The Wicked Sister

by Karen Dionne

  On the plus side, the scenery is going to be spectacular. It’s hard to believe that tomorrow we could be tramping around in our very own woods, leaves crunching underfoot and squirrels gathering acorns while the chickadees chatter, maple and beech trees glowing red and gold against an azure sky. We can take out the canoe on our very own private lake whenever we like, catch perch and rock bass for our dinner, spend long winter evenings in front of a roaring fire, sipping drinks and reading Hemingway and Dostoyevsky while Diana sleeps on a bearskin rug at our feet, her cheeks flush with heat, while outside the wind rattles the windows and the snow blows.

  Okay, so maybe I am a bit of a romantic, as Peter often claims. Realistically, I know our lives won’t be nearly as idyllic as I’m making it sound. There will be firewood to cut, mosquitoes and black flies to deal with, rain and wind and cold. But weighed against the advantages, these are mere inconveniences. The only thing that matters is that we will be living in a place where our daughter will be able to thrive and grow.

  We navigate the next four miles with only the light from the quarter-moon to guide us, the minivan’s headlights slicing across the tree trunks like a laser, bare branches reaching for us like zombies in a horror movie. I’d forgotten how rough the road is, and how narrow. Peter’s parents argue about the condition of this road all the time. His father wants to bring in a bulldozer to knock down the hills and straighten the curves and fill in the low spots with gravel. His mother wants the road to remain as it is. I used to take her side in the debate because I love the way that the lodge has been frozen in time, but now, as we lurch along in near-total darkness, Peter clenching the wheel and me digging my fingernails into the armrest and the edge of the seat, knowing we’ll have to deal with the condition of this road every time we want to drive in or out, I begin to understand his father’s thinking.

  By the time we come to the security gate that spans the gap in the cliff, the clouds have moved in and what little moonlight there was is gone. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have sworn we’d been kidnapped and driven to a secret rendezvous in the middle of nowhere—which is actually a fairly accurate way to describe our acreage now that I think about it. Peter’s father had the gate installed three years ago after the lodge was broken into and vandalized. I used to think that this gate was an abomination, the chain-link fencing strung with concertina wire more suited to the entrance to a mental hospital, or a prison. Now I think it’s beautiful. On the other side is quite possibly the only place on earth where my family will be safe.

  “Are we there?” Diana asks yet again when we come to a stop.

  “We’re here,” Peter says with a grin. He opens his door to get out and unlock the gate, then sits back down and reaches across the console and takes my hand.

  “We did it, Jenny. We made it. We’re home.”

  I squeeze his hand in return. Peter doesn’t let go.

  SIX

  NOW

  Rachel

  Fifteen years in a mental hospital serving a self-imposed life sentence for a crime I am now almost certain I didn’t commit is so far beyond the pale, to say I feel massively cheated and betrayed doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s hard to know who is the most deserving of my anger—my family, my therapists, or myself. Right now, I’m fingering my family. I can’t believe they let me languish at the hospital all these years. I honestly can’t recall a single instance in which Diana or Charlotte brought up the possibility of me getting out. I have no idea which of them is ultimately responsible for my unjust incarceration or if they are equally to blame, but I guarantee there are going to be some hard discussions with my so-called loved ones the minute I get home. If my therapist knew what I am planning, she’d say I need to let go of what happened in order to move on. But maybe I don’t want to go forward. The answers I need don’t lie in my future; they’re buried in my past.

  I tuck my stuffed bear into a corner of my duffel and zip the bag shut. White Bear is my constant, my most precious possession, the only thing that has traveled with me from home, to the hospital, and now back home again. White Bear is also the reason I spent my twelfth birthday in a straitjacket after one of my roommates took him while I was sleeping and hid him inside one of the toilet tanks in the community bathroom and I shoved her into the wall after she showed me where she’d stashed him. I didn’t mean to give her a concussion. That said, having a reputation as someone who is not to be trifled with has definitely worked to my advantage. The incident has been blown all out of proportion over time—I’ve heard whispers that I put the girl in a coma or worse—but I don’t care what people say about me as long as they keep their hands off my stuff.

