The Sisters

by Rosalind Noonan

  “Then tomorrow night. Tomorrow is Friday.”

  “But there’s no time to figure things out. Can’t it wait until next week?” Ruby asked.

  “It can’t. I can’t even tell you the worst of it now, but later. I’ll explain it all when I see you. One thirty or two.”

  “Like, after midnight?”

  “We have to be sure people are asleep. I’ll meet you out on the street, but park a block or two away so that Leo doesn’t hear you.”

  Ruby wrote down the address, though her mind was already skipping ahead to obstacles like what to tell her parents and what to do with Glory once she was free from Leo and the sisters. After ending the call Ruby slapped her phone down and rested her head on the counter by the light board. “I can’t believe I just agreed to that.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Delilah gave her shoulders a shake. “Someone is dead in the attic, and you’re driving out there after midnight to . . . what? Bury the body?”

  “Not exactly,” Ruby muttered, “but pretty close.”

  * * *

  “Stay right toward Waterfront Drive,” the electronic voice from her GPS instructed. Thank God for that. Ruby hated driving to strange places, and she would never have figured out where to go in the dark without the navigation system on her phone.

  The look and feel of Portland changed once she crossed over the bridge, leaving behind the more institutional faux skyscrapers for converted warehouses and shops with signs and storefronts that were dated and stodgy enough to be considered retro now. She knew kids at school who came to East

  Portland all the time for awesome Thai food or pizza or thrift shops with hidden treasures. But not me, she thought. Ruby had never been adventurous until she’d sought out Glory. She should have stayed true to her cautious nature, content in her bubble.

  Once she turned right, off the commercial street, the roads seemed to shrink into smaller lanes dwarfed by houses that hunkered close together, like overgrown mushrooms sprouting in the flatlands. As she approached the “destination” she slowed down for a look at the place. The grass seemed dead and the bushes under the windows could have used some clipping, but it wasn’t so different from any other house on the block. It was unremarkable. Hard to imagine that more than a handful of women lived under that roof as willing prisoners. Glory had warned her to park out of sight, just in case the awful man was awake and looking outside.

  She continued down the street counting off two more blocks before she turned the car around and parked in front of a one-story cottage that seemed sleepy and dark behind two giant gumdrop-shaped hedges. She killed the lights, wondering if she’d be able to see Glory coming from here. Probably not. Then rain clouds had blotted out the moon, and the streetlamps were widely spaced, their light muffled by the bare branches of trees clawing at the sky.

  I’m here, she texted to Glory. About two blocks away. On Sequoia near . . . She squinted through the watery windshield. struggling to make out the sign . . . Plum Lane. Making sure the doors were locked, she searched for a good song on the radio and then finally turned it off. The GPS on her phone was already programmed for their next stop, a motel near the airport. The room was cheap, and it was on a bus line Glory could ride to the long-term shelter, which she would need to apply to in person. Ruby had learned that you couldn’t stay even one night until you had a “TB Card,” which certified that you weren’t suffering from tuberculosis. Even with that, Glory would need to meet with counselors and fill out forms and wait for an opening in the long-term housing. “It will be three or four days, minimum,” one of the volunteers had told Ruby when she called. Four nights in a hotel was going to do some damage to Ruby’s savings account, but she didn’t have much choice.

  She scratched at the back of her neck, picked at a little bump there, and then let her head loll against the headrest. She would be glad when this was all over.

  CHAPTER 36

  The buzzing phone between her breasts stirred Glory from a light nap. She hadn’t planned to sleep, but in the lag time between lights-out and now there’d been nothing else to do, so she’d climbed into bed, pulled the comforter over her clothed body, and shut her eyes to meditate on the beautiful life Luna would have once they were free.

  She removed the phone from her bra and flipped it open beneath the covers. The message from Ruby said that she had arrived and was waiting just blocks away.

  It was happening. At last, it was really happening. They were going to be free.

