Once Two Sisters

by Sarah Warburton

  My father pulls out a chair for my mother, and she sits gracefully. They aren’t afraid, I realize with a jolt. They think Ava is fine, wherever she is. They don’t seem concerned that she might be missing. They sit at this conference table like there will be an agenda with a PowerPoint presentation and a coffee break. As though this weren’t a case of us all being here because Glenn is trying to control a situation Ava obviously created.

  But when Detective Davies sits down, that seat becomes the head of the table. And I think he was letting Glenn and me shout at each other just to get a feel for our relationship. Glenn fills me with hot anger, but the detective’s self-control, his calm watchfulness, tempers that rage. In the real world, it doesn’t matter what Glenn thinks of me. Detective Davies is the one who needs to believe I’m innocent.

  I look right at him, relaxing my face and widening my eyes. “They’re checking my phone, right? Trying to see who sent me the texts?”

  He nods without expression. “And they’ve got your laptop and are working with the email provider. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  So Andrew gave them my laptop. Even though he and I agreed we’d cooperate, I can’t help feeling disappointed. And not just in my husband. I should have known a glass or two of wine wouldn’t permanently erase a hard drive.

  My father asks, “What do you need?” I can hear the unspoken ending to his question: from us? He and my mother don’t want to be here. They don’t think it’s necessary. And that makes me feel so lonely, because I know they’d act the same way if I were the one missing. Ava and I were only ever duties to be fulfilled.

  “Actually,” Detective Davies says, “we’ll need to talk to you all again, together and separately. Just to cover our bases. But at this point we don’t have any evidence of foul play.”

  Glenn’s head snaps up. “She’s been missing for four days! She left her phone and her laptop, she missed a meeting with her agent, she didn’t leave a message or—”

  Detective Davies raises a hand as if to hold back Glenn’s torrent of words. “I know. And we are investigating. But her wallet is missing. And there have been no demands for ransom or indications of violence. Our team is committed to finding your wife. But we’re just getting started, and we’ll be looking at a number of scenarios and talking with everyone who knew her. We need a solid understanding of her movements and her state of mind.”

  Her state of mind. I blurt out, “You think she went missing on purpose?”

  “It’s something we have to rule out.” Detective Davies won’t give anything away, but I feel a rush of triumph. “Only a small percentage of disappearances are the result of criminal action.”

  Glenn’s mouth twists. “You think she’s just taking a break? Or that this is some kind of stunt? Ava would never do that.”

  My instinctive snort is covered when my mother speaks, her voice as clear as if she were addressing a lecture hall. “No history of mental health issues, no tendency toward overwhelm, risk-averse … I don’t see it.”

  Dad adds, “She’s always been very confident, but stable. Not prone to reckless or impulsive behavior.”

  And there it is. Ava’s not crazy. Not like me. That stings. My parents know, Glenn knows, what Ava did to me. They just don’t think it matters.

  I have to say something. “What about her books?”

  They all look at me. I can’t meet Glenn’s eyes while I say this. The light glints off my father’s glasses, so I can’t tell what he is thinking. If I look at Detective Davies and see pity or amusement in his face, I will die.

  “She always put something about me in them, made me the murderer or the paranoid detective. Or straight-up killed me. It’s why I took off. It’s been three years since she saw me.”

  My mother’s tone is professionally neutral as she says, “You think Ava is doing this to you?”

  Okay, I know it sounds crazy, but I believe it. And if I back down now, Ava will win all over again. I pull the broken wristwatch out of my pocket, clenching it in my hand. The solid metal is real, proof that something happened last night. “The police know about the text messages and the phone call, they’re checking out those emails, and last night someone tapped on the window and used my daughter’s voice to lure me outside. All I found was this.”

  I toss the watch, and it slides clear to the end of the table, right in front of Glenn and Detective Davies.

  Glenn picks up the watch, stares at it, and the color drains from his face. “Where did you get this?”

