The Night Sister

It sure turned out to be dangerous for Sylvie, Piper thought.

“Gram, I’m telling you—we found Sylvie! She never left. We found her suitcase! It’s been hidden in the floor of the tower all this time. And there’s a secret room in the basement of the tower—like a dungeon! And there’s a skeleton down there. It’s got to be Sylvie.”

Amy’s grandma looked at Amy, then the other two girls. Her eyes were pale and watery. She turned the burner off on the stove. The cooked-meat smell was nauseating.

“I think it’s time for your friends to go home,” she said.

“No,” Amy said. “They were there when we found her suitcase, and they’ve been searching for clues right along with me. I wouldn’t have found Sylvie without them, and they want to know what happened as bad as I do. And the police will want to talk to them, right? To all of us.”

Grandma Charlotte shook her head. “No police. And your friends need to leave now.”

“But, Gram, we—”

“No police.”

“Okay,” Amy said. “You let Margot and Piper stay and we won’t call the police.”

Grandma Charlotte gave a reluctant nod. “Come sit,” she said, voice firm. They followed her to the kitchen table. She picked up her pack of Virginia Slims and adjusted the big glass ashtray.

“Come sit”? She was being awfully calm for someone who’d just been told there was a dungeon on the property holding the skeleton of her long-lost daughter.

She knows, Piper thought. Somehow, she knew about the room and what was down there. What if she was part of it? Some sick husband-and-wife torture team. That’s why she didn’t want them to call the police. Piper should grab Amy and Margot, get them out of the house, run to their safe condo, tell her mother everything. She knew this, and yet she stayed.

Grandma Charlotte lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke up in the air. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something I hoped I’d never have to talk about again, but now I see there’s no choice.”

“Oh my God,” Amy said, leaning back in her chair so that it tottered precariously on its two back legs. “Don’t tell me you knew? You knew Sylvie was down there, dead, this whole time? Jesus, Gram, she was your daughter!”

Amy’s grandma shook her head. “That’s not Sylvie down there.”

“But it’s got to be; we found her suitcase, we—”

“It’s not her.”

“Well, who is it, then?”

Grandma Charlotte drew in a long breath, then let it out. “It’s Fenton. The girls’ uncle.”

“Fenton? No.” Amy shook her head. “It can’t be Fenton. It’s Sylvie. I know it is. I saw her ghost. She’s been leaving me notes in the typewriter.”

That gave Grandma Charlotte pause. “You saw Sylvie’s ghost?”

Amy nodded. “She comes to me in my room when I’m sleeping. She leaves me messages on the typewriter. She’s the one who told us how to find the twenty-ninth room.”

Grandma Charlotte looked down at the cigarette in her hand. She shook her head, but said nothing.

“Grandma, how do you know that skeleton is Fenton?”

Grandma Charlotte looked up to stare at Amy through the haze of cigarette smoke. “Because I’m the one who put him down there.”

“You killed Fenton?” Amy asked.

“No. I just hid the body.”

“So what happened to him?” Amy demanded.

Grandma Charlotte looked at Piper and Margot.

“Tell me,” Amy insisted.

“If we go down this path, if I tell you the truth…” Grandma Charlotte’s voice trailed off.

Amy pushed her chair back from the table, the metal legs scraping the linoleum floor. “If you don’t tell me what’s going on, I swear I’ll call the police and show them the suitcase and the body in the tower. I’ll let them figure it out.”

“You can’t do that, dear,” Grandma Charlotte said kindly.

“Why not?”

“Because, if anyone were to find out what really happened to Fenton, no one would ever leave our family alone.”