  Glory sent a text saying that she was on her way, then closed the phone, tucked it back into her bra, and sat up on the sloped mattress. In the bed across the room, Luna lay, breathing softly as she hugged her pillow. Glory had thought she’d never fall asleep after Glory had told her about the plan.

  “Tonight?” Luna had spread her arms wide in surprise and joy. “We’re leaving tonight?”

  “Just me, but that’s only because I don’t want you tumbling out the window.” Glory had spoken quickly, never breaking stride as the glee fell away from Luna’s face. The details of the plan had restored Luna’s hope. Just a day or two and Glory would be back. With the police, if necessary. Soon Luna would meet her sisters! And she would be allowed to leave the house, shop in a store, walk to the park. And school . . . five days a week, she’d be attending school with kids her age.

  Luna had pressed her hands over her mouth to suppress a delighted squeal. “I can’t wait!”

  “Quiet, you.” Glory fought to keep from laughing as she kissed her daughter’s cheek and watched her struggle to contain her excitement. Luna had missed out on so many things. Soon her imprisonment would be over. Glory had fantasized about their new life for years.

  At last, Luna would be able to attend a real school and get a proper education. School would also give Luna a chance to make friends with other children her age and develop some social skills. The budding friendship with the neighbor girl had been sweet, but the penalties had been so harsh and unfair.

  And in her fantasy, she took Luna miles away from Portland to a country town similar to Roseville. Even if Leo and Natalie were thrown in jail, the city would be fraught with memories and fears that Glory couldn’t escape. Maybe she was getting old and sentimental—in her thirties!—but she wanted to give Luna the freedoms she’d had as a child. Berry picking on a summer day. Chasing through the corn maze in the fall. Ice skating with her friends in the winter. Girl Scouts and cheerleading and soccer. For all of her differences with her mother, Glory realized that she’d had a good childhood in Roseville, and Winston had felt the same way about small-town living. Glory looked forward to the day when she and Luna could get in a car and drive until they rumbled into a quiet rural town.

  Her only reservation was that she had to leave Luna behind tonight, but she would be back soon. Maybe she’d come with the police tomorrow while most of the sisters were off at the hotel. Or maybe she would bring them at night so that the other sisters would have a chance to speak up for themselves and ensure their own escape. She would need to break the news about Luna to Ruby, and she worried that revelation might hit the girl in the wrong way. And then there was the challenge of convincing the police that Leo and Natalie were holding some of the women against their will, but if she couldn’t do that on her own she would get someone from the shelter or Social Services to help her. She was just one badgered woman, but she would make her voice be heard.

  “Things are moving fast,” Glory had told Luna. “I know that, but now is the right time, the only time for us to make the break.”

  “I’m fine with it, Mama.” Luna had linked her fingers through Glory’s and swung her hand back and forth. “This is going to be the best thing that ever happened in my life.”

  The truth of that statement had caught Glory’s heart with a twinge of regret. She couldn’t change her daughter’s past, but she could change her future.

  “Can I help you pack, Mama?” Luna asked. “We can bundle up your things in a plastic bag.”

  “Ther
e’ll be no packing. I’m going with the clothes on my back, and you will, too, when we come back to get you. Don’t worry. I’ll take you shopping for some new things.”

  “Shopping . . .” Luna whispered the word with balled fists as she struggled to keep quiet. “My life is going to be a Nickelodeon show.”

  “Even better,” Glory had said, hugging her girl. “But not a word of this to any of the sisters—and no visit to Hazel. And when Leo asks about me, tell him that you simply woke up and I was gone.” Glory had to trust that Leo wouldn’t hurt Luna in retaliation. He was not a good man, but his malice was a cautious, festering evil, slow to move. Before he targeted Luna, she would be gone.

  Now Glory longed for one last hug, but Luna was in a deep sleep and she didn’t want to wake her. They’d be together again, soon enough.

  Moving quietly, she put on her sneakers and jacket and then blew her daughter a kiss good-bye. She transferred her cell phone to the jacket’s pocket and then zipped up. Kneeling on the bed, she moved the gritty old curtain aside and unlocked the window. Water flew in and filled the sill as she opened the window on the miserable, damp night. The sky was dark with indistinct clouds of gray on gray, and visibility was poor. It was as if she were about to descend into the jaws of a monster, like the Jabberwock, in one of Winston’s favorite poems. He’d taught it to Ruby, and now Luna could recite it too.

