The Winter Sister(75)

“There’s something I don’t understand,” I finally said.

As I glanced over at Persephone’s letter beside me on the bed, I kept my eyes unfocused just enough so that the edges of each word became imprecise, one after another blurring together.

“You told me,” I started, “that you were messed up when it happened. Right? That’s how you put it? Messed up?”

Ben nodded, the movement as slow and full of effort as if there were an anchor hanging from his neck.

“And my sister wrote that she wanted to help you with what you were going through, so what was it, exactly? What made you hold on to her so hard in the first place?”

He brought his glass to his lips, took a gulp that nearly emptied it, and then slid to the floor, his back against the dresser, his legs straightening out in front of him. Releasing a long, heavy breath, he set his whiskey down beside him on the carpet.

“It was a lot of things,” he said. “But, for starters—I told you how my mom moved to Portugal, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, when she left,” he continued, “I had just graduated high school. And I had no plans. I wasn’t going to college or anything—because, you know . . .” His voice deepened, as if imitating someone else. “It was clearly my goal in life to be an utter disappointment to my father and bring shame to the family name.”

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, my mom gave me the option to come with her. But Portugal? Europe? I didn’t know anyone there. And besides, my grandfather was here—right here, actually, living in this guesthouse—and he and I were really close. I didn’t want to leave him.”

He paused, glancing down at the remains of his drink. “And thank God I didn’t.” His shoulders lifted and sagged with a barely audible sigh. “He died a little while later. He had a stroke, and—things deteriorated very quickly. It happened in October of that same year, a few months after I started dating Persephone.”

Again, I nodded, the pieces of Ben’s past falling together for me like snow into piles—Richard Emory had died and Mom had gone to his funeral. He’d had a loss, Mom had said of Will. He’d had a loss, and I love him.

“So, with my grandfather dying,” Ben said, “so soon after my mom left, it just—it felt like everyone I loved was leaving me.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “And it really messed me up for a while. Like, it hurt some days just to get out of bed.”

I remembered mornings like that—how the sun could feel like a wound bleeding into my bedroom, how my mother’s bed was no longer a cocoon I could join her in, and how that made it even easier to stay buried for hours in my own.

“So, that first time it happened,” Ben went on, “with Persephone and the bruises—I was holding on to her not just as a shoulder to cry on, but because I couldn’t bear the thought of not having her to hold on to.”

He shook his head, swept his hand over his face as if trying to wipe the memories off. “I was floundering,” he said. “Lost. I wasn’t seeing things as clearly as I should have. I mean, all I had at home was my dad, and that was . . . not the best thing to have.”

I tightened my fingers around my drink. “What do you mean?”

Ben shrugged, his gaze falling onto the carpet. “We’ve never had a great relationship,” he said. Then he lifted his hand to his cheek and ran a finger along the curve of his scar. “He gave me this, you know.”

My eyes widened. I realized that I’d never even wondered about the scar’s origin or tried to imagine his face without it. How blank it would seem. How normal and benign.

“What happened?” I asked.

Ben looked up at the ceiling. “It was stupid,” he said. “I was twelve and acting out. My mom had asked me to do the dishes but I wanted to play video games. We argued for a while until my dad just—snapped. I remember him yelling, ‘You’ll do as you’re fucking told,’ and then he threw a knife at me.”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

“I was actually pretty lucky,” Ben said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

“But—” I paused, fumbling for words. “But that’s insane!”

Ben nodded, slowly and rhythmically, his gaze lingering in the air above us. “Yep.”

I inched forward on the bed. “So what happened?” I asked. “Did your dad get arrested or anything?”

Ben laughed, the sound startling me as it erupted from his mouth. “No,” he said. “My parents took me to the hospital and they told the nurses I’d had an accident while playing with a knife.”

“And your mom just went along with that?” My chest was heating up.

“She didn’t want to, of course,” he said, “but my dad convinced her that the scandal would be damaging for all of us.” He chuckled. “I still remember him using that exact word—damaging. He was in the front seat on the way to the hospital, and he was yammering on and on to my mom about what would happen if she were to say anything—the damage to Emory Builders, the damage to our reputation, the damage to my legacy and inheritance that he’d supposedly spent his whole life building. Meanwhile, I was just sitting there in the back seat with a bloody rag to my face. Talk about damage.”