The Night Sister

“What’d you guys do with all her stuff? The things she left behind?”


Her grandmother turned back to the sink and pulled the plug out of the drain. “I don’t know. There wasn’t much. Some of it might be in the attic, I think. Your grandfather and I, we cleaned out their room, packed everything of Sylvie’s into a trunk. We thought it would help poor Rose. She was so destroyed by Sylvie’s leaving. We thought it might be better if she wasn’t surrounded by all of those things—reminders of her sister everywhere.”

The last of the dirty dishwater went down the drain with a terrible, wet sucking sound.

—

The attic smelled like dust and mice. Piper was sure she could hear faint scuttling sounds off in the shadows, feel beady eyes upon her. She hoped it was only mice and not something larger, something more dangerous.

Was it more than rustling?

Was that faint breathing she heard coming from the darkest corner, the place where no light touched?

“I don’t like it up here,” Margot complained.

“So go back home. Nobody’s stopping you,” Piper said. She wanted to get the hell out of there, too, but no way would she admit that to Amy.

Margot flashed her a no-way, not-without-you look. Their mom was working, and then she had class—she was going to law school part-time. She was doing it for all of them, she repeated, again and again. She could have a good job, make some real money, make a difference in the world—wasn’t that what her daughters wanted from her?

Not really, Piper always wanted to say. What she wanted was to have a mom who was more like a mom, someone to be there when they got home from school, to cook real dinners instead of Hamburger Helper and frozen lasagna. A mom who wouldn’t order Piper to stay with goody-two-shoes Margot all day, no matter what. It pissed Piper off a little—it was like being an unpaid babysitter.

“Aw, your little sister’s not so bad,” Amy would always say. “She’s actually pretty cool.”

Amy sometimes said she wished she had a kid sister, or any brothers or sisters, for that matter. She said it stank to be an only child—a mistake.

“My mom told me once that’s what I was,” she’d confessed to Piper. “That she’d never wanted kids. She got pregnant by accident. Never even told me the guy’s name.”

Piper had thought that was a cruel thing to tell a kid, even if it was the truth.

“There’s a lot of crap up here,” Amy said now, blowing dust off another cardboard box. She’d already opened half a dozen of them and found nothing useful—baby clothes, old Life magazines, stained tablecloths, and chipped china.

There was an old couch covered by a sheet, a broken treadle sewing machine, a wooden wardrobe that was empty except for a few mothballs, and a steamer trunk with a tiny suitcase resting on top. Amy reached for the little square suitcase and undid the latches.

“Cool! It’s a typewriter,” she said, pulling off the cover to reveal a gunmetal-gray typewriter with green keys. Royal, it said in silver letters on the front. And on the back, Quiet De Luxe. “Holy crap, I bet this was Sylvie’s typewriter! The one she wrote her goodbye note on!” She punched a few keys, and the arms with the letters moved up and got stuck, tangled together. Amy hefted the typewriter to the floor and opened the trunk. “Jackpot,” she said.

Inside, they found clothes: a wool winter coat, saddle shoes, a couple of dresses and cardigans, a few slips, three white nightgowns. There was a bowling trophy, a certificate for winning the London High spelling bee: Presented to Sylvia Slater on the thirteenth day of March, 1959, it said in ornate calligraphy.

“I guess this is definitely Sylvie’s stuff,” Piper said.

“The things she left behind,” Amy said, staring down as she pulled things out of the trunk.

Piper wondered what she would choose to take with her if she ran away.

Amy—you’d take Amy.