by Ren Richards
Sebastian betrayed no shock in his expression. He looked thoughtful. ‘Did you humour her?’
‘I didn’t say whether I believed that Autumn was still alive,’ Nell said.
‘What if you played along?’ Sebastian asked. ‘What if you had a chapter entertaining Easter’s fantasy that Autumn is still out there, plotting her next attack?’ At Nell’s blank expression, he exhaled. ‘That sounds stupid now that I’ve said it.’
‘No,’ Nell said. ‘No, that might be a good idea.’
Sebastian raised his shoulders haughtily. ‘In that case, glad my genius could be of help.’
In the morning it snowed. A flurry that looked like pieces of the sky’s paint flaking down. Nell sat in her car, staring at Royal King’s State Penitentiary, whose image was sliced over and over by the windshield wipers. Despite the warmth from the vents, a chill had stolen into Nell’s bones.
Nell was never remanded after Reina’s disappearance, even after her arrest. The only good thing that came from Lindsay’s marriage to Matthew had been his money, which paid her bail, and for the top lawyer in western Missouri. The lawyer staunchly maintained Nell’s innocence, creating such a vivid account of what happened that day that Nell almost believed it herself.
She checked her reflection in the visor mirror. She wasn’t wearing makeup. Makeup was a type of mask, and Easter Hamblin saw right through those. Nell needed to be straightforward, speak clearly, and show no trace of the secrets she kept. That way she could get Easter to focus on herself. That way the book could get written.
By the time Nell sat at the visitor’s window and took the phone from the receiver, she was ready.
Easter Hamblin sat before her in her grey jumpsuit, a wry smirk on her face.
‘You spoke to my mother,’ Easter said. Her Russian accent teased her words just slightly today.
‘You’ve been in touch with her?’ Nell guessed.
‘No,’ Easter said. ‘But I can tell when someone has spoken to her. My lawyer looked the same way you do. My mother’s pity for me is contagious.’
‘You think that I pity you?’ Nell asked. Her notebook sat open before her. Easter looked at it, then at Nell.
‘Isn’t that why you’re here? Because you want to paint me as a victim?’
‘I’m here to tell your story,’ Nell said, not letting her emotions show. She wasn’t even sure that she had any emotions in that moment. She was never sure how to feel about Easter. ‘I’m here to tell your side of things, because you’re trapped in a cell for the rest of your life, but I can make sure your words slip through the bars.’
Easter smiled at that. She pointed a finger and tapped it against the glass, as though Nell were the one in a terrarium. ‘You’re good,’ she said.
Nell went on. ‘The last time we spoke, you told me that Autumn hated everyone but pretended to like them.’
‘She does.’ Easter shrugged, with the resigned nonchalance of a suffering sister. ‘You have no idea how infuriating it is to know someone is full of shit, but there’s no way to make anyone else see it.’
Nell knew the feeling very well. Matthew had been cut from the cover of a romance novel: he had money and abs; he called his mother every Sunday; he taught his nephews how to pitch a baseball; he treated Lindsay like a princess. Except for when he didn’t. Nell had seen through all of it, and it hadn’t mattered. For all the words she could write, there had been nothing she could say about Matthew that would convince Lindsay.
‘I read the papers,’ Easter said. ‘They want to make my sister out to be a saint. And people just eat it up.’
Easter was getting agitated, and Nell could sense a tangent brewing.
‘I don’t write for a newspaper. I’d like to write the truth about Autumn. I’m here for your side, remember. As long as you tell me the truth, it’ll go into the book.’
This was mostly an appeal on Nell’s part. She knew that Easter Hamblin was not going to tell her the truth. But it didn’t matter, so long as what Easter had to say was different and more substantial than what the papers said.
Easter was quiet for a full minute. Nell had been counting the seconds in her head, and when Easter at last drew a breath to speak, Nell grabbed her pad and made a note of the lengthy pause. A suspenseful silence was a great way to begin a chapter.
‘Autumn was born first,’ Easter said, favouring her Russian accent. ‘I was plucked out alongside her. That’s the way it was from the start: she led the charge and I was a tumour with an identical face.
