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The night starts easy. Cards tap softly against the wood grain table, laughter spilling out in uneven bursts between sips of lukewarm beer. The house hums with that kind of quiet comfort that only settles in between people who’ve known each other too long to bother filling every silence.
Eli’s grinning behind his cards, cheeks flushed and eyes glassy from drink. “You’re bluffing, Bea. I just know it,” he says, leaning back in his chair with a lazy confidence that’s half charm, half alcohol.
Bea scoffs, narrowing her eyes at him with a devilish smile. “You wish. Maybe then you’d have an excuse for losing so bad.”
Eli barks a laugh, warm and loud, and Andy joins in with a softer, uncertain echo that comes just a beat behind. She glances between them, her own cards fanned in her hands, a pencil tucked behind her ear to keep score. It’s been a good night so far. No awkward silences. No looks traded over her head. No gentle corrections from Bea pretending to smooth things over. For once, she feels like she’s getting it right—keeping her jokes light, her tone friendly, her words careful.
She even thinks it’s going well.
When her drink runs low, she gets up with a grunt, the legs of her chair scraping softly against the floor. “You two need a refill?”
Bea waves her off without looking up, focused on her cards, but Eli taps his nearly empty bottle in answer. “Sure thing, grease monkey.”
Andy smirks as she heads to the counter. “You say that like it’s an insult!”
“Not at all,” Eli replies easily, tipping his bottle toward her in a loose cheers. “Anyone who can build that damn horse of yours deserves a medal.”
The praise hits her square in the chest. Compliments always do, especially from someone like Eli, someone her sister loves and respects deeply. It makes her chest flutter in this strange, clumsy way that almost feels like pride. “Ah, thank you!” she blurts, a little breathless with the surprise of being understood even just for a second.
She turns back to the counter, reaching for a couple of bottles. The metal caps knock together, a small, bright sound that fills the space between their laughter. “More than I can say for you though, huh?” she adds, trying for playful. The words come out light, teasing, easy. She even throws a grin over her shoulder, crooked and sure of herself.
Eli pauses mid-sip, his grin faltering enough to be noticeable. “What do you mean?”
Andy pops one of the new bottles open, still smiling like it’s all in good fun. “You know, after that whole electric fence incident! Took you… what, like four tries before it could hold a charge?” She laughs softly, leaning her hip against the counter as the cap clatters to the floor. “Guess I oughta teach you a thing or two now that you’re one of us, huh?”
It’s meant to be teasing, good-natured—the way she’s heard other people do when they’re close enough to joke about mistakes. But something shifts. The laughter bleeds out of the room like air from a tire. Bea’s eyes flick to Eli, and his grin is already gone.
The quiet that follows isn’t empty; it hums, low and tight, like the hum of a power line before it snaps. Andy feels it before she understands it, a slow, cold weight gathering in her stomach.
Eli gives a small laugh, thin as paper on his tongue. “Yeah… guess so,” he says, but his voice is already withdrawing from the room. He sets his cards down as he clears his throat, not looking at her. “I… I should go check on the uh… the brahmin. Make sure my handiwork is still... holding up… You two keep playing without me.”
He stands before anyone can say more. A quick kiss to Bea’s cheek. A murmur of apology that no one quite catches. The door creaks shut behind him, and the room exhales into stillness.
Still, but tense.
Bea’s jaw works before the words do. Her knuckles blanch white around her cards, and then she slams them down hard enough to make the bottles rattle. “Christ, Andy,” she snaps, the words cutting through the air like glass. “You can’t just say stuff like that!”
Andy startles, blinking as she sets her drink down. “I– I was just playing,” she says, confused. “I didn’t mean–”
“Didn’t mean to insult him?” Bea’s tone sharpens, rising with every word. “To insult my husband?” She laughs once, bitter and disbelieving. “You always do this, Andy! You don’t mean it, but you do it anyway!”
Andy’s mouth opens, but Bea is already moving, pushing her chair back so hard it screeches against the floor. She circles the table until nothing stand between the two sisters.
“I try so hard to make room for you, Andy! I tell people you're just ‘quirky’ and they should cut you some slack. I defend you. I tell them you ‘mean well.’ But I’m tired! I have to make everything better every single time you fuck up!”
Andy’s arms cross tight over her chest, a shield more than a stance. “I know!” The words burst out before she can stop them. Her voice trembles, but it doesn’t back down. “And it doesn’t even matter, Bea. Nobody likes me anyway! No matter how long I lie awake every night replaying everything I say, wondering what I should’ve said instead, how I messed it up or–”
“Then why do you keep doing it?!” Bea’s voice climbs, ragged.
