“You think he blackmailed his own son into marrying someone else and having a child with her? Mom, I’m sorry, but you’re just being paranoid.”
“No, I’m not. It’s what happened, Sylvie. It’s how he was. Richard took Will away from me, and if he found out the truth, he would have taken Persephone, too. Will would never lie to me about something like that.”
She took a deep, ragged breath, the air hissing in her throat. “So that’s why we kept it a secret. We weren’t just protecting Will. We were protecting Persephone.”
“Maybe you were. Because Will had you all twisted up about everything. But Will wasn’t protecting her. Protecting her would imply that he actually cared about her, but obviously he didn’t. He never even tried to have a relationship with her.”
“Goddamn it, you’re not listening. He didn’t have a relationship with her because he cared about her! Fuck, Sylvie, I barely had a relationship with her because of how much I cared about her!”
My blood seemed to stall for the briefest of moments. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
Mom shook her head, her eyes shining with fresh tears. “I loved her more than anything in this world. She had both of us in her. She was proof of how deeply we loved each other.”
When she blinked, a tear raced down her cheek. She cleared her throat, the sound like a cold car attempting to start.
“But I couldn’t get too close to her,” she continued. Then she looked up at me, her eyes wide and frantic. “I couldn’t get too close to her just to lose her someday. I’d already gone through that once with Will. I couldn’t survive it again. I had to—I had to watch her carefully, but I had to keep her at arm’s length, too. I just, I never imagined I would lose her the way I did.”
She lifted a finger to her chin, catching a tear on her knuckle. Then she wiped at her nose.
“Do you have any tissues in here?” she asked, looking around, but I was too stuck on what she’d said to answer.
I had to keep her at arm’s length. When I pictured it, I saw Mom’s hand on Persephone’s shoulder, her arm stiff as it stretched out as far as it could go between them. It was just an expression—“arm’s length”—but the image in my head felt right somehow, felt true. How many times had I burrowed into Mom on the couch, while Persephone sat alone in a chair? How many times had Persephone announced an accomplishment—that B+ on her English paper in high school, or her citizenship award in middle school—only for Mom to steamroll over it with something I had done, something I had achieved? How many times had Persephone told me we had two different mothers, or that Mom must have loved my father because of how much she clearly loved me? But now, Mom was insisting it was the opposite: it was Persephone’s father she had loved beyond reason; it was Persephone who was the daughter—and here, a lump formed in my throat—she had cherished the most. Because of what she symbolized. Because of whose she was.
My mind flashed to Persephone’s letter, the ease and candor with which she’d recounted her pain to Ben. Shitty mother, she’d written. All that stuff with my shitty mother. And I’d painted birds on her collarbones, clouds on her wrists. I’d covered up the bruises, turned them into teacups and trees and planets, and all the while, I never knew them for what they were—symptoms of the ache and loneliness no paint could ever cure.
How much of Persephone’s relationship with Mom had I missed? How many small but accumulating hurts and dismissals had I filtered out over the years, swathed, as I’d been, in Mom’s arms? How many times had Persephone watched us together and felt her skin grow cold? How much of the warmth I’d basked in had actually been real, and how much had been reallocated from love belonging to Persephone? Love Mom wouldn’t allow herself to show. Love she kept, like a dangerous animal, at arm’s length.
“Arm’s length, huh?” I said now. “How’d that work out for you?”
She looked down at the floor and shrugged. Then she closed her eyes, and a tear dripped onto her lap.
“I wonder—” She shook her head. “I don’t even know if she ever knew how much I loved her.”
I watched her face, saw how her skin looked suctioned to bone, and I thought of how all the secrets she’d kept—who she’d loved and how much—had led Persephone to the place she’d ended up.
“She didn’t . . .” I started to say.
Mom looked up at me, her eyes almost hopeful, as if she expected me to continue the sentence with something that would ease her guilt and pain. But instead, I said something terrible, something true, and a part of me—so removed from the part whose instinct was to protect her—hoped it would shatter her into shards.
“She didn’t know you loved her.”
27
I was counting the tiles on the floor of Mom’s treatment room, and every time I got to ten, I looked toward the door, searching for Ben. I kept expecting every nurse that walked by to be him, but so far, he hadn’t appeared. Eight and nine and ten—and it wasn’t his tall frame filling up the doorway, wasn’t his scar on the cheeks of the faces that passed. Eight and nine and ten—and the hours moved along, slow as the drugs that dripped into Mom’s bloodstream. Three and four and five—and I glanced at Mom, saw her squeezed-shut eyes wringing out the light.
She hadn’t spoken to me at all that morning, but I kept looking at her in her chair, her head tipped back, her lips dry and slightly parted. I even opened my mouth a couple times to apologize for what I’d said the night before, but then I clamped my teeth together, recalling all her secrets and everything they’d done.
I had to see Ben. Eight and nine and ten. He needed to know who Persephone was to him. I’d barely slept all night, filled with the urgency to tell him, to rewrite a history already dictated by pain. He would lose her all over again—lose whatever sacredness still colored his memories of their relationship—but he had to. He had to know. Eight and nine and—
My cell phone vibrated with a call, and for a second, I assumed that it was him. It was Lauren, though, and I shook my head, remembering that I’d never even given Ben my number.
