The Night Sister

“Margot might have mentioned it,” Jason said, gripping the steering wheel a little more tightly. “But Amy left a note…well, not a note, really, just something written on an old photo. It said, ‘29 Rooms.’ Does that mean anything to you?”


For the first time since he had picked her up at the airport, he looked directly at her, his brown eyes studying her, watching for a reaction. And once more, she was twelve again, being grilled by the pesky kid who followed Amy around like a puppy dog—a boy who was a laughingstock, not just to Amy but to them all.

She paused for a moment, pretending to search her memory, then shook her head slowly.

“No,” she told him, holding eye contact, her face a mask. She wished, with all her might, that they’d never found that goddamn photo; that she had never heard of the twenty-ninth room, had never seen it with her own two eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything at all.”

Jason was quiet for a moment. She had no idea if he believed her.

“The photo itself,” Jason went on at last, “we figured out it’s Amy’s mother, Rose, and Rose’s sister, Sylvie, when they were kids, about eight and twelve. Sylvie, she went missing not long after she graduated from high school. Did Amy ever talk about her?”

Piper shrugged. “Once or twice, maybe. She said Sylvie ran away. Went off to Hollywood, maybe.”

And, for half a second, she was sure she could feel Amy’s hot breath against her cheek, hear her singsong voice as she whispered in Piper’s ear:

“Liar, liar.”





Piper


Margot and Jason’s bedroom was painted ivory with sea-foam trim. Like the rest of the house, it was decorated with framed antique photos of a London long gone—a shot of downtown showing the old A&P market, a photo of an old dairy farm along Main Street.

Margot was propped up in bed against fluffed pillows like an invalid queen, surrounded by everything she could want or need within reach: a stack of paperbacks and baby magazines, bottled water, the TV remote, cell phone, a pile of protein bars and apples. There was also a collection of old, yellowed newspapers in plastic sleeves. She was reading one, with a masthead across the top that said The London Town Crier.

She tossed aside the paper she was holding and squealed, “Piper! You’re here!” as though she hadn’t been expecting her sister at all.

Piper plunked herself down on the bed and they embraced. Piper felt Jason’s gaze boring into her back.

“What’s with all the old papers?” Piper asked. “Don’t tell me it’s for work!”

Margot gave a sly smile. “Not exactly. A little side project I took on for the historical society. I’m organizing a collection of old Town Criers for display. They were published here in town by the ladies’ auxiliary in the fifties and sixties. It’s amazing stuff, really. If you read between the lines, you get this incredible history of the town.”

Margot’s face lit up whenever she spoke about London’s history. Piper relaxed; she hadn’t realized just how worried she’d been about her sister on the drive from the airport until she saw her with her own eyes. Margot was stuck in bed, hugely pregnant and quite a bit puffier than usual, but she was still Margot, getting excited about a stack of dusty old papers.

Piper picked one of the papers up and scanned the front page. It was dated March 12, 1952. The lead story was about the talent show held at the high school. There was also a recipe for Mrs. Minetti’s famous three-bean casserole.

Piper glanced at the photograph of a farm on the wall to the left of the bed. There was something familiar about it. She studied it for a moment before realizing it must be the old Slater farm that sat on the Tower’s land before Amy’s grandfather tore down the barn and built the motel. She recognized the house and the hill behind it. It was strange to see it as a blank landscape dotted with Holsteins, no sign of the crumbling stone tower or rows of motel rooms.

It seemed an odd, even unsettling choice of a photo for Margot to hang in her bedroom, especially now. Piper looked away, not wanting to draw attention to the photo or her realization of what it was.