The Good Sister

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  She sits up straighter and picks up the backpack resting on the seat beside her.

  When Carley asked Angel why she needed to bring her laptop along, she wrote, cuz i dont have mine here and i want to show u something online so whatevr u do dont 4get

  Carley was about to point out that just a phone with Internet access would be sufficient when she remembered that her own phone is still hidden wherever Dad stashed it. She didn’t want to get into explaining that to Angel, so she wrote back, don’t worry i wont 4get

  Her heart beats a little faster as she spots Sacred Sisters up ahead.

  Angel was the one who suggested meeting at the school.

  i wasnt sure where u live, qp, she wrote, and you weren’t online this morning so i came here to see if i could figure out a way to trace u. 2 bad the place is deserted 2day

  well duh, Carley typed back. its saturdayyyyy

  yeah but doors r unlocked so get ur butt over hereeeeeeeeee

  She promised to meet Angel there as soon as possible.

  Now, Carley pulls the cord to request the bus stop, which is up past the school, on the far corner. As the bus slows, she notices that the sign in front of Sacred Sisters has been altered.

  “42ND ANNUAL SPRING FLING—CANCELED.”

  Beneath that is a new line: “GRIEF COUNSELORS ON HAND SUNDAY 2–4 P.M.”

  It’s Johnny’s job to change the sign. Maybe he’s here today. Suddenly, she wishes she had taken some extra time to brush her hair.

  But then she reminds herself that this isn’t about Johnny.

  It’s about Angel.

  Smiling with anticipation, Carley stands and makes her way to the front of the bus.

  Decked out as an enchanted garden, the school gym has gone from festive to forlorn, giving off an air of abandonment—like a girl who got all dressed up for the big dance, only to be stood up by her date.

  Ruthie.

  That night, the night before she died, Angel watched in her bedroom as she fixed her hair and put on a shiny pink dress.

  “Ruthie! That’s a fairy princess dress! Where did you get it?”

  “At Goodwill. It had a tear in the seam, so it was practically free, and I fixed it. You can’t see it, can you? It doesn’t smell like mothballs, does it?”

  “What do mothballs smell like?”

  The dress did smell funny, but Angel didn’t want to hurt her feelings. People were always hurting her feelings. She talked about that a lot. Sometimes she came home from school and cried because of the way the other girls treated her.

  It was so nice to see Ruthie happy for a change that night, with pink cheeks and sparkly eyes. Her orangey-red hair was pulled back from her face with a pink ribbon.

  She was going to a dance. With a boy.

  “Who is he, Ruthie?”

  “Do you remember when the florist rang the doorbell and gave me that beautiful bouquet of pink flowers a few weeks ago?”

  “The ones that smelled nice?”

  “Yes. He’s the one who sent them.”

  “Where are the flowers? Did they die?”

  “No.” Ruthie’s glow faded. “They . . . they’re gone. But I saved a few of the petals.”

  “Are you in love with the boy, Ruthie? Are you going to marry him so that he can be my dad and you can be my mom?”

  “You’re silly!” Ruthie laughed, and she picked up Angel and they spun around and around so that the skirt of her dress swished and swirled.

  “Ruthie! What are you doing?”

  “Dancing!” It was so good to hear her laughing that Angel didn’t even care that much about being dizzy.

  “Listen, you can’t tell Mother and Father you saw me dressed up like this, okay? I’m going to sneak out of the house for a little while.”

  “How will you get out?”

  “Through the window.”

  “How will you get back in?”

  Ruthie smiled and walked over to the window that overlooked the roof of the mudroom. “The latch is broken, and it goes up and down really easily from the outside. Want to see?”

  She climbed out the window, closed it, and then opened it again a moment later.

  Before climbing back inside, she held up a clear plastic box that was stashed outside on the roof.

  “What is that?” Angel asked.

  “It’s my corsage for the dance. The florist delivered it right after school yesterday, and I hid it out here so that Mother won’t smell it. Please don’t tell, okay?”

