The Night Sister

“Where was I when?” Sylvie snapped. Her face was distorted by the glass, all mixed up with the bright-orange colors of the butterfly. For once, she was not the beautiful one, but something strange and hideous—an orange-faced monster.

“Earlier this morning, just before five,” Rose said, putting the jar back down on the coffee table; Sylvie looked normal again, her hair neatly combed, tangle-free. “I woke up and you weren’t in bed.”

“Of course I was in bed, Rose.” For half a second, Sylvie looked worried, panicked almost, but then her expression changed into her best poor-crazy-little-sister look. “Where else would I be?”

“But your bed was empty. Your pillow…”

Sylvie held up a finger and waved it back and forth the way she’d learned in her hypnosis book. When she spoke, it was in her slow, wavering hypnotist voice. “Follow my finger with your eyes. That’s right, good. Now feel your eyelids getting heavy, heavier still; it’s a struggle to keep them open.”

Rose played along, following her sister’s finger with her eyes.

“Go ahead and close them, Rose. That’s right. Let yourself go deeper. Deeper still. The only thing you’re aware of is the sound of my voice. You’re going to listen to what I tell you. You’re going to understand that each word I speak is the absolute truth. Nod if you understand.”

Rose nodded.

“My bed was not empty,” Sylvie told her. “I was there the whole time.”

Rose slumped her shoulders forward, tried to look relaxed and like she was at her sister’s mercy.

“Now tell me what you saw this morning,” Sylvie commanded, her voice low and soothing.

“Your bed was not empty,” Rose repeated, voice dull and robotic. “You were there the whole time.”

“Very good,” Sylvie said. “And that’s the way you’ll remember it from this moment on. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Rose said.

“Good girl. On the count of three, you will open your eyes. One, two, three.”

Rose opened her eyes. Sylvie sat in the chair across from her, curling her hand into a tight fist and smiling. The butterfly lay in the jar on the coffee table between them, its orange color seeming impossibly bright for something dead.

“Do you think Mama will put blueberries in the pancakes this morning?” Sylvie asked brightly, glancing toward the kitchen, as though nothing unusual had happened.

Rose’s heart began to thump madly. She was surer than ever now that her sister had been out of bed last night; for some reason, Sylvie really didn’t want Rose to know it. This was the first time Rose could ever remember Sylvie keeping a secret from her, and Rose didn’t like it. Not one little bit.





2013





Piper


Piper wheeled her carry-on through the terminal, passing rows of plastic seats, a crêpe restaurant, and a kiosk selling overpriced neck pillows and eye masks. Once she exited through the double doors out into the main corridor, she searched the small crowd for Margot. In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Piper figured Margot would be impossible to miss. She recalled the image of her sister from last night’s dream: Margot teetering at the edge of a hole, off balance.

Piper blinked away the vision. She saw a couple embracing, a mother welcoming a college-age son home, a man in a suit holding a sign that said Walker Party, a cop scanning the crowd. No Margot. Piper was reaching into her bag for her cell phone when she felt a hand on her arm.

“Piper?”

She turned. The cop had approached.

“Jason!” she said, realizing that the police officer was none other than her brother-in-law. It was more than the anonymity of the uniform—he looked thinner and much older than he had when she’d last seen him, two Christmases ago.