by Meg O'Brien
Paul shrugged. “I’m beginning to realize that I’ve got to break it off with her. I can’t split my loyalties anymore. Shit, Al, losing Angela had such an effect on us, it’s a wonder Gina and I are still together at all. We can’t go through the loss of another child and survive.”
“You want it to survive?” Duarte asked. “Your marriage, I mean?”
“I don’t really know how to answer that. I know we’ve got problems, but I don’t want to lose Gina. That’s the bottom line, I guess. I don’t want to lose her.”
“And you think it’ll all be on you, if something happens to Rachel? You’ll be to blame for everything?”
“Well, like I said, I can’t shake the feeling that whether she left on her own or Angela’s got her, it wouldn’t have happened if I’d been paying more attention.”
“Sure,” Duarte said. “I know how that works. Anything at all that happens to our kids, we gotta be at fault.”
“But it’s different this time,” Paul said. “This time, it’s true.”
“So what do you want to do about all this?” Duarte asked.
Paul looked through tears at his untouched sandwich. “I want to go home and hug my wife,” he said.
8
Rachel stood at the cabin window, looking out. Snow had fallen in the night, and it lay on the cedars and the ground as far as the eye could see. There were no other cabins, no homes, no birds flying overhead.
She was completely alone.
She turned back to the potbellied stove, opened it and shoved another log on the fire. The stove warmed the entire one-room cabin, and there were cans of food in the rustic cupboards that could be heated in a pan on top of it. There was also an oil lamp, an old musty-smelling cot, a rickety little table and chair, and a small corner area with a toilet and sink. No gas or electricity, and no fridge. No milk, no fresh foods.
A spartan existence, she thought. Just enough to keep me alive.
But for what purpose? That was what frightened her the most.
She wasn’t sure how many days she had been here. Two, now? Or was this the beginning of the third day? She decided to start making marks on the wall each night, to keep track. Wasn’t that what prisoners did in the movies?
She couldn’t remember how she had gotten here. The last she knew she was in her car, wondering why the car ahead had stopped. Then the driver had stepped out and come to her window. Rachel had rolled it down, asking, “Is there something wrong?”
The words were barely out before the driver’s hand, holding a strange-smelling rag, came down over her nose and mouth. Her head was shoved back against the seat to keep her from squirming away, and though she tried to strike out with her arms and legs, they went weak. The next thing she knew, she was here in this cabin. Alone.
She thought she knew who the driver was. She hadn’t actually recognized her, but there was something about her expression, something familiar just before Rachel blacked out.
Angela. It had to be Angela.
Damn her stupidity! She should have told her parents about taking Angela’s call the other day.
“I’d like to see you,” Angela had said. “I’ve missed you, Rach. Haven’t you missed me?”
Rachel could hardly believe it. She really had seen her on campus, then! It hadn’t been a figment of her imagination.
She had wanted to see her sister. But she feared her, as well. There were things she couldn’t quite remember about the night that Angela had tried to kill her, things that were like a nightmare she could only remember snatches of the next morning. The one thing she knew for sure was that there was more about that night to be afraid of than she remembered.
She had agreed to meet Angela at a restaurant, out in public where nothing could happen. She told her mother she was going to Ellen’s house, so that she wouldn’t worry. And worse—she had told her she was staying overnight. Her mother wouldn’t even have been looking for her till the next day—if then.
Her plan had been to meet with Angela, and if the talk went well she would go home and tell her mom and dad about it. If it didn’t, she could always drive over to Ellen’s and ask to spend the night. That way, if she were upset, at least she wouldn’t have to answer a lot of questions.
Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Angela had been a step ahead of her all the way. Rachel never did make it to that restaurant. Instead, she had woken up here.
For about the hundredth time she beat her fists against the one window of the cabin and was forced to admit that she was only wasting her energy. The window didn’t give an inch. The glass was thick and unbreakable, and the door, made of heavy timber, was apparently locked or barred from the outside. Her hands were already swollen and bruised from trying to force either of them open. If only there had been a poker for the fire—anything she could use as a tool, or even a weapon.