  “I told you, I—”

  “This is Ava’s watch.”

  My breath catches in my throat. I should have kept my mouth shut. But then I think of Ava laughing her ass off, and I’m furious again. “Of course it’s Ava’s watch. That bitch is behind this whole thing. She hates me.”

  “You. It’s always about you. Jealous, spiteful—”

  My mother interrupts. “You heard voices? That’s why you went outside?” I know what she’s thinking. My daughter is delusional.

  Detective Davies pulls a pen from his pocket and lifts the watch out of Glenn’s hand. “You recognize this watch as your wife’s?”

  Glenn nods. “There’s a dent on one side. It was always hitting the side of the desk when she typed. She’d take it off, then put it on again. That’s why the clasp is so loose.”

  “When was the last time you saw your wife wearing this watch?”

  “She puts it on every morning.” Glenn shoots me another suspicious glare. “And you just happened to find it in the middle of the night.”

  I grip the edge of the table. “I didn’t just happen to find it. Ava tricked me into coming outside. Ava wanted—”

  Glenn slams his hands on the table. “Enough about Ava. She didn’t do this. She’s missing. And if I find out you had anything to do with it, I’ll fucking strangle you myself.”

  He shoves past Detective Davies, slamming the door to the conference room on his way out.

  As though taking this as a sign that the meeting is adjourned, my mother stands. Looking at Detective Davies, she says, “You’ll contact us with any additional information?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she holds out a hand for my father and extends the other to me. “Time to go, Zoe.”

  * * *

  On the ride home, I stare at the back of my parents’ heads. It’s so strange being an adult under your parents’ care, staying in their house, following their rules. My car, phone, and laptop are all back home in Texas, and my parents don’t even own a television. I know the news is out there, that the world might be hearing something about Ava, about Glenn, about me.

  From the back seat, just like the child my parents still think I am, I say loudly, “I need to stop at a drugstore.” Then to forestall any questions, I add, “It’s that time of the month.”

  “Ahhh,” my mother says, and I can tell she is ascribing some aspect of the way I’ve behaved over the last twenty-four hours to my hormones rather than my missing sister.

  They wait in the car while I sprint inside. I do pick up feminine products to flank my real purchases. Moving on instinct, I grab a top-up card for a cell phone and an extra pair of socks. At the front register I ask the clerk for a disposable cell phone.

  When I am settled again in the back seat, I ask casually, “So you’ll both be going in to work this afternoon?”

  Silence. I can picture the thought balloons rising over the backs of their heads. Staying at home makes no sense. There is work to be done, and no reason not to do it. I have to believe, on some level, that my parents realize their own analytical reactions aren’t normal. They just don’t care.

  “We were discussing it,” my father admits.

  My mother half turns in her seat. “You don’t need us at home. The police don’t need us. And we’ll have our phones turned on.”

  Dad adds, “Unless …”

  She nods. “Or at least we’ll check them for messages. We can get work done and be home this evening.”

/>   Excellent. I nod as if this makes total sense. “I don’t guess you know what Glenn will be doing?”

  My mother almost raises an eyebrow. Despite the silver in her hair, her skin is as smooth as if she’s never frowned or worried or been afraid. “Zoe, I expect you to refrain from fixating on Glenn’s animosity toward you. These stressful circumstances have affected him, but neither his scapegoating of you nor your self-victimization are productive.”

  Reflexively I slouch down in the seat, feeling completely shitty. Even though I want my parents to go to work—it’s part of my plan—I feel so alone right now. I clutch the plastic drugstore bag to my chest. “Yeah, all right.”

  She turns around to face the windshield, and I can feel the pressure building inside me. I want to kick the back of her seat, throw myself from the moving car, anything to let out the pain and rage. But I’m not an angry teenager anymore.

