The Wicked Sister

by Karen Dionne

  As I near the clearing, I hear Rachel talking. She sounds as though she’s carrying on a conversation. Most likely she’s talking out her troubles with an ant or a fly. Rachel has an amazing imagination. Some children conjure up an imaginary friend to keep them company, but Rachel has an entire forest full of creatures she purports to know and love. I hang back in the trees. I won’t interrupt unless she needs me; I just want to be sure she’s all right.

  Then I see who—or rather, what—Rachel is in conversation with, and my heart drops. She’s not talking to herself, or to an imaginary insect or animal as I supposed. She’s talking to White Bear.

  I can hardly believe it. White Bear is eleven, a powerful, mature adult male, with teeth and claws like daggers. His thick white fur shimmers and ripples in the sunlight. I want to call out to her, to tell her to get away, to stop what she’s doing before she gets hurt. This is a wild animal. Even if she has interacted with White Bear before, there are no guarantees that she can do so safely again.

  And yet even I can see that she seems to hold some sort of power over him. There are a few rare people who have a special bond with wild animals who are able to interact with them to an extraordinary degree, and evidently, this is true of Rachel. I hold my breath as she sits down and pats the ground beside her. When White Bear sits at her command, I am in awe of my daughter. I am also terrified for her. White Bear towers over her. He could kill or maim her as easily as he can rip open a termite nest, yet he sits quietly beside her, as charmed by her murmurings and caresses as if he were a cat or a dog. The scene feels as enchanted as a fairy tale. I hold my breath so as not to break the spell. Whether Rachel’s extraordinary ability to communicate with animals is something she was born with, or it’s because of the unique way in which she was raised, clearly, there’s something magical about my daughter. Earlier, when I saw her holding the rifle, I knew it was never in her nature to want to shoot it. I blame Charlotte. My sister has no idea how fragile our family is, how much work it takes to keep up the façade. I realize we never told her about Diana’s diagnosis. But she’s so enamored of my daughter now I doubt she’d believe me if I did. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Charlotte is the poison, rotting my family from within.

  I remain close by until White Bear wanders off and Rachel starts for home, then follow her at a distance. Because I realize now that the real danger isn’t from White Bear. It’s not even from her sister. It’s from mine.

  TWENTY-SIX

  NOW

  Rachel

  Trevor’s rifle is the same make and model as mine. My great-grandfather used to call this Remington “the most-loved hunting rifle in America,” and I’m definitely loving this one now. I crawl over the back seat into the cargo area to look for ammunition. I search everywhere, inside a canvas sack that turns out to hold fishing gear, under and inside every paper bag, every tackle box, every nook and cranny, but can’t find any. What kind of hunter carries a rifle but no bullets? Granted, there’s no game in season this time of year, but a stray bullet or two stuck in the edges of the floor mat would have been nice. I check my jacket pocket hoping to find a lone remaining bullet lodged in a corner, but the pocket is empty. Still, it feels good to hold a rifle in my hands. Diana and Charlotte won’t know it isn’t loaded.

  I tiptoe across the front porch and ease open the door and sneak through the great room and go up the main stairs, then creep down the upstairs hallway, sticking as close to the walls as I can so the boards are less likely to squeak. I don’t think Diana would put Trevor in my childhood bedroom, and I don’t think she’d put him up in the room with the sleeping porch either, since White Bear’s paws are presumably still on my bed, which leaves six bedrooms to choose from.

  My bed. My Remington is beneath it. I slip inside the room to exchange Trevor’s useless rifle for mine, but my Remington is gone. So are my suitcase and duffel bag and stuffed bear toy and White Bear’s paws. Diana has removed every indication that I was here—proof that if my sister gets what she wants, I will never leave the property alive.

  I make my way down the hall, pausing outside each bedroom door to listen for breathing, or the creak of bedsprings. But in the end, it isn’t sound that tells me where Trevor is, but the smell of wet wool. I hope one day to be able to tell him that his life might have been saved because of his wet feet.

  I tiptoe to the bed and put my hand over his mouth.

  “Shh,” I whisper when his eyes jerk open. “It’s me. Don’t talk. We have to leave. Now. Are you good with that?”

  His eyes widen, dart around the room, then look up at me and relax. He nods. I take my hand away.

  “Jesus, Rachel—you scared me,” he whispers back. “Your sister said you’d gone to your mother’s old observation blind, but then when you didn’t come back, she admitted that you’d had a breakdown and she’d shut you in her workshop so you wouldn’t hurt yourself. I couldn’t leave until I knew you were all right, so I talked her into letting me spend the night. What’s going on?”

  Trevor wouldn’t leave without me. He wanted to stay until he was sure that I was all right.

  He put himself in danger for me.

  “I’ll explain everything later. Right now, we have to get out of here. Grab your things and let’s go. And don’t make any noise.”

  I watch a range of emotions roll over his face: uncertainty, doubt, incredulousness. I get it. A crazy person who he just sprang from a mental hospital, whose sister claims has had a nervous breakdown, has snuck into his room carrying a rifle expecting him to go with her without asking questions. I’m not sure what I’d do if our circumstances were reversed.

