The Winter Sister Read online

  “I can do this all night,” she said. She moved even closer to me, still swishing her hair around, but now the gold necklace she always wore fell forward, and the tip of the starfish pendant grazed my lips.

  “Okay, fine,” I conceded, pushing her hair, her necklace, away. “Show me.”

  Persephone turned on my bedside lamp and lifted the side of her shirt. “There’s this one,” she said, pointing to a fresh bruise the size of a quarter just beneath her rib cage. “But Mom won’t see that one.” She let her shirt fall back down and then showed me the inside of her right wrist. There were two more bruises rising toward the surface of her skin. “It’s just these ones really.”

  I swore I knew the size of Ben’s fingertips better than I knew my own. I sighed as I reached beneath my desk for the bucket of acrylic paints Mom had bought me for Christmas two months earlier. Grabbing some brushes and a Styrofoam palette, I sat back down beside my sister. Then I took her arm in my hand and turned it this way and that, assessing my canvas.

  I worked in silence. I squirted Midnight Blue onto my palette and mixed it with Eggshell, not bothering to ask Persephone why she stayed with him. As I painted a moon over the first of the bruises, then crossed it with red-tinged waves that covered the other, I didn’t remind her that I thought love should be painless, that it shouldn’t be sneaking in and out of windows, or blood vessels bursting. We’d already had those conversations before, and they all ended the same way: “You don’t understand. You don’t know him. It’s not what you think.”

  “Okay,” I told Persephone, lifting my brush from her skin. “I’m done.”

  She smiled approvingly at the moonscape, and I rubbed at the colors that had bled onto my hands. There were always traces of my work on my own skin in the morning, and though my mother often commented on what I’d done to Persephone, praising me for the “beautiful little tattoos” I’d given her, she never seemed to notice the tattoos I’d given myself, the paint that screamed on my knuckles and fingers. When Persephone showered each day, she was careful to keep her concealed bruises away from the water. When I showered, I scrubbed and scrubbed.

  • • •

  “Sylvie.” Detective Falley squeezed my shoulder gently. “Are you okay?”

  The screaming had stopped. The hammering and crashing of furniture had stopped. Now, all I could hear from down the hall was the faint sound of paper being ripped, over and over, ssshhhhk, ssshhhhk, ssshhhhk. What could she be tearing in there? Photographs? Letters? Secrets? Later that day, when Mom finally left her room to use the bathroom, I crept across the hallway to find that it was a calendar she’d been destroying. Scraps of months lay scattered across the carpet like seeds in a garden, and among all those fragmented squares of dates, every fifteenth was circled in red.

  “I’m really sorry about this, Detective,” Aunt Jill was saying to Parker as they walked into the living room, where Falley still bent toward me with concerned eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”

  Missy followed them. She was wearing one of Persephone’s T-shirts, which snapped “I DON’T CARE.” I hadn’t seen her take it from our dresser the night before or I would have offered her some of my own clothes to wear. Missy shuffled in slippers—Persephone’s slippers—toward the couch.

  “Are you able to stay here for a while?” Detective Parker asked Jill. “With the family?” He shifted his eyes toward me.

  “Of course,” Jill said. “The girls have tomorrow off for Presidents’ Day. I’m a teacher’s aide—over at the middle school in Hanover?—so I’m off, too. We can be here, no problem.”

  “Good,” Parker said. “Now, do you have a recent picture of Persephone we can take with us?”

  “Yes!” Jill said. “I actually took out the photo albums first thing this morning. I was thinking of making some flyers to hang around town.” She walked into the kitchen, which was open to the living room, and flipped through one of the faux-leather books on the table. “It would just feel better to actively do something, you know?”

  She pulled my sister’s senior portrait, taken earlier that school year, from its plastic sheath. In the photo, a painted bruise peeked out from Persephone’s neckline, a shadow to anyone who didn’t know, but to me, a focal point.

  “So should I put the police station’s number on the flyers,” Jill asked, “or have people call us directly?”

