We lived on the side of Spring Hill without any highway access, so to get to the yellow ranch where Aunt Jill waited to “hand over the reins” (when she said those words on the phone, I couldn’t help but imagine my mother as some leashed wild animal), I had to drive through the north side of town. Past Spring Hill Commons, where middle-aged women peered into shop windows, despite the flurries that dusted their heads. Past the churchlike Town Hall with its white columns and wide doors, its steeple that boasted stained glass windows and a large ticking clock. The benches on the town green were covered in snow so pristine it looked as if someone had laid thick white blankets over them. Even still, an older man had cleared a spot for himself to sit and, as if in prayer, he stared ahead at the gray life-size statue of George Emory, Spring Hill’s Revolutionary War hero—and Ben Emory’s great-great-great-etc.-grandfather.
Ben had been protected from the start—by his last name, his family’s money, by the Emory estate that loomed on the highest hill in town. Spring Hill’s own residents had even protected him. As soon as word got out that Ben was a “person of interest” in Persephone’s murder, the news stories filled with people classifying the killer as an “out-of-towner.”
Even the detectives, Falley and Parker, seemed to do little with the damning information I’d given them. A couple days after Persephone had been found, I worked up the courage to ask Aunt Jill for a ride to the police station, and she steered her car through a sprinkle of snow, swearing under her breath each time we slid on a patch of black ice. Then she sat with me inside the interview room, holding my hand as she, Falley, and Parker heard the secret I’d been hiding.
“I’ve been painting my sister’s bruises,” I started.
Parker and Falley exchanged a glance before Parker leaned forward. “Come again?” he asked.
I took a deep breath and looked at Aunt Jill, who, with wary eyes, nodded. “I lied to you guys the other day when you asked me if Ben ever hurt Persephone,” I said. “After she comes—came—home from seeing him, she’d have bruises on her.”
Parker wrote something on a yellow legal pad. “And you’ve been painting pictures of them?” he asked.
Falley put her hand on his, stopping him mid-scribble. When he looked at her, she shook her head, tucking loose strands of chin-length brown hair behind her ears. “I think she means she’s been painting over them,” she said.
They held each other’s gaze until Parker cleared his throat and drew a line through something on the pad. “Right,” he said.
“We saw the paint,” Falley explained, folding her hands together over the table. “But just to clarify—do you remember what part of her body had bruises on it the night you last saw her?”
I swallowed—hard. It hadn’t occurred to me that they’d already know about it, but of course her body would have been examined. She would have been naked on some long metallic table, her eyes closed, her blonde hair the only cushion for her head. Deft gloved fingers would have pressed against whatever was left of the paint, and the bruises beneath would have been exposed—ugly, menacing things.
“Sylvie?” Aunt Jill squeezed my hand. I looked at her, and she nodded toward the detectives, who waited for me to respond.
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. What was the question?”
“The bruises,” Falley began again, her voice gentle and patient. “Do you remember what part of her body they were on?”
I tried to remember. All the daisies and seascapes and storm clouds and ladybugs were blending together. The bruises were usually on her arms, but sometimes it was her shoulder or hip bone or thigh. That final time, though—I closed my eyes, saw her leaning over me, her hair tickling my face, her starfish necklace nearly in my mouth—there’d been a bruise just beneath her rib cage, and two more on—
“Her wrist,” I said.
Parker went back to making notes. “And why did you put paint on those bruises?” he asked.
I slipped my hand out of Aunt Jill’s and scratched my wrist. “Because Persephone asked me to,” I said. “She didn’t want our mom to see.”
“So this happened more than once?” Falley asked. “You painting over her bruises?”
Jill’s eyes were on me, her gaze hot and unrelenting.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on Falley’s youthful, encouraging face. “This happened all the time. Ben hurt her for months. He did this to her. I know he did. You have to arrest him.”
My voice rose in pitch, but I didn’t care. As much as my confession made me look bad, it made Ben look far worse—and that was all that mattered. He wouldn’t get away with what he’d done to Persephone. He wouldn’t be able to hurt some other girl and call it love.
“So I understand you’re saying that your sister asked you to do this for her,” Parker said. “But how come you never—”
“I don’t know,” I said, before he could finish what I’d already been asking myself for days. “I just—I don’t even know anymore.”