  Down the hall, someone coughs.

  “Please,” I whisper. “The rifle is yours. It’s not loaded. I found it in your Jeep. But we have to hurry. It’s important. You have to trust me.”

  “Okay,” he says at last. He throws off the covers and sits up. “I trust you.”

  He eases off the bed to put on his shoes and his jacket, then grabs his backpack and follows me into the hallway. We navigate past Charlotte’s bedroom and down the main stairs and wind our way through the great room. Behind me, there is a thunk.

  “Sorry,” Trevor whispers. “It’s so dark in here.”

  “Who is it? Who’s down there?” Charlotte calls from the top of the stairs.

  “It’s me,” Trevor answers before I can stop him. “I couldn’t sleep. I was just going outside for a smoke. I stubbed my toe is all.”

  Trevor doesn’t smoke, but Charlotte won’t know that.

  “Stay there. I’ll turn on some lights for you.”

  “No need,” Trevor says quickly. “I’ll be fine.”

  He clumps noisily to the front door and makes a show of opening it. I follow him silently in the shadows and dart outside before Trevor shuts the door just as noisily. We run for the Jeep.

  “Don’t start the engine,” I hiss as he opens the driver’s door and tosses his backpack onto the back seat. “Not until we’re out of earshot.”

  He puts the Jeep into neutral as I open the passenger door and brace myself against it to push. It’s harder than I imagined, especially when we come to a slight rise and the Jeep rolls to a stop. We’re not nearly as far away from the lodge as I’d like, but we pile in anyway. I twist around in my seat as Trevor peels down the driveway and turns onto the access road.

  “Do you see anything?” he asks.

  “Nothing. Thank you,” I add as the lodge recedes in the distance. “For believing me, and for trusting me.”

  He grins. “Well, when a beautiful woman shows up in my bedroom in the middle of the night carrying a rifle, I figure the smartest thing is to do what she says.”

  I blink. Did Trevor just call me beautiful?

  “So, are you ready to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Diana wants to kill me.” I hate putting it so bluntly, but there’s no easy way t
o say it. “Possibly both of us, now that she knows you’re helping me.”

  I think again about the danger I put him in, how if anything were to happen to him, it will be on me.

  “She wants to kill you? Why? What did you do to her? This doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. I promise it does, but first, we really need to get out of here.” It’s one mile to the security gate, three miles after that to the highway. To freedom.

  Only when we come to the gate, it doesn’t budge. Normally, it would swing open automatically as we approach.

  “Stay here,” I tell Trevor as I open my door and get out to see if I can open the gate manually.

  “Can I help you?” a tinny voice says over the intercom as I approach. A voice belonging to a person who has no intention of helping; who doesn’t do a thing for anyone unless it benefits her.

  Diana.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THEN

  Jenny

  Peter and I have barely spoken in the days since the incident at the gun range. Not because we are at each other’s throats—if anything, we are more united than we’ve ever been—but because there’s nothing left to say. For the first time in a very long while, we are in complete agreement: As soon as Diana is out of the picture, Charlotte has to go. There’s no reason for my sister to stay on. Her job, which she performed so miserably, will be over. We’ve focused on Diana and her needs far too long. Rachel is only eleven. We need to get rid of the corrupting influences in her life so we can create an atmosphere in which she can flourish. It’s not too late to make up for lost time. Assuming the state lets us keep her.

  It breaks my heart to think that she helped Diana kill the girl at the roadside park. Emily Walker was twelve years old, according to her obituary. An excellent student who loved horses and playing basketball. No siblings. Survived by her parents and a host of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Killed by my daughters’ hands—both my daughters, because Rachel has at last told the truth. Her account was doubly hard to listen to knowing that the repercussions of turning Diana in for murder will also fall on Rachel. I have to believe that the authorities will realize she was coerced into helping, and she is too young to fully understand what she was doing, and that Diana is solely to blame, and that Rachel won’t be charged. I can’t lose them both.

  Meanwhile, I can’t stop thinking about the Yang boy. William would have been fourteen now, and ready to start high school, or if he turned out to be as gifted as his parents, perhaps he already would have. As for what would have become of him after that, there’s no way to know. He’s frozen in time, forever a toddler, the promise of his life snuffed out at my daughter’s hand. He and his parents deserve justice. Handing Diana over to the law and letting the court system determine her fate is the only way to make this right. Meanwhile, I can’t help thinking that if Diana had been called to account for the first death, there might not have been a second.

  Then there’s our boy. Our unborn son who never drew a breath. As I lay on my back in the rocks and snow waiting for Peter to come back for me, during the ride back to the lodge and then in the back of the Suburban as Peter raced for the hospital in Marquette; throughout the examinations, the X-rays, the tests, the consultations with specialists, the helicopter airlift to the University of Michigan teaching hospital in Ann Arbor because my leg was so badly shattered the doctors in Marquette had no idea where to start—during all of that time, I knew that our son was gone. Giving birth to a baby that has already died is as dreadful as it sounds. Peter and I saw him before they took him away. He was perfect and very small, with all his body parts in the right places and with the correct number of fingers and toes, tiny fingernails, delicate eyelashes. His skin was not as blue as I expected, more translucent, luminescent, an extraterrestrial, a moon baby, a child of the stars.