  “I won’t tell.”

  “You’re my little angel . . .”

  Eyes flying open at the distinct sound of a distant door opening and closing, Angel is back to reality, standing in the middle of a shadowy school gym decorated as an enchanted garden. This is what it must have looked like that night . . .

  Somewhere in the school, closer to the gym, another door opens and closes. Footsteps echo in the deserted hallway; not the purposeful stride of a teacher or counselor paying a weekend visit to the workplace, but the uncertain steps of a teenage girl who ventured far from home, all alone, to meet a friend.

  Just like Ruthie did that night.

  And—like Ruthie—Carley Archer won’t be finding a fairy-tale ending when she gets here.

  Having found that Angel was right about the school doors being unlocked, Carley walks slowly down the halls with her computer bag over her shoulder. Angel had said she’d be in the gym; she was going to shoot some baskets while she waited.

  Unnerved by the shadowy, deserted corridors, Carley listens for the sound of a basketball thumping.

  She hears nothing but her own footsteps and steady breathing.

  “Angel?” she calls.

  No reply.

  She stops walking, wondering what to do.

  Maybe Angel got kicked out while Carley was on the bus trying to get here.

  Maybe she’s been trying to message about where to meet instead.

  Carley doesn’t have her phone, but she does have the laptop. If she can use it to get online, she can get in touch with Angel that way.

  Carley turns and starts back down the hall.

  Then a voice, a female voice, echoes from the direction of the gym, stopping her in her tracks. “Carley?”

  “Yes!” Relieved, she calls back, “Angel?”

  “Yes.”

  Carley hurries in that direction, grinning.

  When she reaches the gym, though, she hesitates. The doors are propped open, but the interior is dark.

  “Angel?” she calls again.

  “In here.”

  Carley takes a few steps over the threshold and immediately comprehends why Angel wasn’t playing basketball in here.

  The gym is decorated for Spring Fling. Oversized, glitter-painted flowers, trees, and picket fences line the perimeter. Papier-mâché butterflies and bumblebees are suspended from the ceiling, motionless amid tissue paper clouds.

  “Angel?”

  “Hi, Carley.”

  The voice is behind her, so close to her ear that she gasps and whirls around.

  But it isn’t Angel standing there.

  For a split second, she’s terrified to see a figure looming behind her.

  Then her eyes adjust and she recognizes the face.

  Her first thought is that she’s going to get into trouble for sneaking into the school on a Saturday.

  Her next is that for some reason, Sister Linda isn’t wearing her habit, dressed instead in an old-fashioned, full-skirted pink taffeta dress covered in brownish stains, and a pink ribbon tied around straggly ginger-colored hair.

  Entry from the marble notebook

  Friday, March 7, 1986

  All day, I was so worried something would go wrong and I wouldn’t get to go driving, or he wouldn’t be there if I did.
>
  As soon as the bell rang, I ran straight home from school and I tied a pink ribbon into my hair. It wasn’t ribbon, really. It was seam binding from Mother’s sewing box, but it was all I could find.

  I never wear pink. I’ve always thought the color clashed with my hair, but when Adrian saw the ribbon in it, he told me I looked pretty. He asked where I was going and I said out driving with Father. Father heard and got this pleased smile on his face, as if I’d tried to look special for him. It made me sick.

  Then Adrian tripped over his shoelace and fell down and started crying, and Mother freaked out the way she always does when he gets hurt, and Father yelled at him and said boys don’t cry.

  “I wish I were a girl,” Adrian said, while I was bandaging his scraped knee, “because then I could cry all I wanted to.”

  I told him I’m glad he’s not a girl. He asked why, and I just said, “Because then you wouldn’t be you.”

  The truth is that it’s because I don’t have to worry, ever, that Father might do to him what he does to me. He never gives Adrian the time of day because he only likes girls. Even tiny girls. I’ve seen him staring at the little four-year-old who lives a few doors down, and I shudder at what he’s probably thinking.