I glanced at Mom, snoring gently beside me now. Then I looked back at my phone and sent the call to voicemail. I knew I needed to talk to her—I owed my best friend that much—and after my conversation with Ben the night before, I thought I might even be able to. But Mom’s treatment room, the hospital itself, wasn’t the place, and right then, I had only enough energy to devote myself to one difficult task.
I stood up and walked out of the room. I didn’t see any nurses in the reception area, so I approached a woman at the front desk and waited as she wrapped up a conversation on the phone.
“Thanks for your patience,” she said a minute later. “How can I help you?”
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for Ben Emory.”
“Hey.”
A rush of warmth shot across my chest at the sound of his voice behind me. He’d startled me, I told myself—that’s all it was—but when I turned and saw he was already smiling at me, my sternum felt lit up from inside. I raised my hand to my chest, trying to rub away the sensation.
“I found him,” I said over my shoulder to the receptionist.
I heard her chuckle and then Ben’s fingers wrapped around mine, tugging me away.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said after we’d taken a few steps. He let go of my hand, the smile still stretched out on his face. “I was actually going to call you tonight, but then I realized I don’t have your number.”
Part of me wanted to laugh, having had the same realization only minutes ago—but the other part, which had no patience for bones that felt lit up inside, got right to the point.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Okay.” Ben nodded. “Go ahead.”
“No, I—” I looked around. “Not here. Can we get together after you get off of work?”
“Oh, sure. Of course. And actually—the reason I was going to call you is because I want to show you something.”
I winced. “I
don’t think I can handle any more letters.”
“No,” Ben said, smiling again. “This is a good thing, I promise. Do you want to come over tonight? I’m done here at six.”
Was it the light in the room or were his eyes just a simple shade of brown? I’d looked right into them several times over the last week, but in that moment, I couldn’t see them as the impossibly black color they’d always been.
“Yeah.” I swallowed down the thought. “That sounds good.”
“Great,” Ben said. “I can even whip something up for us, if you’d like. I can’t promise it’ll be better than frozen pizza, but—”
“No,” I cut in. “That’s okay. I’ll just eat before I come.”
His expression slackened, as if disappointed, but I couldn’t let him plan a meal for us, imagining it as some sort of date, only for me to show up and destroy him. It would be too cruel—and after everything that had happened, everything I’d learned, I knew now that cruelty was not a thing Ben deserved.
“Okay,” he said. “Well, just come when you can, then.”
“Okay,” I agreed, and I spun around before I could see him walk away. Heading back toward Mom’s room, I felt stiff and heavy with dread. After tonight, Ben would never remember Persephone the same way again, and it wasn’t fair that the messenger had to be me. He should have always known. We all should have.
When I walked back into the treatment room, Mom’s eyes were open. She stared at me as I took my seat beside her.
“Who were you talking to?” she asked.
I looked at her, but her face revealed nothing—just a pale oval of bone and skin. I turned my eyes toward the doorway. There was no way she could have seen us from there; the view didn’t reach that far. Still, there seemed no point in lying anymore. I was tired of it. I was so intolerably tired.
“Ben Emory,” I said. “He works here.”
Mom’s mouth dropped open, but then she squeezed her eyes tightly and twisted her head away from me, leaning it back against the chair.
I felt no need to explain or apologize. I just looked at the floor—eight and nine and ten—and got back to counting tiles.
• • •
I didn’t listen to the voicemail Lauren had left until Mom was back in her recliner at home, but by then it was too late.
“You’re either at your mom’s chemo,” she’d said, “or you’re still ignoring me. Either way, I’m leaving for work soon, but I’m out at seven thirty. You better call me back sometime after that.” Then she’d softened her tone and added, “Oh, and Wolf Bro called Steve to complain about his last session. He’s coming in today to discuss the issue with me—apparently the eyes don’t look beast-y enough with the new shading—so at the very least, you’re gonna want to hear that story. If I’ve forgiven you for ignoring me, that is.”
It was just after seven when I got to Ben’s, and I vowed to myself that I would call Lauren back as soon as I left. But for now, I was still carrying the weight of someone else’s lies, and before I could feel unburdened enough to talk to Lauren about my own, I needed to tell Ben the unfathomable fact of who Persephone had been.
“Hey,” Ben said when he opened his front door. “Come on in.”
He was smiling at me again, and it was enough to make me hesitate. His expression should have been wary, not welcoming; he should have locked the door when he saw me coming. But he didn’t know that yet, and I took a few extra seconds wiping my feet on the mat before walking inside, as if I could scrape off the truth.
“Can I take your coat?” he asked as he closed the door behind me.
“Uh, no, that’s okay.”
I didn’t know how long I was staying—or, more accurately, I didn’t know how long he’d want me to stay once I told him what I knew. If the situation were reversed, I’d ask him to leave immediately. Then I’d scream until the walls shook. I’d throw everything in the house to the floor.
