LITMIR.BIZ

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was Seattle), band manager for a local group, temp, barista again, tattoo artist.

      My sister was also a petty criminal. Identity theft, credit card fraud and drug dealing, though the legalization of marijuana had put a dent in her business. I hadn’t known about any of that until last month, when my mother told me she had to fly out and get Poe, because my sister had been sentenced to two years, out in August with good behavior.

      Beantown Bug Killers had given me a plan. Stay on Scupper until Lily got out. Then she’d either come east to fetch her daughter, or I’d fly back with Poe. And I’d...fix things.

      How, I wasn’t sure.

      We turned onto the dirt road that led to our house, and I held my arm across my chest to minimize the jostling. My collarbone ached. Mom glanced at me but said nothing. In the back seat, Boomer whined with excitement, sensing we were close to our destination. The car jolted over a pothole, and I sucked in a breath, my knee and shoulder flashing white with pain. My back ached, too, heavy and dull thanks to the bruised kidneys. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be peeing blood later on.

      And there it was. Home. A humble, gray-shingled Cape with a screened-in deck on one side, almost exactly as I’d left it, the bushes in front taller than I remembered.

      I’d been away for so long.

      My mom pulled into the unpaved driveway—we didn’t have a garage—and threw the car into Park. She got out, opened the back door for Boomer, who raced off to sniff and mark his territory.

      Lily and I used to think home was the most magical place on earth—the sound of chickadees and crows, gulls, the frigid ocean slapping against the rocks a few hundred yards away, the gray seals that would visit the shores with their pups. The wind would scrape and roar across the sky almost constantly, howling in the winter. The yard was just a carpet of pine needles, and beyond that, forest and ocean. The Krazinskis were our next-door neighbors, and they were half a mile away. Lily and I, and sometimes Dad, used to sit for hours in trees or makeshift forts and wait to see animals—fox and deer, pheasants and chipmunks, porcupines and raccoons.

      I opened the car door, the smell of pine and wood smoke thick and rich.

      Though I wouldn’t go so far as saying it was good to be home—not yet—I knew this was where I needed to be.

      I tried to get out of the car, but since my knee was in a brace and I couldn’t bend it, I flopped right back onto the seat, jarring my collarbone, pain flashing all the way into my fingertips.

      Being helpless sucked.

      Also, my mother wasn’t the world’s most loving caretaker. She was halfway to the house with my suitcases. “Mom? Can you give me a hand?”

      “Poe!” she yelled. “Get out here and help your aunt!” She went inside.

      The wind gusted, cutting through my jacket, pressing me back into the seat as I struggled. The Dog of Dogs came up to check on me, and I patted his head with my good hand. Dogs beat people every time. “Are you my pretty boy?” I asked. He wagged in the affirmative, then trotted off again.

      Finally, the door opened, and out came my sister.

      No. It was Poe, but the resemblance was shocking.

      My niece was beautiful. Her hair was dyed blue, shaved on one side, jagged on the other. She wore torn leggings and a T-shirt with a skull on it. As she got closer, I could see she was bedecked with black rubber bracelets and more ear piercings than I could count and had a tattoo on her neck.

      She looked far, far older than fifteen. But her skin was pure and sweet, and her eyes were the same shade as blueberries, just like Lily’s.

      “Hi, honey,” I said. “You got so big.” My voice was husky. The last time I’d seen her, five years ago, she asked me for piggyback rides, which I happily gave. She’d had long black hair back then, and I taught her to French-braid it.

      She gave me a dead-eyed stare, looking more like Lily than ever.

      “Uh, can you just...” I held out my hand. “Take my crutch, okay.”

      She did, and I hoisted myself out, then hopped, grabbed onto her with my good hand and steadied myself. Took the crutch back. “Thanks, Poe.”

      “What happened to you?”

      I blinked. “Gran didn’t tell you?” Wasn’t it important enough for a mention? “I was hit by a van.”

      “Seriously?”

      “Yep. I broke my collarbone, got a concussion and dislocated my kneecap. And bruised my kidneys.”

      “Gross.”

      “Yeah.”

      “Can you sue them or something?” she asked with a flicker of interest. “Like, if it was FedEx or the cops?”

      “It was Beantown Bug Killers, and no. I was jaywalking.”

      The interest faded, and the disgust returned.

      We went inside, though she was faster than I was, obviously, and failed to hold the door for me. “Come on, Boomer,” I said, and he trotted in, nearly knocking me over, unaware that he no longer weighed twelve pounds. I followed awkwardly. Poe was already slumped on the couch, engrossed in her phone. Mom was in the kitchen, her yellow parakeet on her shoulder.

      The interior of the house was the same. I looked into the little den, almost expecting to see my father there, clacking away on his computer, or Lily, playing with her Barbies on the floor in the living room. The woodstove sat on the hearth of the stone fireplace, a more efficient way to heat the house. Same brown plaid couch, same old recliner, same coffee table where Lily and I had colored and chattered.

      Of course, it was the same. My mom wasn’t the type to throw things away, and she could fix anything.

      I thought of my apartment—not Bobby’s, but mine, the one I’d had before the Big Bad Event. The pale green couch, the balcony, the pretty throw pillows on the bed. All those lovely things, packed away in a storage unit in Brookline.

      “Get away from me, dog,” Poe said. “Is he really going to live with us?”

      “This is Boomer. He loves people.” He whined, echoing my message, and licked Poe’s hand. She turned away without looking up from her phone.

      I crutched it into the kitchen. Same creaky table where I’d done so much homework.

      Mom was pouring herself a cup of sludge. “Want a cup?” she asked. The bird was sitting on a shelf. Near food.

      “Does that bird ever go in its cage?”

      “Sometimes. At night. Mostly, he flies around where he wants. Coffee?”

      “Sure.”

      When I was in medical school, my mother came on one of her annual Visits to Boston because I Have to See My Daughter and informed me she’d gotten a bird. Tweety, not the most original name. She taught it (him? her?) tricks, such as eating a cracker held between her lips or sitting on her head while Mom drank coffee. Tweety could give kisses, which made me shudder and envision my mother dying an agonizing death from bird-borne encephalitis. When I called twice a month, I could often hear Tweety in the background, sounding much like a knife scraping against a plate.

      But my mother loved the bird and sometimes laughed while describing Tweety’s intellect, so who was I to judge?

      Mom set a mug down in front of me. Scupper Island Chamber of Commerce, as boring and unimaginative a mug as could be. Again, I pictured my pretty things—my green-and-blue coffee cups, packed, hopefully, in bubble wrap. I hadn’t been able to do it myself.

      I sat down, my knee flashing with pain. “Mom, can I have an ice pack?”

      “Bag a’ peas okay?”

      “Even better.”

      She got one and propped my foot up on an extra chair, then laid

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