  William Yang. Emily Walker. Our not-yet-named boy. Three deaths. All tied to Diana. With the weight of all of that pressing down on us, it’s no wonder that Peter and I are utterly spent.

  We’re washing dishes at the kitchen sink when Diana runs into the side yard.

  “Mom! Dad! Come quick!” she calls.

  My heart drops. For the briefest of moments, I think she’s killed someone else. I throw open the window.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “White Bear is dead!”

  “What? How?” I drop the dishrag in the sink and run outside.

  “Hurry!” Diana says as she runs up to meet me on the porch. She grabs my hand. “You have to come! Rachel shot White Bear!”

  “Rachel shot White Bear? Why would she do that? That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Just come.”

  Charlotte clatters down the back stairs and runs out the kitchen door to join us. “What’s going on? I heard shouting.”

  “Rachel shot White Bear,” Diana says again.

  “Is she all right?” Peter asks.

  “I don’t know! Just come!” Diana says.

  We take off running. I can’t imagine how this could have happened, why Rachel would shoot her favorite bear, where she would even get her hands on a rifle since we sent Max packing a full week ago and he took the rifles with him. Just days ago, Rachel was playing with White Bear as if he were her pet. There’s no way she could hurt him. Diana is lying. It’s a trick. To what purpose, I have no idea. I can’t help but note that the emotion she is exhibiting more closely resembles excitement than worry.

  But when we come to the gun range, I see the awful truth. White Bear is lying on the ground, a pile of unmoving flesh and fur. My throat closes. My one-in-a-million bear should have lived for at least another dozen years, sired cubs, possibly even another white one. Now there truly will be no more.

  “You see?” Diana says, again with that odd mix of detachment and excitement. “I told you. Rachel killed him.”

  “But why would she? And where is she?”

  “She went that way.” Diana points into the woods.

  I take off for the trees. Diana must have shot White Bear and is trying to pin the blame on her sister. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Rachel saw her do it, and she ran away.

  Behind me, I hear Charlotte and Peter arguing. “This is your fault,” Peter says. “If you and Max hadn’t insisted on setting up a gun range, this never would have happened.”

  “Don’t blame this on me,” my sister retorts. “You enjoy shooting, too.”

  I leave them to it. All I care about is Rachel. My heart breaks for her. Rachel is no stranger to death—nature is as red in tooth and claw as the poet says, and animals eat and are eaten all the time—but the deep connection she had with this bear puts his death on a whole other level. If Rachel did this, she’s going to be a wreck. I know how it feels to take on the responsibility for another’s death. And the devastation I felt over the Yang boy’s death is nothing compared to how I would have felt if he had been my closest friend. Of course she ran into the woods to hide. The forest is the only place where she will feel safe.

  Behind me, there is a gunshot. I whirl around.

  Peter is lying on the ground. Diana and Charlotte are standing over him. Both of them are holding rifles.

  I blink. For a moment, I am too stunned to move. I don’t know which of them shot my husband. All I know is that the gaping hole in his chest makes it clear that he is dead.

  I scream. Run to Peter’s side and fall to the ground and gather him in my arms and rock him as if he were a baby. As if he were still alive. I look up at my sister and my daughter in disbelief and shock and horror.

  “Why? Why did you do this? Why?”

  “You were going to send Diana away,” Charlotte says. “I couldn’t let you do that. This is our home.”

  She puts her arm around my daughter and looks at her with a mix of pride and love and affection, and something else. “Ownership” is the only
word I can think to describe it. As if my daughter belongs to her.

  “You never loved Diana,” she goes on. “You always favored Rachel.”

  Rachel. I scramble to my feet. “What have you done with her? Where is she?”

  “You see?” Charlotte says to Diana. “I told you she only cares about your sister.”

  Diana shrugs as if all this talk of love and caring is an annoyance. “Enough.” She raises her rifle.

  I fall to my knees at her feet. The barrel is inches from my chest. “Diana. Darling. No. Don’t do this.”

  “You were going to send me away,” she says. “Rachel told me. She heard you and Dad talking.”

  “Rachel— No, no. That’s not true. I mean yes, your father and I talked about it as a possibility after—after that girl at the roadside park died. But we know you had nothing to do with that. This is your home. I promise no one is going to send you away.”

  I focus all my attention on Diana, try not to look behind me at my husband. “I love you,” I say.

  She has to believe me. If she kills me, Rachel will be an orphan. Unless Diana is planning to kill her as well—I swallow hard.

  “She’s lying,” Charlotte says. “Go on. Shoot her. One murder each. That’s what we agreed. Do it.”

  My throat seizes. Charlotte killed my husband. Not Diana. My sister made a devil’s bargain with my daughter, and now my daughter is going to kill me.

  Diana raises her rifle and sights along the scope.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry you thought I didn’t love you. I’ve always loved you. I still do.” Pouring everything that I am feeling into what may well be my last words, knowing that the words are true.

  Time slows. We remain as we are, a delicate balance.

  And my daughter pulls the trigger.