The Winter Sister(100)

I felt the pinch of my lungs as I stopped breathing. Then, the air hitching between my lips, I asked, “Why do you say that?”

Ben shrugged and looked back toward the window. “I haven’t talked to him,” he said, “but I hear he’s hired this whole team of lawyers. Some high-profile firm. And Tommy—well, suddenly this fancy attorney blows into town, offering to take on his case pro bono. But I bet my dad’s tied up in that, too.”

I gripped Persephone’s necklace harder in my hand. “So Tommy’s not going to testify against him?”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

The walls crept closer. The ceiling sagged toward our heads.

“Are you going to testify?” I asked. “I mean, I know he’s your father, but—”

“That man is not my father,” Ben declared. “Not anymore.” He scratched his scar, scraping his nail slowly along the ridge of it. “Not ever, really.”

As we sat in silence, I opened my fingers to glance at the starfish on my palm, and quickly closed them again. Then, Ben asked, “Is he yours?”

“My what?”

“Your father. Are we . . .”

“No. I asked my mom about that—twice, actually—and she insisted that he isn’t.”

“Well, good,” Ben said. “Because that would be a little much, learning my dad’s a murderer and sleeping with my sister, all in the same week?” He whistled so quietly the sound was mostly air. Then, as I lifted my eyebrows in surprise, he shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was so inappropriate. I’m just not sure how to deal with all of this. It’s so hard to even comprehend. I mean, first off—Persephone and I, we should have never been together in the first place, right? Someone should have told us the truth and stopped us. But, at the same time, it doesn’t change the way I think of her, you know? If I remember her now, I still feel that same spasm of love, deep in my stomach. And then I feel sick about that.”

I looked at him, saw the anguish and confusion in his eyes. Then I put my hand on top of his and squeezed. “Hey,” I said. “It’s only been a couple days since you found out. You just need time to process it all.”

He stared down at my hand. “Time?” he scoffed. “Time has never been enough to make me stop loving her. It’s been sixteen years, and I still haven’t stopped.” He sighed, his eyes scanning the back of my hand. “But maybe you’re right, maybe now that I know, it’ll be different.”

He laced his fingers with mine and held my hand hard, his knuckles white, my own pinched and pressured. I winced at the pain of his grip, but I relished it, too. It made the ache in my lungs, my heart, my stomach—the ache I’d felt for days, or maybe even years—subside. But then I saw the danger in that, in trading one pain for another, and I slipped my hand out of his grasp.

He didn’t fight it. He let me go.

“You don’t have to stop loving her,” I said. “I know I won’t.”

“That’s different.”

“It doesn’t have to be. You were there for her, and I’m grateful to you for that. She deserved to have someone who understood her,” I added. “We all do.”

His eyes were unreadable as they shifted back and forth between my own. Then he nodded, blinking, and tears slipped down his cheek.

“I should go,” he whispered, standing up. He took a couple muted steps toward the window before I stood, too.

“Wait,” I said.

He turned around, slowly, as if the air were becoming too heavy for him to move through. “Yeah?”

“It’s just—you know Tommy?”

He let out a short laugh. “I think I remember him, yeah.”

“Right. Well, why do you think he kept telling the police—and telling us—that my mother knew something important? He was clearly hinting at Will being Persephone’s father, but why would he point people in that direction? Your dad ended up bankrolling his whole life. He had a lot to lose if Will got arrested.”

Ben took a deep breath and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess he just loved knowing something that no one else did. I mean, we were closest to Persephone, and we didn’t have a clue. But maybe, maybe knowing this big, decades-old secret—it somehow proved to him that all that bullshit he’d said was true, about being the only one to actually see and know Persephone.” He shrugged. “And it probably made him feel powerful for once, you know? He must have just thrived on showing that off, on taunting people with the fact that he knew something. I mean, think about his life. That ounce of power, or control, or whatever it was, probably meant a lot more to him than money. I know it always does for my father.”

Ben shifted his feet, putting his hands in his pockets. “But speaking of Tommy,” he said. “I found all the stuff he sold my dad. Persephone’s stuff.”

I stood up straighter. “You did?”

“Yeah. After I got back from the police station, I went inside the main house. I’m not even sure why. I guess I just figured my dad would be arraigned in the morning, and this would be the only chance I’d have to look around. I think I hoped I’d find something to help me reconcile the fact that my father murdered my . . .” He swallowed. “Anyway, I noticed that this room on the third floor—my mom’s old office—was locked. And I kicked the door in. I didn’t even know I was capable of that, but I just kept picturing his face as he said that what he did was all my fault, and it went a lot easier.”