  So we went out driving and I was such a nervous wreck that while I was parallel parking, I hit the bumper of the car in back of me. Luckily, there was no damage.

  Finally Mike and his friends came out of the school. When he saw me, he got this huge smile on his face and they all came walking toward the car. Father made some comment to me about what a friendly group of kids they are.

  Mike must have been pretty sure I was going to say yes about the dance, because he already had a note written and folded up with my name on it. He threw it onto my lap when Father wasn’t looking. Here it is.

  Separate sheet of paper taped into the marble notebook

  Dear Ruthie:

  I’m so happy you want to go to Spring Fling with me!

  I can tell your dad is kind of strict, and I’ve heard your mom is, too, so how about if I just meet you at the dance? Wear a pink dress for me, please, and the special gift that will be delivered on Friday afternoon after school. I’ll be waiting for you by the punch bowl in the gym.

  Love,

  Mike

  Chapter 16

  Jen paces the length of the living room again, past her parents and Frankie, all of them grim-faced and perched on the very edges of their chair cushions, as if to ensure they’ll be able to jump up at the slightest bit of good news . . .

  Or bad.

  She can hear Thad on the phone in the front hall, talking to the police. They’ve been in contact for the past few hours, but there’s absolutely nothing to go on—and no reason, according to the authorities, to assume the worst.

  Frankie isn’t certain how long the girls had been gone before she came out of the bathroom after showering and blow-drying her hair. She assumed they were still in their rooms. When Amy Janicek called to ask Carley about babysitting tonight, Frankie answered the phone, went through the house hollering for Carley, and found the note she’d left on the counter.

  Hearing Thad hang up the phone, Jen goes out into the hall. “Anything new?”

  He shakes his head and opens his arms. She steps into them and rests her head against his chest.

  “I can’t believe I took away the girls’ phones,” she tells him. “I keep thinking that if they had their phones, they’d call. Or at least we could trace them with the built-in GPS systems.”

  “Emma’s probably had hers disabled for months now anyway. Plus, I’m the one who stashed the phones in the car trunk, Jen. If I’d left them in the house, they would have found them.”

  “That was the point of not hiding them in the house. Emma snoops.”

  “I know, but . . .”

  “Don’t beat yourself up, Thad.”

  “You either.”

  They’ve been doing their best all afternoon to assuage each other’s guilt . . .

  Just as Jen had tried to do with Debbie.

  Debbie . . .

  The train of thought starts careening, and once again, Jen’s recent nightmare pops into her head—the one about the casket at the funeral home. It’s been coming back to her all afternoon, ever since she found out her girls were missing. Try as she might to banish it, the image of Carley in a coffin flits around in the back of her mind like a vengeful ghost.

  Thad sighs. “I keep wondering why Carley, at least, hasn’t found a phone somewhere and called us anyway.”

  “Me too.”

  It isn’t like their responsible firstborn to let them worry like this.

  “Maybe she’s doing it on purpose,” Thad suggests. “Letting us worry, to punish us for punishing her.”

  “I think she was over that.”

  “I don’t know. She was pretty furious last night.”

  “I know, but when I saw her in her room earlier . . . I got the feeling that all was forgiven.”

  Seeing the look on Thad’s face, Jen knows he thinks she misread Carley.

  Or maybe it was an act, all of it; the subdued attitude, the gratitude for the wifi password, even the hug. Maybe Carley was still, deep down inside, steeped in resentment toward her mother.

  Just like Nicki was.

  Jen hasn’t allowed herself much time to process what Debbie told her about the suicide note. But whenever her thoughts settle on it, she finds it hard to believe Nicki could harbor such deep-seated anger without ever betraying to her mother the slightest inkling of disapproval.

  Maybe Debbie just couldn’t admit the truth to Jen, or even to herself.

  Now Mike Morino is in the same boat. Was he aware that his daughter, too, was distraught over his extramarital affair?

