The Winter Sister

by Megan Collins

  Somehow, I didn’t wake up until the sun was high in the sky the next morning, and even then, I only opened my eyes because Missy was shaking me. “Sylvie,” she said, “the police are here.”

  I threw off my blankets and jumped to my feet. Sure enough, from our bedroom window I could see a cop car in the driveway, the same two detectives fidgeting with their belts and stepping through snow to get to our front door. I had made it into the hallway before they even rang the bell.

  Mom was in the entryway. Jill was in the entryway. Missy was dressed. It was as if they’d all been expecting this visit.

  “Good morning,” Jill said as Detective Falley and Detective Parker stepped into the house. She was trying to sound cheerful—or, at the very least, normal—but her voice trembled. “Can we get you anything? There’s still some coffee in the pot.”

  “No,” Parker said. “No, thank you. We, uh, we’re here because—”

  “Where is she?” I demanded. Mom glanced back at the sound of my voice, but her eyes were dim, as if she couldn’t remember who I was.

  Falley took a step forward, closer to the four of us. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but we—we believe we’ve found Persephone’s body.”

  Mom dropped to the floor, her knees folding beneath her. She put her hands flat against the dark gray tile and wailed. Aunt Jill put her hand on Mom’s back, and when she looked up at the detectives, tears glossed her eyes.

  “Her body?” Jill asked. “So she’s . . .”

  Parker and Falley nodded. Missy’s hands gripped my shoulders and my throat went dry in an instant.

  Jill stood up, leaving my mother sobbing in the fetal position on the floor. “What,” she tried, “what happened?” I stared at Mom, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.

  Falley was also looking at Mom when she said, “We don’t know for sure yet. She was covered with about a foot of snow, but it looks—it looks as if she was—gone, before that. She had . . . bruises on her neck. She appears to have been strangled.”

  No. No, no, no. No.

  The word ran through my head, over and over, quiet at first, but then screaming. And in the years that followed, that was the moment when my memory of that day broke down. I could never remember when the detectives left, or at what point Mom stood up, walked to the barely stocked liquor cabinet in the kitchen, pulled down a bottle of something clear, and headed like a person on death row to her bedroom. I couldn’t remember those last moments when Mom was Mom, before the years of empty vodka bottles, of a locked door and a dusty, stale smell throughout the house. Whenever I tried to piece together the minutes following Falley’s words, all I could see was the night Persephone left.

  • • •

  She had gone out with Ben earlier than usual, about eight thirty. It was risky, because Mom had been awake, curled up on the couch watching TV, and she could have heard Persephone landing on the snow-covered mulch beneath our window. She could have seen a flash of headlights pass through our house. And on that night, despite all my promises to my sister, I was hoping she would. I was hoping that, finally, it could all be over—the bruises, the late-night painting, the cold air that slipped through the window I was expected to leave cracked open each night.

  But Mom didn’t notice. I could hear canned laughter floating down the hallway, could hear the squeaky old couch as she fluffed up pillows and repositioned herself. An hour later, I listened to popping sounds in the microwave, wondering if Mom would come to my room to offer me some of her snack. Then, just as my clock switched to ten twenty-five, as I saw Ben pull up to the curb two houses away, Mom turned off the TV, walked toward our room, and knocked lightly on the door.

  “Good night, girls,” she said.

  I held my breath, waiting for her to open the door, to stick her head inside just in time to see Persephone, snowflakes in her hair, pull up the window. But my lungs began to burn, and I heard Mom’s bedroom door close. Down the street, Persephone in her red coat was getting out of the car.

  I acted without thinking. In a burst of motion that felt like one continuous movement, I closed the window that was supposed to be left open, turned the latch, shut off the light by my bed, and got under my blankets, facing the wall, my eyes wide open.

  First, there was the crunch of shoes through snow, the sound muffled by walls and glass, but growing louder every second. Then, a fumbling of fingers against the window. Finally, a pause—was it one of anger or confusion or just mild annoyance? I’ll never know—and then a tapping on the glass.