I turned to Aunt Jill, and the look in her eyes—not anger, not frustration; just bald, profound weariness—made something in me collapse. “I’m so sorry,” I said to her. “I was so stupid. I should have told Mom about it the first time it happened. I can’t believe I . . . I’m . . .”
She pulled me into a sideways hug between our chairs. My throat felt thick, my saliva viscous, but the warmth of her embrace was an immediate comfort, like burrowing under blankets on a cold night. As tears slipped from my eyes, the fabric of her sweater soaked them up.
“It’s okay, Sylvie,” she said. “You’re doing the right thing now.”
“That’s true,” Parker added. “We’re glad you came to us with this information. We knew the bruises on her wrist and side had happened prior to the strangulation.” I felt Jill’s body tense up, in sync with my own. “But we didn’t know if the two events were connected.”
I narrowed my eyes at the sterile way he’d worded it—“the two events.” Pulling away from Aunt Jill, I sat up straight in my chair. “They’re connected,” I said.
Parker nodded once. “We will follow up with this information, for sure.”
It’s not “information,” I wanted to say. It’s the answer. The smoking gun.
“Sylvie.” Falley leaned forward. “Did Persephone ever give any explanation for what Ben did to her? Did she ever say how it happened, or why she stayed with him?”
I shrugged. “Just that they loved each other. And that it wasn’t what I thought. She was always saying that—‘It’s not what you think.’ ” I shook my head as I realized for the millionth time how foolish I’d been. “But it was what I thought. Him killing her proves that.”
I said these words into my lap, and when I looked up at the detectives, Parker was staring at me in a lingering, expectant way, as if he felt I was holding something back. But I wasn’t—and that was the problem. The truth was just that simple. My sister, according to her own twisted definition of the word, had allowed a man to love her to death.
The detectives launched into a list of questions then. When did she first come home with bruises? How many bruises did she usually have at a time? Where were these bruises? Here, look at this body I’ve drawn right here—please forgive me; I’m not an artist—and place an X anywhere you can remember her having been hurt. Did your sister ever say, or give any indication, that her boyfriend had been (a small pause here, a couple taps of a pen) sexually abusing her?
“Why do you ask?” Aunt Jill cut in sharply. “Was she sexually abused on the night she . . .” She glanced at me before adding the final word. “Died?”
Falley was quick to shake her head. “There’s no evidence to suggest that,” she said. “We just have to cover all our bases. It’s standard procedure.”
I had a hard time understanding how anything related to what had happened to Persephone could be considered “standard,” but I answered the question anyway. “She never said anything like that.”
“Okay,” Parker said. “But their relationship was sexual in nature. Correct?”
“Detective,” Jill said, her pronunciation reminding me of when lawyers yelled “Objection!” on TV. “Sylvie is fourteen years old.”
Parker looked at Falley, who gave a quick, nearly imperceptible nod, and then turned back to Jill. “That’s old enough, I think.” He swung his eyes toward me. “But you don’t have to answer the question, Sylvie, if it makes you uncomfortable.”
It did make me uncomfortable—not because he was asking about sex, exactly, but because he was asking about Persephone and sex. It seemed like my sister’s privacy had been violated so much already, and now, here was another layer being grabbed at and stripped away.
“I don’t know,” I said. But then I remembered the glow of her cheeks on nights when she’d stumble back through the window and, to my relief, wouldn’t ask me to paint. She’d be smiling in a drowsy, contented way as she got ready for bed, and sometimes, I’d even hear her humming.
“I mean, she never talked about it,” I continued, “but . . . yeah, probably.”
Jill shifted in her seat as Parker nodded and scribbled onto his pad. “Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”
For a few moments, neither detective said anything. One of the light fixtures above us buzzed, sounding louder and louder to me until Falley finally spoke.
“Thank you, Sylvie,” she said. “Unless there’s anything else you think we should know, then that’s all the information we need from you right now.”
When I didn’t say anything, still distracted by the sound of the light (it was kind of like the chorus of bugs Persephone and I always listened to through our open window on summer nights, laughing in our separate beds as we tried to harmonize with them), Aunt Jill slid back her chair. “Thank you for your time, Detectives,” she said. The three of them stood, getting ready to shake hands.
“Wait.” The word punched out of my mouth, reminding me that there was something else. “I—I just have a question.”