  I stand up and sling the duffel over my shoulder. The bag is heavy. Inside are my books: more than fifty Berenstain Bears titles, given to me by my therapists on special occasions over the years after my passion for bears became clear, along with two books of fairy tales I stole from the hospital library because I’m the only one who checks them out, so who’s going to miss them? I’ve loved fairy tales since I was old enough to read them—the darker, the better—and I especially love the tales that feature bears: “Bearskin,” “The Willow-Wren and the Bear,” “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Not the G-rated story everyone remembers from kids’ books and cartoons, but the 1831 version in which the bears set Goldilocks on fire and drown her.

  These along with a suitcase full of secondhand clothes Aunt Charlotte picked up for me at thrift shops and yard sales are all I have in the way of worldly possessions—not counting, of course, the acreage and the lodge. I’ve thought about signing my half of the property over to my sister more than once since Diana is the one living there and I had no intention of going back. Now I’m glad I didn’t.

  I pause in the doorway and take a last look around the room. The spider watches me warily from her corner. If she knows that something is different about today, she doesn’t let on.

  “Goodbye,” I whisper. I don’t tell her I’m not coming back.

  I also didn’t tell Scotty that I was leaving. I wanted to see him one last time, wanted to grab one final hug, wanted to remind him to brush his teeth every night so his breath doesn’t stink and to steer clear of the orderlies who have it in for him. But Scotty will never understand why I get to go home and he does not, and the thought of trying to explain why it might be a long time before we see each other again is just too painful. I’m hoping that I can come and visit him before he forgets all about me, but the next days and weeks are so uncertain, I’d rather say nothing than make a promise I can’t keep.

  I head down to the lobby to sign out for the last time. It turns out it’s easy to discharge yourself from a mental hospital if you’re the one who put yourself there, which luckily for me I did when I recommitted myself after Diana’s guardianship ended the day that I turned eighteen. All you need to do is tell your therapist you want to leave. Fill out the paperwork, wait three days in case you change your mind, then pick up your discharge instructions along with any prescriptions for your current meds, and you’re good to go. Whether or not you’re actually cured apparently isn’t a deciding factor, which makes me wonder about all the people in similar circumstances who are walking around outside these hospital walls who shouldn’t be. It took me longer to arrange for my ride than it did to arrange for my discharge.

  Outside it’s cold, mid-April, maybe forty-five or fifty degrees, with the occasional wind gust blowing across what’s left of the snowbanks that cuts through me like I’m not wearing anything at all. My tennis shoes and jean jacket are nowhere close to adequate for the weather, but I’d rather take my chances with hypothermia than spend a minute longer than is absolutely necessary inside. Growing up in a mental hospital is every bit as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as it sounds—locked rooms, leather restraints, electroshock therapy, mood-altering drugs—but that was the point. I was warehoused. Forgotten. I didn’t so much fall through the cracks as willingly jump into t
hem.

  Now, of course, all of that has changed.

  Instantly, my anger boils up thick and hot. I dial it down to a simmer and shelter against the building to shake out a cigarette. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ll do if it turns out I didn’t kill my mother. It’s hard to know where to start. Most women my age have a job, a house or an apartment or a condo, a 401(k), a car. I don’t even know how to drive. I can’t cook or sew. I have no idea how to do a load of laundry or iron a shirt or hang a picture or run a dishwasher. I’ve never made a budget, or rented a movie, or shopped for groceries, or bought something online. Until last week, I’d never even made a phone call.

  This is not to say that I am without skills. I know which wild plants are safe to eat and how to fix them, how to find my way in the woods without the sun, moon, or stars. I can swim like a tadpole, climb a tree like a bear, sit as still as an opossum. I can look at a set of tracks or a pile of scat and know immediately which animal made it and how long it’s been since the animal left it behind. I know the differences between a mouse and a vole and a shrew, between a grass and a rush and a sedge, between a marsh and a bog and a fen, and the list goes on and on. I’m not helpless. I just need help.

