The Night Sister

Piper wanted to take her away from here, out of this shitty trailer, out of the town of London, where she’d never be allowed to forget the tragedy. She wanted to put Lou on a plane and bring her back to L.A., back to her tidy home. She could turn the office into a nice bedroom, with a canopy bed covered in stuffed animals. She could give Lou a good life. She could keep her safe.

Piper had never longed for a child. Her life seemed full without one. She had a successful business, lots of friends, the occasional (though rarely serious) romance. Yet this girl was awakening some deep, primal mothering instinct inside her.

“Only if you want to,” Piper said.

“It was late,” Lou began. “After midnight. I heard Mama downstairs in the kitchen, banging around. She did that when she was drinking sometimes…fell into things, opened and closed the cupboards real hard.”

“Did your mom drink a lot?” Piper asked, swallowing hard. She hated the thought of Amy’s becoming a drunk. Amy seemed bigger than that somehow, above addiction. But alcoholism, she knew, ran in families.

Lou squinted. “Sometimes. Daddy, he quit years ago, but Mama, she always kept a big bottle of white wine in the back of the fridge. So I heard her banging around in the kitchen first, then in the hall closet. That’s when she must have been getting the gun. Daddy kept it there the way Mama kept wine in the fridge—just in case.”

Sweat began to form on Piper’s forehead and the backs of her hands. She loosened the scarf she was wearing, undid the buttons on her sweater. There was a rank odor in the room that seemed to be getting stronger. Something moldering: damp earth, fungus.

“She started up the stairs. She was saying a rhyme:

“?‘When Death comes knocking on your door

you’ll think you’ve seen his face before.

When he comes creeping up your stairs,

you’ll know him from your dark nightmares.

If you hold up a mirror, you shall see

that he is you and you are he.’?”



Piper shivered. She remembered Grandma Charlotte reciting that same little rhyme to them years ago, not long before everything changed.

Lou’s singsong voice sent chills through Piper. She wanted to beg her to stop, not to go any further. Lou closed her eyes tight, and began to rock slowly as she spoke.

“First, she went into her bedroom, where Daddy was sleeping. She crept right in, quiet as a mouse. But he must have woke up, because they started arguing.”

“Could you hear what they were saying?” Piper asked.

“No, but there was a lot of noise, yelling and stuff breaking, and Mama screaming. Then: bang!”

Piper jolted.

“All I could think was that I had to hide. I jumped out of bed and stuffed the pillows under the quilt so she’d think I was in there, sleeping. I saw that once. In a movie.”

Piper nodded. “Then what did you do?”

“I opened the window that leads to the roof. Levi and I used to do it all the time. We’d go out there sometimes to watch the stars.”

Piper nodded. She remembered going out that same window when she slept over at Amy’s—how they’d sit out on the roof and puff at cigarettes Amy had stolen from her grandma, take sips of the salty cooking sherry they’d found down in the kitchen. Amy would pretend she could name all the constellations, but Piper knew she was making it up. Amy’s sky held nightmarish images: a toad swallowing a little girl, the queen of the spiders, a hand wielding an ax.

“Mama came back down the hall. I stood right by the window, listening. I heard Mama go into Levi’s room.”

“?‘Mama?’ Levi called. ‘What are you doing?’

“?‘Saving you.’

“?‘From what?’

“?‘Nightmares.’

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Piper leaned back, as if the shots had been fired into her own chest.

“Then she came for me. I saw the light when she opened the door. I was right beside the window, crouched down low. She walked up to my bed, and without pulling back the covers, she fired the gun again. Then she went back out into the hall, and there was one more shot. It was quiet after that.”

Lou’s eyes looked as glassy as a doll’s.

“I stayed out on the roof even after everything got quiet. I didn’t want to see inside.”