Once Two Sisters

by Sarah Warburton

  He doesn’t answer, so I start talking, laying one brick on top of another, watching to see if he’s following.

  First, the ways the entrance to the missile silo seemed familiar. Second, the location—only hours away from home. I don’t know how long I was unconscious in that van, but it wasn’t more than half a day. Then my parents’ names, and the phrase reverse-engineering SERE. How I had been researching military interrogation techniques for a book and came across a name I recognized: James Spiegler, a colleague of my parents’. He’d been involved in developing a new version of SERE, one that relied more on psychological torture than physical torture.

  I realized how little I knew about what my parents actually do, and instead of researching the novel, I turned my attention to researching them. I found a picture of them with Spiegler in front of a cabin in the woods, one that could be this one. One I discovered had been built over an abandoned missile site. I found my father’s name with Spiegler’s and other authors’ on an article about psychological manipulation and reverse-engineering SERE.

  Now I feel like someone has spilled a box of puzzle pieces on the table and I’m holding only five in my hand.

  Beckett is unnaturally quiet, his eyes wide, but I can tell his brain is sifting through the information. “What you’re saying—it fits with the lab coats and clipboard, the talk of getting results, but it’s crazy.”

  He trails off, and I wonder if he’s doing the same thing I’m doing, assessing my parents’ possible involvement. Then he shakes his head. “Whatever’s going on, it’s got nothing to do with me.”

  I thought he might be my ally, but we can’t break the damn barrier, we can’t escape, and he can’t even stand to work with me to find answers. Angry fear floods me and I snap, “Because this is all my fault? Just like everything else? I’m the reason you’re a failure?”

  And for once he’s silent. I stalk over to the wall and lie down facing it, overwhelmed by fatigue. I can hear Beckett moving, but I’m not going to look.

  I’m no longer hungry or thirsty, but my mind is spinning. I think there’s no way I’ll fall asleep, but my eyes won’t stay open. Somewhere in the distance water is dripping.

  I struggle to stay awake, but I’m drowning.

  And there are monsters in the dark.

  CHAPTER

  16

  ZOE

  MY MOM AND dad finally leave me alone in the house. And I’ve never been so grateful to have the kind of parents who think more about their work than their daughters. I can imagine their own relief at dropping the pretense of being worried and caring, almost smiling as they drive back to the professional lives that define them, even at the risk of appearing callous.

  Even with Ava missing.

  Alone, I take a few minutes to explore this strange house full of familiar objects. The old house was bigger, suburban, but even then my parents chose modern, uncomfortable furniture and abstract art that was different from anything our neighbors had. I see the canvas covered with black, gray, and red slashes that hung above our fireplace instead of a family portrait. This townhouse doesn’t have a fireplace, but that hostile picture still has a place of pride, centered above a black leather chaise lounge that looks like a refugee from a therapist’s office.

  Fitting.

  Next to an end table where I used to set my drink without a coaster, there’s an unfamiliar floor lamp, stainless steel, with a menacing arc, looming over a matched set of club chairs, so tight and sleek it’s impossible to imagine sitting on one. In another corner, placed almost like an afterthought, is an abstract sculpture with angular metal spikes shooting out like an explosion, but without any symmetric beauty.

  Everywhere I look, my eyes find something unwelcoming and discordant. No cozy chairs for snuggling up and reading to a child. No personal photos of family time or charming mementos from trips abroad.

  That’s the thing that makes this feel like my childhood home. The overwhelming sense that I’m not welcome.

  I have to find Ava and get the hell out of here.

  In the kitchen, I find a paring knife and tear into the packaging of my newly purchased cell phone, tossing the instructions aside in my haste to plug it in. But I can’t wait for it to charge up or power on. This house is creeping me out.

  I call Andrew again from the landline, and again it goes straight to voice mail. The little flutter of anxiety I felt this morning is pounding against my rib cage now, the steady beat of panic.

  He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t love you. He doesn’t love you.