  Parker reached into his pocket and handed Jill a card in exchange for the picture. “Thank you,” he said. “You can put that info on the signs. Though I should warn you that, with things like this, we get a lot of false information. Ninety-five percent of the calls that come in are useless.”

  “Well, that still leaves five percent,” Jill replied.

  Ssshhhhk, ssshhhhk, ssshhhhk. In my mother’s room, paper kept ripping.

  Clearing his throat, Parker rubbed his hand over the light brown stubble on his face. “Just a couple more things,” he said, shifting his gaze toward me. “Is it okay if I ask you some questions, Sylvie, before we go?”

  I looked to my aunt.

  “Go ahead, Sylvie,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, that’s fine.”

  Parker looked down at his notepad and clicked the top of his pen. “Your aunt reported that you saw your sister drive off with Ben Emory at about ten thirty the night before last. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how did she seem just before she left? Was she angry, for example? Sad? Excited to see her boyfriend?”

  I imagined what the expression on her face must have been as she looked at me through the window Friday night, her breath making ghosts on the glass as she called my name. She must have looked angry, annoyed. She must have looked ready to kill me.

  “I don’t know,” I told Parker. “I guess she was . . . neutral.”

  He made a note on his pad. “Okay. Now, you also mentioned that she snuck out a lot to see him. Why is that?”

  Everyone stared at me, the two detectives standing closest, my aunt and cousin on opposite ends of the room. So much seemed to hang on what I had to say, but how could a fourteen-year-old girl be expected to know what needed knowing?

  “She’s not allowed to date,” I said. “Neither of us are. But I’m—I wouldn’t date yet anyway.”

  “So your mother had no idea that your sister has been seeing Mr. Emory?”

  “Well,” I started, “she didn’t know she was still seeing him.”

  “Go on,” Parker prompted.

  “My mom came home from the diner one night—she’s a waitress; I don’t know if that matters—and she found Persephone with Ben. They were just watching TV, I think, but it was the first time she’d ever brought a guy home, and my mom got upset. Persephone had broken the rule.”

  From there, after Ben had slinked out the front door, the two of them erupted at each other, Mom yelling at Persephone for her “blatant disrespect” and Persephone screaming right back about Mom “treating us like babies.” At one point, Persephone knocked over a lamp with her wild gesticulations, and they both stared at it on the floor for a moment. Then Persephone tore off its flimsy shade and threw it across the room, where it whizzed by Mom’s face and toppled some picture frames.

  “Since then,” I told Detective Parker, “Persephone’s always just snuck out to see him.”

  “How well do you know him?” Falley jumped in.

  “I barely know him at all. He graduated last year, so I’ve never even gone to the same school as him.”

  “And Persephone’s a senior this year, correct?” Parker asked.

  “Yes,” Jill and I said in unison.

  Falley took a step toward me. “The reason I asked, Sylvie,” she said, “is because when we first got here, you seemed pretty sure that Ben had something to do with your sister being missing. Why is that?”

  “I—what?”

  “Has he ever hurt your sister before, or done anything that would put her at risk?”

  “I . . .” I looked
around the room. Four sets of eyes were latched onto me. “Like I said, I don’t really know him.”

  “That wasn’t the question,” Parker said.

  Why was I being interrogated? And where was the hot, bald light I’d seen on TV shows, the one that would shine on my face and sweat out all my secrets? At least then I wouldn’t have a choice if I betrayed Persephone. As it was, though, the living room was cool and gray. The faces of the detectives remained serious, but kind enough.

  Aunt Jill came to put her arm around my shoulder protectively. I leaned into her, grateful for the save, but then she whispered in my ear, “It’s okay, Sylvie. Just tell the detectives whatever you know.”

  We’re sisters, Sylvie, Persephone would always say. And that’s sacred. So I know your promise to keep this a secret isn’t just words. It means something to you. Just like you mean something to me, and just like I hope—I really, really hope—I mean something to you.

  Of course you do, I’d say.

  Then prove it.