  My heart pounded so hard in my chest that I thought I could see it disturb the blankets. Still, I waited it out, pretending to be fast asleep. Persephone would be mad, yes, and she’d likely pin me to the bed and squeeze my wrists until they bruised—but at least it would be my bruises, not hers. At least, after having to give up and ring the doorbell, after having to explain to Mom where she’d been, she would be exposed. Mom would take care of it. Mom would make sure that Persephone never snuck out again. And in that way, my sister would be safe, and I would never have had to utter a word.

  What I didn’t know, though, was that Persephone would not ring the doorbell. Once the tapping stopped, and she gave up hissing my name through the glass, I pulled my blankets back and crept toward the window to peer out. But I didn’t see her trudging to the front door. Instead, I saw her running back toward Ben’s car, fresh snow sparkling on her coat. She opened the passenger door and the two of them drove away, the car growing smaller and smaller until it turned the corner and disappeared.

  And I didn’t know it then, but if I’d just kept things the way they were supposed to be, if I’d kept the window open, the latch unlocked, if I’d kept on swallowing Persephone’s secrets night after night, then I could have—I would have—kept my sister, too.

  3

  When Aunt Jill called to tell me about my mother’s cancer, I was forcing down my second tequila shot in a bar on Thayer Street. It was my thirtieth birthday, and Lauren was buying. “All night,” she said, “anything you want. None of this Sober Sylvie shit.” I was wearing a black dress that dug into my thighs and black strappy shoes that dug into my ankles. When I stumbled outside to answer my phone, my jerky movements were less a product of the tequila than the four-inch heels that Lauren had forced me to wear (“Don’t even think about putting on flats. That dress is a fuck-me dress, and a fuck-me dress needs fuck-me shoes.”). I’d been working at Steve’s Ink all day, so I hadn’t had the energy to argue with her, or to explain that I didn’t care that much about my birthday. With Lauren, it was easier to just wear whatever outfit she threw at me, drink whatever shots she bought me, and hope she found a guy she liked within the first thirty minutes. That way, I could feign queasiness and spend the last hours of my birthday alone in my bed.

  I leaned against a telephone pole just outside the bar, watching a parade of young people—Brown students, most likely—marching inside. Putting one finger into my ear, I tried my best to shut out the music that blasted through the door of the bar.

  “Jill,” I said. “Hi.”

  “Happy birthday!” she said. “I can’t believe you’re thirty years old. That must make me—what? Thirty-seven?”

  I smiled, shifting my weight from foot to foot. “No way,” I said. “Thirty-five. Tops.”

  “Great. I’ll take it.”

  In the pause between us, I flicked through my brain for something to tell her, some recent activity or achievement that would prove to her that I wasn’t “just floating,” as she had said during our last conversation in September. But what was there?

  “So,” Jill said. “Anything new?”

  I scanned the other side of the street, where a man sitting on the curb snuffed out a cigarette and then reached into his jacket pocket for another. Behind him was the Thai restaurant where Lauren and I often got takeout, and I looked at the flashing “OPEN” sign, my mouth watering. When I glanced back at the man a moment later, I was startled to find that his eyes were alre
ady locked onto mine. He cupped his hand over his lighter and lit a cigarette, his gaze lingering as he inhaled. I quickly looked away, busying my fingers by picking at an old staple on the telephone pole.

  “Nothing much,” I said to Jill. “I’m still at Steve’s. Still living with Lauren. You know, same as last month.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, working at that tattoo store.”

  “Tattoo parlor,” I corrected her.

  “Right. Parlor. It’s just—all those needles, the blood. I wouldn’t last a minute. Surely there must be something else you can do with your talents.”

  The man with the cigarettes stood up. He wiped his hands on his pants and walked down Thayer Street. A girl, coming from the opposite direction, sped up her pace to meet him. When they reached each other, they embraced, and the girl snagged his cigarette with a laugh. He put his arm around her and kissed her cheek as she took a drag.