  I run upstairs to my bedroom, dump out all the detritus from my shoulder bag, and pack it lightly with the pair of socks and my wallet. I race back downstairs to check the phone. The battery’s at seventy percent, and that’s good enough. Hello, internet.

  I’ll start by finding out where Ava lives now. The last time I saw her, she was in Delaware, but I know she moved. During one of our awkward phone check-ins, my mother let that slip. Something “closer to Glenn’s work.” Translation? The greater DC area.

  I type in her full name, then cross-check with Glenn’s, and bingo. There’s an address right here in Arlington. Closer to our parents than I would have guessed. Close enough for me to drop by. And there’s a home number, so hopefully I can make sure the house is empty when I get there.

  I am sick of all this drama. The sooner I prove Ava’s alive and well and behind her own “disappearance,” the sooner I can go home.

  Of course, I’ll need transportation. After the agony of waiting for an app to install, I find a freelance driver just ten minutes away. While I wait for him to arrive, I call Ava’s home number, but thankfully no one picks up. Either Glenn is not at home or he doesn’t answer calls from numbers he doesn’t know. Either way, I’m going to risk it.

  The ride is uneventful, the driver hip and chatty. He doesn’t mind my monosyllabic responses. I’m buzzing with anticipation, the same kind of pre-adrenaline rush I used to get when I snuck out at night. We leave the tidy townhomes that line the streets where my parents live and enter a straight-up suburb. Large homes, but different from the sprawling ones in Texas. These are definitely East Coast homes, Colonials and Victorians and Georgians. And I know that even the deceptively small ones command a high price. This is a neighborhood for politicians and power brokers, bankers and best-selling authors.

  I get out on the sidewalk and the car speeds away. Now I am free to stare. Looking at Ava and Glenn’s home, I feel like she’s cheated my expectations again. Ava bought this house after I disappeared, a new house for a new marriage. It should have been a fairy-tale mansion for a modern-day Snow Queen, something imposing and imaginative, entirely unique.

  This is just a generically pretty, Victorian-style home with gabled windows and curlicues around the porch. Not old. Not special. It could belong to anyone. In fact, it’s got the same sort of look as all the other houses on the street. Same builder using a master plan, changing it just enough to make each house slightly different from its neighbors.

  Like most modern neighborhoods built for a certain income bracket, there’s no sign of life during business hours. Adults are at work, children are at school or day care, it’s very quiet. I’m the only thing that doesn’t belong.

  Time to quit stalling. I square my shoulders. Obviously, I can’t just march up the front steps and beat down the door, but I can see if anyone’s home. And if it’s Glenn? That thought doesn’t stop me. I’m not finished trying to persuade him of my innocence, and if that doesn’t work, I’m not finished fighting with him either.

  I walk with faux confidence up the front walk, up the three little steps, and rap briskly on the door, my heart booming. Nothing. I press the doorbell, a few seconds longer than usual. I can hear the distant chime, but no other sound. The house is empty.

  My first feeling is rising triumph. If the police thought Ava was kidnapped, they’d be monitoring the house or staking it out or something. They must really believe she’s doing this herself. A pu
blicity stunt. Typical Ava Hallett.

  Then I get the neck-crawling sensation that someone is watching me, but not from inside the house. I step away from the door and shrug, conscious that I may have an audience, but when I turn around, the streets and yards are still deserted. Each house has windows shaded by white curtains, giving them blank, unassuming gazes.

  I don’t waste any more time at the front. I need to shake this feeling. Out here in the open, I’m a mouse in a grassy field with a hawk circling overhead. Walking briskly, like someone with a job to do, I skirt around the corner and down the side of the house, grateful for the size of the yard and the privacy afforded by the lush evergreens planted between Ava’s property and her neighbor’s. In Texas, our yards are divided by pine fences mandated by our HOAs. The trees are prettier, and with a pang I imagine Emma playing like Ava and I used to, using a fallen pine branch as a make-believe broom or filling the lower branches of the trees with our dolls.

