“Tell him why you didn’t want them to be together.” My voice was stiff as it scraped against the cold. “The real reason.”
Tommy laughed, a quick, satisfied jab of sound. “Guess you finally talked to your mother,” he said.
Will swept his eyes over my face, an incredulous look warping his features. Something inside me relished his surprise, the ways he was coming apart. His silver hair, previously slicked back, now fell across his forehead, and I stared at the bruise already coloring his jaw.
“You know?” he asked quietly. Then, with a surge of anger, he thundered, “She told you?”
“No,” I said. “Don’t worry. My mother kept your little secret, just like you made her believe she had to. I discovered it on my own. Last night.”
I turned to Ben, whose eyes were wide with an effort to understand. “I wanted to tell you,” I said to him. “Tonight. That’s why I came.”
Looking back at Will, I saw a tinge of fear tucked into the sneer in his lip.
“Tell him or I will,” I insisted—but still, he said nothing.
I took a deep breath. “Tell him what Persephone was to you,” I said. “Tell him how you had the right to take her life. Because that’s what you think, isn’t it? Your children are yours to do with as you wish. What’s a knife across a cheek, what are hands around a neck, if they’re not listening to you, not doing what you command?”
“I don’t—” Will sputtered. “I don’t know what your mother told you, but—”
“My mother told me nothing. You got what you wanted. Persephone never knew. Ben never knew. This town never knew. But that’s over now. Tell him why you did it. Tell him who Persephone was.”
I looked at Ben. His eyes were focused on the ground, shifting back and forth as if reading something off the pavement, but I could see in his face that he was piecing it together.
“No,” Ben said after a moment. “No, that . . .” He chuckled a little, but then grew instantly serious. “No.” He raised his eyes to stare at his father. “That can’t be true. Because if it were, you wouldn’t have kept that a secret—how could you have—when you saw we were—No. No way.”
But I could see in his eyes—which were everything and nothing like his father’s—that he knew it was true. It was on Will’s face, even as he seemed perched to deny it, and there was a part of Ben, I knew, that had always understood his father was capable of anything.
I walked away then, back up the driveway, and no one made a move to stop me. I could hear Will rushing to explain, to redefine—“As usual, you don’t understand, because you’ve never made a single sacrifice for this family. I couldn’t possibly tell you, because if I told you, then you’d tell her, and then everyone would . . .”—but his words quickly dissolved into static. I could feel myself beginning to buckle, and I knew I only had a couple more minutes before I completely broke apart.
It wasn’t until I reached for the door handle on the driver’s side of my car that I realized I was still holding the box Tommy had dropped on the driveway. I blinked at it, the loops of Mom’s handwriting as recognizable to me as Persephone’s or my own, then I took out the afghan and let the box tumble to the ground.
Wrapping the blanket around me, my face numb to what would have been the scratch of wool against my face, I opened my car door and slid inside. I could feel a sob building up inside me, ready to break the dam and let all my loss and grief and love and relief come flooding out, but I quickly swallowed it down. I had one more thing to do.
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I held Persephone’s afghan tightly in place with one hand, and I used the other to look up the number I needed. When I found it, I pressed the button that would connect the call.
Someone answered on the second ring.
“Spring Hill Police,” the dispatcher said.
“Hi.” My voice, I heard, was on the edge of caving in. “I need to speak to Detective Parker. I have important information about the death of Persephone O’Leary.”
29
Mom didn’t watch the news—didn’t subscribe to the paper, either—so she didn’t see the front-page story, the breaking news on every local channel: “Spring Hill mayor arrested, charged with murder.”
Will and Tommy had been taken away for questioning the night before, and I’d let Detective Parker drive me to the police station to make my statement. When we got out of the car, he ushered me to the same interview room I’d been in twice before. We sat down, he set up a recording device, held a pen over a notepad, and in a voice that sounded scuffed and skinned, I spoke.
Now, as I sat up in bed, groggy from a marathon stretch of what felt like blackout sleep, blinking at the diluted sunlight filtering through the blinds, I could barely remember what I’d said to him.
What I did remember was Parker’s somber expression when he came back into the room after having excused himself for several minutes. He sat down, leaned forward a little across the table, and clasped his hands together.
“I’ve spoken to my partner,” he said.
“Detective Falley?” I asked dimly.
“Uh, no. She—”
“Doesn’t work here anymore,” I finished for him. “Right. Sorry. I forgot.”
“It’s okay,” he said, waving away my apology. “Detective Hartwick is my partner now. He was at the scene tonight. Anyway, Ben Emory is corroborating your story.”
“My story?” My voice was small and far away, like it came from someone in another room.
“Your version of what you heard tonight,” Parker clarified. “Now, when it comes to incriminating statements made by family members of the victim, it doesn’t always hold a lot of weight in court—for reasons I’m sure you understand.”
I didn’t.
“But when you’ve got the alleged murderer’s son backing up everything you said,” Parker continued, “that’s a different story.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “It’s still only testimony, though. And listen—I believe you—I believe what you and the younger Mr. Emory said you heard tonight.” He scratched his cheek and looked at the wall behind my head, as if unable to meet my gaze. “But we’re still lacking direct evidence, and that could be a problem.”
