Once Two Sisters

by Sarah Warburton

  This room should be like something from a storybook, except my parents have spoiled it. The bare floor has a judgmental gleam, and on the wall I see two more of those abstract paintings I hate. When Emma does something like that, at least she uses lots of color. Her art is active and messy and alive. These paintings are dead.

  “You still have my old furniture?” I ask. Surely that means they care a little.

  My dad looks at me blankly. “Did you want it?”

  “If you can use it, just ship it home. Texas, you said?” My mom looks almost eager. Stupid. They didn’t keep my furniture because it reminded them of me; they kept it because they needed to furnish a guest room. They’ve done everything they could to force it to fit their modern aesthetic, and they’d be only too happy to replace it. That’s my parents. Pragmatic, thrifty, never sentimental.

  “Maybe.” I wheel my suitcase into the middle of the room and drop my bag beside it. I want to ask if they’re worried about Ava, if they think she’s okay, if they think (like I still do) she’s just pulling a stunt. But I don’t think I can take another reminder of how little they care. It’s Ava’s fault I’m here at all, and for just a second I miss her more than I’m angry at her. She’s the only person in the world who had the same childhood as me, no explanation necessary.

  “If you have anything to hang up, there should be coat hangers there.” Mom gestures as if I am incapable of recognizing a closet.

  “I put a clean towel and washcloth by the sink in the bathroom,” Dad announces.

  “Okay then.” Mom steps out into the hall, and I can see a flicker of relief pass over her face. She’s almost done having to act like a mother. “Call us if you need anything.”

  “Good night.” Dad pulls the door shut behind him.

  It is eight o’clock at night.

  There are no chairs in this room, so I sit on the edge of the bed. This could be any one of the quiet nights from my childhood when Mom and Dad were clearly being whoever they were once they were finished pretending to be parents. I remember the way they whispered, even when Ava and I should have been asleep, the way they stopped talking when one or the other of us walked into the room. When it was “our time” at dinner or over homework, they hovered and asked us about our day, but it was hard to shake the feeling that they were playacting. Even now, it’s as if they had to ask themselves, What would real parents do for a daughter who came home to spend the night? And the only answer they could muster was to supply clean towels.

  I wouldn’t mind being treated like a child, as long as that child was loved.

  If I ever get back to my home in Texas, I will make sure Emma knows how much I love her, no matter how old she gets. I will make a big deal about her every time she comes home—having her favorite dinner (currently chicken nuggets), playing her favorite games (Chutes and Ladders), and never ever leaving her alone for a minute. I’ll probably drive her crazy.

  I feel like I’m going crazy now. The silence is creeping under my skin, building up. No wonder I screamed and raged so much as a kid. There’s nothing else to do. I grab my bag and get back on the bed, messing up the white counterpane. That’s better. I scoot back and gather the bedspread around me like a nest, as if it could give me the warmth I need.

  I’m not going to have to stay here long. Ava will get tired of this game. I just have to wait her out. And in a few days, Andrew and Emma will come up. Then I realize that Andrew doesn’t have any way to contact me. My parents have an unlisted home number. My phone is in Texas with Detective Valdez.

  I wrap my arms around my knees. Everything will be okay. I’ll call Andrew tomorrow from the landline, probably one of the last landlines in America. I’ll tell him everything that’s happened. He still loves me. He has to. Emma doesn’t know I’m a liar. God, how I wish she were in my arms. But I don’t want her in this house. The last thing I want is to see her joy and confidence replaced by insecurity and loneliness. Maybe when I call Andrew, I’ll tell him not to come, for Emma’s sake.

  The two windows in my room are bare, no blinds or curtains. The sun has set, but the darkness outside is punctuated by lights from the townhouses on either side and across the street. Maybe I should change my clothes in the bathroom or the closet, but I don’t give a shit. I strip and pull on an oversized T-shirt. This oppressive house is making me reckless, just like it always did. I’m tired, bone-tired, but not even a little bit sleepy. Tonight, I won’t go prowling in search of alcohol, but that’s something to look for tomorrow.