  If I were still at home, Emma would be at school. I might be pushing a loaded shopping cart through the produce aisles at H-E-B or accepting a sample of chicken salad. Maybe I’d be at home with the washing machine and the dishwasher both running while I wiped down the counters and swept the kitchen floor. Or I could be playing hooky with Felicia over a cup of coffee and a kolache, the soft yeasted roll giving way around sharp sausage-and-jalapeño filling almost as spicy as our gossip. If I want another morning like that, I will have to be strong now.

  There’s a sun-room jutting from the back of the house, a kind of glassed-in porch. That door is also locked. I take a step back to scan the windows, a little surprised to be standing here, battling a growing sense of despair. All the ground-floor windows are shut tight. Then I notice it. A dormer window set in a corner, facing east. Open. And somehow I know that has to be Ava’s study.

  Ava always used to open a window in her room. Our parents hated it. They complained that she was wasting money and electricity, making the AC and heat inefficient. That even with screens, insects were getting inside. That it was an unnecessary security risk. What if it rained while we were out, and her floor and curtains got wet and rotted? Once my father even unearthed a hammer and nails from somewhere and nailed the window shut. Ava’s fingers were red and raw the next morning, and I knew she’d gotten that window open again.

  Now that she has her own house, I bet her window is never shut.

  Even if there is an alarm system, it can’t be armed without every window closed. All I have to do is get up there. But I don’t see a ladder or step stool around, and the pine trees are too far away from the house. Even if they weren’t, they don’t look easy to climb. I walk across the yard, considering. There’s no way to spider-crawl up the wall, and when I step closer and give the drainpipe a shake, I can see it’s too flimsy to be any use either.

  I have almost given up when I turn the corner to the side yard. There, someone—surely not Ava—has planted a little herb garden with brick paths in a simplified, miniature labyrinth. In addition to the plants, all dulled by the end of summer, there’s a sundial, an opalescent gazing globe on a stone pedestal, and a wrought-iron bench big enough for two people to sit.

  Tall enough, I think, for my purposes, if I stand it on end.

  This is reckless, crazy, the kind of thing I thought I’d never do again. I’m a nice suburban mom now, not some loony who uses garden furniture to break into a house. I almost give up. Then I remember. If I don’t do this, if I don’t find Ava, I’m going to lose Emma and Andrew. If I can’t clear my name, that life is lost to me.

  It’s hell to drag the bench over to the sun-room, and I leave deep gouges in the lawn. There’s not going to be any way to cover that up. My lungs and legs are desperate for oxygen, and my fingers are on fire with the weighted edge of the iron as it cuts into my hands. I have to be careful at the end. I want to prop the bench against the house, but if I slip, if it veers too close to one of the huge glass windows, this could be a very literal break-in.

  When I think it’s mostly stable, I take a deep breath and brace my hands against the wood of the house, trying to make myself as light as possible. My stomach feels hollow with fear. If I slip, I could kill myself. Worse, I could knock myself unconscious and wake when Glenn pokes me with his foot or when the police show up. My insides cringe at their imagined contempt.

  As I stretch upward and start to lever myself off the second armrest, I feel the bench shift, and I leap. For a moment I’m not on the bench or the house, but then the roof of the sun-room catches me under my arms, and I lean into it.

  I refuse to fall.

  Pushing and scrabbling through sheer force of will, I am on the broad roof of the sun-room. Below me the bench has fallen on its back, thankfully not through a pane of glass. As I lie on my belly, I am close enough to touch the open window just in front of me. My whole body is shaking.

  The gray shingles are rough and warm under my hands and cheek. I push up a little, aware of how high this is. Anyone could see me. Is someone calling the cops right now? I reach out for the windowsill and scramble through.

  As my feet scrape across a table set right beneath the window, I knock books to the floor. I land heavily, loudly, and hold my breath for a beat, waiting for someone to come storming up the steps and find me. But the house is silent. My heart is pounding so heavily it’s hard to believe it makes no sound.