But Angela had been too smart for that. Nothing worked—not the cans of food, the can opener, the few plastic forks in the kitchen drawer, the logs of wood that she had tried pounding against the window and door like a ram.…
And because she had been such an idiot, her parents would never find her. Even when they realized she was missing, they wouldn’t know why.
They might think to blame Angela, of course. But Angela had changed. She didn’t look at all like the twin sister Rachel remembered, or even the woman she had seen on campus. She looked like someone else entirely now, and her parents would never recognize her—even if she walked up and spoke to them on the street.
It was sometime in the night that Rachel heard a noise at the door of the cabin. She had left the oil lamp on with the wick turned low. There was no telling how long the oil would have to last, and she knew she should try to preserve it. Still, her worst fear was of waking up in the night, in the dark, with Angela standing over her. There were times, in fact, when she would drift off and then wake suddenly, certain that Angela had been there.
Now, bolting upright on the cot, she stared at the door as it slowly opened. Her heart beat wildly in her throat, and she remembered how she had planned to leap up if Angela came back, grab a piece of firewood and slam her with it.
Brave plans, made in the cold clear light of day. Instead, she could barely move. Her whole body was frozen with fear.
“Hey, little sister,” she heard the husky voice of the grown-up Angela say. “I’ve brought you something.”
She was dressed in a leopard-print jacket, jeans and boots. The jacket was open, and around her neck was a gold locket with the initial A on it. In her right hand was a long silver knife, flashing a sickly yellow in the dim glow of the oil lamp.
Angela came toward her, the tip of the knife pointing at Rachel. Rachel squeezed back against the log wall as far as she could, pulling the musty blanket up to her neck. “What do you want?” she cried. “Damn you, Angela, what do you want with me?”
“I brought you a surprise,” Angela said, reaching into a pocket with her free hand. From the leopard jacket she pulled a shiny red apple, holding it up. “You always liked apples, didn’t you, Rach? Remember how we used to share them? Mom would say, ‘Don’t cut your own apples, girls, I don’t want you playing with knives.’ But we’d sneak a paring knife out and sit in the backyard under the willow tree, where she couldn’t see us.”
Angela came closer, pressing the knife against the soft flesh beneath Rachel’s chin. “Remember that?”
Rachel nodded. Her teeth were chattering, yet she barely felt the blade on her skin, she was so numb. Numb and distant, as if she were floating on a glacier, but the glacier was in the sky and she was floating farther and farther away from home.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, snap out of it!” Angela said. She turned on her heel and strode over to the small table by the stove, where she began to cut the apple. When it was in quarters, she counted them out in a singsong voice. “Eenie, meenie, miney, moe…catch a doctor by the toe.”
She laughed. “Get that, Rach? Doctor?”
Rachel didn’t answe
r.
“Now, don’t tell me you don’t remember, little sister.” Angela grinned. She tossed two pieces of the apple at Rachel. “Here, eat up. You’ll be needing your vitamins.”
Rachel didn’t touch the apple slices. The thought struck her that they might be poisoned.
“Not hungry?” Angela said in a mock-teasing voice. “Must be nice. I can’t tell you how many hungry days and nights I’ve had since last we met. Let’s see now…that would have been when we were both sixteen, right? The night you managed to sneak away from summer camp and visit me at Saint Sympatica’s?”
Angela laughed, and the sound of it chilled Rachel. “What a night that was,” Angela said. “Remember now, little sister? The night you killed Dr. Chase?”
Rachel’s mind reeled. What was Angela talking about? And who was Dr. Chase?
“That’s—that’s crazy,” she said. “You’re crazy!”
“I could very well be,” Angela agreed indifferently. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not right.”
“I—I didn’t,” Rachel stuttered. “I—I n-never did anything like that. How could I?”
