Sam stared, too.
Charlie said, “Everything in here is Dad’s private property. We have no right to look at it.”
Sam reached into the drawer with her pen.
She pushed away the brightly colored mailer.
CULPEPPER, ZACHARIAH INMATE #4252619
Charlie said, “It’s probably a death threat. You saw the Culpeppers today. Every time it looks like Zachariah might finally get an execution date—”
Sam picked up the letter. The weight was nothing, though she felt a heaviness in the bones of her fingers. The flap had already been ripped open.
Charlie said, “Sam, that’s private.”
Sam pulled out a single notebook page. Folded twice to fit inside the envelope. Blank on the back. Zachariah Culpepper had taken the time to tear off the tattered edges where the paper had been ripped from the metal spiral.
He had used those same fingers to shred apart Sam’s eyelids.
“Sam,” Charlie said. She was looking in the drawer. There were dozens more letters from the murderer. “We don’t have a right to read any of these.”
“What do you mean, ‘right’?” Sam demanded. Her throat choked around the word. “I have a right to know what the man who murdered my mother is telling my father.”
Charlie snatched away the letter.
She threw it back into the drawer and kicked it closed with her foot.
“That’s perfect.” Sam dropped the empty envelope onto the desk. She pulled at the drawer. It would not budge. Charlie had kicked the front panel past the frame. “Open it.”
“No,” Charlie said. “We don’t need to read anything he has to say.”
“‘We’,” Sam repeated, because she was not the lunatic whose idea it was to pick a fight with Danny Culpepper today. “Since when has it ever been ‘we’ where the Culpeppers are concerned?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Nothing. It’s pointless to discuss.” Sam reached down and pulled on the drawer again. Nothing moved. Her fingers might as well be feathers.
Charlie said, “I knew you were still pissed at me.”
“I’m not still pissed at you,” Sam countered. “I am newly pissed at you, because you are acting like a three-year-old.”
“Sure,” Charlie agreed. “Whatever you say, Sammy. I’m a three-year-old. Fine.”
“What the hell is going on with you?” Sam could feel her own anger feeding off Charlie’s. “I want to read the letters from the man who murdered our mother.”
“You know what they say,” Charlie said. “You’ve been in town one day and you already heard it from the bastard’s bastard himself: we lied. He’s innocent. We’re killing him because of some fucking legal bill that Dad would’ve never collected on anyway.”
Sam knew that she was right, but that did not change her mind. “Charlie, I’m tired. Can you please open the damn drawer?”
“Not until you tell me why you stayed today. Why you did the arraignment. Why you’re still here now.”
Sam felt as if she had an anvil on either shoulder. She leaned against the desk. “Okay, you want to know why I stuck around today? Because I cannot believe how much you have screwed up your life.’”
Charlie snorted so hard that blood dripped from her nose. She wiped it away with her fingers. “Because your life is so fucking perfect?”
“You have no idea what—”
“You put a thousand miles between us. You never return Dad’s phone calls, or Ben’s emails, or call any of us, for that matter. You apparently fly down to Atlanta all the time, less than two hours away, and you never—”
“You told me not to reach out to you. ‘Neither one of us will ever move forward if we are always looking back.’ Those were your exact words.”
Charlie shook her head, which only served to amplify Sam’s irritation.
“Charlotte, you’ve been trying to pick this fight all day,” Sam said. “Stop shaking your head as if I’m some kind of madwoman.”
“You’re not a madwoman, you’re a fucking bitch.” Charlie crossed her arms. “I told you we shouldn’t look back. I didn’t say we shouldn’t look forward, or try to move forward together, like sisters are supposed to.”
“Excuse me if I could not read between the lines of your poorly constructed invective on the status of our failed relationship.”
“Well, you were shot in the head, so I’m sure there’s a hole where your invective processing used to be.”
Sam gripped together her hands. She was not going to explode. “I have the letter. Do you want me to send you a copy?”
“I want you to go to the copy store, duplex it for me, and then shove it up your tight Yankee ass.”
“Why would I duplex a single-page letter?”
“Jesus Christ!” Charlie punched her fist into the desktop. “You’ve been here less than a day, Sam. Why is my miserable, pathetic little life suddenly such a huge concern for you?”
“Those are not my adjectives.”
“You just pick at me.” Charlie jabbed Sam’s shoulder with her fingers. “Pick and pick like a fucking needle.”
“Really?” Sam ignored the lightning strike of pain every time Charlie poked her shoulder. “I pick at you?”
“Asking me about Ben.” She jabbed again, harder. “Asking me about Rusty.” She jabbed again. “Asking me about Huck.” She jabbed again. “Asking me about—”
“Stop it!” Sam yelled, slapping away her hand. “Why are you so fucking antagonistic?”
“Why are you so fucking annoying?”
“Because you were supposed to be happy!” Sam yelled, the sound of the truth like a shock to her senses. “My body is useless! My brain is—” She threw her hands into the air. “Gone! Everything I was supposed to be is gone. I can’t see. I can’t run. I can’t move. I can’t process. I have no sense of ease. I get no comfort—ever. And I tell myself every day—every single day, Charlotte—that it doesn’t matter because you were able to get away.”
“I did get away!”
“For what?” Sam raged. “So you can antagonize the Culpeppers? So you can turn into Rusty? So you can get punched in the face? So you can destroy your marriage?” Sam swept a pile of magazines onto the floor. She gasped at the pain that sliced up her arm. Her bicep spasmed. Her shoulder seized. She leaned against the desk, breathless.
Charlie stepped forward.
“No.” Sam did not want her help. “You were supposed to have children. You were supposed to have friends who love you, and to live in your beautiful house with your wonderful husband, not throw it all away for some feckless asshole like Mason Huckabee.”
“That’s—”
“Not fair? Not right? That’s not what happened with Ben? That’s not what happened in college? That’s not what happened whenever the fuck you felt like running away because you blame yourself, Charlie, not me. I don’t blame you for running. Gamma wanted you to run. I begged you to run. What I blame you for is hiding—from your life, from me, from your own happiness. You think I’m closed off? You think I’m cold? You are consumed with self-hatred. You reek of it. And you think that putting everyone and everything in a separate compartment is the only way to pick up the pieces.”
Charlie said nothing.
“I’m off in New York. Rusty’s in his tilted windmill. Ben’s over here. Mason’s over there. Lenore’s wherever the hell she is. That’s no way to live, Charlie. You were not built for that kind of life. You’re so clever, and industrious, and you were always so annoyingly, so relentlessly happy.” Sam kneaded her shoulder. The muscle was on fire. She asked her sister, “What happened to that person, Charlie? You ran. You got away.”
Charlie stared down at the floor. Her jaw was tight. Her breathing was labored.
So was Sam’s. She could feel the rapid rise and fall of her chest. Her fingers trembled like the stuck second hand on a clock. She felt as if the world was spinning out of control. Why did Charlie keep pushing her? What was she trying
to accomplish?
Lenore knocked on the open door. “Everything okay in here?”
Charlie shook her head. Blood dripped from her nose.