  I was right—this is Ava’s study. There’s a straight-backed chair in front of the table, so she must use it as her desk. No drawers to search, but bookcases line three of the four walls. The fourth has a door and Ava’s mood board. At least, that’s what I guess it is. From floor to ceiling the wall beside the door is covered with bits of paper—newsprint clippings, postcards, photos, notes written in Ava’s bold, spiky script—and a few are even affixed above the door itself.

  I haven’t seen her handwriting in years, but it’s burned into my memory. The open window, the familiar shapes of each letter—it’s strange to consider that some of the things I knew about her are still true. People think sisters know each other better than anyone else. Ava and I don’t have that kind of relationship, but we aren’t strangers either. Seeing her handwriting now gives me a jolt of recognition, followed by a gut-tingling sense of foreboding.

  Looking around the study, I know I shouldn’t touch anything. If by some remote chance Ava really is missing and they dust for prints in here, I don’t need them finding mine.

  A quick dig through my shoulder bag yields those new socks I bought at the drugstore. I didn’t let myself admit it earlier, but I was preparing for this moment. I will do whatever it takes to get my life back. Feeling ridiculous, I pull them over my hands and wipe down every incriminating surface. Just to be safe, I’ll leave these makeshift “gloves” on while I snoop around.

  Straining my ears, all I hear is the eerie silence of an empty house.

  I pick up the books I knocked onto the floor, but they are nothing special. Two oversized paperbacks marked as “Advance Readers,” neither of them by Ava, and an Audubon field guide to the birds of North America. I drop them back onto the desk. There’s no computer here, and I wonder if the police have taken it.

  I approach the wall covered with notes. Ava was always collecting bits of paper, even as a child. Some she tore from magazines or envelopes, some she covered with words or phrases in her own scrawled handwriting, or little sketches, unintelligible to anyone but her.

  Seeing this fills me with resentment. I don’t know why I come across as the crazy one. From a distance, this wall has a freaky Beautiful Mind vibe. In addition to the torn paper and Ava’s black writing, there’s the impression of the colors she chose: forest greens, Valentine reds, and rich gold tones. Once I get closer, I see things grouped together that don’t make sense.

  It’s almost like two sections. The lower part is blanketed with a swirl of words and pictures that seem to go with Bloody Heart, Wild Woods. I see snippets of fairy tales, pictures by Arthur Rackham and Trina Schart
Hyman, and bits of sheet music for old folk songs. The top half is less colorful, mostly black-and-white printed text and handwritten notes. I step closer and read “a psychiatrist, a lie-detector expert, and a hypnotist,” “Mindszenty,” “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape,” and “MK-ULTRA.”

  There’s even a folded piece of paper that looks like a blueprint, accompanied by a word—“Spiegler”—in Ava’s handwriting. I put that one into my bag. It’s the only thing that remotely resembles a location. Maybe that’s where she’s holed up.

  As for the rest, I wonder if it’s research for her next novel—or has my sister become a tinfoil-hat conspiracy theorist? I pull my cell phone out of my bag and fumble to find the camera on it. The screen flickers, and then my cheap phone starts rebooting. Fuck. I turn back to Ava’s desk, and there is a pen on top. Instead of trying to figure out where the hell she puts all the paper and things a normal person would keep in a desk drawer, since this table doesn’t have any, I open up one of the advance reading copies and tear out the back page. The violent ripping echoes through the house and makes my pulse race.

  I copy the strange words and tuck the scrap of paper into my bag.

  Being here has a weirdly familiar feel. I used to babysit as a teen, and it was impossible to resist the temptation to see how people arranged their books, what clothes they had in the closet, what was hidden in their drawers. Now that I have a chance to dig into Ava’s life, I can’t stop, even though I’m running on adrenaline and nerves.

  I have to check out the rest of the house.

  Stepping out into the hallway, I’m hyper-aware of every sound.

  Next to Ava’s study is a storage space with dusty boxes, trunks, and old furniture. On the other side of the staircase leading down to the first floor is a guest bedroom, anonymous and boring. I ignore it and the little closet next to it. Downstairs, there is a room that’s slightly raised, just two steps above the ground floor.