The Night Before(7)

Cheep beer in plastic cups. Cigarettes. Flavored lip gloss. Bug spray …

It was a tradition on the last day of summer, the last Saturday night before the start of school.

Branston was a small city, flanked by the Long Island Sound on one end and the rural woodlands of New York State on the other. Just at the northern border, before the woodlands and rolling farmland, was the public preserve and river gorge that backed up to Deer Hill Lane.

They didn’t live far from it now, though Rosie had never gone back. Not in eleven years.

Every year it was the same. Dozens of local kids bursting at the seams with the excitement of change. It was in the air. A new season. A new grade. Getting older. Wanting new things. Dreading new things. Needing new things. Hope pushing up against fear like summer against fall. She could still conjure that feeling in her gut.

They’d parked their cars on a gravel road along its edge and walked to a small clearing. Music from someone’s speaker had been drowned out by the clamor of drunk teenagers. She’d been a sophomore in college. Laura had been starting her senior year of high school. Joe hadn’t been at the party that night. His family had wanted one last weekend at their house on the Cape. Gabe had already gone back to college. Of the four of them, it was only Rosie and Laura who had been at the party that night. And it was only Rosie who knew what it felt like to hear that scream in the woods.

Maybe that was enough remembering. Maybe it would leave her now.

Rosie walked quietly across the hardwood floor. The house was a Cape, built in the 1930s. The floors upstairs were bird’s-eye maple, gorgeous but old, and every step created a noisy creak. She made it past her bedroom without waking her son, then continued down the hall.

Laura stayed in a small converted attic. It was at the end of the hallway, just past the guest bathroom. The lights were off, her door closed.

Rosie took another step, placing her foot down in front of her, gently at first, before shifting her weight.

Then she stopped, suddenly aware of herself, creeping around her house in a state of panic the way she had done when Mason was born. How many times had she woken him from a peaceful sleep just to make sure he was still breathing? Her fears were not normal.

Or maybe they were. Maybe there was good reason.

Rosie had been her sister’s protector from the day she was born. It was in her blood, in her bones. But it had never been enough. In the end, she had failed.

The smell of the fire. The scream in the woods …

She would never forget it. She would never stop hearing it. The woods had been silenced in an instant. No one had moved. They’d all just frozen, wondering what they’d heard. Waiting to see if it would come again. And it did. A second scream. Rosie had looked around the fire, searching for Laura. Even as her legs had started to move toward the road where the cars were parked, where the scream had come from, she’d kept looking, hoping, that she was wrong. That the scream did not belong to her sister.



* * *



Two more steps and she was outside the attic door. She pressed her ear against the wood and listened for sound. The TV, maybe. Music. Laura sometimes fell asleep with things still playing. But the room was quiet.

She placed her hand on the doorknob and turned it gently. But it, too, creaked from age. So would the door jam as it twisted on rusty metal. There was no getting in the room without waking the person inside. But Rosie was too far gone to care, and the memory kept playing.



* * *



They’d run to the road, scattering through the woods to find the quickest path. There was no trail. It had been so dark. Someone had a flashlight and they’d turned it on. Someone else had got ten into a car and turned on the headlights. The screams had become sobs. Down the road were two figures. One standing and one on the gravel road, lying still …

Rosie pushed the attic door open, slowly, already talking herself down. They were not in the woods. Whatever she found in this room wouldn’t mean anything. Laura was a grown woman. Maybe she got too drunk to drive and stayed at his place. Maybe she stayed to sleep with him. She’d promised to be home with the car, but people break promises like that all the time. Especially Laura. Especially when it came to men. Her good intentions were always overcome by the desire and longing that were never satisfied. And so what if she did sleep with him? Joe was right: the guy was older. Forty and divorced. Safe to the point of boring.

But all of this reasoning came and went without effect. The past, the scream in the woods. And that boy lying at her sister’s feet. The memory played.

Running to her sister, breathless from screaming her name. Laura! Coming to her, that look on her face. Terror. Disbelief. And that boy on the ground. The blood pooling around his head. Laura’s first love. The one who’d broken her heart. Dead.

This memory always played until the end. Always. Rosie blinked away the last image and looked for her sister.

Laura had been gone for ten years, but it didn’t matter. Rosie was always waiting for the next tragedy to unfold.

The door open now, she flipped on the light.

And all she found was an empty bed.





FOUR


Laura. Session Number Six. Three Months Ago. New York City.

Laura: Rosie thinks I bring this on myself. She says I’m the one breaking hearts.

Dr. Brody: What about that? What about the ones who did love you?