  But Taylor’s parents were already divorced—had been for years, according to Marie. Would she be so upset about his cheating on his third wife that she’d end her life over it?

  Nothing makes sense—but right now, Jen is mainly concerned with her own daughters.

  Thad stiffens suddenly and she looks up to see him staring over her shoulder, at the door. She turns her head just in time to see it open.

  Emma is standing on the threshold.

  “They’re back!” she screams, grabbing Emma and holding her tight, releasing a sob of relief into her daughter’s hair. “Where have you been?”

  Emma’s hair smells of stale cigarette smoke.

  Jen lifts her head, turns to look around for Carley, certain she’ll see her here, quietly pleased at having managed to deliver her sister safely home from whatever decadence . . .

  But Carley isn’t here.

  “Where’s your sister?” Thad is asking Emma. “Where’s Carley?”

  “How should I know?”

  “What do you mean? She went out looking for you!”

  “Well, she didn’t find me, did she?” Emma asks with a bratty little shrug, and Jen clenches her hand against her side to keep from reaching out to shake her daughter.

  “When was the last time you saw Carley?” she asks, fighting to keep her tone even. “When?”

  Emma’s gaze flicks from Jen to Thad to her grandparents and aunt standing expectantly in the living room doorway. Her smug expression fades.

  “I haven’t seen her since before I left,” she says in a small voice. “Why?”

  “Because she went after you,” Thad tells her, “and she hasn’t come back.”

  Jen spots a new, rarely seen emotion in her daughter’s blue eyes: fear.

  “Emma—”

  “I swear I don’t know where she is.”

  “But you know something, Emma. What do you know?”

  “Mom, I don’t—”

  “You know something!”

  Emma swallows audibly. “I’ll show you. But I can’t do
it on my own laptop, and it probably won’t show up on yours, either. Where’s Carley’s phone?”

  “I’ll get it,” Thad says grimly, taking his car keys out of his pocket.

  Louie’s Bar is pleasantly crowded on this blustery late afternoon. There are several flat-screen televisions, all tuned to the same channel and positioned so that every table and every seat at the bar has a clear view of the Sabres game in progress.

  Al Witkowski has been coming here ever since his fake ID and five bucks could get him a couple of Genny Cream Ales, a dozen wings in a paper-lined plastic basket, and a decent tip for Phil, the bartender. Now that’ll cost him fifteen. Still not bad, all things considered.

  Phil—whose real name is Phyllis—was a skinny blond college dropout when Al first met her. Now she’s a hefty, gray-haired, divorced grandma in a black T-shirt and jeans, world-weary but with the same quick wit that made her a favorite among the neighborhood “boys” as she still calls Al, Bobby, and Glenn Cicero, who graduated from Cardinal Ruffini in the class between the two brothers.

  “What’ll it be, boys?” she asks as they settle onto stools at the end of the bar, wearing Sabres jerseys like most of the other patrons.

  Until recently, Phil would have added, “You want the usual?”

  The usual would have been a round of Genny drafts and a bucket of wings, the hottest ones on the menu. Suicide wings, they call them here at Louie’s.

  But lately, they’ve been changing things up a bit. Al’s trying to cut calories and drop a few pounds, so he sometimes orders a grilled chicken sandwich. So does Bobby, when his gall bladder is flaring up. And Glenn occasionally has a bottled import instead of whatever’s on tap lately, which inevitably causes Phil to grin and ask him if business is booming over at the funeral home.

  Today, Glenn orders a round of bourbon for the three of them, straight up. Business is booming, all right—but no one’s smiling about it. And no one’s ordering suicide wings.

  Mike Morino—an old pal from the neighborhood—lost his daughter this morning.

  “Last week, it was Debbie Quattrone’s daughter. What the hell is going on with these kids,” Bobby mutters, keeping one eye on the Sabres game on the flat-screen television behind the bar, “that makes them think killing themselves is going to solve anything?”