The Winter Sister(91)

“Right now, Ben,” Will said again.

There was a part of Ben that almost obeyed his father—a flicker in his arms that seemed ready to let go—but then, his back rippling with the force of the movement, he pushed Will harder against the garage.

“Did you do it?” he yelled, smacking his hand against the door, inches from Will’s head.

Will winced, closing his eyes for a second, but he opened them again at the sound that spewed from Tommy. At first, it sounded like he was choking, but then, when I looked at him, I saw he was laughing—a textured, guttural noise.

Ben turned his head toward Tommy, still holding his father to the garage.

“What’s so funny?” he snapped.

“I’m sorry, this is just—oh man.” Tommy covered his mouth, but then his fingers slipped from his face when another snicker burst from his lips. His laughter condensed in the air, his breath vivid and white as it rushed right out of him.

“Fuck the money, okay?” he continued. “I changed my mind. I don’t want it. This right here is priceless.” He laughed again. “And—holy shit—so worth the wait. I mean, your face, Benji.”

“Thomas,” Will warned, but Ben tightened his grip on his father’s shoulder, his eyes never leaving Tommy’s face.

“Nah, don’t ‘Thomas’ me. I’m done with that. I mean, he heard us, right? Cat’s out of the bag now. Cat’s meowing up a fucking storm.” His laughter doubled him over, his hands clutching his knees. “Oh man. This is so—” Then he cleared his throat, straightening back up and attempting a serious expression. “No, but it is true. Your dad killed your girlfriend.”

And just like that, I felt the cold again.





28




The air bit at my skin, my bones glazed with ice, my blood freezing in my veins. To move right then would have been to shatter, so I stayed rooted to the ground, only a thread of air spooling in and out of my lungs.

As Tommy broke into laughter again, Ben let go of Will, his arms going slack at his sides.

“I saw it happen, man,” Tommy said to Ben. “I saw you leave with her, even after you dropped her off at her house. And it took me a while to find my mom’s car keys—that bitch was always hiding them from me—but I followed you anyway. Or I tried to. Tried to figure out where you might have gone. I mean, it was so weird, you know? You dropped her off, just like you always did, but then she came back and you guys left together again. That wasn’t how you usually did it. I wanted to know where you were going. Where you were taking her. She should have been off to bed, Benji.”

He sounded angry, like a parent scolding a child for missing curfew.

“I couldn’t find you,” he continued. “I drove around for a while, but I didn’t know what route you took. What I did find, though . . .” He looked at Will and licked his lips. “Well, that was so much more interesting. Mind you, it was too late for Persephone by then. But if it’s any consolation, your dad really was very pathetic that night. He was sitting in the snow beside her, sobbing into his hands like a little kid. It disgusted me. I mean, if you’re going to do something like that, then fucking do it. Don’t sit around and be a crybaby about it.”

He shook his head, a grimace pulling at his lips. Then he looked at me, and I stared back, unable to blink.

“For the record,” he said, “I never wanted your sister dead. She and I were the same, okay? But when I saw that she was gone, I realized it made sense for her to die.”

He cocked his stare back toward Ben. “She wasn’t yours anymore, Benji. She wasn’t yours to pick up and drop off and drive to the park where you kept her locked up in your car for hours every night.” His smile slithered across his face. “That’s right—I followed you more than once. I knew it was only a matter of time before Persephone realized you were nothing but a rich kid, sucking off your daddy’s teat for life—and when she did, I’d be there to show her we were the same. Only—you were so possessive of her, weren’t you? Staring me down as you drove past my house at night, like I had no right to stand in my own yard and look at whatever I wanted. Waiting for me at the bus lane—Jesus, dude, you’d already graduated, and there you were, back at school—just to tell me to stop sending her letters, as if you were the only one allowed to speak to her.”

Tommy snapped his eyes toward me again. “So, by dying, see, your sister was finally free of this asshole. She didn’t belong to him anymore. She didn’t belong to anyone. By dying, she became even more like me—neither of us had anybody—and you know what? In the end, that made her more mine than she’d ever been his.”

He chuckled. “But your dad,” he said, turning back to Ben. “Oh my God—that night—I finally saw where you got your patheticness from. Once he finally noticed me standing there, noticed there was another fucking car idling in the street behind his, he scrambled to keep me quiet. He explained the whole thing.” He licked his lips again. “His dirty little secret. Well, actually—at first he tried to play it off like he’d just found her there, but I’m not an idiot, I could see the marks on her neck. His hands were shaking—like this—” He demonstrated. “So I told him I knew that he’d strangled her, and then that’s when he told me.”