“No,” Parker said. “No, thank you. We, uh, we’re here because—”
“Where is she?” I demanded. Mom glanced back at the sound of my voice, but her eyes were dim, as if she couldn’t remember who I was.
Falley took a step forward, closer to the four of us. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but we—we believe we’ve found Persephone’s body.”
Mom dropped to the floor, her knees folding beneath her. She put her hands flat against the dark gray tile and wailed. Aunt Jill put her hand on Mom’s back, and when she looked up at the detectives, tears glossed her eyes.
“Her body?” Jill asked. “So she’s . . .”
Parker and Falley nodded. Missy’s hands gripped my shoulders and my throat went dry in an instant.
Jill stood up, leaving my mother sobbing in the fetal position on the floor. “What,” she tried, “what happened?” I stared at Mom, but I couldn’t bring myself to move.
Falley was also looking at Mom when she said, “We don’t know for sure yet. She was covered with about a foot of snow, but it looks—it looks as if she was—gone, before that. She had . . . bruises on her neck. She appears to have been strangled.”
No. No, no, no. No.
The word ran through my head, over and over, quiet at first, but then screaming. And in the years that followed, that was the moment when my memory of that day broke down. I could never remember when the detectives left, or at what point Mom stood up, walked to the barely stocked liquor cabinet in the kitchen, pulled down a bottle of something clear, and headed like a person on death row to her bedroom. I couldn’t remember those last moments when Mom was Mom, before the years of empty vodka bottles, of a locked door and a dusty, stale smell throughout the house. Whenever I tried to piece together the minutes following Falley’s words, all I could see was the night Persephone left.
• • •
She had gone out with Ben earlier than usual, about eight thirty. It was risky, because Mom had been awake, curled up on the couch watching TV, and she could have heard Persephone landing on the snow-covered mulch beneath our window. She could have seen a flash of headlights pass through our house. And on that night, despite all my promises to my sister, I was hoping she would. I was hoping that, finally, it could all be over—the bruises, the late-night painting, the cold air that slipped through the window I was expected to leave cracked open each night.
But Mom didn’t notice. I could hear canned laughter floating down the hallway, could hear the squeaky old couch as she fluffed up pillows and repositioned herself. An hour later, I listened to popping sounds in the microwave, wondering if Mom would come to my room to offer me some of her snack. Then, just as my clock switched to ten twenty-five, as I saw Ben pull up to the curb two houses away, Mom turned off the TV, walked toward our room, and knocked lightly on the door.
“Good night, girls,” she said.
I held my breath, waiting for her to open the door, to stick her head inside just in time to see Persephone, snowflakes in her hair, pull up the window. But my lungs began to burn, and I heard Mom’s bedroom door close. Down the street, Persephone in her red coat was getting out of the car.
I acted without thinking. In a burst of motion that felt like one continuous movement, I closed the window that was supposed to be left open, turned the latch, shut off the light by my bed, and got under my blankets, facing the wall, my eyes wide open.
First, there was the crunch of shoes through snow, the sound muffled by walls and glass, but growing louder every second. Then, a fumbling of fingers against the window. Finally, a pause—was it one of anger or confusion or just mild annoyance? I’ll never know—and then a tapping on the glass.
My heart pounded so hard in my chest that I thought I could see it disturb the blankets. Still, I waited it out, pretending to be fast asleep. Persephone would be mad, yes, and she’d likely pin me to the bed and squeeze my wrists until they bruised—but at least it would be my bruises, not hers. At least, after having to give up and ring the doorbell, after having to explain to Mom where she’d been, she would be exposed. Mom would take care of it. Mom would make sure that Persephone never snuck out again. And in that way, my sister would be safe, and I would never have had to utter a word.
What I didn’t know, though, was that Persephone would not ring the doorbell. Once the tapping stopped, and she gave up hissing my name through the glass, I pulled my blankets back and crept toward the window to peer out. But I didn’t see her trudging to the front door. Instead, I saw her running back toward Ben’s car, fresh snow sparkling on her coat. She opened the passenger door and the two of them drove away, the car growing smaller and smaller until it turned the corner and disappeared.
And I didn’t know it then, but if I’d just kept things the way they were supposed to be, if I’d kept the window open, the latch unlocked, if I’d kept on swallowing Persephone’s secrets night after night, then I could have—I would have—kept my sister, too.
3
When Aunt Jill called to tell me about my mother’s cancer, I was forcing down my second tequila shot in a bar on Thayer Street. It was my thirtieth birthday, and Lauren was buying. “All night,” she said, “anything you want. None of this Sober Sylvie shit.” I was wearing a black dress that dug into my thighs and black strappy shoes that dug into my ankles. When I stumbled outside to answer my phone, my jerky movements were less a product of the tequila than the four-inch heels that Lauren had forced me to wear (“Don’t even think about putting on flats. That dress is a fuck-me dress, and a fuck-me dress needs fuck-me shoes.”). I’d been working at Steve’s Ink all day, so I hadn’t had the energy to argue with her, or to explain that I didn’t care that much about my birthday. With Lauren, it was easier to just wear whatever outfit she threw at me, drink whatever shots she bought me, and hope she found a guy she liked within the first thirty minutes. That way, I could feign queasiness and spend the last hours of my birthday alone in my bed.
I leaned against a telephone pole just outside the bar, watching a parade of young people—Brown students, most likely—marching inside. Putting one finger into my ear, I tried my best to shut out the music that blasted through the door of the bar.
“Jill,” I said. “Hi.”
“Happy birthday!” she said. “I can’t believe you’re thirty years old. That must make me—what? Thirty-seven?”
I smiled, shifting my weight from foot to foot. “No way,” I said. “Thirty-five. Tops.”
“Great. I’ll take it.”
In the pause between us, I flicked through my brain for something to tell her, some recent activity or achievement that would prove to her that I wasn’t “just floating,” as she had said during our last conversation in September. But what was there?
“So,” Jill said. “Anything new?”
I scanned the other side of the street, where a man sitting on the curb snuffed out a cigarette and then reached into his jacket pocket for another. Behind him was the Thai restaurant where Lauren and I often got takeout, and I looked at the flashing “OPEN” sign, my mouth watering. When I glanced back at the man a moment later, I was startled to find that his eyes were already locked onto mine. He cupped his hand over his lighter and lit a cigarette, his gaze lingering as he inhaled. I quickly looked away, busying my fingers by picking at an old staple on the telephone pole.