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past two years that I can live without her, that I don’t miss her with a visceral, embodied ache, all the time. Pretending that what happened severs the phantom umbilical cord that has tethered us together for more than two decades. As I look around the trailer, every cranny of it steeped in Zelda, I realize that I’ve been fucking kidding myself. I want my sister so bad it hurts. And I realize, suddenly, that that’s what she’s been trying to do. This entire scheme—the fire, her supposed death—is a little show, a spectacle for my benefit. She’d had enough of my punishment, and this is her saying: You can’t ignore me, Ava, you can’t live without me. You can’t get away from Silenus, you can never leave ME. Scarves, fabric, textiles, prints cover all the walls. I can see at least three of Zelda’s colorful kimonos draped on various surfaces. The bed is rumpled, unmade, and I sit down on it, holding a pillow to my face, breathing in her scent. There’s a lump in my throat that I’m working very hard to dislodge. Maybe I’ve overreacted, these past two years. Could I have been blowing it out of proportion? It was a betrayal, yes. And what happened afterward doesn’t even bear dwelling on. But maybe . . . Then I realize that Zelda is manipulating me without having to say a single word, and I toss her pillow across the room in frustration. The pillow takes out a lamp on its way, and I lean my head back, annoyed, unsure why I’ve come to the trailer after all. Just to feel close to Zelda? No, to figure out what game she’s playing. We’re playing. Who on earth is Jason? And the locked barn doors? I suspect her of staging everything, but why let the police think it’s murder? If she was going to fake her own death, she’d only be making everything more complicated by leaving clues suggesting that it was not accidental. Why risk alerting the cops that all is not as it seems? My recent fixation on Poe immediately makes me think: locked-room mystery. As though she knows how this would tantalize me. I get up and pad around the trailer, looking at Zelda’s artifacts. A bizarre ceramic sculpture here, a spent candle toppled onto its side next to a pile of sketch notebooks carelessly scattered on the table. Good way to start a fire. The trailer is cluttered with years of Zelda’s
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