I felt my eyes expand, an old fear instantly resurrected.
“Now, with both of your statements,” Parker rushed ahead, “we have enough to arrest Mr. Emory. But I want to warn you about the possibility that it may not stick. He’ll be arraigned in the morning, and more than likely, he’ll be able to post bail immediately.” He changed his tone then, seeming to notice the panic on my face. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t try.”
In the silence that followed, I felt tears begin to spill over onto my cheeks, wetting the salt that had dried there from tears I’d already cried.
When Parker spoke again, his voice was gruff but sincere. “I want to see him pay for this just as much as you do. I promise, Ms. O’Leary, that I will do my best for you and your sister.”
“And my mother,” I added. Even after everything, the words slipped out of my mouth like instinct, like breath.
Parker flicked his eyes toward mine and nodded. “And your mother.”
• • •
And now, I would have to do my best for her. I had asked Detective Parker to let me be the one to tell Mom, but when I’d finally left the police station, fetched my car from Ben’s and somehow driven it home, I hadn’t trusted myself to speak to her. Instead, I’d shuffled past her closed door and crashed onto my bed. I’d been certain then, even as sleep tugged at my eyes and eased the ache in my muscles, that I’d be clearheaded enough in the morning to do it right.
So now I had to do it. I had to tell her that the man whose love she’d worn like a lead cape on her back was the same man who’d stolen her daughter, who’d plunged her entire life into darkness. I had to hold back my fury, keep myself from screaming that her relationship with Will was the root of our relentless pain. After all, I reminded myself, planting m
y feet onto the floor, if it hadn’t been for that love embedded in my mother like a tick, I never would have had a sister in the first place. I never would have known the compromises I was capable of making.
So I had to be better than I wanted to be, better than I really was. The truth, I knew, would punish Mom enough.
Walking toward the door, I caught my reflection in the dresser mirror. My eyelids were swollen, my cheeks puffy, my hair matted against the side of my head. Shadows crouched beneath my eyes like bruises, and my lower lip looked bitten and chewed.
I moved closer to the glass, examining the shape of my nose, the curve of my chin, but it wasn’t until I traced my jawline with my finger that I knew what I was looking for. Will’s face the night before had been granite-hard and impenetrable, but thinking of it now, remembering the features that had been spotlighted by the bulb over the garage, I could see Persephone in it. Her blonde hair, gray eyes, and pointed chin were Mom’s, but her nose—the sharp slope of it—was Will’s. Her lips—their fullness like ripened fruit, their Cupid’s bow—were Will’s. Even her skin tone, like sunlit sand, seemed borrowed from him. It was a wonder I’d never noticed it before.
Scrutinizing my own features, I turned my head to look at every angle of my face, searching for even the slightest resemblance to Will. Mom had sworn he wasn’t my father, and I’d believed her at the time, but it was possible, I realized now, that she was still protecting him. It was possible that—
A sound came from the living room that snatched my attention away from the mirror. I listened for it again, holding my breath, and when it came, I recognized it as Mom emitting a low moan before letting out a deep, echoing retch.
I yanked open my door and headed toward the living room. When I rounded the corner, I found Mom in her chair, holding a bucket to her chest as she leaned her head back, her skin slick with sweat. The room had a stale and sour smell, and I watched Mom close her eyes, groaning.
“Mom, what’s going on? Should I call a doctor?”
I hadn’t seen her like this since the day I’d come home late from picking up her medication. I reached for the phone on the table beside her chair, but she jerked out a hand, cold and moist, to stop me.
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “It’s just—” She stopped suddenly, then opened her eyes wide as she swallowed. I saw her throat move up and down in her neck. “It’s just catching up to me. But I’m fine. It’s already passing.”
She pressed a palm into the arm of the chair and shifted her body, her other hand still holding on to the bucket. Then she looked me over, her eyes trailing from the top of my rumpled head, over the jeans and sweatshirt I’d slept in, all the way down to my sockless feet.
“What were you doing in there?” she asked.
“In where?”
“Your room.” Her voice was laced with suspicion.
“I was sleeping,” I said.
“It’s the afternoon.”
I looked at the sliding glass door, the dim light trickling through it, and I saw that she was right. I’d slept through most of the day.
“I had a rough night,” I said.
“Well, maybe if you weren’t so involved with Ben Emory, you wouldn’t be having rough nights.”
“I don’t think you have any right to talk.”
Mom set her lips into a firm line, looked into her bucket, and leaned her head back again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“Tell you what?”
“About Ben,” she said, her voice brittle. “Working at the hospital.”
The air pressed against me, and I slumped onto the couch, landing heavily against the cushions.
“I didn’t want to upset you,” I said.
“Oh, well, you did a great job.”
“You know, can you just cut the sarcasm for, like, two seconds? You make it so difficult to talk to you about anything.”