  “ ‘Beware the Jabberwock . . .’ ” The poem rolled through her mind as she turned around and eased her feet and legs out over the windowsill. “ ‘The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!’ ” She’d once thought it was a nonsense poem for children, but she had come to see it as a poem about conquering your fears. “ ‘Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch! ’”

  Her feet slid down, seeking the shed rooftop as she held on to the wet windowsill. For some reason her toes weren’t touching the shed, and she wriggled her legs, searching for a foothold but finding nothing.

  What the hell . . . why wasn’t she feeling the roof underfoot? The muscles in her arms were beginning to ache with the stress of holding on to the windowsill as her body dangled in the air. She shifted slightly to look down and spot the shed, but the motion made one hand lose its grip on the slick, wet windowsill. She was slipping, but she kept her hands pressed to the side of the house, knowing she would land on the little rooftop eventually.

  She was wrong.

  A quick glance down revealed that there was nothing to hold her up, nothing to stop her from falling into the darkness. A frantic cry escaped her lips as she scrambled and flailed and scratched at the siding in an attempt to save herself from falling. In the end, there was the quiet explosion of her life, the solid slam of the earth, the unnatural sound of bones breaking, tissues erupting, a searing flash of pain, and finally the dark sleep of escape.

  * * *

  What was that sound? Luna turned her face away from the pillow to listen. Something bad had snapped her out of sleep. Someone shouting? Some animal pouncing in the backyard? Another raccoon foraging among the dead plants in the garden?

  There was only silence as Luna stared across at the rumpled bed beneath the open window. A damp chill was penetrating the room, and she realized Mama had left the window wide open when she went out. That was weird. Usually Mama pushed it down, leaving it open just a crack.

  Scrambling out from under her quilt, Luna scooched onto Mama’s bed on her knees and saw that the lights were coming on across the way at Hazel’s house. Two dogs started barking, the gruff sound echoing through the yards. Peering over the wet windowsill, Luna glanced down into the yard and gasped.

  The shed! It was gone and . . . was that Mama? A clump of cloth, still and round as the big sack of rice Georgina kept in the pantry. She must have fallen. “Mama?” Luna called down, her senses on high alert now as Mama didn’t move.

  Like a wild animal running on instinct Luna bolted from her room and down the stairs. She skidded into the kitchen, her socks slippery on the linoleum floor, but there was no getting out the kitchen door with all of Leo’s special locks and alarms on it. She threw open the door at the side of the kitchen and went into the garage and pushed the button to raise the big door, not caring anymore if the whole house woke up. Mama was hurt! She ducked under the rising door and plunged into the fog. Cold bit at her, soaking her socks as she sloshed through the squishy grass to get past the garage and into the yard where everything was wrong.

  In an instant she took it all in: The shed that now sat on the far side of the house. The unevenly packed earth of Annabelle’s grave where Mama lay sprawled in an awful position, her left leg twisted under her body, her torso twisted in another direction. The sight brought tears to Luna’s eyes. She buried her face in her trembling hands, then dared to look again at her mother’s broken body. “No.” She held her breath as she went to help Mama.

  Gathering her nightgown, Luna dropped down to her knees and gingerly touched her mother’s cheek. “Mama, can you hear me?” She wanted Mama to wake up and say that she was fine, just a little bruised. And then Luna could help her around the garage out to the street to meet Ruby. Or they could duck through the hole in the fence to Hazel’s house and go inside and have some hot cocoa while Hazel’s mother gave Mama an aspirin. And then maybe they could stay there. Forever.

  But Mama wasn’t moving, and the part of her pants that was torn and bloody seemed to have bone showing through. A wave of sickness washed over Luna, and she forced herself to look away from the blood before she threw up.

