The Winter Sister(2)

A little while later, Jill hurried into the kitchen to ask me for the names of Persephone’s friends.

“Ben,” I said.

“I called over there already. I had to leave a message because no one picked up. Who else?”

I shrugged, and then mentioned some girls I’d once seen Persephone with in the library as they worked on a project for school. Jill retreated back to my room, and I listened through the thin walls as, call after call, she reached a dead end: “Oh, they’re not really friends? Okay, well thank you anyway. Let me give you my number just in case she . . .”

When she ran out of people to contact, Jill insisted we try to sleep—me in my bed, Missy in Persephone’s, Jill on the lumpy couch in the living room. For a while that night, I kept myself awake, listening for the tap of Persephone’s fingers on the window. All I ever heard, though, were Missy’s kitten-like snores in my sister’s bed, and the sound of Persephone’s watch, ticking on somewhere in the room like a promise.

? ? ?

On the morning of the second day, I waited for Mom outside her door, sitting like a puppy that had been shut out. Normally, she was able to soothe me in ways that nothing else, not even painting, could. Her hand on my forehead was a cool washcloth, her voice a lullaby. We often played a game where she pretended to plant a garden on my face, using her fingers to show me where the roses would go (on my cheek) or where the lilies would be (on my forehead). “You’re blooming,” she’d say, and then she’d pretend to pick some of the flowers. “I’ve got three roses, two hydrangea bunches, and a stem of baby’s breath. How much will that cost me?” She’d pinch her fingers together as if holding a tiny bouquet. “It’ll cost you one hug,” I’d say, and then we’d hold each other tightly, laughing at how ridiculous we were, how happy.

But when her door finally creaked open, her eyes were so swollen they looked as if they’d been punched. Her cheeks seemed to sag, and she was still wearing the bathrobe she’d had on the morning before when I told her that Persephone was gone.

She looked at me on the floor but didn’t kneel down beside me or put her hand on my head. It was almost as if she knew what I had done, and hated me for it.

“Did she . . .” were the only words she uttered, and I felt how deeply I was failing her when I shook my head.

The doorbell rang just then, and Mom ran down the hall to the front door as Jill rounded the corner from the living room. They opened it together without a word, and I craned my neck to see between them. Missy was still asleep in my sister’s bed, and I couldn’t wait to tell Persephone that. “It was so weird,” I would say. “She just kept sleeping as if it was a vacation or something. I mean, you’re missing, right? But she’s just snoring away in there.” I could hear our laughter, even as I watched the police enter the house.

Two officers, a man and a woman, stood in the cramped entryway of our small two-bedroom ranch. They wiped their feet on the doormat, their hands on their belts like they were about to start line dancing.

“Are you Ms. O’Leary?” the male officer asked Mom.

“Yes,” she said huskily. “Yes, that’s me.”

“And I’m Jill Foster.” Jill stepped forward. “I’m the one who called last night.”

“I’m Detective Falley,” the female officer said, “and this is my partner, Detective Parker.” She gestured to the man beside her, who was looking beyond us as if already trying to find clues within the walls of our house. “I wanted to let you know, first of all, that we followed up on what you reported to our desk sergeant, and we spoke to Ben Emory.”

Mom stumbled backward a little. “What’s he got to do with this?”

“We understand,” Detective Falley said, “that he’s the last person your daughter was seen with.”

Mom spun around to look at me, and her eyes seemed grayer than usual, clouded by the horror gathering on her face. I looked at my feet, wiggling my big toe through the hole in my sock.

“Did you know about this?” she asked me.

I swallowed. “Yes,” I said. “I saw her leave with him. She . . .” I paused, unsure of how far to go in my betrayal. Then I looked up, keeping my eyes on the detectives, neither of whom could have been more than thirty-five. Parker even had a small patch of zits around his nose.

“She sneaks out of the house a lot to see him,” I said. “He’s her boyfriend. They’ve been doing this for months.”

Any color left on my mother’s face disappeared. Her skin became as gray as her eyes, as gray as the cold light from the cloudy sky outside. “Boyfriend?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“This is Sylvie,” Aunt Jill said to the detectives, gesturing toward me. “She’s my niece. Persephone’s sister.”

Falley nodded. “Ben says he doesn’t know where she is. Says they were driving around, got into a fight, and she demanded to be let out of the car so she could walk home. He says he let her off on Weston Road and then waited out the storm at his friend’s house overnight. We checked with the friend’s mother and she confirmed that Ben arrived around eleven p.m. and stayed until ten or so the next morning.”

“Then where is she?” I asked. “And why would she want to walk home when it was snowing? Ben’s lying! He has to know where she is.”