  At last the dark green late-model Jeep I’m expecting turns in at the end of the long driveway. I toss the cigarette on the sidewalk and wave. Trevor rolls down his window and waves back. He looks happy, as he should. I’ve promised to give him full access to the crime scene along with all the photos he wants to take in exchange for this ride. I may have also hinted at the possibility of an interview with Charlotte or Diana, though I have no idea if they’ll agree to this, so I was careful not to promise. Either way, the level of access I can give him should be enough to take his story from a local-interest piece to a full-length feature article he can possibly place with a major newspaper or a national magazine. I’m his ticket to fame and fortune; he’s my passport to the outside world. I think it’s a fair trade.

  The Jeep comes to a stop directly in front of me. Trevor gets out and goes around to open the back. “Is this everything?”

  “This is it.” I wave my hand dismissively at my luggage as if my lack of material possessions is a lifestyle choice and not something imposed on me by the life I chose. He loads my suitcase into the cargo area while I slide into the passenger seat with the duffel between my feet.

  “You sure you don’t want to put that in the back?” he asks as he gets in behind the wheel. “There’s plenty of room.”

  “I’m good.” There’s no logical reason to keep my duffel bag close except that knowing White Bear is near enough to touch him if I need to makes me feel less nervous about what I’m about to do. And yes, I realize my therapist would have a field day with that.

  “Suit yourself.” He puts the Jeep into gear and we’re off. I don’t look back.

  It feels strange to ride in a car, stranger still to ride in a car with a man who is for all practical purposes a stranger. I’ve known Trevor for years, but only in the context of the hospital, and always with Scotty around. I know he’s Scotty’s legal guardian, and I know he was casting about for a decade trying to figure out what he wanted to do, which is why he’s only just now going back to school, and I know he loves wild places as much as I do, but that’s about it. If he’s read even half of what’s been written about my family, he knows far more about me than I do about him. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

  “I was surprised to get your call,” he says as we pull out onto the highway. “Feeling better?”

  At first, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Then I remember. “I’m fine, thanks. Those medication changes can really do a number on you. I appreciate your coming to get me.”

  “It’s no trouble.”

  Given that he’s about to put three hundred miles on his car today as a favor to me, I doubt this is the case, but I don’t call him on it because—obviously—he’s doing me a favor.

  A housefly buzzes against the window glass. Let me out! Let me out! it says over and over. I crack open the window and cup my hand over the fly and guide it gently to the opening. It takes off without so much as a thank-you. Flies aren’t the best conversationalists. For that matter, neither am I. It’s hard to know if keeping my thoughts to myself is something I learned because of all the hours I spent with my mother sitting silently in her observation blind, or if I would have been this reticent no matter how I was raised. I do know that I discovered early on that choosing when to speak and what to say was one of the few aspects of my hospital experience that I could control. I actually haven’t spoken a word in group therapy in years—not out of stubbornness, as my therapists no doubt assumed, but because I had no interest in getting better. Aside from Scotty and Trevor, the only ones I spoke to regularly were the spiders. If Trevor is hoping that this car ride will turn up some juicy details for his article, he’s going to be disappointed.

  “Did you bring your copy of the police report?” I ask.

  “It’s in my bag in the back.”

  “Okay if I have a look?”

  “Help yourself.”

  I twist around to reach between the seats and take out the manila folder and read the report carefully straight through. I’m looking specifically for references to me. Aside from the paragraph I focused on last time, there’s not much. After I was found beside the highway, I was brought to the local emergency room, where doctors patched me up and gave me fluids and kept me for observation. Apparently, it took them a while to realize that the reason I didn’t speak or move was not because I wouldn’t but because I couldn’t, though to be fair, mine was probably the first case of catatonia they had seen. They brought in a psychiatrist, who checked me out and sent me on to the Newberry Regional Mental Health Center for evaluation, and as far as the police report is concerned, my story ends there.

