The Winter Sister(69)

“It’s in here,” I mumbled, rifling through shirts and blankets, tossing each item on the floor as soon as I confirmed that it hadn’t belonged to Persephone. When I reached the bottom of the bin, I picked it up and threw it over Tommy’s bed.

“She’s insane!” he said, his voice dancing with delight as I looked inside the bottom bin. A stack of blank paper, a couple magazines, journals packed with indecipherable handwriting—but nothing I recognized. I held up the bin and shook out the rest of its contents, Tommy’s laughter in the background only spurring me on.

“Sylvie,” Ben said again, his voice a little firmer this time.

“No,” I said. “Not until . . .”

There was a closet door on the opposite side of the room. I waded through bins and papers to rip it open. The shallow space was barely big enough for a person to stand in comfortably, and lined up inside was a vacuum cleaner, a broom, and a mop. The only thing hanging from the pole at the top was a gray button-down. As I slammed the door, I grunted.

Ben was making his way around the bed, Tommy covering his cackling mouth as he watched me, and I dropped to the floor, lying with my stomach flat against the carpet. Reaching underneath the bed, my hand flailed around in empty space until it bumped against something hard and rigid, wrapped in cloth.

Ben knelt down beside me, rested his hand on my back. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“No!” I said. “There’s something . . .”

My fingers hooked around it and yanked it out from under the bed. I used my other hand to push myself up off the floor and didn’t look at what I was holding until I was kneeling in front of Ben. We stared at it, Tommy’s laughter cutting off like a needle jerked from a record, and after taking in the shiny pink satin, the waves of blonde hair, the unblinking gray eyes framed by lifelike lashes, Ben and I looked at each other.

“Is that hers?” he asked.

“No,” I breathed, remembering what Falley told me she once saw in Tommy’s bedroom. “It’s his.”

“Don’t you fucking touch her,” Tommy shouted, lunging forward and pouncing on the bed to snatch the doll from my hand. The mattress groaned as he landed on it, and after pulling the doll away from me, he clutched it to his chest. He stroked its hair, smoothed a wrinkle from its dress, and when he spoke again, his voice was strained.

“Get out,” he said.

“Sylvie, let’s go.” Ben took my hand and pulled me up as he stood. He started leading me toward the bedroom door, but I resisted, watching what looked like tears gather in Tommy’s eyes.

“No, wait,” I said, and I took a step back toward the bed. “Tommy, I’m sorry I upset you. I’m sorry I . . . touched your doll. Please, just—tell me what you did with Persephone’s things. Tell me what you know, and then we’ll leave, I swear.”

Tommy narrowed his eyes, squeezing out a single tear that slithered down his skin. “My doll?” he said, his voice pinched. “Are you fucking serious right now? You think she’s just a doll? Just a fucking doll?”

He jumped off the bed, the doll slipping from his grasp and landing facedown on the comforter. When he started to charge at me, I drew in a quick gulp of air, but then he fell, tripping over one of the many things I’d thrown around the room.

Ben grabbed me by the arm—much more tightly now—and pulled me out into the hallway, back through the kitchen, and toward the living room.

“No,” I protested. “No, stop, Ben. I didn’t even get to check the dresser, I have to—stop!”

He dragged me toward the trailer door, and when he opened it and pulled me through it, the cold air lashed my face, his fingers digging so deep into my arm I could already picture the bruises they’d leave. Then he slammed the door behind us, finally letting go of me at the top of the stairs, but the momentum sent me sputtering down the steps, and my feet landed hard on the slush that coated the sidewalk.

“What the hell?” I demanded. “Why did you do that?”

He walked down the steps, shaking his head. “He’s insane, Sylvie,” he said. “He was coming after you.”

“That?” I asked, gesturing toward the trailer. “He tripped! He’s a clumsy idiot. He couldn’t have hurt me. And I still had the dresser drawers to check. I could have found something!”

My chest heaved through my words; my throat tightened with missed opportunity. I felt tears burrowing in the corners of my eyes.

“You weren’t going to find anything,” Ben yelled. “There’s nothing to find in there.”

I opened my mouth to respond, then quickly closed it. There was so much certainty in the way he spoke, as if it wasn’t even possible that a single item of Persephone’s could still be with Tommy. But I hadn’t even checked the dresser or kitchen cabinets before Ben had hauled me from the trailer, his hands and arms constricting as a straightjacket.

“How do you know there’s nothing?” My heart was beating hot and wild. “What was going on between you two in there? He seemed to think you knew a lot more than you’ve said.”

“What? I have no idea what he meant by any of that. He’s just crazy. He’s completely unhinged. Didn’t you hear what he said about that doll? It’s like he thinks it’s a person or something. And did you get a good look at the thing? It looked like . . .”