The Night Sister

Foxcroft Health and Rehab smelled like sour milk and boiled meat. Grim-looking women and a few equally grim-looking men in scrubs walked the halls, pushing carts full of medications, snacks, and clean linens. Somewhere off in the distance, an out-of-tune piano was being played inexpertly.

Piper followed Marge S., the aide she’d met at the front desk, through a warren of corridors. They passed a nursing station where an overwrought-looking woman in Tweety Bird scrubs was on the phone saying, “I understand your position, but you need to understand that is simply not an option for her right now.” Piper followed Marge S. down a hallway with residents’ rooms on both sides. Each door had a bright sign announcing the names of the residents. Some were decorated with stickers and posters of puppies and kittens. One door had a wreath of artificial flowers. There were a few doors with bright-red stop signs bearing further instructions. They stepped around medicine carts and people napping in wheelchairs. An ancient-looking man in a colorless cardigan shuffled by, but stopped short when he saw Piper.

“There you are!” he cried with delight. Piper smiled nervously and kept going.

“Here we go,” Marge S. said at last.

Rose Slater, said the sign. There was no second name, and when they entered the room, Piper saw the other bed was empty, stripped down to the bare mattress.

“Rose, honey, you have a visitor,” Marge S. announced.

The woman in bed looked up, fixing her dark eyes on Piper. Her skin was thin and white, but taut and remarkably free of wrinkles. She wore a hospital nightgown and robe. She looked younger than Piper had imagined, and though Piper had never met her before, she would have recognized her as Amy’s mother. From pictures, Piper had always thought Amy looked more like her aunt Sylvie, but now she saw that Amy had her mother’s delicate nose, her brow, and her cheekbones.

Rose stared up at Piper with unblinking, cool eyes.

There was a TV across from the bed, dark and silent. A rolling table held a hairbrush, a water cup, and a plastic pitcher. Beside the bed, a small bureau. On it was a wind-up clock, ticking loudly, and a large glass jar, which Piper recognized at once. At the bottom of the jar lay the ruined luna moth.

“You’re not her,” Rose said, voice faded, but clear.

Piper couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved that Piper wasn’t who she’d been expecting.

“Ms. Slater,” Piper began, “my name is Piper. I was a good friend of Amy’s back when we were kids.”

Rose nodded. “I remember.”

Piper nodded, too, though Rose couldn’t possibly remember her—they’d never met. Maybe Amy had talked about her?

“I’ll leave you two alone, then,” Marge S. said. “If you need anything, just push the call button. And remember, Rose, if you want to get out of bed for any reason, you need to call first; otherwise, that pesky bed alarm will go off.” Marge S. turned to Piper and said cheerfully, “Our Rose likes to go on walkabout!”

“Thank you,” Piper said, watching the woman hurry out of the room and into the chaos of the corridor. An alarm was beeping shrilly as a resident hollered for someone to call her a taxi.

“I wonder,” Rose said, “if you know anything about my granddaughter, Lou.”

Piper smiled. “She’s fine, Ms. Slater. She’s an amazing kid. I was with her all afternoon. She’s someplace safe, I promise.”

“Safe?” Rose said. “Really? When Jason was here, he wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

“Jason? Jason Hawke?”

Rose nodded.

“He came to visit you here? When?”

“Yesterday morning,” she said. “He thinks I’m senile, you know. Psychotic, even. That’s what he wants to believe. What Amy wanted to believe, too. But the truth is, I’m the only one who knows what’s really happening. I’m the only one who sees things for what they are.”

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Piper said, moving closer to the bed.

“Isn’t that why you’ve come? To hear about Sylvie?”

“And Amy and her family,” Piper said.

Rose nodded. “Yes. Amy. I tried to warn her. She didn’t listen. She locked me up in here instead.”

“Warn her about what?”