  I lean my head against the window and watch the world flash by. Once my parents are gone, I’ll prove to everyone that Ava’s perfectly fine. Glenn and my parents and Detective Davies will understand she’s the bad girl.

  And I’ll go back to Texas and never see any of these assholes again.

  CHAPTER

  14

  AVA

  POISED FOR A second on that staircase, I inhale as if it might be my last breath. Then the woman gives me another push, and I have to move my feet to keep from plummeting to my death. Taking the stairs too quickly, almost tripping, I’m starting to realize where I am.

  When I’m not actually writing or promoting my books, I do research for them—digging through archives, interviewing professionals, and scouting locations. Locations like this abandoned missile silo in West Virginia.

  Even though I only saw it online, in person I recognize the inspiration for my most recently planned novel. I can picture the stairway that continues behind that vault door. I know it leads to a room built around a central concrete column. Beyond that is a tube-shaped metal hallway and the missile chamber, a drop of over one hundred fifty feet encircled by rusted-out metal walkways and scaffolding.

  I’m light-headed with exhaustion and fear, unable to process the reality of stepping into the very nightmare I’d intended to use as a fictional backdrop. The man in the lab coat struggles to type in a code on a security pad, then wrenches the wheel to crank the door open. The sound cuts through the fog in my head. Even if this is a dream, I’m not going to stand here waiting to be forced to my death.

  I lurch at the man wrestling with the door. Inside my slow, sluggish body, my heart is beating like a panicked bird in a cage. With all my strength, I slam my head into his.

  The world explodes in colored lights as we stagger apart. Something slams into my side, and I fall under a heavy weight. My stomach churns with the pain in my head, and someone’s elbow is in my ribs. Beckett.

  The woman’s hiking boots are in my peripheral vision as I struggle to untangle myself. She says, “That was stupid, Ava. I expected better.”

  Beckett rolls away and lies gasping next to me.

  She sets one foot gently upon my throat. I can feel my pulse trembling against the thick rubber of her sole. She speaks again. “Phil, pull it together and open the damn door.”

  I hear Phil scrambling and the grating of metal and realize my eyes are closed tightly. My whole body is rigid, attuned to the single point where her full weight could crush my windpipe, but I’m not going to give this petty tyrant the satisfaction of seeing my fear. I open my eyes. Do it, I think, I dare you.

  She’s staring right at me. Her lips twitch as though she’s amused or even proud that I’m looking her in the eye. Softly she whispers, “Just relax. This isn’t about you.”

  But I’m the one on the ground, her foot on me filling my nostrils with the scent of mud and leather, unable to speak, barely able to blink.

  There’s a rush of air and a scraping sound, and Phil says, “Cristina? It’s open.”

  Cristina, that’s the name of this militant woodwitch, and as I look up the length of Cristina’s khaki-clad leg, all the way to her cold brown eyes, I stop breathing for a moment. No zip ties. No drugs. Not even a cattle prod. But I am still helpless.

  “Cristina?” Phil asks again.

  I could swear I see in her assessing gaze the same contempt Beckett inspires in me. But all she says is “Get the other one in first.”

  I don’t move at all. I don’t look away, even as there are more sounds of scuffling and moaning. Beckett says, “My ankle. When she pushed me, my ankle got fucked.”

  That’s what happened—I slammed into Phil, then Cristina pushed Beckett into me, and now Phil’s taking Beckett back into the bowels of the missile silo while I lie here helplessly, my body vibrating with my need to escape.

  Cristina raises her foot a millimeter. She lets the hiking boot hover, and I can’t help it. I flinch.

  “Remember this.” Her voice is soft. “Get up. Slowly. We have work to do.”

  She steps back and watches as I awkwardly push myself to my feet, unsure if I can even stand anymore. It’s not only the dryness in my mouth that makes it hard to swallow. Defeat is bitter as a poisoned apple.

