I took a step back, surveying the house. One of the front windows had been smashed in, and I eased through the gap, stepping around shards of broken glass.
Then I was in the carcass of my grandparents’ living room. Their things—the patriotic plaid couch, the circular rag rug, the framed family photos assembled on the plain Shaker furniture—were long gone, the furniture carted off and sold at auction, the family photos and memorabilia tucked safely away in cardboard boxes in Aunt A’s attic. Without their belongings, the room felt naked. The bold floral wallpaper still clung to the walls, and even in the dark I could see the ghostly imprint where an oil-painted pastoral scene once hung above the fireplace. Now, instead of tiny farmers plowing fields while tiny cattle grazed nearby, someone had spray-painted a tag in yellow characters.
I held my breath and listened for sounds of life. Nothing.
“Lanie?”
No answer, not even a creaking of floorboards.
“Lanie?” I tried once more.
Despite the complete silence, I refused to give up. There was a pulsing beneath my breastbone, a familiar urgency that was telling me my sister needed me. I moved from the living room into the dining room, the striped wallpaper there covered in graffiti and the moldering carpet littered with crushed beer cans. Without the large dining table, the one that Pops had assembled by hand and that had since taken up residence in Aunt A’s dining room, the room seemed much smaller than I remembered. I moved into the kitchen, pausing to yank open the door to the pantry. But there was nothing other than empty shelves and the furtive sound of mice feet. Standing on the peeling linoleum, I closed my eyes and remembered helping Grammy stir fresh blueberries into pancake batter and slicing lemons for lemonade with my sister. I could almost smell the sugar, the fresh fruit—but it was just a mirage. I was about to start up the back stairs to the second floor when I paused to look out the window.
The moon had emerged from behind a cloud, illuminating the stretch between the farmhouse and the barn. And glimmering in its light I saw the shiny black of my sister’s SUV. The vehicle was parked haphazardly in front of the barn, the door of which was yawning open like a sleepy beast. The lock on the house’s back door stuck, and I nearly broke it in my hurry to get outside. I rushed toward the barn, the loud drumbeat of my heart sounding my arrival.
The vast, absolute darkness of the barn stopped me at its threshold, and I stood there, blinking without seeing. I activated the flashlight function on my iPhone and swept the barn with the feeble beam, revealing little more than blurry columns of dust and the vague outlines of discarded farming equipment.
“Lanie?” I called. “Are you in here?”
There was no response, but the sensation that my sister was here was too strong to ignore. I stood stock-still, straining to hear something, anything.
And then I did. A small, shuffling noise, so soft I nearly missed it.
Stepping into the barn, I called my sister’s name again. “Lanie. I know you’re in here.”
The silence that responded was so deafening, I almost wondered if I’d imagined hearing something.
“I’m not leaving until you come out,” I said.
Something creaked above me, and I snapped my head upward, squinting into the darkness. My eyes were slowly adjusting to the lack of light, and I could see just enough to catch a subtle flutter of movement near the ceiling. The loft. I pointed my iPhone skyward, but the weak beam petered out long before it reached the loft. In the dark, I heard a faint humming noise—with a start, I recognized it as the “Brother John” nursery rhyme.
“Lanie,” I pleaded. “Come on. I know you’re in here.”
A streak of light erupted from above. My sister stepped to the edge of the loft, holding a flashlight under her chin. The light cast long shadows on her pale face, transforming her into a ghoulish impersonation of my sister.
“I’m here.”
“What are you doing up there?” I called, even though I wasn’t certain I wanted to know.
“Do you remember that time you and I were playing up here, and a bat swooped down at us?”
I nodded. Lanie and I were eight, that in-between age when we still wanted to play make-believe but were getting too adventurous for our own good. We had loaded knapsacks with dolls and pink plastic teacups and had scaled the steep ladder to the barn loft, intent on hosting a tea party on the bales of hay. Never comfortable with heights, I had always been afraid of the loft—even before the bat descended upon us. It had grazed my head, its leathery wings stirring the air and raising goosebumps on the back of my neck. I shrieked in terror and ducked, my arms clutched over my head. I didn’t recall my sister screaming. Lanie had remembered it right—she really had always been the brave one.
“Yeah,” I said. “Dad said it wanted to join the tea party.”
“Remember how Pops climbed up here with a broom to save us? And how he was swinging the thing around? And Grammy was standing there on the barn floor, hollering to Pops to be careful, that he was going to fall and break his neck?”
“I do.”
“Do you ever think it’s funny how concerned humans are with their own mortality? Pops didn’t fall and break his neck. He didn’t die that afternoon, but he did die five years later. And do you think that those five years really made a difference, in the scheme of things? A few more harvests, a few more Christmases. A heart attack. And then, bam! Some drunk kid takes you right out of existence.”
“Five years is a long time, Lanie. And life is a precious thing.”
“But is it really? What if you don’t do anything worthwhile with your life? What if, instead of making the world a better place or doing anything even remotely redeemable, you’re actually responsible for destroying the happiness of others?”
“Lanie, why don’t you come down? I’d feel a lot more comfortable getting existential if you were on solid ground.”
She dropped the flashlight to her side, plunging her face back into darkness. “Sorry, sister. I’m not coming down. Not that way.”
“Then I’m coming up,” I said, my pulse thundering in my ears. “Okay?”
“Suit yourself.”
The ladder felt more insubstantial than I had remembered, and I struggled to quell a wave of fear. I allowed myself small comfort in the fact that the wood felt solid, unlike the soft, rotting planks of the front porch. I was grateful for the darkness as I ascended the ladder; it kept me from seeing the ground. I was only minimally more comfortable once I had pulled myself up onto the loft, the forgotten remnants of ancient hay whispering under my feet. I couldn’t bring myself to approach the edge where Lanie stood. As children, she loved to stand at the edge and stare down at the busy barn below, like a queen surveying her kingdom. I could never stand beside her; I was too scared. It always struck me as unfair. We were twins. How did the ability to withstand heights fail to imbed itself in my genes? In time, I would come to realize that it wasn’t just heights; my sister wasn’t afraid of anything.