The Night Sister

“No way,” he said aloud as he peered in at the wide-planked wooden floorboards, “no freaking way.”


The pack of cigarettes and note were gone.

Which was impossible.

He’d been watching the tower.

No one had gone in or come out.

“What are you doing here?”

He spun, saw Amy coming down the driveway toward him.

“Nothing, I…I left you some cigarettes. Did you get them?”

“Cigarettes? No, I never saw any cigarettes.”

“I put them in the tower earlier this afternoon.”

She moved close, stuck her head in the tower. “Well, where are they?”

“Gone,” he said. “I left them right there just a couple hours ago. If you didn’t take them, who did?”

“I dunno. Someone must have come along and picked them up.”

“But no one went in or out of the tower! I was watching!”

“Watching?” She looked from the open doorway to his face, which suddenly felt like it was on fire. “Stay out of the tower, Jay Jay,” she snapped.

Jason nodded. Took a step back, away from Amy, toward home. “But I just wanted to give you the—”

“I don’t want to catch you anywhere near this place. It’s off limits. Piper nearly died falling through the floor in there today. It’s not safe. Got it?”

“Whatever you say,” he told her, and she smiled, tousled his hair.

For once, he’d done the right thing.





2013





Jason


Jason sipped his black coffee while Piper flitted around the kitchen. She whipped eggs and milk, dunked slices of crusty bread, then gently placed them in the cast-iron skillet, where they sizzled and spat in butter. A huge fruit salad sat on the counter in a cut-glass bowl he and Margot had gotten as a wedding gift and only used for special occasions.

Margot was in bed, resting, just the way she was supposed to be.

He was still a joke to Piper. He saw it in the way she watched him, waiting for him to screw up in some way, to let Margot down. There was something slightly amused—mocking, even—in the way she looked at him and spoke to him, as if he were still an awkward little boy.

Piper had lied to him about not knowing what “29 Rooms” meant. It meant something to her; to Margot as well. He could see it there, a flicker of recognition, perhaps a twitch of fear. He could understand Piper’s not telling the truth, but Margot had never lied to him before. Maybe she’d break down and tell him. He wouldn’t push her, though. He didn’t want to risk upsetting her, raising her blood pressure.

Jason bit the inside of his cheek. He wished he could smoke a cigarette, but he never smoked in front of Margot (though sometimes she smelled it on him) and wouldn’t dream of lighting up in the kitchen. He’d wait till he was in his truck.

He blamed the smoking on Amy. Hadn’t his first cigarette ever been from a pack he’d stolen to give to her? And later, when they were in high school, the two of them smoked together all the time, even sharing cigarettes. There was something so intimate about it, almost more intimate than when they slept together.

They were never exactly going out. They didn’t do the things other couples did: going to the movies, holding hands in the halls at school, hanging out at Dairy Cream on Friday nights and sharing a chili dog and a banana split.

“I don’t believe people are meant to be monogamous,” Amy told him once, after sex. It was when they were lying together in the dark, smoking, that Amy would share all her secrets and dreams. All the walls came down, and she would talk to him about anything and everything. “Do you?”

“I dunno.” He shrugged, although inside he wished that she’d be his girl and wear his ring and do all that other sappy bullshit that other couples did.

It was Amy who encouraged him to ask Margot to the junior prom. This was after Amy had turned him down flat—no way would she be caught dead at any prom.

“You should ask Margot. She’s been madly in love with you since she was in, like, third grade.”