The Winter Sister(20)

Now, sixteen years later, my sister’s case was so cold that I imagined the folders and bags of evidence cracking like ice in the aisles of the police station basement. So much had changed since that day in the interview room, and yet, the details of my sister’s death remained a mystery.

As I turned onto the street where Persephone and I had grown to be teenagers together, each making choices we couldn’t unchoose, my heart thudded. My stomach felt weightless and heavy all at once. With only a few houses left before I reached our ranch near the end of the road, I caught sight of the cluster of hills where the Emory estate lurked. It was one of the many things that hadn’t changed in the years I’d been away—the Millers’ blue house still had a broken shutter on the first floor; our street sign still sat crooked on its metal pole; and the place where Ben Emory had grown up still felt like a taunting, towering presence over the south side of town. I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of that distant land, or the thickening flakes of snow against my windshield, but something in that moment made me shiver.





6




Before I could knock or ring the bell, the front door opened. I had been looking down, careful not to slip on the icy walkway, and it took much more energy than it should have to lift my head and meet Jill’s eyes. She was smiling at me, dressed in a loose sweater that hid the weight she’d gained over the years, and I was so relieved that it was her instead of my mother that I rushed up the steps and threw my arms around her.

“Whoa,” she said, squeezing me in that strong, enveloping way of hers. “Don’t know what I did to deserve such a hello, but I’ll take it.”

Jill’s face was a bright burst of joy in the snowy gloom of the afternoon. The consequence of avoiding my mother during her illness, I suddenly realized, was that I’d been keeping myself from Jill as well. Jill who made banana bread on rainy days. Jill who smiled.

“Well, come in,” she said. “It’s freezing out there.”

I stepped inside and wiped my feet on the mat. Then I followed Jill to the living room, where it was so dark I could barely see. The curtains on the sliding glass door were closed, the lights were turned off, and when my eyes adjusted to the shadows, I didn’t find Mom on the couch like I’d expected. She was probably squirreled away in her bedroom, and even though that meant I still had a few more minutes alone with Jill until I had to face her, some part of me felt stung by the fact that she hadn’t even wanted to greet me.

Pulling off my scarf and shrugging out of my coat, I looked around for a place to put my things. Where had we hung our jackets? My memory offered up an image of Persephone bouncing through the doorway after school and flinging her red coat over the rack in the entryway—the same rack that Mom had knocked over when Persephone went missing. Her rage that day had momentarily paralyzed me, and even remembering it now, I could only stand in the middle of the room, my coat and scarf hanging limply over my arm as I stared at the carpet.

“So,” Jill said, “here we are.”

I nodded, knowing where this was going. The welcome was over, and now we had to get down to business.

“Is she in the bedroom?” I asked.

Aunt Jill cocked her head, her brow furrowing. “Who?”

Who? I actually laughed—the question was so strange. “Mom,” I said.

Jill squinted and then her eyes slid past me, toward the corner of the room.

“I’m right here.”

My lungs squeezed shut as I heard my mother’s voice, huskier than I remembered, but undoubtedly hers. I saw then what I hadn’t noticed when I’d entered the darkened room. Mom, or at least some version of her, was sitting in a recliner by the bookshelf. She was thinner than I’d ever seen her. When had been the last time? Two Junes ago when Jill dragged her to Hanover for another attempt at a family dinner? She’d been thin then as well, and had always been slender, but in the years since Persephone’s death, the shape of her body had become less and less defined, more like a teenage boy’s than a woman’s. Now, though, all of her features seemed sunken. Her cheekbones protruded, and her neck looked like a thin stalk that could barely hold up her head. She’d lost her hair, too—her long, blonde Persephone hair—or at least that’s what the scarf around her scalp suggested.

“I . . .” My throat felt dry all of a sudden; my vocal cords grated against each other. “I didn’t see you there.”

Aunt Jill laughed, the sound of it rich and rippling. “I guess not!” she said. “I was wondering why you hadn’t said hello. Thought you were just being shy.”

I looked at Mom, but her eyes were so masked by shadows that I couldn’t see if they looked at me in return. “I didn’t see you,” I repeated.

Aunt Jill walked around the couch toward the sliding glass door. “It’s because we’ve got these damn curtains closed,” she said. “Is your headache any better, Annie?”

“No.”

“Well.” Aunt Jill ripped open the curtains, and for a moment, all I could see was crisp, blinding ivory. “We need some light in here.”

Mom shielded her face with her hands and I saw how delicate her fingers looked, how easily it seemed they could break. When she lowered her hands, I noticed the brittleness of her skin, flakes gathering on the corners of her lips, the lobes of her ears. She had only wisps for eyebrows, making her forehead seem wide and vast as open land, and her cheeks looked sucked in. She was wearing a gray sweater, with large buttons down the front, and it was almost shocking how completely the shirt consumed her. She looked like a child playing dress-up in her mother’s clothes.