  Inside my bag I find allergy pills, a forgotten baggie of cereal I put together for Emma, and Ava’s book. I triple the dose of the pills, hoping a good hit of antihistamine will knock me out for the night. Once I’ve turned off the overhead light, the lamps on either side of the bed glow like stage lights, waiting for the curtain to rise.

  I take Bloody Heart, Wild Woods and crawl back into bed, pulling the covers up around me. Glenn is fresh in my mind, the way he looked at me with hatred. The last book Ava wrote is the one that killed our relationship. I haven’t found myself in this one yet, and I don’t know which would be more painful: not to appear in it at all, or to find that she still knows everything about me, all the worst bits.

  I hold the book in my hands for a moment. Maybe the opening quote about two sisters is the only part that’s for me. That fragment of a fairy tale reminds me of a different Ava. Not the one who eviscerated me in prose, laying out my every secret fear on the page, but the one from years ago, who crawled into bed with me during thunderstorms. The big sister who told me stories.

  “We are in a boat,” she would whisper. “A boat that looks like a bed. All around us are waves, and underneath the waves is another world.”

  As she spoke, the room around us seemed to melt away and the darkness became black water underneath a starry sky. Beneath the billows, I believed there was a city of coral and pearl, where mermaids swam and strange music rose in bubbles. Ava made it all seem real.

  In my memory, I hear her say, “Hold on to the covers and take a deep breath. We’re going down.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  ZOE

  I DREAM THE POSTS of the bed elongate, stretching up and out, becoming trees. Between their spreading branches is a spider web where the canopy should be. Caught in the middle of it is a girl, Ava, the way she looked at eight when I was only five. Her hair is tangled with the filaments of the web and her eyes are huge, dark holes of panic. The bed shakes, and I know with certain dread that the massive spider is coming for me. I can hear its razor-fanged jaws clicking together.

  I wake with a start and the sense that I really did hear something. My heart is racing, but my limbs are weighed down with the medication I took. I reach out for Andrew, but then I remember, and the pain of it snaps my eyes open.

  I’m alone in this bed.

  My parents’ house is quiet, and there’s no clock in the room. Without my phone, I have no idea what time it is. Then I hear it again, something pattering against my window, like a sudden gust of rain. Pebbles. The sound of pebbles on glass.

  Silence.

  I slide my legs out from under the covers. My head is full of cotton wool and my thoughts come slowly. There aren’t any trees near my window, and nobody knows I’m here.

  No one except Andrew, my parents, and Glenn.

  Somewhere deep inside me a smarter Zoe is telling me to get back in bed, go back to sleep. I don’t know what fresh hell tomorrow will bring, but I need to be rested and ready to fight. But what if it is Glenn?

  All I can think about at this moment is how much Glenn hurt me today and how happy I used to be in his arms. Even if he doesn’t love me, he can’t hate me. If Glenn hates me, then Andrew could hate me. If Andrew hates me, there’s no happiness for me anywhere. I have to fix this.

  If Glenn is throwing something against my window, if he wants to talk to me, I have to find him.

  The bare floor is icy on the soles of my feet, and the cold seems to travel up my
legs. The silver moonlight is tempered by the golden glow of a few errant porch lights. I cross the luminous grid on the floor and look out the window.

  No moisture on the glass, nothing to indicate it was rain or freak hail. No one standing in the street, holding a boom box over his head, ready to declare his love. Not a single smoker on a porch or a stray dog or anything suspicious. Nothing.

  I should go back to bed.

  Instead I open the door of my room and hesitate, listening.

  The world is so quiet, I could believe I imagined the sound. I take one cautious step into the hallway, but everything is still. There’s no light from under my parents’ closed door, and I know they wouldn’t have heard anything anyway. Not if they sleep the way they used to, with eye masks and ear plugs and a white-noise machine. In our house, if you had a bad dream, you were on your own.

