The Night Sister (22 page)

Rose woke up in the morning with a tinny taste in her mouth, her body spent and exhausted. She'd dreamed of knives and claws, and razor teeth. She lay there for a minute, breathing a little too hard, eyes closed, listening for her sister.

Then she remembered.

Rose turned and reached for the jar beside her bed.

The luna moth was not moving. It lay on its side, lifeless.

Rose began to scream.

“What is it?” her mother asked, hurrying into the room, still in her nightgown.

“Sylvie!” Rose said, holding up the jar wrapped in wire. “It's Sylvie! I've killed her.”

“Rose,” Mama said, voice shaky as she took a step back, looking stunned.

“This is Sylvie! Here in the jar! Look!”

Mama's confused eyes locked on the jar in Rose's hand. “Don't be ridiculous,” she said at last.

Rose sobbed. “She was a mare. I wanted to show you. To prove it. I didn't mean to kill her.”

Mama shook her head. “You listen to me, Rose. That moth is not your sister.”

Mama's eyes moved from the jar to Sylvie's empty bed and the open closet door, where many of the hangers hung empty.

Rose blinked, trying to understand what she was seeing, where Sylvie's things could have gone. She remembered last night, how Sylvie said she was going away. Had she packed everything up to leave before she headed out to the tower? Was she really planning to run away, worried she'd be caught for killing Fenton?

Mama then moved to the desk, where a piece of paper was loaded into the Royal typewriter.

Mama pulled the paper out, read it out loud:

I can't stay here any longer.

I'm sorry. I love you all and know you'll understand.

I'll write once I've settled.

All my love,

Sylvie

“What's all the commotion?” Daddy called from the doorway, where he stood, shoulders slumped, wearing his old rumpled pajamas.

“It's Sylvie,” Mama said, voice shaking, as she stepped forward to hand him the typed note. “She's run away.”

A door closed in Rose's chest. She knew Mama was wrong.

She'd killed Sylvie.

Yes, Sylvie may have been a monster, but Rose hadn't meant to hurt her. She just wanted to catch her. To prove to the world what Sylvie really was. Now no one would ever believe. They'd all think that Sylvie had run away, gone off to some bright new future. And Rose alone would bear the burden of the truth.

She clung desperately to the glass jar, looked at the beautiful broken creature inside, and began to sob.

“It's for you,” Margot said, holding the phone out to Piper. They were sitting together, having a luxurious breakfast in bed. Piper had made crêpes with apple butter, turkey bacon, sliced melon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Jason had gone to work early without so much as a glance at Piper. Piper had heard him and Margot talking late into the night, Jason's voice desperate and at times angry. At one point, she heard him snarl, “You and Piper and Amy.” Apparently, they hadn't resolved things: when Piper got up to use the bathroom in the night, she saw Jason snoring on the couch, four empty beer cans on the coffee table, and the sports channel playing on the muted TV.

Margot hadn't said a word about Jason so far this morning, choosing instead to talk about everything Piper should accomplish today. Not only was there a crib that needed to be assembled, there were curtains with little elephants to hang, and bags of tiny onesies and footie pajamas to put in drawers. Up until this point, Margot and Jason had left everything unpacked or stored away. If the worst happened (It couldn't possibly, could it? Life couldn't be that unfair…), the last thing they wanted was an adorable elephant mobile hanging over an empty crib, or drawers full of tiny clothes that would never be worn. But now the baby's arrival seemed imminent, and Margot was feeling completely unprepared. She also seemed to desperately need something to keep her busy, something to focus on that wasn't Jason or Amy. She showed Piper checklists from books and Web sites, and made frantic lists of things they didn't have and would need to get: diaper-rash cream, a rectal thermometer, tiny nail clippers.

Piper was loving it.

“For me?” Piper said, reaching to take the phone from Margot. Margot shrugged, looking equally puzzled. Who on earth would be calling Margot's home phone looking for Piper at 10:00 a.m. on a Monday?

“Hello?” Piper said.

“Piper? Hey, this is Crystal. Lou's aunt?”

“Oh, sure, hi.” Piper's pulse quickened a bit. Had something happened to the little girl?

“So…Lou hasn't stopped talking about you since yesterday. Guess you made quite an impression. She keeps asking when she can see you again.”

“Oh, that's nice. I could come by and visit again sometime.”

“Yeah, well, here's the thing. I've gotta work this afternoon, and I don't have anyone to watch her. Would you mind?”

“This afternoon?”

“Just for a couple hours. Until Ray gets home at three. Lou's really not all that comfortable with most adults, especially now. It would be a real favor.”

“Uh, sure. I guess I can do that.”

“Cool. Oh, and maybe you could go by her house first? She needs some things. Clothes and toys and stuff? When they brought her over, all she had was the stuff she was wearing. She doesn't want to go back there—can't say I blame her.”

“But isn't it all sealed off? Will the police let me in?”

Margot's eyes got huge as she watched Piper. “The motel?” she mouthed. Piper nodded.

