Little Miss Perfect was standing there when it happened. She screamed and fainted. I didn't know what to do." "But you knew it was him, right?" "No." "So then?" "Then I said a prayer." Liv turned to him, her face pale, the tears brimming in her eyes. "Why didn't you tell me?" she whispered. "You should've told me. This is my fault." She looked at her hands in her lap, her voice quieter, and said, "I should have kept him home." Olivia had never told him about this; she didn't know if he would've remembered. Or believed her. "It's not your fault," he said. "And you did keep him home. But you can't always do that. Don't be afraid of the world because of your family. All families are imperfect. You just have to hope for the best." They remained silent then for a long while, and for once Olivia was grateful for that, though she was unable to keep the sound of her brother's voice in her head. * * * There was a new girl in the neighborhood, one who had come to live with a relative on the other side of town. She had never been to this part of the woods before, but when the wind lifted and died and lifted again and rolled in as a dry sound, she could see every detail of what it hid. She was ten, and she had never seen a deer. The deer she first saw in the woods was still on the ground, on its side, and her brother, Olivia's, hands shook as he held the camera and ran toward it. It was too far for her to make out what the animal looked like, but she knew the boy would know; she loved it when he spoke like this. It was as though she was able to see her brother for the first time, able to hear him, and she listened when he talked about what he saw, how it was the way it was, which meant it was not the way it was supposed to be, and she understood there was a different world out there beyond the fence that separated her mother's garden from theirs. She saw Olivia with the deer first, running from her bedroom when the sound of the shot brought her downstairs. Her brother would never say it, but she knew Olivia wanted to be there; she always wanted to be there, and she knew it would be soon. He only had to ask, and she would run. The first time Olivia had her, the deer lay on the ground in the center of their backyard and Olivia was standing beside it, her hand in the air, blood on her shirt. "It's okay," she said. "I've got her. I've got her." Olivia looked at their father and he nodded. "What the fuck is going on?" he said, the veins of his neck sticking out. "Don't get close to her," his mother said. "Don't get close." Olivia would never tell him what had happened, but her brother had found out from someone at school. She was too young to talk about it, though she was too young to be allowed to be so close to the deer, which made her feel safe and guilty at the same time. In the photograph the girl saw what the deer was: it was the girl in the photograph, lying on the grass in the back of the car. The girl's eyes were closed and her hair had fallen out of her braid and it was tangled and dark and wet. Her shirt was stained, wet, her body limp. Her head had fallen over and one of her arms had fallen off her side. There was a shadow under her in the picture that looked as though it could be her breath. There was a smell in the air that the girl could taste. "It smells bad," she said. "I know." She would not live. She only wanted to hide. ## Blowback I don't remember why I didn't go home for my birthday that year. It's possible I didn't have enough money for a gift or a cake or a dinner. I think that's likely; I don't remember having to deal with my mother over something so simple as a birthday celebration. When I was in school, she mostly forgot the day; there were other days of the week that meant more to her. My father left for work early, so there was the opportunity for him to come home, but he didn't do it, though he was supposed to pick me up from school and take me out for dinner. He never did. If he forgot that day, though, he was present enough for my birthday, or maybe for one of the other weeks of the year when I mattered more to him, even if only for a week. But I think it was more than that. I wasn't a child who worried him, not like my brother had. Or maybe it was that it was not his year to be worrying about children. My mother had been a baby when he became a father, and even though he had taken her back after her death, it was still more of a loss for her than for him, not even the loss of a pet. He knew my birthday was coming; he would never forget that. But the anniversary of my mother's death—and it would be marked by the first of January every year as far as my father was concerned—was the only day he never forgot about me. In a way, it didn't seem so terrible to me when he left. I had learned to be alone, as long as I could be alone. There were times when I thought about leaving. I know I considered leaving the house, but I don't think I could have left my father; he would have felt too guilty for what he had done to his family, for what he had done to me. There was always something between us when he was around, and I did not want to disturb that. The guilt had not gone away, but there was still something between us, even after all the years of not talking. But I was gone from the house, and I had someplace else to go. This other home would not be a home, but it would be mine. That was enough. * * * I knew I didn't want to go back to school, especially after that night, but I knew it wasn't safe for me to stay away, either. That was something I thought about for a long time. School had started, so I had a few days in the weeks after to decide. I remembered the other day, and the way people were moving and talking in the halls, the way the air changed, not a breath of air between us but something that could not touch me or be touched. But I also remembered my brother, the way he had been, the way I had never been. The way he had been was how I wanted to be: powerful, confident, as powerful as he thought he could be. I thought about him the night before school started, on the day I left for the weekend and never returned. It was late August, and I had spent most of the weekend sitting on the porch that looked out onto the street, because we had one in front of the house, because the street was empty; not only had our neighborhood emptied out, but the country around us had become so much bigger than it had ever been before. The cars around us were silent; the trucks that occasionally drove by and blew their horns, in warning or celebration of nothing, did not sound their horns. It had been a peaceful year for us; there was still the sound of gunfire at night, but none of it was close. The street had been silent the whole weekend, and we were, too. I felt free, maybe because I was older now, but I could have stayed with my father all the time and I would have been all right; I knew that. The night was quiet, but the house itself hummed. I sat at the far end of the porch so that the humming wouldn't intrude into my thoughts and feelings, and I wondered if my brother had ever sat there. I wondered if he had ever sat outside like this. I remembered what it was like before it had all ended. We were living in one house and then we were not living in that same house. We were not living in any house; we had all lived in a different house. There was a man in a different house, too; there were trees. I looked up at the sky. It would be full dark, almost nine o'clock in the evening, and I wondered if my brother was there, if he was looking up at the sky, too. I remembered it had happened in the morning, when I was at school. I had only been in town for a week or so after the things had happened that had taken me away from my brother and my father and my mother. I was leaving school and walking along the side of the road that led to the house where I had come into the world, only it was no longer a house. There were things I wanted to take with me to my brother and my father, but I didn't know if it was too much to expect that I could make my way back there to retrieve what I needed. If it was too much to bring, I