The Winter Sister(16)

They held each other’s gaze until Parker cleared his throat and drew a line through something on the pad. “Right,” he said.

“We saw the paint,” Falley explained, folding her hands together over the table. “But just to clarify—do you remember what part of her body had bruises on it the night you last saw her?”

I swallowed—hard. It hadn’t occurred to me that they’d already know about it, but of course her body would have been examined. She would have been naked on some long metallic table, her eyes closed, her blonde hair the only cushion for her head. Deft gloved fingers would have pressed against whatever was left of the paint, and the bruises beneath would have been exposed—ugly, menacing things.

“Sylvie?” Aunt Jill squeezed my hand. I looked at her, and she nodded toward the detectives, who waited for me to respond.

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. What was the question?”

“The bruises,” Falley began again, her voice gentle and patient. “Do you remember what part of her body they were on?”

I tried to remember. All the daisies and seascapes and storm clouds and ladybugs were blending together. The bruises were usually on her arms, but sometimes it was her shoulder or hip bone or thigh. That final time, though—I closed my eyes, saw her leaning over me, her hair tickling my face, her starfish necklace nearly in my mouth—there’d been a bruise just beneath her rib cage, and two more on—

“Her wrist,” I said.

Parker went back to making notes. “And why did you put paint on those bruises?” he asked.

I slipped my hand out of Aunt Jill’s and scratched my wrist. “Because Persephone asked me to,” I said. “She didn’t want our mom to see.”

“So this happened more than once?” Falley asked. “You painting over her bruises?”

Jill’s eyes were on me, her gaze hot and unrelenting.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on Falley’s youthful, encouraging face. “This happened all the time. Ben hurt her for months. He did this to her. I know he did. You have to arrest him.”

My voice rose in pitch, but I didn’t care. As much as my confession made me look bad, it made Ben look far worse—and that was all that mattered. He wouldn’t get away with what he’d done to Persephone. He wouldn’t be able to hurt some other girl and call it love.

“So I understand you’re saying that your sister asked you to do this for her,” Parker said. “But how come you never—”

“I don’t know,” I said, before he could finish what I’d already been asking myself for days. “I just—I don’t even know anymore.”

I turned to Aunt Jill, and the look in her eyes—not anger, not frustration; just bald, profound weariness—made something in me collapse. “I’m so sorry,” I said to her. “I was so stupid. I should have told Mom about it the first time it happened. I can’t believe I . . . I’m . . .”

She pulled me into a sideways hug between our chairs. My throat felt thick, my saliva viscous, but the warmth of her embrace was an immediate comfort, like burrowing under blankets on a cold night. As tears slipped from my eyes, the fabric of her sweater soaked them up.

“It’s okay, Sylvie,” she said. “You’re doing the right thing now.”

“That’s true,” Parker added. “We’re glad you came to us with this information. We knew the bruises on her wrist and side had happened prior to the strangulation.” I felt Jill’s body tense up, in sync with my own. “But we didn’t know if the two events were connected.”

I narrowed my eyes at the sterile way he’d worded it—“the two events.” Pulling away from Aunt Jill, I sat up straight in my chair. “They’re connected,” I said.

Parker nodded once. “We will follow up with this information, for sure.”

It’s not “information,” I wanted to say. It’s the answer. The smoking gun.

“Sylvie.” Falley leaned forward. “Did Persephone ever give any explanation for what Ben did to her? Did she ever say how it happened, or why she stayed with him?”

I shrugged. “Just that they loved each other. And that it wasn’t what I thought. She was always saying that—‘It’s not what you think.’?” I shook my head as I realized for the millionth time how foolish I’d been. “But it was what I thought. Him killing her proves that.”

I said these words into my lap, and when I looked up at the detectives, Parker was staring at me in a lingering, expectant way, as if he felt I was holding something back. But I wasn’t—and that was the problem. The truth was just that simple. My sister, according to her own twisted definition of the word, had allowed a man to love her to death.

The detectives launched into a list of questions then. When did she first come home with bruises? How many bruises did she usually have at a time? Where were these bruises? Here, look at this body I’ve drawn right here—please forgive me; I’m not an artist—and place an X anywhere you can remember her having been hurt. Did your sister ever say, or give any indication, that her boyfriend had been (a small pause here, a couple taps of a pen) sexually abusing her?

“Why do you ask?” Aunt Jill cut in sharply. “Was she sexually abused on the night she . . .” She glanced at me before adding the final word. “Died?”