway sans one child.
I hadn’t told anyone we’d separated, after she decided having kids just wasn’t for her.
I felt guilty, but not too guilty.
Ava had given the babies away without another thought, not even bothering to check in on them or ask how they were growing.
I didn’t think it would truly affect her so much. And so.. Badly.
But in a fucked up way, it all worked out in the end, I guess.
Karl was safe then, because the girl that was his mother had truly lost her mind and she was kept away in a place she couldn’t reach him, even thought it seemed as if she had completely forgotten of his existence, I always had the idea in my head that she would one day remember there had been two bright green eyed boys, not just the one.
And what if she wanted her other son back, as well?
I’ve kept him safe, unlike I was able to do for his brother. And I wasn’t about to start letting someone mess with the sweet natured and gentle boy I’d raised.
I saw things in Ava that made me realise I had never known her, only knew what I thought she was, what I wanted to her to be, the sweet, sweet little sister. Instead, my sibling had been a devil in disguise.
As we leave the house, ready to make our trekk to the school bus stop, I glance at the window at the fresh mound of dirt thats waiting to be spread when I get back.
Karl notices it, and asks if he can plant some roses there when he gets home.
I tell him that’s a wonderful idea, wondering if and how he could possibly know that flowers were Ava’s favorite flower.
I shake the idea from my head, and together we walk down the dirt roads, hand in hand.