The Winter Sister(70)

He trailed off, but it didn’t matter. I knew what he was going to say. It looked like Persephone.

“He seemed to know something about you,” I persisted, pushing the doll out of my mind. It didn’t matter right then; Ben was only deflecting. “And what was with the way you two were glaring at each other? Have you spoken to him before—before today, I mean?”

Ben shivered against the cold.

“Damn it,” he said, ignoring me as he looked back toward the door. “I left my coat in there. Oh, whatever, it doesn’t matter. We have to get out of here, Sylvie.”

“I’m not going anywhere until you answer me!” I didn’t care how loudly I yelled it. Let there be witnesses, I thought. Let there finally be people who see and know the truth. “Are you in cahoots with Tommy?”

“Cahoots?” Ben repeated. “No! Before today, I hadn’t even seen the guy since I was, like, nineteen.”

“But you’ve spoken with him,” I said. “Haven’t you?”

The tears welling in my eyes were hot as my heart. I wiped them away as soon as they spilled onto my cheeks. I couldn’t let Ben think I was breaking, or that these were tears of fragility. They were angry tears, furious tears; they were how-could-I-be-so-stupid tears.

“No,” Ben said, looking at me now with a careful blend of curiosity and concern. “I haven’t spoken to him, either.”

“Then what was he talking about?” I spit out the question, my voice thick and warped.

“I honestly don’t know,” Ben said. “He was messing with me. He was messing with both of us. He’s just crazy, Sylvie. That’s all.”

“Maybe,” I said, brushing my cheek with the back of my hand. “Or maybe I’m the crazy one for thinking for one second that anyone but you killed my sister.”

“What?” Ben fired. “Sylvie—”

Something inside me spurred me forward, and I pushed him, watching with satisfaction as he stumbled backward.

“Hey,” he protested, but I pushed him again—only, this time, I slipped on the slushy ground, and I nearly fell. He grabbed me by the elbows then, as if trying to stabilize me, and I punched at him instead, my fists landing on his chest with feeble, impotent thumps.

“You did it!” I cried. “Just admit it! Just tell me the truth!”

I could hear myself sobbing, could feel my arms growing weaker and weaker the harder I swung them.

“You know I didn’t kill her, Sylvie,” Ben said, his voice quiet and gentle, like someone trying to lure an animal into a trap. “I loved her. God, I—I loved her so much.”

“If that’s true, then why did you hurt her?” My fists bumped against his chest while he held me. “Why did you abuse her all the time?”

Ben let go of my arms and took a step back. I wobbled, trying to regain my balance, and when I looked at him, my breath coming out in uneven gasps, I saw that he seemed stunned.

“Abuse her?” he asked.

“The bruises!” I pointed to my wrist, my neck, my ribs. “She had them everywhere. All the time.”

“No,” Ben said, slowly shaking his head.

“Yes! She showed me every single one. She made me—she asked me to paint over them, so nobody would know. You must have seen that. You must have known that I knew.”

“No,” Ben said again. “You don’t understand. She . . .”

“She what? Deserved it? Provoked you? Don’t even think of saying that.”

“No. No, of course not. She . . .”

“She what, Ben? What?”

“She asked me to bruise her!”

I took a step back, the tears on my face seeming to freeze.

“What?” I said. “No—no, she didn’t. That’s insane. Stop lying to me!”

Ben’s head drooped, his eyes staring at the ground. “It’s true,” he said, and he sounded so defeated, like he’d lost something just now and knew that he’d never get it back. “It—the bruises—the whole thing—it’s not what you’ve been thinking.”

My eyes widened. The familiarity of that phrase, the gnawing ache of those words—night after night, It’s not what you’re thinking, Sylvie—made my throat sting and swell.

“She asked me to bruise her,” he said again. Then, his eyes lifting tentatively toward my face, he straightened his posture, shuffled his feet.

“I have proof,” he added. He took a step toward me, his black-hole eyes, with all their gravitational pull and imprisoned light, looking deeply, imploringly, into mine.

“Proof?” I heard myself ask.

“Yes,” he said, inching toward me again. “But you’re going to have to trust me, okay? It’s at my house. Will you come with me please, so I can show you?”





22




The thought of being alone with Ben in his house on the hill—where he knew all escape routes, where there’d be no one around to hear me if I screamed—made the hair on my arms stand on end. Even through my coat, I could feel the goose bumps swelling on my skin.

“No,” I told him. “How could you ever even prove that?”

I shivered, the cold air wrapping around me as I stood on the curb, and I shifted my eyes toward Tommy’s trailer. I had a feeling he was watching us, his gaze like an icy hand against my cheek, but when I glanced over Ben’s shoulder at the windows, the curtains remained undisturbed.