  “I don’t know if he ever hurt her.” I looked at Falley and Parker, at Aunt Jill. I even looked at Missy, who sat with her chin resting on the palm of her hand. They were all listening to me, somehow sure that I had the right answers. “He just has to know where she is. She was with him that night.”

  Ssshhhhk, ssshhhhk, ssshhhhk.

  Falley glanced back toward the hallway, listening to the muted sounds of my mother’s rage. She looked at her partner before speaking.

  “Sylvie,” she began, “when your mother’s acted like this in the past, did she—”

  “My mother’s never acted like this,” I interrupted. “She’s never had a daughter who’s been missing before.”

  Silence spread through the room like a gas. Even the sound of paper paused, and I imagined it was because Mom had heard me defend her. I could almost feel the soft approval of her fingers stroking my cheek.

  The detectives shared a glance, Falley tilting her head at Parker, her eyes asking a question I couldn’t read. Then Parker nodded, closing his notebook and clicking his pen one more time.

  “Thank you,” Parker said. “You have our information. Please feel free to call us anytime.”

  He slipped his notepad into his pocket and headed toward the front door. Falley stayed behind a moment to put her hand on my shoulder. “You’re being really brave,” she said gently. “We’ll find your sister. Don’t worry.”

  Aunt Jill walked toward the entryway to see them out, and I sank into the couch cushions, which were still blanketed with Jill’s makeshift bed.

  “This is crazy,” Missy said, the expression on her face one of slow understanding, as if she was just beginning to comprehend how serious the situation was.

  Down the hall, behind my mother’s door, the sound of shredding paper started up again.

  2

  That afternoon, we posted more than fifty flyers. Persephone’s face smirked at us beneath a black, bulky “MISSING” as we worked our way through the center of town and neighboring streets. By the time we stapled the final sign to a telephone pole outside the post office, our fingers felt raw, even through our gloves.

  When we got home, Jill pushed mugs of hot chocolate into our hands and encouraged us to “thaw out” in front of the TV. Missy put on a rerun of The Real World, which I watched without seeing, but at six o’clock on the dot, I changed it to the local news in case they mentioned Persephone.

  As it turned out, my sister’s disappearance was the lead story.

  “The town of Spring Hill is in search of a missing high school student today,” the anchor said. “Persephone O’Leary, eighteen, was last seen leaving her house on Friday night with her boyfriend, Ben Emory, the son of Spring Hill mayor and prominent land developer William Emory. Since then, police have been questioning neighbors and residents, including O’Leary’s boyfriend, who, police say, dropped her off on Weston Road around eleven p.m. on Friday night.”

  “That’s bad reporting,” I said to Missy. “Saying ‘police say’ makes it sound like it’s a fact that Ben dropped her off. But it’s not a fact—it’s Ben’s story. And why didn’t anyone talk to us about this?”

  Missy shrugged. “Maybe they tried,” she said, “while we were out. Maybe your mom didn’t answer.”

  The thought of that chilled me, despite the steam rising from my mug. Could Mom have locked herself away so thoroughly that not even the ringing phone or doorbell could reach her? After we had gotten home, she finally let Aunt Jill into her bedroom, and although I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, it made me feel better to remember that they were in that room together.

  On the TV, the news anchor continued to speak over a video of people dressed in heavy coats and scarves, trudging in thick boots through the snowy woods by Emory Bridge.

  “A modest search party is already underway for O’Leary, and people in town appear confident that they will locate the missing girl soon.”

  Missy and I looked at each other, the surprise in her eyes reflecting my own.

  “Search party?” I said. “What search party?”

  The footage switched to a close-up of a middle-aged woman in a knitted purple hat. Her nose was red and her breath danced in front of her lips as she spoke. I recognized her as Persephone’s third-grade teacher, Mrs. McDonald.

  “I organized all this myself,” Mrs. McDonald said, almost proudly, to the microphone in her face. “I live near Weston Road, so of course I saw the police cars this afternoon, and as soon as I found out what was going on, I sprang into action. Called some friends together, alerted the press, and now here we are. We’re a small group, and we’ve only just started, but we’ll keep searching even after dark.” She held up a flashlight and smiled to the camera. “We won’t stop until we find her. She’s one of Spring Hill’s own, and that really means something.”