Falley sat back down, folding her hands on the table. Then Parker and Jill sat, too. “Sure,” Falley said. “Ask away.”
“Well,” I started, “I know you probably need all her clothes—you know, the clothes she was . . . found in—for evidence and stuff, but I—”
“Actually,” Parker said, sharing a glance with Falley, “that’s something we should talk to you about.”
His tone made me feel uneasy, and I saw Jill’s hands clasp tighter on her pocketbook. “What is it?” she asked.
“Well,” he said, “it’s just that, as you know, Persephone’s body was covered in over a foot of snow. Because of all that moisture, much of the evidence that might have been on her clothes has been compromised. Hair follicles. Fibers. Things of that nature.”
“Compromised,” Aunt Jill repeated. “What does that mean exactly?”
“It means,” Falley interjected, “destroyed. It’s the same with the area surrounding the body. Tire tracks were covered up, and then plowed over. Any footsteps were buried. But—” She leaned forward, setting her earnest eyes on mine. “That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. There are a lot of other angles we’re investigating this from, and we’ll still be keeping her clothes, just in case. Which means—to answer the question I think you were about to ask—we can’t give any of that back to you. I’m sorry.”
“Does that include her necklace?” I asked. “Or can we have that back?”
Falley tilted her head. “What necklace?”
“The starfish one,” I said.
Our mother had given it to Persephone for her sixteenth birthday. When Persephone had opened it, she’d stared at it for a long time. “It reminded me of the Persephone constellation on our wall,” my mother had told her. “All those stars Sylvie painted you as.” Persephone had pulled the necklace from its box. She’d unclasped it and turned around, holding out each delicate gold end so Mom could put it on her. She’d then walked to the entryway mirror and we’d followed her, admiring how the starfish hung just below her collarbone.
She never took it off after that. She showered in it, went swimming in it during the summer, and often held the pendant absentmindedly between her fingers as we watched TV. Still, the night she had received it, she said to me in the dark as we were falling asleep, “Of course Mom got me a present that had more to do with you than me. She only thought to get me a star because you painted me that way.”
She was always saying things like that, collecting evidence that our mother loved me more than her. I never really understood where she got this idea; sure, my quizzes hung on the refrigerator instead of Persephone’s, but Persephone only got average grades. And yes, I always got to pick the movie we’d see when we’d splurge and go to the plush, air-conditioned theater at Spring Hill Commons, but Persephone always crossed her arms anyway, claiming not to care. Persephone’s favorite theory to go on about, though, was that Mom had been madly in love with my father. Naturally, then, Mom favored me, because I reminded her of the man who got away. None of this was true, of course. Both of our fathers had been little more than flings, Mom had always said, even when we were too young to really know what a “fling” was. She was an independent woman, she’d told us, and she could love us more than a hundred fathers ever could. “Well,” Persephone would whisper to me conspiratorially, “she can love you that much.”
It comforted me, then, to see Persephone become so dedicated to the gift our mother gave her. This simple act of wearing the starfish necklace seemed to me an acceptance of the fact that Mom loved us equally. It didn’t stop her from hypothesizing about my father, or suggesting that Mom’s Dark Days were probably some anniversary related to their relationship, but then again, once Persephone had made up her mind about something, nothing could stop her. Not even her sister’s pleas. Not even bruises.
“It’s gold,” I told Falley in the interview room. “And it has a starfish pendant.”
Falley opened a folder on the table and flipped through some papers. She paused as she read, and then closed the folder back up.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Your sister wasn’t wearing a necklace when we found her.”
“Yes, she was,” I insisted. “She never took it off. Ever.”
Aunt Jill nodded. “That’s true,” she said. “I can’t remember the last time I saw her without it. Could you check again please?”
Falley reopened the folder as Parker stood up. “I can call over to Evidence,” he said. “Maybe it wasn’t catalogued with the rest of her personal effects. I’ll be right back.”
I pressed my fingertips into my knees. Despite its name, the phrase “personal effects” sounded completely impersonal. What about her red coat with the third button missing? What about her black boots that she’d worn until they were gray?
Falley gave us a quick, sympathetic smile, tucking her hair behind her ears again. “This necklace,” she said. “It was special to Persephone?”
“Yes,” I answered. “My mom gave it to her.”
“And she and your mom were close?”
“Um . . .”
