The Night Sister

Dear Mr. Hitchcock, My uncle Fenton took me to see The Trouble with Harry at the Paramount in Barre—the same place I saw you just over a week ago. We found the place where you signed the wall. I actually let myself touch your signature—what a thrill! I just loved the movie! Miss MacLaine was absolutely brilliant. I understand it was her first movie role. I’m wondering how you came to cast her? How does someone get a part in one of your movies if they’re not already a star?

I have enclosed a picture of my sister Rose and I performing in our World Famous London Chicken Circus. It’s something we do for the motel guests. We’ve trained the chickens to do all kinds of tricks, and at the end, I hypnotize them. It’s really quite a show. Rose and I were in the newspaper for the circus last summer—a man came and interviewed us and took our picture.

If you are ever in Vermont again, I would love for you to come to the motel and see the circus.

I’m the older girl in the picture, with blond hair. Rose doesn’t care for cameras, so she’s making a face.

Rose is just as strange as usual. Well, maybe more so. Lately she’s always watching me, spying. She hides in the closet, under my bed. She thinks I don’t see her, and I pretend not to, just to see how long she can stay hidden, which actually turns out to be a rather long time. She even watches me when I sleep! Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and there’s Rose, standing over me with a flashlight, shining it down onto my face. Mama says not to pay Rose any mind, that she’s just jealous. She’s got a funny way of being jealous, if you ask me.

Well, that’s all I can think of for now. I hope you are busy making your next picture—I can’t wait to see it! If you ever have time, I’d love to get a letter back. Or an autographed picture even. That would make me feel like the luckiest girl in all of Vermont!

Sincerely yours,

Miss Sylvia A. Slater The Tower Motel





328 Route 6


London, Vermont





2013





Piper


Piper stared at Amy’s daughter, unable to shake the sense that she’d traveled back in time and was sitting with Amy again. The girl was a dead ringer for her mother; paler, certainly, and looking shell-shocked, but it felt eerily as if Amy had been cloned.

The girl was staying in a run-down trailer with her aunt Crystal—Mark’s sister. Crystal had set them up at a kitchen table with a scratched-up Formica top, with warm cans of Coke and a plate of saltine crackers and squares of plastic-looking orange American cheese.

“My name is Louisa, but no one calls me that—only teachers on the first day of school, and the lady who works at the doctor’s office.”

“What do people call you, then?” Piper asked.

“Everybody calls me Lou. Just Lou.”

She looked like a kid who never saw sunlight, a sickly kid; even her freckles were faded. Her eyes were a murky blue; her hair was fine blond wisps. There were shadowy blue-black circles under her eyes. Her lips were chapped.

The trailer was a dump, and Piper hated seeing any kid forced to stay here. The kitchen floor was sticky with God-knew-what; there were piles of dishes in the sink; the curtains, once white, were yellowed from the cigarette smoke that permeated every surface. Being in the trailer was like crawling into a giant ashtray.

Amy’s sister-in-law, Crystal, had led Piper right inside. Crystal was tall and thin with frizzy brown hair that she kept pulled back in a dirty Scrunchie. Her nails were painted a green that reminded Piper of baby puke, and the polish was chipped and peeling. She had a canker sore in the corner of her mouth. “Can you keep an eye on her for an hour or so?” she’d asked. “I’ve gotta go to the store.”

“Um, sure. Why not?” Piper had said casually, thinking, Who leaves a traumatized child alone with the first person who walks through the door?