Rose nodded. “She was here for a few weeks after the murders. But then we agreed she had to go. Any plans we had made could no longer be. At least not until you were grown and gone and nobody suspected anything. But then—”
Again, I heard a noise somewhere behind me in the basement. I turned and looked into the shadows, where my father’s old dental chair remained untouched still. Just beyond, I could see the fuse box and a tangle of wires on the wall. It was then that I realized the phone cord had been cut. I was not sure what to do so I turned back to Rose. “But then what?”
“But then Franky didn’t stay away. She couldn’t. And the truth was, I didn’t want her to. So without telling me beforehand, she came back. On Halloween night, while I was out and you were here alone, she slipped in through the sliding door and waited for me. That’s when you first saw the light on again. I told her it was better to just leave it on, because I knew it would keep you from coming down here, since you thought it had to do with Mom and Dad and the things they did when they were alive. I knew you still believed.”
I stood for a moment, staring at my sister, wondering how she was capable of keeping so much hidden for so long. “Did you . . .”
“Did I what?”
“Did you kill them?”
She shook her head.
“Say it!” I shouted. “I want to hear you tell me that you didn’t!”
“No,” she said, crying and shaking her head more. “No. No. No. It was Franky. She did it, Sylvie.”
I felt cold all over. Pinpricks up my arms and down my legs and across my stomach. My entire body was shivering now and I could do nothing to stop it. Voice trembling, I asked, “How could you cover for her, Rose? How could you let me go on thinking I had seen someone I did not?”
“Because I loved her. And she did it because she loved me.”
No noise came from behind me, but I saw Rose’s gaze shift over my shoulder. I felt a presence there, and so I turned around.
For an instant, all those pictures in the living room of Emily Sanino flashed in my mind. I saw the young woman before me as a dark-haired toddler in a pink dress, a few years older at the beach in a bright one-piece bathing suit, as a lanky adolescent with a mouth full of braces and a T-shirt that said GOD’S LOVE SUMMER CAMP. I remembered the trophies with the little golden girl on top. Track awards. And now that track star Rose had dated was standing before me, head shaved to the scalp just as it must have been that night at the church, one of the few details that had led me to believe it was Albert Lynch who knocked me down on his way out the door. In one ear, she sported a small silver cross, the sort my mother used to wear, but the effect was menacing instead of peaceful. When she spoke, her voice was more composed than I would have imagined. She asked, “What did you do to Rose?”
Voice still trembling, I told her, “She fell.”
“She fell? Or you pushed her?”
My sister spoke before I could. “Franky, leave Sylvie alone.”
“Why?” Franky said. “She’s the same as your parents. No good for you.”
“I don’t care,” Rose said. “Leave her alone. Let me handle this.”
“You’ve been handling this for months and where has it gotten us?” Franky shouted. “Look at the mess she’s made of you.”
She stepped out of the shadows then, coming closer. I thought of that night last winter, the sound of the gun so close to my ear before I fell to the floor and crawled beneath that pew. Like some sort of alarm the shhhh seemed to grow louder in that instant, so loud I almost did not hear Rose shouting, “Sylvie! Run! Get out of here!”
I turned toward the stairs and stepped over my sister’s leg, bent the wrong way still, like those turkeys in the field on the other side of the woods. But I only made it up a few steps before I felt a hand snatch the back of my old T-shirt. I grabbed the banister and hung on as Franky pulled and pulled, until finally, I felt the fabric start to give and then suddenly the shirt came completely free. The dank air against my bare skin sent a shiver snaking through me as the sudden shift of pressure caused me to stumble forward. My hand slipped through the space between the slatted wooden steps, and Franky came around and grabbed it from beneath. I wrenched my hand free, pulling away from her with such force that I stumbled back down the stairs again, barely missing my sister.
“Stop it!” Rose screamed as I scrambled to my feet. “Please stop!”