36

“Now. Now,” Abi said. “Let’s not go throwing accusations around, you know—”

“She killed them,” Lauren said, cutting short her relative’s monotone statement. “It was her fault. Martha’s the—”

“Stop that!” Abi slapped Lauren across the face with the handle of the knife. For the first time, there was a sense of haste and desperation in her voice. “You know that’s not true.”

Lauren felt a searing pain race through her head. Stars danced in front of her eyes. “You think she was innocent?” A slither of enamel freed itself from a wisdom tooth and rested on her tongue. She spat it onto the floor at Abi’s feet. “You can’t be that stupid.”

“She was young, she was troubled, she—”

“She burned them alive!” Lauren said, laughing from the pain, the anger, the absurdity. “I was twelve years old. Twelve! And I was forced to listen to my parents screaming for help as they burned to a crisp!”

Lauren was slapped again, and again, and again, her head rocking this way and that, the pain growing with each contact. Abi shouted as she hit her, but the words didn’t filter through the pain, through the ringing in her ears. When she stopped, Lauren could see only a haze, a fuzzy outline of her psychotic sister as she loomed over her, breathless, angry, struggling to contain herself.

“She was only three years older than you,” Abi said, backing away, her voice and her movements more animated, less methodical. “Just fifteen. Still growing. Still getting to grips with the world. And it wasn’t her fault.”

“You don’t think she started the fire?” Lauren said slowly, almost dreamily, as her vision gradually returned.

“No—No—maybe—it doesn’t matter. She lost her parents, too, you know.”

“I think that was the point, wasn’t it?” Lauren asked. “She wanted them dead.”

“No, she did not!” Abi screamed. “She loved them. She was just angry. All little girls get angry at their parents, all little girls—”

“Barricade them into their bedroom and then start a fire?”

Abi paused, hands by her side. Lauren’s vision was still hazy, the stars still clearing, but she saw the hatred set deep into her sister’s heavily made-up face.

“It was a mistake, okay?”

“But that’s not what the police said, is it?” Lauren shifted on the couch, forcing herself to sit up straight, to stare her attacker in the face. “They locked her away, didn’t they? Too young, they said, but she wasn’t a criminal, she wasn’t a murderer, she was just mentally ill. That’s what they said. That’s why they put her in that psychiatric hospital. And that’s where she stayed for the next ten years.”

Abi sat on the sofa opposite, practically falling into it, her head hung low, the hand that held the knife slung over her lap. “Martha hated it there,” she said. “They treated her like a madwoman. I sent her letters every day. I visited her. I kept her spirits up as much as I could, until I just couldn’t anymore—” She paused, shook her head. “I did my best.”

Lauren rolled her eyes and then turned them back to the clock. A couple more minutes had passed, but time seemed to be moving even slower than before. She allowed herself a glance toward the stairs, free to do so now that she wasn’t being watched. A shadow behind the wall caught her attention and she knew instantly that it was Ethan. It was the same place he hid when he was preparing his jump scares, because no matter how many times he did it, no matter how prepared and expectant she was, he always managed to scare her.

The sight of his shadow empowered her, gave her the strength to continue. “They told me the day she was released. They said she had moved down south, two hundred miles away, they promised. Under an assumed identity, they said.”

Abi nodded and then returned to mournfully staring at her lap. “She was too young when it happened so her name was never released to the press, but of course, the locals knew. The rumors spread. She couldn’t return here.”

Lauren shook her head. That wasn’t the only reason she couldn’t return. There was also the fact that Lauren still lived in the town they had grown up in, and she didn’t want to breathe the same air as her sister, let alone live in the same postal code. Her eyes returned to the mantelpiece, but this time they focused on a large ornamental urn.

“She lived a normal life. A quiet life. Under her new name, she made a good living for herself.” Abi looked up, catching Lauren’s gaze just as she pulled it away from the mantelpiece. “She wanted to be your sister again,” Abi continued. “To re-create the family. Just us three. But you wouldn’t let her.”

Lauren shrugged. “I had my own life to live.”

“And you were going to give up on your sister just like that?”

Lauren nodded. “She could have contacted me. She should have been in touch.”

Abi shook her head. “That’s not true.”

“Why?” Lauren pushed, waiting for her to admit it.

“You know why.”

“It was a long time ago, I forget. You tell me.”

Abi rose to her feet. “Because they wouldn’t let her, that’s why. Because they said she couldn’t have contact with any members of her family. She wasn’t even allowed to use the family name!” She threw her hands in the air and finished with a short burst of laughter, expressing just how absurd the demand had been. “Crazy that, isn’t it?”

“It was a restraining order, if I remember, right?”

Abi nodded. “Restraining order,” she mimicked. “If you could believe such a thing. Imagine arresting someone for seeing their own family!”

“Imagine that…” Lauren said slowly, keeping eye contact. “So, did she ever break that restraining order?”

“Of course not. She’s a law-abiding girl.”

“Except when she’s burning down houses and killing her parents, you mean?”

“How dare you—”

“Tell me this,” Lauren said quickly as Abi advanced on her again. “If she didn’t break it, then what the hell are you doing here and how the fuck were you in her life for so many years?”

Abi stopped still, the anger fading, dripping from her face like warm ice cream.

“You’re a member of her family, right?”

Abi didn’t respond, her eyes vacant, her expression empty.

“So, tell me, did she break it or not? And while you’re at it,” Lauren added, “take a look at the mantelpiece there and answer me this question: if you’re my grandmother, then why are your ashes above my fucking fireplace?”