  Luna swallowed back a whimper, not sure what to do but knowing she had to stay calm. Help Mama. As she leaned back on her heels to take her mother’s hand, she noticed something shiny in the grass. Mama’s cell phone. She rested Mama’s hand in her lap and reached for the phone.

  When she flipped it open, it lit up. Still working. Her first time using a phone, but she’d seen kids with them on television. She pressed the numbers 9-1-1 and waited with the skinny part pressed to her ear, the way kids held it when they used it to talk. She wasn’t sure what to expect, using a phone, but the burring pulse she heard there didn’t seem helpful. Had she done it wrong?

  “Nine-one-one operator, what’s your emergency?” The woman’s voice sounded stern.

  “My mother fell out the window and she’s hurt. I think she needs a doctor to take her to a hospital.” Off to a hospital. That would get Mama out of here, just as she planned. “Yes. That’s what she needs.”

  “Is she responsive?” asked the woman on the phone.

  “I don’t know. No. She’s not answering me. She’s not awake.” Luna bit back a sob. Despite all of the books she’d read and movies she’d seen, she didn’t know what to do in an emergency like this.

  “Can you confirm the address? I have you at 4725 Sequoia Lane.”

  “I don’t know.” No one had ever told her the address of the house, but she had seen the street sign dozens of times when she stared out the front window. “Sequoia is right. That’s it. Can you send a doctor?”

  “We’re sending an ambulance for your mom. How old are you?”

  When Luna said she was ten, the woman told her she was handling things well for a girl that age. Then she asked her a lot of questions about Mama. Was she breathing? Did she have a pulse? Luna wasn’t sure about the pulse, but she thought she saw her mother’s chest rise and fall. The woman told her to talk to her mom until the paramedics arrived. “She might be able to hear you.”

  “I’m here, Mama,” Luna said as she folded up the cell phone and tucked it into the band of her left sock. Lights were coming on at the back of the house, and she didn’t want Leo to see the phone and take it away. “It’s me, Luna, and I’m just going to hold your hand and tell you a story, so you can just listen or maybe try to wake up. Okay?”

  As she spoke, she settled onto the ground next to Mama, ignoring the cold mud as she took Mama’s hand and, one at a time, squeezed her fingertips. As if she could rub life into her. “What about the story of Haro
ld? The kid with the purple crayon? You know that was my favorite when I was little. It was your favorite, too, right? So I’m going to draw you a picture of a doctor with a big medical bag. And inside his bag he has a stethoscope and medicine and everything else he needs to help you feel better.” Luna had never seen a real doctor, and the ones on television were a little scary. But Mama said doctors and nurses helped sick people, so someday Luna would have to give that a chance.

  “And I would use the purple crayon to draw a blanket to put over you, to keep you warm. And some hot chocolate for both of us.” Sounds rose around her. The snap of the locks on the back door. Barking dogs and footsteps on gravel. The distant whoop of a siren, still too far away. People were coming from the house, but she ignored them and talked on, reminding Mama of sweet things she always said and stories they shared.

  When two sets of feet walked up next to Mama, Luna kept her head down and kept talking, totally focused on her mother. He had moved the shed without telling anyone. He had done it. This was his fault.

  “What happened here?” Leo said softly. As if he were a kind person. “She must have gone straight out the window. It’s a nasty drop.”

  “That’s too bad,” said the woman.

  Luna followed the legs up to see that it was Natalie, standing out here in the yard without a wheelchair or cane or anything to hold her up. How could that be? Had she been faking it, pretending to need a wheelchair? She was a liar, like her brother.

  Luna hated them.

  Enough with them! Luna huddled down closer to Mama, pretending the others weren’t there. Mama’s skin was pale, white as snow against her dark hair, and her lips had a bluish tint. Oh no, oh no! Luna knew she should be doing something to save her! Maybe blowing on her lips? “You know I love you eight miles high,” she whispered, “and eight miles wide.”

  “Maybe we should bring her inside,” Leo said.

  “No,” Luna muttered without looking up. She wasn’t going to let them hide Mama away now.