The Shadow Sister, page 22
The only identifiable thing is a flash of silver: a bracelet with a single green pendant I know by heart.
Grandma’s bracelet.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“It’s me,” Sutton replies.
SUTTON
AFTERNOON OF
I pause before the crosswalk to tighten the laces of my running shoes. They’re getting loose, and the heel on my right foot keeps slipping even when I’m not running. I double tie it, but I’m glad I’m not actually exercising today. The next time I sprint, my shoe’s probably going to pop right off.
I pull my phone out as I cross the street to text Mom if we can get a new pair soon. I have enough to buy them myself, but if I go shopping with her, I can likely get a new sports bra and leggings too. She’ll probably drag Casey along, but I can handle that.
I wonder if school will have hired a new coach in time for cheer camp. It’s going to be hell getting back in the groove with someone new, but it will be worth it. I’m excited for us to take smart risks, risks that will challenge us to be better instead of sacrificing safety for show.
I press the wake button, but nothing happens.
I press it again.
A third time. The battery is dead.
I sigh. This isn’t really a surprise. I almost always charge my phone in my car at lunchtime, but I couldn’t do that today with my Jeep in Seattle. The last I heard from Andrew, he said he arrived safely and got his parking validated. I’m sure he’s texted updates since.
The Garden is only three miles away. I’ll ask one of the waitresses for a charger to plug it in when I arrive. There’s no other solution for the time being. I really hope the meeting with the mortgage expert went well. The organization assured me when we spoke on the phone that they’d helped hundreds of low-income first-time buyers purchase a home, but I won’t know if they were able to help the Prendergasts until he gets back.
If it doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something else. Coach isn’t the only one with connections to real estate. Maybe Dad knows somebody. Or Mom. She doesn’t love that I’m with Andrew, but it shouldn’t keep her from wanting to help his family. Maybe she’d find an angle for a news story. We’ll make it happen. Together.
I wonder if he’s texted. I hope he doesn’t think I’m ignoring him.
I walk along the road, and the closer I get to Bend’s End, the worse the sidewalks become. There’s only another hundred yards of paved walkway before the curb turns into gravel.
My fingers go to the pendant of Ma Remy’s bracelet again. The action should soothe me, but Casey’s face replaces any worries I have with frustration. I wish you were never born, I told her last night. I feel bad about it, but she wished me dead first. I kicked her out of my room when it looked like she was about to cry.
I didn’t want to piss her off.
She just refuses to understand.
All day I’ve wondered if explaining why the bracelet was so important to me would change anything. I know she thinks I’m a materialistic bitch, but maybe if I told her about the day Ma Remy promised me the bracelet, she’d understand. I could explain the story of our family. But would she even believe me?
Traffic roars beside me. I try to put more space between myself and the road, but it’s a fruitless effort, like talking to Casey.
She hasn’t trusted me in years. I could drop all my defenses and ignore every time she’s screwed me over, and she’d recoil from me like a vampire from a cross.
There’s no point in trying to explain myself. It doesn’t matter.
Ma Remy willed the bracelet to both of us. I offered to share it; It was Casey who drew a line in the sand. She always does. There’s no room for compromise with Casey. You either agree with her, or she thinks you’re against her.
A red truck honks as it passes me, then pulls over. I can’t see the driver but make out a decal on the back window. Heights Above Church.
Shit, shit, shit. I can’t believe Casey enlisted Ruth to track me down. They don’t even have their licenses! I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for teens with only a learner’s permit to drive with other underage people who aren’t family. I tug my sleeve down to cover the bracelet.
I’m trapped.
The engine idles. I wait for Casey to jump out. She doesn’t.
When the window lowers, neither my sister nor her best friend greet me.
It’s Ruth’s dad. “Sutton Cureton,” he calls. “What are you doing on this side of town?” He punctuates the lighthearted scolding in his voice with his trademark smile, the same one plastered on billboards leading in and out of town.
I let out a relieved breath. I may not love Pastor David, but he’s a far more welcome sight than his daughter right now.
“Don’t you have a car?” the pastor continues, judgment in his voice.
It’s going to take me even longer to get to the diner if I stop to chat with him, but I would never live it down if I snubbed him. I look both ways and cross the street.
I don’t like David Heights. I never have. There’s nothing wrong with him, but it feels like he has no personality outside praising God. Casey and I used to joke about it together, mimicking him, but Casey got more sensitive about criticizing him since his wife died.
Grace was incredible. She was the sweetest person and still had a backbone stronger than most bridges, especially against her husband. Most of the time. We never mocked her.