“Okay,” he said, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I have something to show you. Or—sorry, not show you—I’m giving it to you. I remembered it when you were talking to Tommy yesterday, and I was going to give it to you when we got back to my house, but then, honestly, I just forgot about it, after the letter, and everything.”
I looked at my feet as my face flushed. “That’s okay,” I said quickly. “But can I just say my thing first?”
But he wasn’t listening. He had walked into his bedroom and was now heading straight for his nightstand drawer. After a moment of watching from the doorway, I crossed the threshold and followed him into the room where, less than a day ago, we’d pressed our bodies together, desperate to feel something other than pain. I stopped myself a few feet from the bed, closing my eyes against the image of us—mouths on skin, fingers gripping hard. I willed the memory to dissolve, then forced myself to picture Persephone instead, her blonde hair trailing down her back as she got into Ben’s car night after night.
Snapping my eyes open, I looked toward Ben, hunched over the nightstand, blocking my view.
How was I going to say it? I’d tried to rehearse it on the way over but I still didn’t know where to start. I could keep it simple—Ben, Persephone is your sister—but how could he take that seriously? And if I told him, instead, the story of how I’d found out, would he even be able to follow? Or would the words become only syllables, and then only sounds?
“Got it,” he said, turning toward me. He held his hand up in the air, palm toward the ceiling. Squinting into the space between us, I tried to translate the gesture—and then I saw it. At first I only noticed the delicate chain that dangled from his fingers, but as my eyes followed that down to the pendant hanging at the bottom, my pulse flickered.
It was the gold starfish swinging like a pendulum from his hand.
My eyes stretched wide. “Where did you get that?” I demanded.
Something flashed across Ben’s face—satisfaction, maybe, or anticipation—and I saw he was still smiling at me. “I’ve had it since she died,” he said.
My breath became shallow, the room teetering. I managed to take a couple steps backward. “No,” I whispered.
“It’s okay,” Ben said, “you can have it. I didn’t know until yesterday when you asked Tommy for it how much it would mean to you. But here—it’s yours.”
He held it out to me, his arm reaching through the air to close the gap between us. My feet continued to move backward, though the rest of my body felt frozen in place.
“Sylvie, what’s wrong?”
The smile had faded from his face, but I could still see the ghost of it, lingering in the corners of his lips.
“It was you?” I murmured, my eyes glazing with tears.
He cocked his head to the side. “What was me?”
I spun away from him then, and in the fraction of a second before I’d fully turned around, I saw his eyes widen. When I yanked open the front door, I could feel him just behind me, his shoes thudding against the hardwood floor. I stumbled down the steps, fumbling for my keys in my coat pocket, and ran toward my car, his fingers brushing my coat as he tried to grab me.
“Sylvie, stop! Wait. Stop!”
I was almost there—just about to open the driver’s side door—when he grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around. His fingers dug into my arms like dead bolts locking into place, and he pressed my back against the car, his breath erupting in bursts against my cheek.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I stared up at him. His eyes were blacker than I’d ever seen them, even with the light from his front door shining toward us. His pupils looked wildly dilated, like an animal about to pounce. I tightened my muscles, tried to wriggle free of him, but I couldn’t move—his grip was that hard. Now, I could only stand there, helpless as Persephone once was, shaking.
But then, just as suddenly as he’d clasped onto my arms, he glanced down at his hands, and his mouth fell open. He let go.
“Sorry, I—” he started. Then he shook his head. “Yo
u’re scared of me?”
“You killed her,” I said, my voice husky with tears.
“What? Why would you say that? You know that’s not true.”
“You have her necklace. She was never without it. Ever.”
“I—I know that, but—”
“She wasn’t wearing it when they found her body. Which means that the person who has it was the last person to see her alive.”
“No,” Ben said, snapping his head back and forth. “No, no, no. You don’t understand. I found the necklace. I didn’t take it from her.”
I heard a surge of voices then, not too far away from us. There were people, it seemed, just beyond the turn in the driveway back toward the main house. They were saying words I couldn’t make out, words that sounded sharp and contentious. But I didn’t care about that. Whatever it was, whoever was arguing, didn’t matter to me then.
“You found it on her dead body!” I cried. “After you killed her!”
“No,” he protested, looking back toward his father’s house, the source of the sudden commotion. “No, I—” He thrust his eyes back onto mine. “I found it in my driveway. Right after she went missing. I was shoveling and I found it there, under the snow. I almost—”
“—and your secretary’s been giving me the runaround all fucking day.”
“I almost shoveled it away.”
“I won’t be ignored like this!” the voice insisted. It was louder now, practically shouting, the boom of it echoing toward us.
“Why would it be in your driveway?” I demanded.
“I don’t know.” He glanced toward the voices again. “But I told you how we were fighting, how she was kicking all around, going nuts. It must have fallen off her then. And I don’t know, I guess it fell out of my car some point after that.”
“But—the police,” I said. “I told them to check to see if you had it.”
“They did.”
“And?”
“And,” Ben said, “I lied to them.”
“I need more. I didn’t sign up to be harassed like this. People knocking on my door.”
The Winter Sister Page 26