I thought of the impatient tone that would creep into Mom’s voice whenever Persephone used to ask for a ride somewhere. (Seriously? I just got home from serving people all day long, and now you want me to serve you, too?) I thought of the day Persephone got her license, how she bounced around the house, holding it up like a trophy she’d won. But Mom refused to let her use her car. (If you think I’m letting a seventeen-year-old drive around wherever she pleases, you’re crazy. I’ll hide the keys if I have to.) Persephone ran to our room then, slammed the door behind her, and even from the hallway, I could hear her screaming into her pillow. Letting myself in, I watched with wide eyes as she punched her fists against her bed, as she unclenched her fingers to claw at the quilt, her legs kicking, her face becoming bloodred.
Even when they weren’t fighting, Persephone would talk about Mom like there was something wrong with her. “You know she drove your dad away, right?” she said to me one night just after we’d gone to bed. “I mean, that has to be it. I don’t remember him or anything, but I bet you a million dollars she loved him so much that she suffocated him. Like how she’s always doting over you. I don’t know how you stand it.” I shrugged in the dark but said nothing. I didn’t really know what she meant.
“I don’t know how to describe their relationship,” I said to Falley. “I mean, they weren’t, like, super close, but they also weren’t, like . . . I don’t know.” I looked at my hands, knotted my fingers together. “Sorry.”
“Oh, don’t be,” Falley said. “It’s a complicated question. I don’t know what I’d say, either, if someone asked me about me and my mother.” She laughed a little, and the sound was comforting. “But you’re sure she was wearing this necklace the night she drove off with Ben? You saw it on her before she left?”
I remembered her coat, sprinkled with snow as she ran back to Ben’s car. I remembered the jeans she’d put on earlier that night (“Ben likes these,” she’d said), but I couldn’t recall seeing the necklace. It was like asking me to remember if she’d been wearing socks, or if she’d brushed her teeth that morning. How do you remember a specific occurrence of something that happens every day?
“I guess, technically, I didn’t see it on her,” I said. “But she was wearing a coat. And anyway, I know she was wearing it. She was never not wearing it.”
The door opened with a loud click as Parker returned. We all looked at him expectantly, but he just shook his head, keeping his eyes focused on Falley. “She wasn’t wearing a necklace when her body was found,” he said, “and there was nothing like that recovered at the scene.”
“Then Ben must have it,” I blurted. “Maybe it fell off her when he was strangling her. Or maybe he kept it as, like, a trophy or memento or something. Isn’t that a thing murderers do?”
“Sylvie,” Aunt Jill said, placing her hand on my leg.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Don’t murderers do that?”
Parker rubbed his chin, seeming to think carefully about how to answer my question. Finally, he said, “Sometimes. But that’s more consistent with the behavior of a serial killer. And there’s no evidence to suggest that this was the work of someone like that.”
“Sylvie,” Falley said, before I had a chance to respond. “If your sister was, in fact, wearing a necklace that night, and it’s missing now, then we have to be open to the possibility that this was a robbery gone wrong.”
“What?” I asked. “That’s crazy. The necklace was gold, yeah, but it couldn’t have been worth that much. You know my mom’s a waitress, right?”
Falley shrugged. “Sometimes things look more expensive than they actually are,” she said. She paused then, flipping open her folder and jotting something down on the inside cover. “Please be assured that we will look into this. It’s a good lead. We can contact pawnshops, and—”
“Pawnshops? It won’t be in a pawnshop. It’ll be with Ben. I know it.”
She paused—for only a moment, but I felt something cryptic in the lag time of her response. “We’ll look into that, too,” she said.
“In the meantime,” Parker piped in, “it would be helpful to us if you could check Persephone’s things when you get home. See if she took it off that day for some reason. See if it fell off and slipped under the bed or a pillow or something. Maybe it’s in a drawer in the bathroom. You’d be surprised where missing things turn up.”
I imagined Persephone then—how the sleeve of her red coat must have looked like a slash of blood in the snow, how the runner who first discovered her must have jogged in place, squinting at what he saw, unsure in the dull morning light if the sleeve belonged to a body, or if it was just some lost, discarded thing.