  I turned away, facing the bar again. He’d been harmless, of course—just someone waiting for his girlfriend to arrive. Lauren always told me I was paranoid, that the things that ran through my head on any given Tuesday could be lifted straight from the script of a Lifetime Original Movie. The ones where women are always at risk, and men, though beautiful and benign to the untrained eye, are always, inevitably, monsters.

  “The needles and blood are no big deal,” I said to Jill. “You get used to it.”

  “Okay,” Jill said. “So are you just used to it, then, or do you actually like tattooing?”

  “I like it,” I lied, because it was easier than explaining the truth.

  “Okay. Well, listen, Sylvie,” Jill said, her tone suddenly shifting. “I know this isn’t the best time for this. You’re celebrating right now, I’m sure. But can we make some time to talk tomorrow? There’s something I need to discuss with you.”

  There was an edge to her voice that I hadn’t heard in years. For the first time since I’d walked outside, I registered the cool October air on my skin.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Is it something about Persephone?”

  “It’s—what? No. Nothing like that.” I could hear her, probably in her kitchen in Connecticut, sighing.

  Sixteen years after my sister’s murder, the case was as cold as her body must have been that night. But there were still days when I found myself hoping for some kind of news, some fresh lead that had come to light, some witness that hadn’t found the courage to speak, until now. Never mind that it had happened on a street without many houses. Never mind that the snow had compromised the crime scene, made the chance of finding DNA evidence or fibers of clothing nearly nonexistent. After all those years, I’d never stopped waiting.

  “Is it Missy, then? Something wrong with the baby?”

  “No,” Jill said. “No, no. She and Carl just went for an ultrasound last week actually. The baby’s doing great. It’s . . . about your mother actually.”

  A group of wobbly, laughing girls spilled out of the bar, and the sudden flare of music felt like a punch in the stomach.

  “Listen,” Jill said, “I can hear that you’re busy. Let’s just—”

  “No,” I interrupted, walking a few yards down the street. “It’s okay. I can hear you. Just tell me.”

  I waited as Jill inhaled on the other end of the phone. Even with the muffled sounds of the bar surrounding me, I could still hear her slow, deliberate breath. I put my hand on the arm of a sidewalk bench.

  “I’ve been taking your mother to a few doctor’s appointments lately,” Jill said. “She’s been getting treated for what they thought was just acid reflux. But . . . well, new test results came back today, and it’s . . . cancer. Esophageal cancer. I’m so sorry, Sylvie.”

  My fingers tightened on the bench’s metal arm.

  “Is that the one you get from drinking a lot?” I asked.

  In the pause that followed, I could tell that Jill was surprised by my question. But what surprised me was that she hadn’t been calling to tell me my mother was dead. In the months after Persephone was murdered, how many times had Jill and I pressed our ears against Mom’s bedroom door, listening for some sound of life inside? How many times had I picked her lock, only to creak open the door and find her lying the way I imagined that people in coffins did? At a certain point—when our pleas did nothing, when the bottles continued to pile up in the sink, when the meals we made her never made it to her lips—I’d stopped seeing her as a withered plant that could be watered and sunshined back to life. Instead, I’d started seeing the sagging stem of her spine for what it was: a sign that death was rooted within her.

  “Uh, yes,” Jill said. “Well, that’s not the only cause of it, but . . . alcoholism can definitely be a factor.”

  My heart contracted. I tried to imagine my mother’s face as the doctor told her the news, but whether her expression was one of fear or anxiety or relief, I couldn’t tell; in my mind, she kept looking away.

  “How long does she have?” I asked.

  Again, there was a pause from Jill’s end.

  “She’s starting chemo next week,” she said. “Then, depending on how that goes, there might be another round before, hopefully, she can have surgery.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  “It’s not a death sentence just yet, Sylvie. But, I’ll be honest—it doesn’t look good.”

  I nodded, staring at the goose bumps that had risen to the surface of my skin. I wanted a sweater. I wanted my blankets and pillows. I wanted to crawl into bed.