“Because I don’t know what else to do!” Andy’s voice breaks open, frantic and raw. She shoves off the counter, hands flinging outward, desperate. “I try being quiet, I try talking more, I try fixing things, I try bringing gifts, I try making jokes and it’s never right!” Her voice catches in her throat, but she pushes through it. “It’s always something, Bea. I’m just trying to be friendly, but they look at me like I’m wrong. Like I don’t even belong in the room!”
“Well maybe you don’t, Andy! Maybe it is you.” Bea steps forward, voice cracking on the words. Her finger jabs toward her sister’s chest, but there’s more behind it than anger—something worn and heavy in her eyes. Fury, yes, but braided with grief. With years of trying and failing to bridge the gap growing day by day. “Did that ever even occur to you? That people shouldn’t have to decode you like some busted-ass robot just to feel human around you? God, sometimes I just wish you were normal!”
Andy flinches.
It’s subtle, but it feels like the whole room shifts around it. The breath leaves her lungs in a single, hollow exhale, and whatever she’d been about to say dies somewhere between her ribs and her throat. She goes completely still.
Normal.
The word rings through her head, metallic and sharp, echoing like a wrench dropped onto concrete in an empty garage.
Softly, she says, “… Okay.”
Bea blinks. The fight drains from her face in an instant.
“I– No, Andy, that’s not what I–” she steps back, hand falling, guilt suddenly surging up her neck in a hot flush. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just–”
“No,” Andy’s voice is quiet, flat, but not cold. Just… faded. Like something has shorted out inside her. “That is what you meant,” she says, eyes not quite meeting her sister’s—somewhere near her shoulder. Somewhere safe. “It’s what everyone means. After mom and dad…" She sighs, eyes darting to Bea’s face for a heartbeat and away again. “Well, I thought you were the only one on my side anymore. But I guess I was wrong. Like I always am.”
She picks up her drink with a quiet clink of glass, stepping to the door with steps too loud for the echo. When she pauses, it’s not to look back at Bea, but rather at her boots. The same boots that they won together in a game of darts just a few weeks ago.
“Goodnight, Bea.”
The door creaks open. A breath of fresh night air slips inside before it shuts again, soft but final.
The silence that follows isn't peaceful. It's almost worse than the yelling.
Bea doesn’t move. Her hand is still suspended in the air, as if reaching could rewind the last thirty seconds. Through the window, she watches her sister’s shape dissolve into the dark, swallowed by the quiet yard beyond. Regret crawls up her spine, heavy and nauseating, settling in the pit of her stomach. The kind of regret that says leave it. Things will be better in the morning, and then they can talk it out. She’ll fix it. She always fixes it.
So she decides to let Andy have the night.
When morning does come, the sky is overcast. A dull, gray sheen stretches over the landscape, muting the colours of the Oregon land and reflecting Bea’s inner emotions. She walks the familiar path to their parents' old house—a walk she’s taken a thousand times, but today her steps feel heavier. Her boots crunch softly against the dirt, the rhythm of her walk syncing with the steady loop of rehearsed words in her head.
She’ll start with the apology. That’s always worked before. She’ll tell Andy she didn’t mean it like that, that she was tired, that her temper got ahead of her. Then she’ll offer something to make peace. A hand with repairs, maybe? Help testing those new schematics? Hell, she’d even climb onto that goddamn robot horse if it would make her sister laugh again. Anything to ease them both back into something normal.
The front door creaks as she opens it with a careful knock.
“Andy?” she calls softly.
Nothing.
No shuffling footsteps, no distant clatter of tools from the workroom... Bea hesitates in the doorway, frowning. The air itself feels wrong. Hollow. The kind left behind by something that’s already long gone.
Her eyes sweep the living room, and that’s when she sees it. The organized clutter that usually defines Andy’s presence—the disassembled terminals, spare parts, tools she never put away—is half gone. The neat chaos of someone who didn’t want to make a statement but couldn’t help it. The satchel gone from the hook, the spare boots missing from beside the door…
Bea steps further in, the floor creaking beneath her. Her chest tightens with every detail that confirms what her gut already knows. The bed is stripped bare, blankets missing. The drawer where Andy kept her sketches hangs open, empty save for a few graphite smudges. She moves to the window, wiping a smear of grime from the glass with her sleeve. Outside, the dirt road is marred by the tell-tale hooves of Andy’s pride and joy... her life-sized Giddy-up Buttercup.
Bea stands there for a long time again, the silence pressing in.
Andy didn’t just leave the house. She left Pendleton entirely.
And it’s all her fault.