Even though I knew I wouldn’t find it, I scoured our bedroom as soon as Jill brought me home. I banged drawers open and shut, I put my hands between Persephone’s mattress and bed frame, I got onto the floor with a flashlight and searched between the clumps of dust under her bed, and I even picked through our trash can, wincing at the paint-smudged tissues. After searching, I felt a strange sense of satisfaction. The necklace wasn’t there, so there was only one other place it could be—with Persephone’s murderer. With Ben.
But the police never found it—not with Ben, or at a pawnshop, or on the ground that spring, when all the snow was melted and the detectives, in a last-ditch effort, returned to the place where my sister’s body had been found. In fact, I had very little contact with Falley or Parker after that day in the interview room. They came over one morning, a week or so after Persephone’s funeral, to ask for samples of Persephone’s handwriting, but even as I handed them old birthday cards she’d written in for me, they wouldn’t tell me why they needed them. After a while, I grew weary of calling them. I grew weary of Falley’s voice on the phone, telling me kindly, but firmly, that although the investigation was ongoing, she had no new information she could share.
I was sure that Ben’s father was protecting him. For as long as I could remember, Will Emory had been our mayor, and his pockets ran deep. He had inherited ownership of Emory Builders, which had been around since the turn of the century, and it was nearly impossible to throw a rock in Spring Hill without it flying over land that was either owned or developed by the Emorys. As mayor, he was able to use his wealth to an even greater advantage, keeping his hands in every aspect of town government, from planning and zoning to the police force. There were rumors that he would summon individual members of departments into his office, close the door, and use whatever tactics necessary to get what he wanted. No one in town ever seemed fazed by this, though; when it came to Will Emory, “any means necessary” was not a sign of corruption, but just another reason to revere him. Look how resourceful he is, residents said.
I’d only seen him on a handful of occasions. He was tall, with irises as dark as his pupils, giving him an unsettling shark-eyed gaze, and his sandy hair had streaks of gray in it. At Persephone’s wake, which nearly every Spring Hill resident attended, regardless of how they may have treated us in the past, Will stood with his head bowed somberly, playing the part of the compassionate town leader. When he reached Mom in the receiving line, ready to offer his rehearsed condolences, her knees buckled suddenly, and Will caught her as she fell against him. He had a moment of uncertain stillness, and then he stroked her hair, looking around the room to be sure that everyone saw how comforting he was, how tender. Even then, cloaked in a practiced, artificial sadness, he came off as an intimidating man.
Over the years since then, election after election, town council members had come and gone, but Will Emory remained a constant as the mayor of Spring Hill. Even living in Providence, I’d kept up with him online. I wanted to read that he’d planned an early retirement, or that he’d finally lost the voting public’s support—anything that would mean Ben no longer benefited from his father’s immunity, his backdoor threats—but all I ever saw were stories about council meetings and ribbon cuttings.
It wasn’t just Will Emory’s position that gave Ben power; he had a long line of respected Spring Hill ancestors to stand behind him like an army of ghosts. The statue of George Emory on the town green was only part of his family’s legacy. Emory Lane was named after Jackson Emory, one of the original colonists who settled Spring Hill in 1674, and Nathaniel Emory had built Emory Bridge back in the 1800s. Even Will’s own father, Richard Emory, had been a popular congressman for several terms. Before that, he had expanded Emory Builders’ niche from constructing modest houses in local towns to erecting million-dollar homes in vast subdivisions and leasing commercial spaces in strip malls throughout the state. The success of the company transformed the Emorys from a highly regarded, prominent family to town royalty presiding over a business empire. To convict Ben Emory of such a vicious crime would have been to cast a shadow on the entire town’s history.
Now, sixteen years later, my sister’s case was so cold that I imagined the folders and bags of evidence cracking like ice in the aisles of the police station basement. So much had changed since that day in the interview room, and yet, the details of my sister’s death remained a mystery.
As I turned onto the street where Persephone and I had grown to be teenagers together, each making choices we couldn’t unchoose, my heart thudded. My stomach felt weightless and heavy all at once. With only a few houses left before I reached our ranch near the end of the road, I caught sight of the cluster of hills where the Emory estate lurked. It was one of the many things that hadn’t changed in the years I’d been away—the Millers’ blue house still had a broken shutter on the first floor; our street sign still sat crooked on its metal pole; and the place where Ben Emory had grown up still felt like a taunting, towering presence over the south side of town. I wasn’t sure if it was the sight of that distant land, or the thickening flakes of snow against my windshield, but something in that moment made me shiver.