“Uh-oh,” Angela said, a strange, hollow smile sweeping over her face. “Oh, dear.” She toyed with the knife, tapping the point as if testing it for sharpness. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten, little sis. You blocked it, right? Just the way you blocked that Christmas Eve night?”
Rachel began to cry. It felt as if all the underpinnings of her life were falling away beneath her. Everything crumbling, all at once.
“I’ll never know how you got away with that night,” Angela said, beginning to pace. “Except that you were the least likely suspect, of course. Little Rachel, so sweet and quiet, never causing any trouble…” She laughed. “Or so they thought. And me? They sent me away to pay the price for you. I wasn’t as sickly sweet as you, I guess.”
Her face twisted into a mask of anger. “Holy Father Christmas, Rach! Who would believe you tried to kill me? And all I did was defend myself.”
Rachel covered her eyes and began to sob. “You’re lying! I never did anything like that. I couldn’t do anything like that!”
Angela ignored her. “You have no idea what it was like at Saint Sympatica’s. I would wait in fear every day, knowing he would call me into his office and do those things to me. Or make me do things to him. One day he took me out into the woods along the river, Rach. I was maybe ten years old. He made me pose for pictures. Then he made me lie down on a blanket and open my legs so he could ‘just touch me,’ he said. But he did more than touch me, Rach. He pushed himself into me, and he said he was only going to do it a little, but he lied. He pushed and pushed until I screamed, it hurt so damned much. Then he put his hand over my mouth so no one could hear me scream. I can still smell that hand, Rach. It had a salty, coppery smell. I didn’t know why until I saw that there was blood on his hand. My blood.”
Her voice became thick with tears, which she wiped away with the hand that still held the knife. “Steady, Angela, steady,” she murmured to herself. She paced in ever-decreasing circles, coming closer and closer to Rachel. “That was the same day it rained blood,” she said, standing directly over her sister at the edge of the cot. “The rain came down in buckets, and it was red, a bright crimson red. When I got back to Saint Sympatica’s I was covered in it. It had soaked into my blouse, my skirt, my hair, everything. I thought somebody, Mrs. Ewing maybe, would run up to me and say something like, ‘Oh, my God, Angela! What happened to you?’ And I would be able to tell them then, because I had proof. I would say, ‘He hurt me, he hurt me real bad, and God made it rain blood to punish him.’
“But no one even noticed, Rach. They were all gathered in the recreation room watching television, and the man on TV was saying how scientists thought a meteor had passed overhead and left some sort of minerals behind that made the rain red. I tried to tell Mrs. Ewing that wasn’t the reason, and that God had made it rain blood to punish Dr. Chase, but then the rain stopped and she was rushing out to hose off the porch. I tugged at her arm and said, ‘Look. Look at me,’ and she did, but for only a second. ‘For heaven’s sake, Angela!’ she said, ‘go up and get out of those clothes! Bring them down so I can wash them before they stain.’
“And that’s when I realized that no one would believe me if I said God had turned the rain to blood. I think maybe somewhere down deep I didn’t believe it anymore, either. And if God hadn’t turned the rain to blood to punish Dr. Chase, there was only one thing I could do.” She took a deep, ragged breath. “I would have to figure out a way to punish him myself.”
There was a long silence, broken only by Rachel’s sobs. “I—I’m so sorry,” she said at last. “I d-didn’t know.”
Angela bent over her and said softly, “But you did know, little sis. You found out when you sneaked in to see me, that night when we were both sixteen. You found him doing things to me there in his room, and you killed him. Then you ran. And that’s why they never could prove that anyone at Saint Sympatica’s killed him, Rach. No one did. It was you, all along.”
“That’s crazy!” Rachel cried. “I never was at Saint Sympatica’s! Never!”
But even as she tried to deny it, snatches of memory began to flit through Rachel’s mind. A room in a big house. Angela pinned to a bed by a man who was shoving himself into her. Angela crying, “Please don’t, oh God, please don’t!” The man smiling. “You know what to do. Do it, Angela, do it.”
She remembered her own head filling with rage, everything going red. Then blank. Blank until this very moment.