‘You’ve had roommates, yes? Maybe you’ve shared a bed with your sibling during a thunderstorm. But sharing a body with someone is the most intimate hell. She didn’t end at this scar’ – Easter rolled up the sleeve of her jumpsuit, revealing the deep, shining purple line that ran up her forearm – ‘and this isn’t where I began. There was no beginning or end to either of us, and there never will be. Autumn could hide from everyone, but not from me. For this, I loved her, even though she was a monster. I took the blame for her. I took the blame when she caught the rats in the garden at the orphanage. She carried them by their tails, biting at the air while she laughed and then tossed them into the fire. When we were found out, she blamed me for it. She burst into tears and said I had frightened her.’
She paused here, waiting for Nell’s reaction. But if Nell could hear the Widow Thompson describe how she’d drowned her children without flinching, she could stomach a few rats.
‘You took the blame,’ Nell said. ‘Why?’
‘I asked myself: is there any difference? It was two pairs of shoes walking through the garden. Hers and mine.’
‘You must have been frightened,’ Nell said.
Easter shook her head. ‘When I was attached to Autumn, I was safe. We didn’t share any organs, but that didn’t matter. Autumn used to say that there were rivers running through both of us. She said the rivers were polluted, all of our secrets and sins flowing from one heart to the next. She was afraid that if I were to die, the doctor would cut us apart and all of those things would come spilling out onto the operating table.’
‘You were ten when you were separated,’ Nell said. ‘What was that like?’
Easter closed her eyes. She drew in a deep breath through her nostrils, and her shoulders rose, and it was as though she were standing outside in the free air inhaling the crescendo of a breeze.
It was the first genuine emotion Nell had seen from Easter. It was the very first thing about Easter Hamblin that she believed.
‘We went under that knife as Russian orphans,’ Easter said, when she at last spoke. ‘But when we woke up, we were little American children. If we wore long sleeves and learned the language, we could be anybody.’
It was frightening the way that Easter could switch between her Russian and American accents. It reminded Nell of the Magic Eye book in one of her foster homes. At a glance, it was a page of white and blue lines, but if you fixed your gaze just right, there was a tiger poised to leap out and claw you to shreds.
Easter’s eyes flitted to the clock on the wall behind Nell. ‘Our hour’s up. The phone will cut off in a minute.’
Nell had never been very good at keeping track of time, but even so, she was surprised how quickly the hour had disappeared. She had been so immersed in the twins’ childhood. ‘You’re right,’ she said, and held up her pad before tucking it into her purse. ‘This was very helpful.’
‘You’ll come back?’ Easter asked.
‘Next week,’ Nell said. The phone clicked, and then went silent. She averted her eyes as she stood, not watching as the corrections officer led Easter back to her cell in solitary confinement.
15
THEN
‘Sharing a body with someone is the most intimate hell.’ That’s what Easter had said. It was easy for Nell to understand. She and Lindsay had been inseparable in their own way, out of necessity, not choice. It was a love sometimes indiscernible from hate.
When Nell was nine and Lindsay thirteen,
Nell saw her first glimpse of a normal life. They were fostered to a couple that were only looking to take on one child, but they would make allowances for two. ‘Everything is set up for a single child,’ the social worker said as they drove between rows of brick-front houses. ‘So try not to eat them out of house and home.’
This was a privilege, Nell and Lindsay knew.
No more group homes. No more stomach bug outbreaks. Though Lindsay was adamant that she would continue to sleep with a pocketknife in hand.
The couple even had a normal last name: Smith. And a house with a white fence that was only a bit dilapidated, and beds of roses that were only a little wilted and brown.
The Smiths preferred girls after too many violent outbursts from the troubled boys who had passed through their doors. Especially around puberty, boys were crude, reclusive and what Mr Smith called ‘stormy’. He had winked at Nell in the rear-view mirror as he drove. ‘And they smell pretty bad, don’t they?’
Nell liked him the moment he said that, because it was true. At their last group home, Nell and Lindsay slept like sardines in the bottom bunk, below an overweight boy who farted in his sleep.
