The Winter Sister(50)

In the upper left-hand corner of the box’s top, Mom had written our address. I noticed that first because of how thick the letters looked, as if she’d traced over them with her pen several times, wanting to make sure that, if the package didn’t make it to its intended recipient, it would at least make it back to her. Then, in the middle of the right flap, there was another address, and when I read it, my breath caught in the back of my throat.

“Tom Dent,” it said, followed by a house number and street in Hanover.





17




Grabbing the empty box, I marched across the room and pulled the door open with so much force that it banged against my dresser.

“Jesus,” Mom barked at the noise, her voice guiding me to the living room.

Her chair was in a reclining position, and she held the copy of Wuthering Heights I’d given her the day before.

“Well,” Mom said, not bothering to lift her eyes from the page, “it’s about time you got up. Or is taking care of me in my time of need a vacation for you?”

“What the hell have you been doing?”

She actually jumped at the question.

“Jesus,” she said again, covering her ears. “I was only kidding, Sylvie. Sleep as late as you want.”

“I’m talking about this,” I said, and I held up the box, facing the side with Tommy’s name on it toward her. She squinted as she read it, then returned her eyes to the book.

“Oh,” she said. “I told you I gave him your sister’s things.”

“No.” I shook my head so hard that a bone in my neck cracked. “You said you gave them to ‘that neighbor boy.’ You were talking about him? Tommy Dent?”

“He goes by Tom now, Sylvie.”

I laughed, a quick indignant sputter, and I paced around the living room.

“Okay,” I said, “we’ll get to how you know that in a second. But first—why would you give him Persephone’s stuff? He didn’t even—he was—I don’t understand what would possess you to do that.”

“Would you calm down for half a second?” She pulled the lever on the recliner and the back of her chair shot forward. “It’s not the end of the world, all right? It was just part of a deal we had.”

I stopped moving, glanced down at Tommy’s name on the box, and then set my eyes on Mom. “A deal? What kind of deal?”

Straightening the scarf she wore around her head, Mom sighed. “He started coming over a couple years after your sister . . .” She let the sentence hang in the air, heavy as wet clothes drying on a line. I glared at her until she continued.

“He used to mow the lawn for me. Clean the house. And in exchange, I’d—”

“You’d give him her stuff?” My voice was so shrill I could imagine the neighbors’ dogs howling in response.

“Yes, well, they were friends. And I hadn’t known that. I’d always thought he was a bad seed, but it turns out he really cared for her. So he’d come over and we’d talk.”

“You’d talk?” As far as I knew, she’d always been too drunk to carry a conversation. Couldn’t even handle the words happy birthday each October. “Talk about what?”

Talk to the mother, Tommy had told the detectives. Now, the sentence drummed in my head as I waited for her answer.

“About her,” she said, as if it should have been obvious. “He wanted to know every memory I could think of. Didn’t matter how small. It was very sweet, actually.”

“Oh, I’m sure!” I scoffed. “But that doesn’t explain why you’d give him Persephone’s stuff.”

“I just told you,” she said. “I gave it to him in exchange for his time.”

“Why wouldn’t you just pay him?”

“He didn’t want money. He just wanted to be able to choose a few of your sister’s things each time. So I let him.” She shrugged. “Two birds, one stone. It—her stuff—I needed it gone.”

The hair on my arms rose. He had been in our house, our bedroom. He had fondled Persephone’s things. I could picture him pressing the nozzle of her cheap drugstore perfume, spraying it into the air as he closed his eyes, inhaling. And Mom had let him do this—over and over. But even as that realization gathered in my mind, there was something else Mom had been saying that made my chest feel tight.

“Say her name, Mom.”

I took a step closer to her, and she blinked up at me.

“What?” she asked.

“You keep saying ‘your sister’ or just referring to her as her, but she had a name and I need you to say it. I don’t think I’ve heard you say it once since she died.”

“That’s not—” She tried an unconvincing, paper-thin chuckle. “You’re being ridiculous.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Say her name.”

The name she’d chosen, just a young woman inspired by her classics course in college. The name she’d picked because she, like the goddess Demeter, had wanted to rescue her daughter from a life in the Underworld—which, apparently for Mom, was any life with a man who wasn’t Will.

She stared at me for what felt like minutes.

“Persephone,” she finally said, and it was barely more than a whisper.