The Winter Sister(37)

“I know,” Ben said. “I didn’t really recognize her at first—it’s not that great of a picture—but then I noticed how much she looks like Persephone here.”

It was true—not just because of the length of her hair or the color of her eyes; it was her posture, too, her height, her frame—and as I stared at the picture, I ached for them both.

Ben flipped over the photo, pressing Mom’s beautiful beaming face against the table. “Look,” he said, pointing to the bottom corner, where someone had written a date inside of a heart.

Those bulky loops, the way the ink curved up at the end of each word—I recognized the handwriting from notes she used to leave on my pillow or in my lunchbox. “My mother wrote that,” I said. “But—what is this? She didn’t even know your dad.”

“Apparently she did.”

“Where did you find this?”

Ben nodded, as if he’d been expecting me to ask that question. “In my grandfather’s house. Well—no, I guess it’s mine now. Do you know where my dad lives? The big house on the hill?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there’s this guesthouse in the back that my grandfather lived in while I was growing up. He died when I was nineteen, and the house just sat empty for years after that. I moved in a while ago, and I’ve only recently had time to start going through some of the things that are stored there. I was actually looking for my grandfather’s stuff, but I found this box that had my dad’s name on it, and the picture was just loose in there with all these high school track and field trophies, yearbooks, graduation tassels, things like that. I don’t know if it was something my grandfather was storing for my dad, or if it was things my dad boxed up and kept there after the house became empty. Either way—there it was.”

“There it was,” I repeated, careful to keep my voice dry and even.

“And look,” Ben pressed on, pointing at the date on the bottom corner again. “This date—it’s about a year and a half before my parents got married.”

“So?”

“So . . . I don’t know. Do you think they dated—your mom and my dad? Before my parents were together? I mean, look at how she’s looking at him.”

He flipped the picture over again, and the warmth in my mom’s eyes brought a stinging feeling to my own. She had been like that once—open, loving, her laughter like a song. She would hum while doing the laundry. She would tend to her rhododendrons in the front yard, talking to the bees that buzzed around her as she worked.

“And this heart she drew around the date,” Ben said, turning the photo once more. “It just—it seems pretty obvious they were together once, right? And, if that’s true, well—my dad has a way of making women hate him.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

Ben looked toward the window. “My parents have been divorced since I was eighteen,” he said. “And it happened pretty suddenly.” He paused, squinting at the trees in the distance outside. “I mean, I knew they fought—a lot—but one day I came home and my mom had all these suitcases packed. I asked her what was going on and she told me she was moving to Portugal.”

“Portugal?”

Ben nodded. “She has a cousin there that she was close with when they were kids. I’d never even met her at the time, but . . . anyway. She said I was eighteen now, and she’d stayed longer than she should have, but she’d wanted to make sure I wasn’t negatively influenced, or something like that. And so she just left. And anytime I’ve talked to her or visited her, if I so much as mention my dad, she goes crazy. She yells about how she doesn’t want to hear a word about him, how he’s a terrible human being, on and on and on like that, and I mean, she just hates him.”

He looked at the back of the photo again, tracing the heart with his fingertip. “And it’s not just her,” he continued. “Since they got divorced, my dad has dated all kinds of women, and they all end up hating him, too. Just last month, I was in the guesthouse and I heard one of them screaming at him at the top of her lungs. Then I heard a car screeching away. So I don’t know what he does to them exactly, but like I said, he has a way of driving women crazy.”

He rubbed at the ink where the date had been written on the photo, as if it hadn’t been dried and set for decades, as if his fingers were strong enough to erase any record of the past.

“Maybe he was abusive,” I said. “Left marks on them.”

Ben snapped his head up to look at me, and my heart clenched. His features hardened and his jaw tightened, the movement of the bone seeming to ripple through his scar.

“No,” he said, his voice resolute. “No, it wasn’t like that. He didn’t hurt them. Not physically, anyway.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked. Then, drawing in my breath, imagining each molecule of air as a tiny source of strength collecting inside me, I added, “Like father, like s—”

“Look,” Ben interrupted, his eyes like two dark marbles staring out at me. “I was just telling you that to try to explain how—well, I think it could be the same thing with your mom. If she dated my dad and ended up hating him, then it would make sense that she wouldn’t want Persephone to date me. Right?”