  Did it, though?

  Spring Hill, Connecticut, was a town of about twenty-five thousand people, a good majority of whom lived in the big brick houses on the hilly northern side of Emory Bridge. People in neighboring towns came to Spring Hill for its frozen yogurt shops and its apple and berry orchards, and at Christmastime, they did their shopping at Spring Hill Commons. Then they drove around to look at the twinkling white lights on all the Ionic columns and wraparound porches, and when they returned home, they reevaluated their monthly budgets, trying to find some extra savings for a new swimming pool or a kitchen remodel, anything that would make them feel more like the residents of Spring Hill.

  But we—Persephone, my mother, and I—had never been a part of that Spring Hill. We lived on the swampier southern side of Emory Bridge. We got our clothes at thrift stores in Hanover, wore out the edges of our library cards, and got free hot lunches at school. My mother had inherited our ranch from my grandparents, whom we had lived with, Persephone and I sleeping in the same bedroom as Mom, until they died in a car accident when I was three. From then on, I grew up with the narrowed eyes of the upper-crust Spring Hill residents on my back. “There goes Annie O’Leary’s girl. Ugh, that woman. Always took handouts from her parents, still looking for handouts to this day. Our taxes even buy her kids’ lunches at school. Meanwhile, Barry’s working his fingers to the bone to make partner . . .”

  So it surprised me that Mrs. McDonald was now claiming Persephone as “one of Spring Hill’s own.” I remembered her writing a letter home to Mom one time, urging her to “consider buying Persephone some new clothes that adhere to the current trends, so as not to alienate her from her peers and cause damaging social consequences.” Mom had hung the letter on the refrigerator, right next to my splotchy kindergarten drawings, as a reminder, she said, of the people we never wanted to be. Now, I imagined her seeing Mrs. McDonald’s face on the news and scoffing, “Attention-seeking snake.”

  “Do you know that lady?” Missy asked me.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “She seems kind of excited.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. Then I added one of
Mom’s phrases: “This freaking town.”

  I clicked the power button on the remote, and for a few minutes, Missy and I sat in silence. In that time, the front door never opened. Persephone never walked inside, stamping the snow off her shoes, asking what had happened to the coatrack and table. Still, I listened for her grunt of annoyance as she noticed there was no longer a place to put her red winter jacket. I listened for it so hard that I didn’t even register that Aunt Jill had walked into the room until she put her hand on my head and spoke.

  “How are you doing?” she asked.

  I looked up at her from my place on the floor, my fingers picking at the shaggy beige carpet. Her face was creased with an exhaustion I’d only ever seen on my mother the mornings after her Dark Days.

  “I want to see Mom,” I said. I started to push myself up off the floor, but Jill’s fingertips on my shoulder stopped me.

  “Not tonight,” she said. “Your mother’s finally sleeping. She wants to be alone.”

  But my sister was missing.

  “She won’t mind,” I said. “It’s just me.”

  I needed Mom’s fingers on my forehead, planting and picking flowers as if my face were fertile, open land. I needed her to pull me into her, wrap her arms around me, and rock me like a child. I needed the lavender smell of her skin, the steady rhythm of her breathing. How would I fall asleep in a sisterless house for one more night without it?

  “I’m sorry,” Jill said, shaking her head. “Not tonight.”

  So Missy spent another night in Persephone’s bed. So Jill spent another night on the couch. So I kept myself awake remembering Ben’s face, how the danger lurked there in the scar that ran like a tendril of hair from the tip of his left eyebrow to the middle of his cheek. I’d only seen him a handful of times, his face pressed against our bedroom window on nights when Persephone was still applying her eyeliner in the bathroom, but I had him memorized. He had disheveled brown hair, which he sometimes pulled back into a short ponytail. Dark circles lingered under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for days, and his mouth was always cocked at a half grin. When I finally fell asleep that night, it was to images of Ben, his fingernails—long and sharp in the dream—tapping on the windowpane until the glass shattered.