Angela smiled. “Aha! It’s coming back, isn’t it? Now you know. And now you’ve got to pay the price for murder, little sister. Just like I’ve been paying for your sin, all these years.”
9
They were in Rachel’s Mustang, on a deserted mountain highway. Rachel thought she recognized the pass as one connecting western and eastern Washington, over the Cascades. From the position of the sun, which was rising, she knew they were heading east—away from home, not toward it, and the road signs told her they were possibly three hours, at least, from Seattle. The cabin had been closer to home than she’d realized.
She tried to think what she could do to escape Angela, but her hands were bound behind her back. If she tried kicking with her feet, they might go off the road and over a cliff. Her only other hope had been that they might reach a part of the highway that was blocked because of the snow, and she might get a message to someone on the road crew. That hope had been dashed when she saw the banks of snow, however, on either side of the road. The crew must have come through in the middle of the night.
If only she’d stop talking, Rachel thought desperately. With every word, she fell deeper and deeper into despair.
She stole a glance at Angela, trying to see in her the sister she had loved and remembered. Angela’s hands, in leather gloves, were tight on the steering wheel, her mouth a grim line. Her waist-length hair was tucked up into a knitted cap. In the leopard coat, jeans and boots she looked so stylish—more like a movie star than a murderer. She really is beautiful, Rachel thought. How can someone so beautiful be a killer?
“I went blank myself after that Christmas Eve,” Angela was saying. “At least that’s what Dr. Chase said. I was like dead or something. I didn’t know what had happened until a few days later at Saint Sympatica’s, and then I didn’t even know where I was. The only thing they told me was that Gina and Paul—the only parents I’d ever known—had brought me there, and then returned to Seattle to be with you, the so-called victim. Can you believe it? All that time they thought you were the victim.” Angela’s laughter was hollow.
“But if I really did do it, why didn’t you just tell them at Saint Sympatica’s that it was me?” Rachel asked.
“Oh, I told them all right. Over and over. Dr. Chase, anyway. He said I was sick, and not to tell anyone at all what I’d just told him. He said I was imagining things, that my mother and father saw me do it, not you, and if I told an
yone that it wasn’t me who started the argument that night, they’d say I was crazy and keep me there forever. I’d never go home, he said, and I’d never be adopted by anyone else.”
“But you never did come home. Or get adopted.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Rachel! You sure grew up stupid. No, I did not get adopted, and I never went home. The good doctor made things up so I’d look unadoptable. That way he could keep me there for himself. The Ewings were nice enough, but they were too busy to notice, or they trusted him, or something. Who knows? It’s like when kids are molested by their fathers and the mother never knows. It’s easy to cover something like that up. Especially when a kid starts out with people thinking there’s something wrong with you in the first place.”
Rachel’s eyes filled with tears. She had never been so terrified in her life, yet at the same time anger began to build. If Angela was telling the truth, she would never forgive her parents for just assuming Angela had attacked her, and not the other way around. Nor would she forgive herself for not remembering and speaking up.
What would it have been like? she wondered. What if she, Rachel, had been the one to be sent thousands of miles away? To be molested and raped?
And if she had been lucid at the time, would she have confessed to starting that fight? Would she have protected Angela?
She didn’t know. But Angela was her twin, and the same bond that had left her yearning for her sister all these years made Rachel want to help her now. It didn’t matter what Angela had done, or if she was lying now. They were sisters, twins, and what happened to one would always impact the other.
She was starting to remember how she had ended up at Saint Sympatica’s when she was sixteen. On her sixteenth birthday, in fact. She had been away at a music camp in Wisconsin, a camp she herself had purposely chosen because of its proximity to Minnesota. By that time she had too many questions that weren’t being answered. Her grandmother was the only one she could talk to about Angela, but only about the time when Angela was sent away. She didn’t have any up-to-date information at all. Rachel wanted to know how her sister was. She wanted to see her. Talk to her. Make sure she was all right.