  Through the door, there is another staircase, a narrow metal one, leading into the depths of a concrete shaft. At the bottom I can see another blast door, this one standing open, offering the only light. These steps are so steep that slipping now might kill me, but maybe that would be better than what we’re walking toward. The concrete walls swallow the sound of our feet on the metal. Somewhere I can hear small noises like pebbles or drops of water echoing, but I can’t tell if I’m just hallucinating them. Surely no sound could penetrate this far under the earth.

  There is no going back. But when my feet reach the concrete floor, I balk again.

  Cristina’s hand clamps down on my shoulder. “Keep going. You’re almost there.”

  “Where?” Anything could be behind that door—a torture device, a slaughterhouse, Bluebeard’s bloody chamber—but my mouth is too dry and my spirits too low to form those words.

  Footsteps approach from the room ahead of us, the sound dying almost as soon as it’s heard. Phil stands in the doorway. “Need any help?”

  He has a bottle of water in his hand. I can’t stop looking at it. My brain is shutting down. That water is the only thing I can see. More than escape, more than life, I want it. It’s been a day since I had anything to drink, and I’d gone another day without water before that. I didn’t realize how much my exhaustion, my fear, was actually my body dying of thirst. In the distance, Cristina and Phil are talking, but all my attention is on that bottle.

  “He’s already in place?”

  “All set.”

  Cristina gives me another little shove and I’m closer to the water, my hand reaching out for it. Phil pulls it back, then looks past me.

  Cristina’s voice, almost amused, comes from behind my shoulder. “Go ahead and take her through. I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble. I’ll deal with the doors.”

  I can tell Phil’s looking at me, but I can’t tear my gaze from the water. Now I know how cheaply I will sell myself—I will grovel, beg, whore myself for a few drops. Anything I might say or think is nothing next to this. I am just an animal after all.

  With a step backward, Phil tells me, “You can have it if you follow me. Come on, now.”

  So I do follow him through the door, even though I don’t want to, and into a room that opens around me in smooth curves around a central concrete column flared at the top like a giant funnel. But I can’t really look at it, can’t really see anything except that bottle of water, catching the light.

  When Phil stops walking, I reach my hand out again, but he shakes his head and motions me forward. “Over there.”

  I don’t want to move even a single step away from the water, but then I smell something amazing. Fried, meaty, and rich, making even my dehydrated mouth salivate. My head snaps around, and I see Beckett sitting on the floor against
one curved wall. Not just sitting. Eating. His zip ties are gone and he’s cramming fried chicken into his mouth with grunts.

  Two steps and my own hands are in the bucket, my mouth full of greasy meat. Even if it were poisoned or rotten, I’d still be eating it. I could weep with relief. The entire world is this—crunching and snuffling and almost choking in my haste to get the food into my system.

  Too soon the chicken is nothing but bones, bones we suck until they are smooth and clean as marble, until my stomach hurts, but there’s water, an entire flat of bottles. I fall on my knees, fumbling with my slick fingers to twist off the plastic caps. I drink one and then another, even though my stomach clenches with pain. I’ve been dimly aware of Beckett, his hands groping for chicken alongside mine, the sound of him gulping water, but now I raise my head and look at him. He’s standing, sweaty and pale. He must have eaten even more than I did, and just as quickly.

  “Sit down,” I tell him. “Let it settle.” Because we can’t get sick. Our bodies need this food. We need to stay strong.

  I press my back against the wall, breathing slowly, willing the food and water to stay down. I force myself to catalog every detail of our surroundings, even though my heart is pounding. The room is circular, with track lights running around the joint between wall and ceiling. The door we came through is now shut and sealed. Against one wall is a broad table with two laptop computers, an external hard drive, file cabinets, and empty shelving.

  Beckett and I have scant assets—the remains of the flat of water, a single folding chair, and a paper bucket full of bones.

  Phil is struggling with something affixed to one wall, and Cristina goes to help him. Together they pull a metal scissor gate free and drag it, screeching, across the room. Another cage.