The Night Sister

“Go back to bed,” Daddy said, voice gruff and sleepy. “It’s too early for any of your stories, Rose.”


Daddy always said Rose had quite an imagination, which was his kind way of saying that she liked to exaggerate, to make things up just to see if she could get away with it.

“I can’t,” Rose said. “Didn’t you hear me? There was something there. Something in the room with me. And Sylvie is gone!”

“There was nothing in your room,” Daddy said, turning over. “You had a bad dream, that’s all.”

Rose shook her head. She wasn’t a scaredy-cat like Sylvie with her nightmares.

“But it wasn’t a dream,” Rose insisted. “And I’m not making it up. It was real.”

“I’m sure your sister’s in her bed,” said Mama, voice low and calm.

“But she isn’t. I think a mare got her.”

Mama turned on the bedside light with an irritated snap.

“A mare? How many times must I tell you girls? Oma’s stories were just that: stories.” She jumped out of bed, pulled on her robe, and marched down the hall. She returned in less than a minute and reported, “Sylvie is right in her bed, where she should be.” She slipped off her robe and climbed back into her own bed. “And, I might add, where we all should be. Off you go.”

“But she wasn’t there a minute ago, I swear,” Rose said.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Daddy said with a groan, sitting up. “I’m going to go put some coffee on.”

He thumped out of the room in his striped pajamas, hair rumpled. Be careful, Rose wanted to call after him. It’s out there still.

Rose crawled in beside her mother; Daddy’s spot was still warm. She snuggled up next to Mama, laid her head on Mama’s shoulder.

“Ah, my poor girl.” Mama sighed. “You really are scared silly. I wish to God Mother hadn’t filled your head with all that nonsense.”

Rose heard water running in the kitchen, and the sound of her father flipping on the old wooden Philco radio. Daddy hummed along to the tune. The door of the new Frigidaire opened, then closed.

While Mama stroked her hair, Rose recalled a conversation she’d had with Oma.

“Does Mama know about the mares? Does she believe?”

Oma smiled. “Indeed she does. But she would never admit to it. For some people, Rose, it’s easier to pretend the things that frighten us most don’t exist at all.”

—

“It’s dead,” Sylvie said, plunking the glass jar with the butterfly on the coffee table, right in front of Rose.

Rose was sitting on the couch, hugging a pillow tight against her chest. The monarch’s body lay on top of the bed of leaves, perfectly still. Rose gazed at it through the glass, which magnified the monarch’s wings, brilliantly orange and veined with black. They reminded her of the stained-glass windows at church. Rose imagined a church of the butterflies where they worshipped metamorphosis. Caterpillar, cocoon, pupae, butterfly.

“You killed it. I hope you’re happy,” Sylvie said, hands on her hips as she glared down at Rose.

Rose bit her lip and hugged the pillow tighter. She remembered how much she’d wanted the butterfly to come to her, to choose her. If Oma were here, she would understand. “I didn’t mean to.”

Sylvie looked at her a minute. “Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t. Maybe you meant to and didn’t even realize it.”

“That makes no sense.” Rose picked up the jar and looked inside, willing the broken creature to move, to flutter its wings.

“Neither does killing a butterfly.”

Sylvie sat in their father’s wingback chair, not taking her eyes off Rose.

“Where were you, anyway?” Rose asked accusingly, watching her sister through the glass jar.