That afternoon, we posted more than fifty flyers. Persephone’s face smirked at us beneath a black, bulky “MISSING” as we worked our way through the center of town and neighboring streets. By the time we stapled the final sign to a telephone pole outside the post office, our fingers felt raw, even through our gloves.
When we got home, Jill pushed mugs of hot chocolate into our hands and encouraged us to “thaw out” in front of the TV. Missy put on a rerun of The Real World, which I watched without seeing, but at six o’clock on the dot, I changed it to the local news in case they mentioned Persephone.
As it turned out, my sister’s disappearance was the lead story.
“The town of Spring Hill is in search of a missing high school student today,” the anchor said. “Persephone O’Leary, eighteen, was last seen leaving her house on Friday night with her boyfriend, Ben Emory, the son of Spring Hill mayor and prominent land developer William Emory. Since then, police have been questioning neighbors and residents, including O’Leary’s boyfriend, who, police say, dropped her off on Weston Road around eleven p.m. on Friday night.”
“That’s bad reporting,” I said to Missy. “Saying ‘police say’ makes it sound like it’s a fact that Ben dropped her off. But it’s not a fact—it’s Ben’s story. And why didn’t anyone talk to us about this?”
Missy shrugged. “Maybe they tried,” she said, “while we were out. Maybe your mom didn’t answer.”
The thought of that chilled me, despite the steam rising from my mug. Could Mom have locked herself away so thoroughly that not even the ringing phone or doorbell could reach her? After we had gotten home, she finally let Aunt Jill into her bedroom, and although I couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, it made me feel better to remember that they were in that room together.
On the TV, the news anchor continued to speak over a video of people dressed in heavy coats and scarves, trudging in thick boots through the snowy woods by Emory Bridge.
“A modest search party is already underway for O’Leary, and people in town appear confident that they will locate the missing girl soon.”
Missy and I looked at each other, the surprise in her eyes reflecting my own.
“Search party?” I said. “What search party?”
The footage switched to a close-up of a middle-aged woman in a knitted purple hat. Her nose was red and her breath danced in front of her lips as she spoke. I recognized her as Persephone’s third-grade teacher, Mrs. McDonald.
“I organized all this myself,” Mrs. McDonald said, almost proudly, to the microphone in her face. “I live near Weston Road, so of course I saw the police cars this afternoon, and as soon as I found out what was going on, I sprang into action. Called some friends together, alerted the press, and now here we are. We’re a small group, and we’ve only just started, but we’ll keep searching even after dark.” She held up a flashlight and smiled to the camera. “We won’t stop until we find her. She’s one of Spring Hill’s own, and that really means something.”
Did it, though?
Spring Hill, Connecticut, was a town of about twenty-five thousand people, a good majority of whom lived in the big brick houses on the hilly northern side of Emory Bridge. People in neighboring towns came to Spring Hill for its frozen yogurt shops and its apple and berry orchards, and at Christmastime, they did their shopping at Spring Hill Commons. Then they drove around to look at the twinkling white lights on all the Ionic columns and wraparound porches, and when they returned home, they reevaluated their monthly budgets, trying to find some extra savings for a new swimming pool or a kitchen remodel, anything that would make them feel more like the residents of Spring Hill.
But we—Persephone, my mother, and I—had never been a part of that Spring Hill. We lived on the swampier southern side of Emory Bridge. We got our clothes at thrift stores in Hanover, wore out the edges of our library cards, and got free hot lunches at school. My mother had inherited our ranch from my grandparents, whom we had lived with, Persephone and I sleeping in the same bedroom as Mom, until they died in a car accident when I was three. From then on, I grew up with the narrowed eyes of the upper-crust Spring Hill residents on my back. “There goes Annie O’Leary’s girl. Ugh, that woman. Always took handouts from her parents, still looking for handouts to this day. Our taxes even buy her kids’ lunches at school. Meanwhile, Barry’s working his fingers to the bone to make partner . . .”
So it surprised me that Mrs. McDonald was now claiming Persephone as “one of Spring Hill’s own.” I remembered her writing a letter home to Mom one time, urging her to “consider buying Persephone some new clothes that adhere to the current trends, so as not to alienate her from her peers and cause damaging social consequences.” Mom had hung the letter on the refrigerator, right next to my splotchy kindergarten drawings, as a reminder, she said, of the people we never wanted to be. Now, I imagined her seeing Mrs. McDonald’s face on the news and scoffing, “Attention-seeking snake.”
“Do you know that lady?” Missy asked me.
“She seems kind of excited.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. Then I added one of Mom’s phrases: “This freaking town.”
I clicked the power button on the remote, and for a few minutes, Missy and I sat in silence. In that time, the front door never opened. Persephone never walked inside, stamping the snow off her shoes, asking what had happened to the coatrack and table. Still, I listened for her grunt of annoyance as she noticed there was no longer a place to put her red winter jacket. I listened for it so hard that I didn’t even register that Aunt Jill had walked into the room until she put her hand on my head and spoke.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
I looked up at her from my place on the floor, my fingers picking at the shaggy beige carpet. Her face was creased with an exhaustion I’d only ever seen on my mother the mornings after her Dark Days.
“I want to see Mom,” I said. I started to push myself up off the floor, but Jill’s fingertips on my shoulder stopped me.
“Not tonight,” she said. “Your mother’s finally sleeping. She wants to be alone.”
But my sister was missing.
“She won’t mind,” I said. “It’s just me.”
I needed Mom’s fingers on my forehead, planting and picking flowers as if my face were fertile, open land. I needed her to pull me into her, wrap her arms around me, and rock me like a child. I needed the lavender smell of her skin, the steady rhythm of her breathing. How would I fall asleep in a sisterless house for one more night without it?
“I’m sorry,” Jill said, shaking her head. “Not tonight.”
So Missy spent another night in Persephone’s bed. So Jill spent another night on the couch. So I kept myself awake remembering Ben’s face, how the danger lurked there in the scar that ran like a tendril of hair from the tip of his left eyebrow to the middle of his cheek. I’d only seen him a handful of times, his face pressed against our bedroom window on nights when Persephone was still applying her eyeliner in the bathroom, but I had him memorized. He had disheveled brown hair, which he sometimes pulled back into a short ponytail. Dark circles lingered under his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for days, and his mouth was always cocked at a half grin. When I finally fell asleep that night, it was to images of Ben, his fingernails—long and sharp in the dream—tapping on the windowpane until the glass shattered.
Somehow, I didn’t wake up until the sun was high in the sky the next morning, and even then, I only opened my eyes because Missy was shaking me. “Sylvie,” she said, “the police are here.”
I threw off my blankets and jumped to my feet. Sure enough, from our bedroom window I could see a cop car in the driveway, the same two detectives fidgeting with their belts and stepping through snow to get to our front door. I had made it into the hallway before they even rang the bell.
Mom was in the entryway. Jill was in the entryway. Missy was dressed. It was as if they’d all been expecting this visit.
“Good morning,” Jill said as Detective Falley and Detective Parker stepped into the house. She was trying to sound cheerful—or, at the very least, normal—but her voice trembled. “Can we get you anything? There’s still some coffee in the pot.”
“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.