  “I’m going to be staying with her during the treatment,” Jill continued, “in her house. But if you want to stop by sometime soon, that would be great. I’m sure she’d be happy to see you.”

  I heard, more than felt, myself chuckle. “No, she wouldn’t,” I said, and I loved Jill then for not trying to argue otherwise.

  “Well,” she said. “You should get back to your night. I’m sorry about the terrible timing, but I didn’t want to wait too long to tell you.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m glad you told me.”

  “Let’s talk more about this soon, okay? Will you call me if you have any questions?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, Sylvie. Good night. Happy birthday.”

  In her last few words, there was a tinge of sadness that I knew was more than grief about my mother. I should have said more to her, asked her more questions—the whole conversation was over so quickly—and yet, it was exhausting trying to be what Aunt Jill expected of me. I couldn’t pretend that, just by turning thirty, I was old enough now to have outgrown my feelings of motherlessness.

  I knew that Jill understood, on some level, what those years had been like for me, but she hadn’t lived them like I’d lived them. She couldn’t know the ache of remembering how my mother didn’t fight for me that first year, when Jill had declared that until Mom got her act together, I would stay with her and Missy. She never tried to get me back, never contacted Jill to see how I was doing. Every Sunday, when Jill and Missy and I went back to the house to check on her, stocking her cabinets with groceries and toiletries that Jill had bought with her own money, Mom cracked open her door, asked in a paper-thin voice if we’d brought any booze, and then shut us out again when we told her, our arms firmly crossed, no—no, we had not. “Well then what the hell did you come here for?” she yelled, a phrase that still jostled me out of sleep sometimes.

  When I went back inside the bar, it took me only a few seconds to find Lauren. Her teal hair, which fell in loose curls around her shoulders, was like a spotlight in the dim room. She was talking to two guys in button-down shirts, each of them holding a beer, and when she saw me squeezing between the crowds of people, she began to laugh.

  “Here she is!” she said, her voice straining to be heard over the music. “See, I told you the birthday girl exists!” She handed me a drink, something frothy and blue.

  “Listen . . .” I started.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Lauren interrupted. She looked at the
guys. “This is classic Sylvie. Watch. She’s gonna try to go home early.”

  “I’m really tired,” I said, moving so that I was standing between Lauren and the two guys. “Just—please. Don’t make a big deal out of this. Looks like you’ve already made some new friends, and you said Jake and Jenna are showing up in a little while.”

  Something must have shown on my face. Lauren narrowed her eyes, and then pulled me away, using her elbows to create a space for us among the groups of people in the bar.

  “What is it?” she asked, her forehead nearly touching mine. “Who was that call from?”

  “My aunt. Nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired, like I said.”

  She held my gaze before responding. “So you’re not upset about something?” Her mouth fell open, as if she’d figured it out. “Is it about your cousin’s baby? Is it okay?”

  I forced myself to laugh. “No, no, the baby’s great. I’m serious, Lauren. I’m fine. I just think those shots were a little much for me.”

  Lauren pursed her lips in thought, and then she nodded. “Well, that I believe. You’re such a lightweight, it’s embarrassing. Fine, okay, whatever. You go home and be eighty, and I’ll stay here with Rob and—hey! Where’d they go?”

  She looked back at the space we’d just left, the two guys lost behind a group of college students wearing purple fraternity shirts.

  “You’d better go find them,” I said. Reaching out to hug her, I added, “Be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay, Mom,” she said, and we went our separate ways—me back to our cramped but cozy apartment, and Lauren back to the nighttime buzz of Providence, Rhode Island.

  • • •

  It took me a long time to fall asleep that night. I was even still awake when, sometime after two o’clock, our apartment door opened. Lauren’s heels clicked across the floor, followed by a thud as she tossed them off her feet. At the distinctive sound of chip bags opening, I considered getting up, putting my head in her lap on the couch, and telling her everything—or half of everything, anyway.