  Peering down the stairs into the front hallway, I see nothing, hear nothing.

  The absence of sound echoes in my head like the roar in a seashell. Maybe this is still my dream and earth has been emptied of people. I am alone in the house, alone in the night, alone in the world.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Not pebbles this time, but something singular, rapping on the front door.

  Ava would wake our parents, or call the police. She would make a smart choice and never get carried away by her curiosity.

  I can’t stand playing it safe.

  My bare feet are silent against the stairs, but the tapping stops, as though someone is listening for me. I speed up, unable to stand the suspense of creeping forward with painfully cold feet. On the mat inside the front door, I stop again. There’s no window, no security peephole, no way to know what’s on the other side.

  It could be Glenn, come to apologize or accuse. It could be Andrew, to wrap me in his arms and make everything better.

  It could be Ava, messing with my head. Showing up only after she’s blown my life apart.

  Angry now, I wrench the door open. No one is there. The street is still empty, the row of townhouses on either side as devoid of life as empty sets on a sound stage. A breeze rises, warmer than the inside of my parents’ house, but nothing else moves. All I hear is a faint chirping from my parents’ security system.

  Then, “Lizzie?” The familiar voice, a child’s voice, pierces me with longing. “Lizzie?”

  I step out into the night, my heart pounding. “Emma?”

  She can’t be here; I know she can’t. But I scan the darkness, squinting at the shadows between the houses, terrified that she is out there.

  “Emma!” I shout, but I don’t know where she is, where the voice came from. I take the front steps too quickly, something crunches beneath my foot, I lose my purchase on the path and go sprawling.

  My knee is skinned and the heels of my hands sting. Wincing, I push myself onto my butt and look around frantically. I can’t see anyone, and the voice doesn’t return. Am I going crazy?

  No. I know I heard something.

  This must have been a trick. Just like the text messages and the phone call. Emma is in Texas. Her school would never release her to anyone except me or Andrew. She isn’t here. She isn’t.

  I keep telling myself that, but I am shaking. I press my hands against the pavement to stand, and something cuts into my palm. The stupid thing I tripped on in the first place. My fingers close around it and I glance down at a slim gold wristwatch. Someone’s lost treasure. The face is cracked, probably because I stepped on it and skidded, grinding it into the path as I fell.

  Then the night fills with sound, the shrieking of the security alarm.

  I leap to my feet as if the police are on their way. The sound cuts through me, and I would do anything to stop it.

  Maybe I can figure out how to turn it off. I charge up the front steps, desperate to silence the alarm before God and the neighbors come to strike me down.

  And there are my parents, awake after all, in the doorway. My father squints at me as if he doesn’t recognize me; then he ducks back inside and the alarm cuts off.

  My mother steps out of the way so I can come in, and I notice she is wearing slippers in the same muted gray as her tailored pajamas. Her sleep mask is pushed up like a headband and she looks completely unrumpled and calm. Pajamas, pantsuit, she’s ready to therapize me. “What were you doing, Zoe? It’s two in the morning.”

  “I heard a noise.” I feel as stupid as I know I sound, but I can’t stop. “Someone was knocking on the door.”

  She leans close to me, and I freeze, not sure if she intends to embrace me or offer comfort. Instead she grasps my chin and examines my eyes, checking my pupils. “What did you take?”

  I jerk away. “Nothing!” Allergy pills don’t cause hallucinations. What I heard was real.

  The phone rings, and I can hear my father telling the alarm company it was a mistake. A guest opened the wrong door. A guest. I want to shout I’m your daughter! I want them to believe me, or comfort me, or worry about me.

  Instead my father is already hanging up and shuffling past us toward bed. On the way he says, “I reset the alarm. Stay put until morning.”

  My mother is still examining my face speculatively. “You had a dream?” she offers.

  Oh, she’d love that, wouldn’t she? An easy explanation and another way to analyze me, neatly fitting all my thoughts and worries into labeled cubbyholes. There’s no point in trying to persuade her. No matter what I say, she’ll think it was all in my imagination.

