The Winter Sister(25)

“Unpacking,” she answered.

“I was just—looking at my stuff,” I said. “Haven’t seen any of this in a while.”

“Hmm. Well.”

She stared out the window as if something fascinating were happening out on our street. For a moment, I was jealous; when she looked through the glass, she saw the usual houses and snowy lawns dotting the road. She didn’t spot Persephone lurking out there, unable to come inside, her icicle-thin fingers pressed against the panes.

“Mom, what did you do with Persephone’s things?”

I held my breath as I waited for her to answer. Was she going to ignore me, pretend I hadn’t spoken, the same way she had when I’d asked about Persephone’s constellation in the living room?

“Oh,” she finally said, her eyes still focused out the window. “I gave them to that boy.”

Something heavy dropped into my stomach. That boy? The only boy with any connection to Persephone was Ben.

“What boy?” I asked, an edge to my voice I hadn’t intended.

She waved her hand dismissively. “That neighbor boy,” she said. “Her friend from down the street.”

But the only friend Persephone had ever had on our street was Faith Dunhill, a girl who’d moved away at the end of eighth grade.

“Who are you talking about?” I tried again. “Ben Emory? He didn’t live down the street.”

Mom’s head snapped toward me, and in a single second, the expression that passed over her face went from surprise to horror.

“Why—” she sputtered. “Why would you say that name?”

I studied the tears that had so suddenly sprung to her eyes.

“So, it wasn’t him?” I asked.

“No!” She let out a quick sob of a sound, and she backed away from the door, her feet falling out of her slippers as she stumbled into the hallway.

Before I had the chance to stop her, she spun into her bedroom and slammed the door. I hesitated for a moment, then followed, twisting her doorknob several times, but each time, the brass handle clicked.

For some reason—despite what history should have told me, despite how desperately she’d run away—I was certain the door would open. And just like that, I was fourteen again. I slumped to the floor outside my mother’s room, my skin prickling from a new charge in the air, as if, on the other side of that door, a dark and desperate storm cloud brewed.

“Mom,” I called, my hand slipping from the doorknob and landing in my lap. “Mom, just let me in.”

There was the creak of her mattress as she climbed into bed, then a rustle of blankets, and then nothing.

“Mom,” I called again, even though I knew she wouldn’t answer me.

For the next few minutes, I sat with my back against her door, my knees pulled up to my chest. My heart was a heavy, throbbing thing, and when I looked at my hands, I was surprised to find they were shaking.





8




The next morning, I woke to a call from Aunt Jill.

“Hey,” I answered, my voice deeper than normal. I pulled the phone away from my ear to check the time. It was eleven thirty-two—the latest I’d managed to sleep since college—and I sat up sharply.

“Hey yourself,” Jill said. “I’m just calling to see how things went yesterday and to make sure you’re all set for tomorrow.”

I grabbed a sweatshirt from the foot of my bed, struggling to respond as I pulled it on. “Things didn’t go so well,” I started to say, but the words stopped dead in my mouth as soon as I saw Persephone’s bed. All through the night, I’d been careful to keep my body turned to the wall. I hadn’t wanted to risk glimpsing what used to be the space where she slept. Stripped of all the belongings that once surrounded it, it looked so impersonal, so unhaunted, but I knew that if I squinted, I could still make out her ghost.

“Hello?” Jill prompted, but she sounded so far away.

I twisted to face the wall again, sinking down under my blankets as if going back to sleep. “Mom locked herself up,” I said quietly.

“Oh Lord.” I could almost hear Jill rolling her eyes. “What happened now?”

“I brought up Ben Emory.”

There was a beat of silence as Jill hesitated. “Why?”

“Because when I asked her where all of Persephone’s things were, she said she gave them to ‘that boy.’ I didn’t know what other boy it could have been, so I asked if she meant Ben. Then she freaked out, and she’s been in her room ever since. She didn’t even come out for dinner.”

The more I spoke, the wearier I felt. Instead of being refreshed from sleep, my body felt drained, weightless.

“It was crazy,” I went on. “It was just like . . .”

Mom’s Dark Days, I was going to say. But Jill didn’t know about those. Persephone and I had never told her how on the fifteenth of each month, Mom would begin the day normally—sometimes even giddily—and then, just a little while later, the atmosphere in the house would change, and Mom would slink off to her bedroom, where she’d lock herself away for the rest of the day.

Persephone would tighten her lips then, watching Mom disappear down the hall. She’d help me pack my schoolbag and walk me to the bus stop. And we lived like that, month after month, until Persephone died and then all of Mom’s days became dark.