The Winter Sister(9)

“Jill,” I said. “Hi.”

“Happy birthday!” she said. “I can’t believe you’re thirty years old. That must make me—what? Thirty-seven?”

I smiled, shifting my weight from foot to foot. “No way,” I said. “Thirty-five. Tops.”

“Great. I’ll take it.”

In the pause between us, I flicked through my brain for something to tell her, some recent activity or achievement that would prove to her that I wasn’t “just floating,” as she had said during our last conversation in September. But what was there?

“So,” Jill said. “Anything new?”

I scanned the other side of the street, where a man sitting on the curb snuffed out a cigarette and then reached into his jacket pocket for another. Behind him was the Thai restaurant where Lauren and I often got takeout, and I looked at the flashing “OPEN” sign, my mouth watering. When I glanced back at the man a moment later, I was startled to find that his eyes were already locked onto mine. He cupped his hand over his lighter and lit a cigarette, his gaze lingering as he inhaled. I quickly looked away, busying my fingers by picking at an old staple on the telephone pole.

“Nothing much,” I said to Jill. “I’m still at Steve’s. Still living with Lauren. You know, same as last month.”

“I don’t know how you do it, working at that tattoo store.”

“Tattoo parlor,” I corrected her.

“Right. Parlor. It’s just—all those needles, the blood. I wouldn’t last a minute. Surely there must be something else you can do with your talents.”

The man with the cigarettes stood up. He wiped his hands on his pants and walked down Thayer Street. A girl, coming from the opposite direction, sped up her pace to meet him. When they reached each other, they embraced, and the girl snagged his cigarette with a laugh. He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek as she took a drag.

I turned away, facing the bar again. He’d been harmless, of course—just someone waiting for his girlfriend to arrive. Lauren always told me I was paranoid, that the things that ran through my head on any given Tuesday could be lifted straight from the script of a Lifetime Original Movie. The ones where women are always at risk, and men, though beautiful and benign to the untrained eye, are always, inevitably, monsters.

“The needles and blood are no big deal,” I said to Jill. “You get used to it.”

“Okay,” Jill said. “So are you just used to it, then, or do you actually like tattooing?”

“I like it,” I lied, because it was easier than explaining the truth.

“Okay. Well, listen, Sylvie,” Jill said, her tone suddenly shifting. “I know this isn’t the best time for this. You’re celebrating right now, I’m sure. But can we make some time to talk tomorrow? There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

There was an edge to her voice that I hadn’t heard in years. For the first time since I’d walked outside, I registered the cool October air on my skin.

“What is it?” I asked. “Is it something about Persephone?”

“It’s—what? No. Nothing like that.” I could hear her, probably in her kitchen in Connecticut, sighing.

Sixteen years after my sister’s murder, the case was as cold as her body must have been that night. But there were still days when I found myself hoping for some kind of news, some fresh lead that had come to light, some witness that hadn’t found the courage to speak, until now. Never mind that it had happened on a street without many houses. Never mind that the snow had compromised the crime scene, made the chance of finding DNA evidence or fibers of clothing nearly nonexistent. After all those years, I’d never stopped waiting.

“Is it Missy, then? Something wrong with the baby?”

“No,” Jill said. “No, no. She and Carl just went for an ultrasound last week actually. The baby’s doing great. It’s . . . about your mother actually.”

A group of wobbly, laughing girls spilled out of the bar, and the sudden flare of music felt like a punch in the stomach.

“Listen,” Jill said, “I can hear that you’re busy. Let’s just—”

“No,” I interrupted, walking a few yards down the street. “It’s okay. I can hear you. Just tell me.”

I waited as Jill inhaled on the other end of the phone. Even with the muffled sounds of the bar surrounding me, I could still hear her slow, deliberate breath. I put my hand on the arm of a sidewalk bench.

“I’ve been taking your mother to a few doctor’s appointments lately,” Jill said. “She’s been getting treated for what they thought was just acid reflux. But . . . well, new test results came back today, and it’s . . . cancer. Esophageal cancer. I’m so sorry, Sylvie.”

My fingers tightened on the bench’s metal arm.

“Is that the one you get from drinking a lot?” I asked.

In the pause that followed, I could tell that Jill was surprised by my question. But what surprised me was that she hadn’t been calling to tell me my mother was dead. In the months after Persephone was murdered, how many times had Jill and I pressed our ears against Mom’s bedroom door, listening for some sound of life inside? How many times had I picked her lock, only to creak open the door and find her lying the way I imagined that people in coffins did? At a certain point—when our pleas did nothing, when the bottles continued to pile up in the sink, when the meals we made her never made it to her lips—I’d stopped seeing her as a withered plant that could be watered and sunshined back to life. Instead, I’d started seeing the sagging stem of her spine for what it was: a sign that death was rooted within her.