The Winter Sister(98)

Lauren barreled through my silence. “It’s in East Providence,” she added. “So, you know, gross—but at least you’ll be doing what you love again, right?”

“Yeah,” I said reflexively. “Right.”

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you more excited about this?”

“No, I am. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I’m not sure it’s the right job for me anymore.”

Actually, I knew that it wasn’t.

“What are you talking about?” Lauren challenged. “Of course it’s the right job for you. You’re so good at it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think I need it anymore.”

“You don’t need it anymore? What’s going on? Did you win the lottery or something? Tap into some trust fund I don’t know about?”

There was so much I would tell her, finally—and once I did, she would know what I meant. I no longer needed to watch a needle sink pigment into flesh, no longer needed to punish myself by reenacting what I’d done to Persephone, always seeing her arm instead of the client’s, always seeing Ben’s dark fingerprints instead of the blank canvas of the stranger’s skin. Because I knew now that it wasn’t me who deserved to be tortured by guilt and memory. I’d been fourteen years old—just a kid, as Ben had said—and none of what Will did to her that night had been my fault. Never mind the painted bruises, never mind the window I’d locked up tight. There’d still been a man—not a kid, but a full-grown man—who had used his hands as a noose around his daughter’s neck, who had squeezed and squeezed until she—

My throat burned as I pictured it.

But still, I had to keep remembering; it had been his hands, not mine.

“The truth is,” I said to Lauren, “I’ve just been going through the motions with that job for a long time now, and I don’t want to anymore. I don’t know what I’m going to do next, and I’m not really sure what I love doing or what kind of job is right for me. But I feel free for the first time to figure out what it is.”

There was a pause on Lauren’s end. “Wow,” she said. “You’re being really serious.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a serious couple of weeks. And I’m really sorry I took so long to return your messages.”

“Oh yeah,” Lauren said dryly. “That.”

“But you know what?” I continued. “I’m actually glad I didn’t talk to you about it before now. Because I didn’t know the whole story then. And you’re my best friend, Lauren. You deserve to know the whole story.”

She was quiet for a few moments, and I could hear her breathing against the phone. “You’re talking about your sister now,” she said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Persephone. And if it’s all right with you, I’d like to tell you all about her.”

? ? ?

The next morning, I stood outside Mom’s room holding my phone. I put my ear to the door, listening for a sound to confirm she was awake, and even though I heard none, I knocked.

“Come in,” Mom said after a moment.

When I tried the doorknob, it turned easily, and though the curtains were still closed, Mom’s light was on. She was sitting up in bed, a box of tissues in her lap.

“Hi,” I breathed.

“Hi.”

She was wigless and scarfless, her head all skin and skull, but she was up. She was speaking. She’d let me inside.

“Aunt Jill sent a new picture of the baby,” I said, stepping toward her. “Can I show you?”

Mom hesitated, her eyes swollen and uncertain, but then she shrugged. “Okay.”

I approached the side of her bed and held the picture up. She surprised me then by moving over a few inches so there was room for me to sit beside her. As the mattress creaked beneath our shared weight, she took the phone from my hand.

“Look at the caption,” I said.

She didn’t laugh or even smile as she read it, but her eyes softened a little. She used her fingers to zoom in on the baby’s face, and then, quietly, she gasped.

“She’s so pink,” she said. “Just like Persephone when she was born.”

I looked at the side of her face. “Really?” I said.

Mom nodded. “You were always so pale.” She spoke without moving her eyes from the picture. “Like a sheet of paper held up to the light. And that was pretty, too. But Persephone . . .”

Her lips lifted slightly, the promise of a smile budding on her face. “She was the most beautiful pink I’ve ever seen.”

? ? ?

I spent some time that afternoon tending to the driveway and front steps. A coating of snow had fallen overnight, and when I came back inside from clearing it, I saw I had a voicemail from an unfamiliar number.

“Hi, Sylvie,” the caller said, a wary tinge to her voice. “It’s Hannah Falley. I’m sorry to just call you like this, but I saw the news, and I spoke to Detective Parker, and now, I don’t know, really. I just wanted to say . . .” She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry we never figured it out. We just didn’t know to look at him. We should have. I want you to know we never dismissed what you said back then. But he just didn’t seem connected in any way, other than being Ben Emory’s father, so we missed it. And that’s on us.”