The Night Sister

She rolled over, looked at the clock: 4:32 a.m. Across the room, her phone was playing Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”—Margot’s ringtone.

“Oh my God,” Piper gasped, jumping out of bed—the baby. It was seven-thirty in Vermont, and Margot wouldn’t call this early unless something was really, truly wrong.

Piper snatched up the phone she’d left on the dresser.

“Margot?” Piper said, half expecting it to be Jason on the other end with terrible news. The worst news of all, even—we’ve lost them both. She shuddered as she recalled her sister slipping into the sinkhole, felt herself reaching for her, her hands grabbing nothing but air.

“Piper,” Margot said, and Piper felt a weight lift from her chest. But she felt it return when she heard the strain in her sister’s voice as she continued: “I’m sorry to wake you. Something’s happened.”

“The baby?”

Margot was eight and a half months pregnant. It was her third pregnancy. The first had ended in a miscarriage at sixteen weeks, and the second in a stillbirth at thirty weeks—a baby boy they had named Alex. Margot and Jason were trying again, though Margot had said that if she lost this baby, that was it. No more. She simply couldn’t bear it.

“No, no. The baby’s fine.”

“Jason?”

“No, not Jason. It’s Amy. She…Oh God, Piper, it’s awful.” Margot was crying.

“Jesus, what happened?” Piper asked. She flipped on the light and blinked at the sudden brightness. The room around her came to life—the queen-sized bed with its snowy duvet, the old rocking chair in the corner, the maple dresser with the mirror hanging above it. She caught sight of her own reflection; her face was pale and panicked, and her white nightgown made her seem like an apparition, gauzy and ethereal, not quite there.

Her sister snuffled and sobbed, and at last was able to speak in partial sentences, voice shaking.

“Last night…they’re saying Amy shot and killed Mark and their little boy, Levi, and then herself out at the motel. Lou—that’s her daughter?—she’s alive. The police found her crouched on the roof. She climbed out a window and hid there….I can’t imagine how she…what she…” Margot trailed off.

Piper said nothing. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

After a moment, Margot went on:

“She didn’t just shoot them, Piper. They were…all cut up. Butchered.”

Margot started to cry and gulp again. Piper forced herself to take deep breaths. Behind the shock and gut punch of loss, another feeling was there, worming its way to the surface: fear.

Piper looked over at the framed photo she kept on her dresser: Amy, freckle-faced and smiling as she stood between Piper and Margot, her arms draped heavily over each of their shoulders. They all looked impossibly happy, grinning up from the bottom of the empty swimming pool, white roller skates with bright laces on their feet. This photo had been in her bedroom at home when she was growing up, in her dorm room at college, and in every apartment and house she’d lived in since.

“When was the last time you talked to Amy?” Margot asked at last, the phone crackling, her voice staticky, like it was coming in from a far-off radio station.