  I page back to the photograph of the murder weapon. Alleged murder weapon, I correct, because before I can accept that this is the rifle that killed my parents, I need to understand why I see a different one in my visions. This Winchester Magnum is a monster; the kind of rifle a hunter would take on safari if she was planning to shoot dangerous game at close range. Definitely not a rifle an eleven-year-old girl could fire without doing herself serious injury, as the report rightly concludes. If I had fired this rifle, there would have been evidence of massive bruising on my shoulder, even after two weeks. The recoil alone should have broken my trigger finger and possibly my wrist or my arm—unlike the much lighter and smaller Remington I see in my visions, which any eleven-year-old with a minimum of instruction is perfectly capable of holding and firing properly.

  And yes, as it happens, I do know quite a lot about rifles. The display cases in the gun room were empty when I lived at the lodge, but when the family came for Christmas I used to sit on my great-grandfather’s lap while we pored over photos from when the cases were full and he taught me each rifle’s name and what it was used for: .22 long rifles for small game, Winchesters and Remingtons for medium game, larger rifles for wolf and deer, all the way up to a Mannlicher-Schoenauer big bore capable of bringing down a rhino—proof of which stood on a raised platform in the middle of our great room.

  “Anything?” Trevor asks.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Just wondering if anything’s coming back. About those missing days,” he adds when it’s obvious I’m still not getting it.

  “Oh. No. Nothing.”

  “Maybe you’ll remember more after you get home.”

  “Maybe.”

  I don’t tell him that regaining my memories is exactly what I’m hoping will happen, though the question of how I survived those two weeks is a long way down my priority list. I want to stand in the place where my parents died. Close my eyes and experience my vision in surround sound, high definition, on-the-spot-and-in-the-moment Technicolor. I want to see or hear something new, some critical missing detail
that will put all my questions to rest, no matter how painful the answers might be. If it turns out that the Winchester is indeed the rifle that killed my parents, I am ready to accept that I didn’t fire it. But just because I didn’t shoot my mother doesn’t mean that I am not responsible for setting in motion the events that destroyed my family. There has to be a reason I took the blame, even if I didn’t pull the trigger. All I need to do is remember.

  I slide the report back inside its folder and return the folder to Trevor’s messenger bag. There’s another reason I am not yet ready to accept its findings, a glaring omission that could have turned the official conclusion on its head if anyone knew.

  Not only do I know a great deal about hunting rifles, I am a very good shot.

  SEVEN

  THEN

  Jenny

  The first thing we did when we moved in was clear out the gun room. For one thing, we don’t need guns for protection. Black bears may be the top predator on our acreage, but they are also among the most timid and least aggressive bear species on the planet. And while we know we have at least two wolves hanging around because we’ve heard them howling on three separate occasions, we’ve never seen them and don’t expect to. There’s a nearly infinitesimal possibility that because of our acreage’s unique configuration and extreme isolation it could be home to a passing cougar or a wolverine, but these animals are so rare in the Upper Peninsula—only twenty confirmed cougar sightings over the past decade, and wolverines quite possibly never lived in the state at all despite Michigan’s nickname as “the Wolverine State”—that the odds of Peter or me stumbling across either are essentially zero. Bottom line: we’re here to study the wildlife on our property, not to shoot it.

  More to the point, there is no way we are going to allow so much as a single rifle on the premises as long as our daughter is in the house, let alone fifty-six. (Fifty-six!) It doesn’t matter that the gun collection was kept in locked display cases, or that the ammunition was stored in locked drawers beneath, or that many of the rifles are rare and valuable museum-quality antiques that under any other circumstances should have been on display; children far less inquisitive than our daughter manage to get their curious little hands on deadly weapons all the time. It would be just our luck for Diana to find the one rifle in the single unlocked case that happened to have been put away loaded and accidentally shoot herself or us.