But Lindsay didn’t like the Smiths. She didn’t like anyone, and she stared out of her window with her jaw set. Don’t ruin this for us; Nell had tried to project the thought into her sister’s head. Already she was fantasising about the adoption papers. She wouldn’t have to visit Bonnie in prison again. She wouldn’t have to endure another drunken phone call from her father when he managed to track his daughters down so that he could apologise. The sloppy weeping only churned Nell’s stomach, and she would listen to it in frozen silence until Lindsay said ‘for fuck’s sake’ and hung up.
This was their chance to have a real family.
The Smiths had a small, tidy house, with a full-sized bed in the spare room for Nell and Lindsay to share. But when it rained, a leak came in through the ceiling and doused the left side of the bed. It rained a lot that spring, so one night Nell would sleep on the dry side of the bed and Lindsay would take her pillow and blanket and sleep on the floor. The next time it rained, they would switch.
This was the only flaw in an otherwise comfortable setup. The public school wasn’t terrible. Mrs Smith was a decent enough cook. Mr Smith invited them to watch football in the evenings and taught them how the game worked.
Slowly, even Lindsay began to warm to the idea of this beige split-level house and the sound of crickets serenading them to sleep.
Less than a month in, it was once again Nell’s turn to sleep on the floor as rain pounded the roof. She didn’t know what woke her, but it was loud, like a clap of thunder. And yet she didn’t move. She didn’t open her eyes.
She heard Lindsay whisper something. The creaking of the mattress coils like a hundred groaning ghosts.
This was what had woken her, Nell realised. The mattress creaking, and then the slam of the rickety headboard against the wall.
A hard breath.
A groan that wasn’t quite pain, but some other sort of agony. It was vulnerable and strange, like a little boy trapped inside a man’s body. It terrified her.
More whispering. Nell opened her eyes without meaning to. Without wanting to.
She saw Mr Smith’s outline in the darkness as he retreated into the darkness of the hall. His bare back showed a single dark mole at the hip.
The sheets rustled in the bed, and when Nell sat up, she saw that Lindsay was curled away from her with the blankets pulled over her head.
Nell wanted to speak, but just as she had opened her eyes without wanting to look, she was now silent without wanting to be silent.
A week later, Nell and Lindsay were rounding the block on their walk home from school when they saw the social worker’s car in the driveway.
‘She wasn’t supposed to come back,’ Nell said, already sounding hysterical, her eyes filling with tears. ‘We were supposed to live here.’
‘We can’t,’ Lindsay said. There was no emotion in her voice.
‘This is your fault,’ Nell spat out.
‘Wait,’ Lindsay said. But Nell was already running ahead of her, her backpack hitting hard against her shoulders.
‘I hate you!’ Nell screamed back at her sister. It echoed off the pristine houses and the freshly paved cul-de-sac. ‘You ruin everything. I hate you. I hate you!’
NOW
‘It’s fascinating,’ Nell said, as Sebastian poured them each a glass of wine. There was chicken roasting in the oven, and the apartment was warm with the smell of it. ‘I can’t work out how much of what she’s saying is true.’
‘It’s probably all true,’ Bas ventured. ‘But maybe not in the way she says. Maybe she’s saying Autumn killed the rats and that rabbit, but it was really her.’
Nell considered this. ‘Their mother told me a story about Easter trying to catch a kitchen mouse and Autumn killing it.’
Sebastian sipped his wine. ‘Maybe she has it backwards too.’
‘What makes you so sure?’ Nell asked.
‘Let’s look at what we know for a fact,’ he said. ‘Easter murdered her sister and pretended to be her for weeks—’
‘A year,’ Nell corrected.
‘She’s clearly delusional,’ Sebastian said. ‘Plus those stories of kids accusing one of the twins of hurting them. It must have been Easter, but they were too scared to say so.’
‘Her own family doesn’t even have it sorted out,’ Nell said. But she wasn’t discouraged. ‘The manuscript is turning out very noir. It’s not what I expected, but I think it’ll work out better. All the articles and TV specials have been speculation, but this book will be what Easter tells us. Believe it at your own peril.’