  I open my hand, displaying the broken wristwatch I’ve been clutching. “I stepped on this out front. Is it yours?”

  She picks it up from my palm and holds it at arm’s length, trying to focus without her reading glasses. Finally she shakes her head and drops the watch back into my hand.

  Before turning to follow my father up the stairs, she says dismissively, “It’s broken.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  ZOE

  THE NEXT MORNING I’m slow to wake. I stumble downstairs, and my father tells me we’re going back to the police station.

  My heart gives a hard thump. Maybe it’s over. Maybe I can go home.

  “Is there news?” And just like that, my hope is chased by guilt. There could be bad news, but I still believe Ava is behind her own disappearance.

  My mother sets down her coffee—black, no sugar or cream. “I don’t know. Glenn said we should meet there again this morning.”

  “But why?”

  She looks at my father, who shrugs. Apparently they are letting Glenn dictate “normal behavior” in this situation. Anyone could see my mother and father would rather just head off to work. I can imagine Mom thinking, After all, it’s not like we can do anything for Ava, so why waste time? At least they are pretending to pretend to care.

  I care, but not about Ava. I care about Emma and Andrew. Does that make me a monster too?

  My parents wait with unveiled impatience while I dial Andrew’s cell number from their home phone, but the call goes straight to voice mail. Is he ignoring me? My voice sounds high and strange as I leave a message with my parents’ phone number and address.

  I’ve written his cell number dozens of times on forms at Emma’s preschool and doctor’s office, on the waivers for trampoline parks and playgroup outings. But I always called it from my cell phone, where he’s listed as my “in case of emergency” contact. This feels like an emergency, but my parents are no comfort at all.

  Once I’m settled in the back seat of their car like a kid, all I can think about is hearing Andrew’s voice and talking to Emma. My life in the Lone Star State seems so far away, a fading echo, like the child’s voice I thought I heard last night. I need my own cell phone. I need a way to reach my family in Texas.

  I need to know if Andrew still loves me.

  Before I am fully awake, we are back at the station. Neither Glenn nor Detective Davies is waiting for us, but the officer at reception buzzes us through.

  The watch is in my pocket, and as I foll
ow my parents into the same conference room, I finger the metal. Yesterday Glenn was so angry, blaming me. Last night some part of me hoped he had come to make peace. This morning I know that was just another dream. I can’t expect him to be sorry for the way he treated me. But maybe I can convince him of my innocence.

  Bringing up what happened—the tapping, the voices—will make me sound crazy. It’s not like anyone was hurt or the house was invaded. There’s no upside to saying anything.

  Experience tells me that keeping my mouth shut is the best way to stay out of trouble.

  Before we even sit down, Glenn comes through the door in front of Detective Davies and he’s scowling, his eyebrows drawn down at an angle as sharp as his cheekbones. I can feel the pit open up inside me, sucking down my last vestige of hope.

  But he’s staring back at the detective, practically spitting out the words, “You spent an hour, an hour, grilling me and you have nothing. No new information, no plan, nothing. You’re not even looking for her.”

  With the kind of patience earned by years of dealing with people on their worst day, Detective Davies speaks mildly. “We’re gathering information, talking to everyone who—”

  “You need to talk to her.” Glenn whips back around, and his gaze on me is like a blow to the sternum. “You read her fucking emails.”

  My face grows hot. “I didn’t write those.”

  “Bullshit. You hated Ava.”

  “She hated me,” I say fiercely. “I just wanted to be left alone.”

  “You wanted anything she had. What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing. What did you do? Everyone knows it’s always the husband.”

  Glenn pushes a chair out of the way, and I grab the one nearest me, either to attack him or defend myself, but Detective Davies puts a hand on Glenn’s shoulder and says, “That’s enough.” And whether it’s the authority in his voice or the realization that we are, in fact, in a police station, Glenn shakes free and throws himself into a seat, scowling down at the tabletop.