Open House(38)

Haley snuggled farther into the pillows. She picked up one of her sister’s old stuffed animals and held it against her chest like a child would. She couldn’t bring herself to go back to her and Dean’s house after the hospital visit with Josie. She had needed to go home first.

Home. Wasn’t it a problem that she thought of her parents’ house as her home instead of the one she shared with Dean? Was it just because that’s where she felt Emma? Haley glanced around the room at all the familiar things: the knickknacks and chipped pottery Emma made in grade school, the toy horse with silky hair that stood midwhinny on her dresser. The bunk beds Haley had sometimes slept in had been replaced with a queen after Emma disappeared, which Haley thought was a huge waste of money when no visitors would ever sleep in Emma’s room. Emma’s posters still lined the pale yellow walls: mostly contemporary art peppered with a surrealist print and one of a femme fatale from a film noir. Her journals, sketchbooks, and art supplies filled the desk drawers. The cops had scrutinized every page of the journals before returning them to Haley’s mom, declaring them unhelpful to the case. And they were, Haley knew that, but it didn’t stop her from reading them every so often, or from flipping through the sketchbooks. The only person she’d ever shown them to was Dean. He’d pored over them, considering each one carefully, just as she’d hoped he would.

Haley remembered when Emma was in high school and their dad found a series of nude drawings she’d done. He’d lost his mind at their inappropriateness until Liv calmed him down, and Haley could still recall her mom’s words when she’d overhead them from the top of the stairs: There’s nothing subversive about this, Tim; it’s art. He was so conservative, and Haley had sworn she’d never be like him, but sometimes when she looked at the naked drawings, she felt a little nauseous. Maybe it was just in hindsight, knowing that something terrible had happened to her sister, but when Haley looked over the male forms Emma had sketched, she couldn’t help but feel as if Emma had intuited the darkness coming for her. The naked men she’d created were too leering, too subtly dominating over their female scene partners. The final drawing showed a man placing his large hands on a woman’s shoulders, and the way Emma had drawn it made it impossible to tell if they were embracing or struggling. Haley felt a slice of fear every time she thought of whatever her sister was trying to work out.

Emma’s journals were sunnier. There were entries about day-to-day minutiae, interactions with family and friends—I can’t believe today is the day T.J. and I met one year ago! It feels like we’ve been great friends forever. His art is amazing!

Emma was only sixteen when she wrote those words, years younger than when she disappeared, but to Haley, it seemed like Emma went to Yarrow and her bright persona took a plunge. Not that clothes meant anything to Haley back then—or now, even—but she couldn’t help noticing the way Emma started wearing black T-shirts because that’s what she thought true artists wore, and how it seemed like, after a few years as an art student, the dark T-shirts started seeping inward, clouding the sunny person she’d once been. Maybe the darkness from Emma’s teenage sketches were inside her even back then when she lived with Haley and her parents, but the safety of living inside a family kept it at bay. Maybe it was percolating, waiting for the right people and place to bring it to the surface, and maybe that place was college.

The front door slammed downstairs. “Haley?” Liv called out, her footsteps already pounding the steps.

“I’m up here in Emma’s room!” Haley called back. She held tighter to Emma’s stuffed cat, her fingers finding the spot on its ear where Emma had kissed off all the hair.

Haley’s mom flew into the room, followed closely by her dad. “What happened?” Liv asked. Her yoga-trained body collapsed onto the pillows with the ease of a teenager. Liv had the same almond-shaped eyes Emma did, and when she looked up from her spot on the pillows Haley saw her sister’s blinking eyes and smooth, pale skin. She imagined the way Emma’s mouth used to lift at the corners whenever she had a secret, and she always had a secret. “I’m sorry I texted you what I did,” Haley said, trying to focus on the fine lines around her mother’s mouth, trying to remind herself that Emma wasn’t here, and that she was truly, irrevocably gone. “I just didn’t know how else to explain it, and I wanted to see you.”

Her dad’s face was white. “This isn’t about whatever happened in town today?” he surprised her by asking. “There are rumors swirling about an accident.”

Haley straightened, feeling ridiculous that she was still holding Emma’s stuffed cat, but not wanting to let it go. “It is,” she said. “That’s why I texted you that I was fine. But Dean and I went to that open house today. The house on Carrington Road that Josie was showing. And weirdly my anatomy teacher and his wife were there, too, and we all went into the kitchen and found Josie lying on the floor.”

Liv covered her mouth. “Was she all right?” she asked.

“She’d been stabbed,” Haley said, sucking in a breath at the sound of the word coming out of her mouth.

Her mom gasped. Her dad moved across the room and sat on Emma’s bed. “Oh my God,” he said. “Is she alive?” His eyes were sharp and more focused than Haley had seen them in a long time. She broke his stare and looked down at the blue throw rug between them. “I went to the hospital and saw her,” she said, “and I didn’t talk to the doctor, but I think she’s going to be completely fine.”