Byron accepted Bree’s hug, wrapped his arms tight around his sister. He tried to hide his crying, but Bree saw. He was just a big kid, she thought. She remembered the night he’d come home and told her about Shanks and the crack, just a week before Miranda Shifflett moved to Kelley Street. He’d stomped into the living room, laughing, his Subway uniform smelling of salami and burnt bread. And he laughed through the whole story. “I figured something was going on when we was running out of turkey and green peppers so quick,” he’d said. “I forgot my cell and went back to get it—and Shanks was handing over a whole damn bundle of subs to this other skinny-ass white dude I’ve seen around. And then, right up in the Subway, at one of the booths, they lit up a rock and started smoking. I was like, Damn.”
“Did they see you?” Bree had asked.
“No,” Byron said. “You know we got Indian in our blood, girl. We can sneak up on anybody.”
Bree frowned. Byron didn’t walk, he stomped, and he’d never been able to surprise anyone. When she told him to report Shanks that very night, Byron had laughed. “I’m not McGruff the Crime Dog,” he said, “and I’m not no narc.”
She told him not to be stupid. Maybe, she said, the owner would be so grateful he’d promote him to manager. She said it offhandedly, but when it had come true a couple of days later, she took credit. “See what happens when you listen to me,” she told Byron. “Don’t Little Sister always know best?”
Byron didn’t cry in her arms for very long—Bree knew he thought he was too much of a man for that. He looked over her shoulder at the counter. “Let me get some of that tea,” he said. He ignored her when she said it wasn’t even cold and lifted the pitcher to his lips, drinking right from the spout. Bree thought, Ocean City, Ocean City, oh, how I long for thee. Whole pieces of herself were swallowed up in her parents’ box of a house, in Byron. Even when Bree had the house to herself, it wasn’t hers— people still referred to it as “Your Mama and Daddy’s House.” The home she envisioned for herself was a bright, bare apartment of hardwood floors and stainless steel appliances.
Every summer, Bree saw all these black people driving slick cars with Maryland plates around Harrisonburg. Big, dark brothers with high behinds; women with clothes that matched too well and elaborate hairstyles piled stiffly atop their heads. They came to visit country cousins, to spend a week at time-share units on Massanutten Mountain. Bree was fascinated with Maryland, because it was only a couple of hours’ drive, and yet it felt a world away. Every black person she met in Harrisonburg who wasn’t a native seemed to be from Maryland. Mary Land. It offered such promise. And Ocean City sounded clean and cool and open. She could feel the light air, the village-like atmosphere in the off-season when the tourists were gone. When she thought of Harrisonburg, she thought gray, grit, humidity, and she thought of those mountains—which visitors found lovely, breathtaking—as confining, stifling. She imagined herself in that sleek new apartment of hers, overlooking the waves as they massaged the beach below. In the days before the disappearances, she had packed only her bedroom and a few dishes from the kitchen, leaving everything else—the furniture, the knick-knacks, the linens—for her brother. Yesterday, as she piled boxes and suitcases in the living room, Byron had asked, “Who’s going to watch over everything?” And she’d said, “You are.” He’d looked surprised, as if he hadn’t thought of that.
Now Bree said, “Don’t drink out the pitcher, Byron.” She pulled a glass from the cabinet and handed it to him. “Grow up.”