The Night Sister

“Was it you Amy saw that summer? You who left those notes in the typewriter? Not Sylvie’s ghost?”


“Yes,” Rose said. “My mother and I agreed that it wouldn’t have been safe for me to live at home. What if I slipped up and Amy saw me transform? Or what if, God forbid, I hurt Amy by accident when I was a mare?”

“So you just left her?”

“I never went far. We allowed the story of my supposed drinking problem to flourish; my mother made references to me being far away, ‘getting help.’ But I mostly stayed around Vermont; I rented squalid little rooms and apartments, and got by however I could, working at supermarkets and Laundromats. I even stole a bit here and there if I needed to—never enough to call attention to myself, of course. And at night sometimes I came back to the motel and checked up on things. Like I did today.” She smiled at Piper.

“It was you? You left me the note this morning?”

Rose nodded. “Wednesday mornings are busy here. We’ve got Bingo; then the children from the elementary school come to visit and sing songs with us. It’s not so hard to slip away in the chaos. No one notices a little bird flying out through an open window; in no time, I can be across town at the motel.”

“And back then, you never let Amy see you. You let her believe it was Sylvie’s ghost.”

“It was easier that way. I knew I should just stay away, but I couldn’t. I’d come back and watch Amy while she slept, just to make sure I hadn’t passed it on to her.”

“And was she?” Piper asked, hardly believing she was even asking the question. “Was Amy one, too?”

“No,” Rose said. “Like my mother told me—it usually skips a generation.”

Piper sprang forward in her chair. “Lou? She’s a mare?”

Rose nodded, licked her lips. Her eyelids started to close. Fast-acting medication, whatever it was. Or maybe she’d just worn Rose out.

“Did Amy know?”

“Didn’t want to believe it. That’s why I came back, why I moved back into the house with them. I tried to help them, like Oma tried to help me. I sensed it right away with Lou, but of course I needed to be sure before I could warn Amy. Once the transformations began, I tried to tell Amy, but it was too late. She called me crazy, and her stupid husband backed her up.

“Then, last week, she came to me, hysterical. She’d seen Lou transform. She wanted to know what to do. I told her about the medicine. I told her to take Lou to the twenty-ninth room and try to keep her down there until she figured out how to get the medicine, what the right dosage would be. Lou was stronger than I ever was. She had quickly learned how to transform at will—to change in the daytime, even, and take whatever form she wanted. And, like any young mare, she was impulsive…dangerous. She wasn’t always able to control her actions once she turned.”

“Wait a second—are you saying it was Lou? That she killed her family?”

The old woman’s eyes were shut now, her voice trailing off into sleep. “A mare can’t help what it is. Can’t help the things it does.”

“Oh my God,” Piper said, grabbing her bag and running for the door. “Margot.”





Margot


Something was wrong and Margot knew it, had known it all day. She’d been uncomfortable since breakfast, but she had told herself that the cramping she felt was brought on by too many crêpes.

“I think I need to take a little bathroom break,” Margot told Lou. The girl looked disappointed. She’d won four hands of Crazy Eights and was well on her way to another victory. They’d already taken one long break when Lou had gone into the kitchen to bring back a snack—saltine crackers with globs of jelly, something that had somehow taken her nearly twenty minutes to prepare.

The cordless phone on the nightstand rang, and Margot picked up.

“Hello?”

“Margot? It’s me,” Piper said, sounding out of breath. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Margot said.