It wasn’t rare for Sebastian to take an interest in her work, but it was rare for Nell to be so eager to discuss it. They spent dinner going over the interview, making a game of guessing what was real and what was Easter’s warped sense of reality.
By her fourth glass of wine, she was sleepy and giddy and her head was filled with words. Not that any of them would do her much good now. She rested her chin on her fist. ‘I’m not going to get anything done tonight.’
His hand was on her knee now. ‘You’ve given this book enough of your time today,’ Bas said. His thumb traced a crescent moon on her skin. ‘Don’t let it swallow you up like the last one did.’
Nell stared at him. His nose and forehead were flushed. The dim kitchen light caught the grey flecks in his eyes, like little stars.
Sebastian was the only one who had ever made her feel human. She wanted to tell him that, but she was only good with words when they were ugly. When she was talking about congealed blood, or how long it takes for post-partum depression to manifest into a delusional psychosis. Or before any of that, before she had written a single book, when she tried to tell Ethan Eddleton the truth about their child.
But with Sebastian, she said almost nothing and felt everything. She gave a little smile, and his hand slid up her thigh.
‘I love you, you know,’ he said.
‘Even though I’m fucked up?’
‘Don’t do that tonight, Nell.’
‘Okay.’
He kissed her before she could say anything else. When he drew back, her head lolled sleepily so that her forehead pressed to his.
I love you too. She wanted to say it, but she never could when it mattered. Her arms coiled around his shoulders. He tried to carry her to the bedroom, but he stumbled back against the counter and a barstool toppled over. Nell giggled into his mouth as it clattered to the ground.
They fell into bed as though they’d been dropped from the sky, flushed and laughing as they wriggled out of their clothes.
The curtain was open, and Nell looked out at the city lights, glittering, the cars like the eyes of slithering snakes. The view was only of Rockhollow, but from here it might as well have been the world. The whole ugly, strange, beautiful place that only made sense when Sebastian was inside of her.
&
nbsp; ‘Nell,’ he murmured. His heat warmed her skin. ‘Look at me.’
She looked away from the window. His eyes were dark and moonless. His back was to the window, so that none of its lights reflected in his gaze. But she could still see the city in him. She could see everything that was ugly, and everything that was good.
16
NOW
Nell woke to her phone vibrating on the nightstand.
Her heart was hammering in her chest, and there was the dizzying sense that the world had ended while she’d been asleep.
Her phone gave another angry buzz. She stretched across the mattress to reach it. She was alone in bed, she realised. The shower was running, and water rushed through the exposed pipes in the ceiling. Her sweat and Sebastian’s being washed from his skin and floating off into the river.
A subtle headache was forming behind her eyes, and she suspected that she was still a little drunk. It wasn’t even 4AM, too early for the sun to rise yet, which meant Sebastian had hours before he needed to get ready for work. His insomnia was back, Nell thought. It only ever came about after sex, when his mind was so frenzied that it prompted him to worry. Like Nell, there were things that Sebastian kept hidden. But this didn’t mean that they were the same. While Nell worried about her past, Sebastian worried about their future.
The phone buzzed again. The light from the screen burned Nell’s eyes as she read the texts. They were from Lindsay:
Nell? Are you awake?
Please be awake.
I need you to come get me. Don’t freak out. Everything’s fine
Drank too much
Woke up next to some rando
His whole house smells like ham
2 W Lazarus Road
Nell quickly typed out a reply:
Jesus Linds
On my way
Nell tried calling, but it went straight to voice-mail. She tugged on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. It had been years since she’d had to clean up the mess of this particular version of Lindsay. Following her divorce from Matthew, Lindsay had been an unapologetic party girl. Alcohol, ecstasy, whatever was handed to her in a nightclub bathroom. The unspoken agreement was that Nell would always come get her. She would scoop her up from the bathroom floor, or from the apartment of whatever man she’d gone home with, set her up on the couch with a vomit bowl and a blanket, and never speak of it again. Nell had no business judging even the worst of her sister’s decisions; she had them all beat.