The Winter Sister(96)

Mom rolled her eyes. “This again,” she said. “Of course he’s not your father. I was never terrified of anyone taking you away, was I? That’s why you and I were so close.”

Her face changed then, quickly and starkly, her features going slack. It was as if she realized the vulnerability of her words, of mentioning something that neither of us had acknowledged out loud for a very long time. It was safer, somehow, to pretend that things had always been so broken between us. It hurt less to act as if we had no desire to go back to the way that things had once been.

“So you’re positive, then,” I said. “This Eddie guy was my father. Not Will.”

“God, how many times are you going to make me say it? Will is not your father. He was furious with me when he found out I was pregnant with you. It hurt him terribly that I’d been with someone else.”

“But—he was married! He had no right to be upset.”

“That marriage meant nothing to him,” Mom fired back.

I sighed. I didn’t have it in me to argue with her anymore. We could go around and around in circles forever, and she’d never be able to see the past for what it had really been. Now, there was only one thing that could possibly save her from the inky depths of such a twisted love, and it was the same thing, I knew, that would destroy her.

“Mom,” I started. “They’ve arrested someone for Persephone’s murder.”

Her head snapped upward. “What?” she said, sounding like someone who’d just been woken in the middle of the night. “Who?”

I took a deep breath and met her stare, which held my eyes in its grip. “Will,” I said.

She squinted at me. “Will who?” she asked.

“What other . . . ? Will, Mom. Will Emory.”

For a long while, she stared at me, her eyes unblinking, her expression blank as a gray winter sky. The clock ticked through her silence, time moving on while the two of us stayed frozen in our seats. I waited for what I knew would come—a sudden slump in her posture, tears in her eyes, something that would document the shock she felt as it punched inside her.

But when she finally spoke, her eyes were dry and her voice was the steadiest it had been in a while.

“That’s a sick thing to joke about, Sylvie. Even for you. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“This isn’t a joke, Mom. I promise you. I was there when he confessed.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not. I saw the police take him away.”

Her eyes narrowed, confusion spreading all over her face. “Well—it has to be some mistake, then. He’s her father, Sylvie. Why the hell would he do such a thing?”

“Because he’s the man that he is,” I answered. “And I know you don’t want to hear it, I know you might not be able to hear it, but he’s not a good man, Mom. He’s bad. He’s really, really bad.”

She shook her head, the wisps of her hair swishing through the air. “Stop it,” she said. “Stop.”

But I couldn’t. I had to explain it to her. I had to tell her what he’d admitted—how he’d tried to reason with Persephone, and when that failed, he killed her. How it was as simple as that. And as I relayed his words, trying to remain as faithful to them as possible, I watched Mom’s eyes, waiting for the tears that needed to fill them up.

“No,” she kept saying as I poisoned the air with words that made it hard for us to breathe. But still, she didn’t cry, her lips didn’t tremble, her shoulders didn’t shake.

When I finally finished, my throat was raw. I watched as Mom pinched her eyes shut and shook her head slightly, back and forth, back and forth. I waited for her to speak, but she just kept it up—back and forth, back and forth—until moments, or maybe minutes later, she went completely still.

I listened to the clock count away the seconds. I searched for any flicker of movement on her face, but she was immobile as a gravestone. Then, just when I thought she’d shut me out so completely that she’d managed to erase everything I’d just told her, her mouth opened.

“It was a mistake,” she said quietly.

“What?” I blurted. “Mom, no, I just explained it all to you. He admitted it himself. He said—”

Her eyes opened, a soft but insistent plea fogging her irises.

“You said he hadn’t planned to kill her,” she said, “so that means he did it by mistake.”

I was paralyzed, my wide eyes locked in place, my muscles completely unresponsive, but then, in a sudden rush, my breath spilled out of me, and I began to sputter.

“That—that’s your response? You’re fine with him killing your daughter as long as he didn’t—didn’t mean to?”

Her face didn’t falter. Her expression was set in stone.

“Listen to me, Mom. Whether he meant to do it or not, he still covered it up for sixteen years. He lied to you.”

“It isn’t lying if I never asked him about it.”

Her words shoved me backward. My throat creaked with attempts to speak, but only air came out.

“How,” I finally managed, “how can you be defending him?”

“I love him,” she said, as plainly as if she were stating her name or address.

“He killed Persephone,” I said through clenched teeth.