“It's all clear. I talked to the cops this morning. They're done up there and said we could come anytime. Ray won't go, and, me, I can't stand the thought of going anywhere near the place. I mean, Mark is”—her voice faltered—“
was
my
brother.
”

Piper didn't know what to say, so she said nothing.

“So would you mind?” Crystal went on. “Picking up a bag of stuff for Lou and bringing it by later? I can't tell you what a help it would be. I leave for work at one.”

Piper didn't want to go to the motel, no way, no how. Didn't want to see where Amy and her family had died so horribly. But then she thought of Lou—her pale face, her smile that reminded Piper so much of a young Amy. The poor kid had been through so much; didn't she deserve the slim comfort of her own clothes, a few favorite stuffed animals to provide some sense of normality, to remind her of the time before this nightmare? It seemed like the least Piper could do.

“Sure,” Piper said at last. “No problem. I'll see you at one.”

She hung up and told Margot what was going on.

“Holy crap! You've gotta go check out the motel! Take a good look around.”

Piper groaned. “You're kidding, right? The thought of even setting foot near that place makes me sick, and you want me to play Nancy Drew? What am I even looking for?”

“Evidence that we're right. That Amy didn't kill her family.”

“Don't you think the police would have found that if it existed?”

Margot shook her head fiercely. “It's a cut-and-dried case to them. Besides, no one knows that motel like we do, right?”

“Jason will kill me if he finds out I went anywhere near the motel.”

“Please. You'll be back in no time. He'll never know! You can stop at Rite Aid on your way back and get the stuff on our list. If he calls or stops by, I'll tell him you're out shopping. Then you come back here for lunch—and to tell me
everything
—and head over to Crystal's to babysit Lou. No problem.”

“I don't know….”

“For Christ's sake, Piper. You already told Crystal you'd pick up clothes for Lou, right? I mean, you don't expect Crystal to go out there, where her brother was killed? And so, while you're there, just…look around. See what you can figure out.”

Piper was silent, trying to come up with a way to make Margot understand that it was impossible, that she couldn't bear it. Then Margot said, quietly:

“You know Amy would do it for you.”

So that was that.

P
iper gripped the steering wheel of her sister's Subaru tightly as she came up to the Tower Motel sign.

28 Rooms, Pool, No Vacancy.

Piper flipped down her turn signal, her eyes on the tower. She recalled Lou's description of the sound of the gun, the footsteps.

Could Amy possibly have shot her husband and son?

Or had there been someone else there?

Something
else?

She remembered the notes left for Amy in the typewriter all those years ago, and Amy's insistence that Sylvie's ghost had come back and was visiting her in her bedroom at night. The fuzzy Polaroid photo she waved around as proof.

The old gravel driveway was nearly washed out. Piper moved slowly; the car bumped as she passed the leaning stone tower and the long shadow it cast. She shivered.

Just a building,
she told herself.

But it wasn't just a building, was it?

She knew the truth.

There was no way she was going in the tower, not today, not ever, in spite of her sister's guilt trip. She'd just tell Margot the tower was too dangerous, the wood floors rotted through.
I was thinking about my own safety,
she'd say,
about how I didn't want your baby to grow up without her kooky aunt Piper.

Kooky. That was something Amy might have called her. Back then.

Suddenly she was twelve again. Gangly and awkward, all legs, feathered hair.

Naïve. Just so young.

There was so much we didn't know.

But there were also the things she
had
known. She'd known that she loved Amy; known it, but never admitted it to anyone, even herself. And somehow or other, in spite all the affairs that came after, both men and women, nothing compared to that wild adolescent longing she felt for Amy. It was Amy she went back to in her mind.

Amy. Always Amy.

Piper passed the first building of units, Rooms 1 through 14. Some of the windows were broken, and the roof had collapsed in three places. She remembered searching through Room 4 and finding binoculars, Amy's sunglasses, the heavy old key ring and key. Was the lock still broken? If anyone could get inside, they might even be sitting there now, peering between the slits of the ruined plastic blinds.

She pulled the car up to the main house, shut off the engine, and sat for a minute, listening to the car tick as it cooled.

Crystal was right—the police were gone. There was no sign of crime-scene tape, no clue that anything horrible had happened here. It looked like any other badly neglected house in rural New England: shutters hanging unevenly, paint peeling, the yard and once-upon-a-time gardens overrun with weeds. It really didn't look all that different from the way Piper remembered it when she was a kid. A little smaller, maybe (didn't everything look smaller once you grew up?), a little more…dark. Was that the right word?

Piper half-expected to look up at the dormer window on the right and see Amy looking down, waving.
Come up. I have something to show you. Something exciting. Sylvie's left another message. She came back last night, stood at the foot of my bed. Here, I've got a picture….

Piper got out of the car, blinking up at Amy's old bedroom window. There was no movement there or at any other window. No one home.

It's because they're all dead,
a little voice reminded Piper, but she shook off the thought, made herself walk to the front steps, climb the crumbling concrete and stone, and push open the heavy front door.