Mom narrowed her eyes at me but didn’t speak, and I turned my head away from her, my gaze falling onto the wall that still, after all these years, remained a white sky to the metallic constellation I’d once painted. I could imagine a bomb going off, a fire swallowing up the whole house, and still, that wall would be standing, alone in the charred yard, Persephone’s angry handprint gleaming like the stars she’d tried to wipe away.
“Why is that still there?” I asked.
I looked at Mom and saw that she was staring at it, too, her eyes a little gentler now. When she didn’t respond, I continued.
“You got rid of everything Persephone ever owned, but you didn’t get rid of the one thing that, to me, feels so much more like her than anything else.”
“What do you expect me to do, Sylvie—tear down the wall?”
“I expect you to paint it. Why haven’t you painted over it? She was mad at you when she wrecked the constellation. Why would you want to be reminded of that?”
She was quiet for a few moments, but her dry, parted lips seemed ready to respond. I pressed my teeth together, willing to wait her out, and when she finally answered me, her voice was soft as the sound of wind rustling grass.
“Because I have to be.”
I hesitated. “You have to be what?”
“Reminded.”
Her arm loosened around the bucket, her hand slipping into her lap.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I deserve that,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
Her tone wasn’t sarcastic, wasn’t taunting or edged with any kind of malice. It seemed like an honest question—one I had no idea how to answer.
“Why do you say that?” I prompted.
She shrugged one shoulder. “You said it yourself, the other night—she didn’t know I loved her. What kind of mother does that make me?”
She paused, leaving a space for me to respond, but when I didn’t speak, she continued.
“The kind that deserves to be reminded,” she answered for herself.
“Mom,” I said. “I was angry when I said that. I had just found out that you’d—”
“I know what you were,” she interrupted. “But I know that what you said was true. I’ve always known it. I just—” She looked back at the constellation, her eyes seeming to trace what was left of its stars. “I always tried so hard to be good to them.”
“Them?”
“Your sister. Will.”
At the sound of his name, my throat stiffened.
“I thought protecting her was the same as being good to her,” Mom went on. “But I was wrong, maybe. I still don’t know for sure. All I know is I got so caught up in all that protecting that I ended up protecting the wrong person.”
“What do you mean?”
She looked at me sharply. “Me, obviously. I was so afraid of losing her that I pushed her away. I made that—” She gestured weakly toward the wall. “I made that happen. And, in the end, I lost her anyway—more than just physically—because, when I look back on my memories of her, they’re all just . . .”
She closed her eyes, gripping the armrests, and after a wave of something—nausea or pain or guilt—seemed to rise and subside within her, she shook her head, letting out a breath.
“They’re just her being mad at me,” she said. “Or her reaching out to me, and me turning away.”
She glanced down at the bucket in her lap, and with a look of revulsion, she picked it up and placed it on the floor.
“Mom,” I started, “I have to tell you something. But first, I have to, I need to . . .”
Her eyes opened again, the gray of them like a shadow falling over snow.
I struggled to continue. “You said the other night that my father is someone named Eddie, someone you barely knew—and I believed you—but . . . I just need to know with absolute certainty that that’s true, that Will is not my father.”
Mom rolled her eyes. “This again,” she said. “Of course he’s not your father. I was never terrified of anyone taking you away, was I? That’s why you and I were so close.”
Her face changed then, quickly and starkly, her features going slack. It was as if she realized the vulnerability of her words, of mentioning something that neither of us had acknowledged out loud for a very long time. It was safer, somehow, to pretend that things had always been so broken between us. It hurt less to act as if we had no desire to go back to the way that things had once been.
“So you’re positive, then,” I said. “This Eddie guy was my father. Not Will.”
“God, how many times are you going to make me say it? Will is not your father. He was furious with me when he found out I was pregnant with you. It hurt him terribly that I’d been with someone else.”
“But—he was married! He had no right to be upset.”
“That marriage meant nothing to him,” Mom fired back.
I sighed. I didn’t have it in me to argue with her anymore. We could go around and around in circles forever, and she’d never be able to see the past for what it had really been. Now, there was only one thing that could possibly save her from the inky depths of such a twisted love, and it was the same thing, I knew, that would destroy her.
“Mom,” I started. “They’ve arrested someone for Persephone’s murder.”
Her head snapped upward. “What?” she said, sounding like someone who’d just been woken in the middle of the night. “Who?”
I took a deep breath and met her stare, which held my eyes in its grip. “Will,” I said.
She squinted at me. “Will who?” she asked.
“What other . . . ? Will, Mom. Will Emory.”
For a long while, she stared at me, her eyes unblinking, her expression blank as a gray winter sky. The clock ticked through her silence, time moving on while the two of us stayed frozen in our seats. I waited for what I knew would come—a sudden slump in her posture, tears in her eyes, something that would document the shock she felt as it punched inside her.
But when she finally spoke, her eyes were dry and her voice was the steadiest it had been in a while.
“That’s a sick thing to joke about, Sylvie. Even for you. What the hell is wrong with you?”
The Winter Sister Page 28