If anything, Pastor Heights’s holier-than-thou attitude got worse after his wife passed. He got more extreme in his preaching. The audacity of some of the things he felt emboldened to say stopped seeming like they were from the Bible and instead came from his opinions. I avoid church now more often than not.
“I loaned my car to a friend,” I tell him as I lean against the open window. “I’m heading to get it back.”
“Where?”
“The Garden diner in west Bend?”
His brow furrows. “That’s a long walk.”
“Not really,” I say. “It’s only a few miles.”
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t know this,” he begins conspiratorially, “because you’re such a good girl, but this isn’t the safest area.” His tone is the same false disbelief he’s perfected for his live streamed sermons. “There’re a lot of people not living up to their potential. I don’t know if I feel safe letting you walk alone. Let me give you a ride.”
“I’ll be okay,” I insist.
“Can’t you humor me?” he asks. “As a father? I don’t know how I’d face Isaiah if something happened to you.”
I begin to protest again, to assure him that I’m fine, but I can’t quite get the words out. I remember Andrew’s own apprehension about this part of our plan. He was worried about me walking alone because of other girls who disappeared from the area recently.
Tamika Horn and Imani Brenton. I met Tamika’s mom before Imani’s disappearance. Andrew and I joined the volunteer effort to put up missing person flyers.
I squeeze my phone in my pocket. I’d probably be fine if it were charged, but if something happened now, I wouldn’t be able to call for help. Can you even track a phone if the battery is dead?
“You got me,” I concede. I walk around the truck and pull open the passenger door. Climbing in, I say, “It’s cheating to use my dad against me though.”
“You could say I have a special connection with fathers.” David winks and laughs at his own joke, and then he pulls back onto the road.
“It’s good to see you, Sutton,” he says. “I see your sister more often because of how close she is with my Ruth, but I’ve always known you girls to be smart. Kind. Respectful, you know?”
I nod, then mutter, “Yes. Thank you.”
“You respect your elders. Not everyone does.”
“Do you have a phone charger?” I ask.
He gives me side-eye for the interruption, but his perfect smile doesn’t falter. “I’m not sure,” he admits. “Ruth is always borrowing them, but you’re free to look.”
I don’t see anything like a cord in the console or cupholders.
He continues talking. “Accepting assistance is an important virtue.”
Nothing there. I check the glove compartment next.
“That’s why God placed me here.”
Nope. I move on to the pocket of my door.
“To help even the most sinful see the light.”
No luck. I’m about to give up when I stick my hand in the space between the seat and console. My fingers slide against the leather until they brush the carpet. Then I feel something.
It’s thin. Like a small cord.
Yes.
I pull, but my joy is short-lived. It’s not a charging cable. It’s a beaded bracelet, like the kind kindergarteners make. The rope gets caught on the seat as I tug, and it breaks apart. The beads slip off the cord, but not before I read the letters falling from my fingers: TAMIKA.
The automatic car locks engage before I can move. I look up at the pastor, a single flower bead and the limp cord left in my palm.
His expression is almost sad. “I guess I was wrong about you, Sutton,” he says. “Maybe you aren’t the girl I thought you were.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Sutton reaches toward the body and holds the decaying arm as she tugs Ma Remy’s bracelet free. She slides it on her wrist and rubs the pendant with her thumb. Then she closes her eyes and bites her lip, taking a deep breath.
When she opens her eyes on the exhale, she looks directly at me.
I recognize the remnants of the clothes Sutton was wearing when she disappeared, floating in the decaying muck. I step back, reaching for something to stabilize me. I feel dizzy. My knees shudder under the weight of Sutton’s piercing gaze. I should be used to her attention, but this time is different. She isn’t studying me. She isn’t watching my movements and decisions to mimic them, to understand me, to get ahead of me.
Sutton looks up at me like she knows me. And I know her.
“Casey,” she says. Her voice is soft and raw in the same breath. She says my name like a prayer. It holds the same intensity as her watering eyes, like I’m a freshwater spring after she’s spent days in a desert. Like she hasn’t seen me in ages.
It can’t be.
“No.” I take another step back, shaking my head. “No,” I say again, and then again, and again, each time inching farther away. Sutton begins to stand, to move away from the thing in the dirt—or the thing moves away from Sutton’s body. I don’t know. I can’t.
Please. Please, I just want my sister. I never wanted this shadow of my sister, this echo of who Sutton used to be. But she clawed out of her broken body and crawled back to me.
The imposter steps toward me. The moonlight glitters on Ma Remy’s bracelet as she reaches for me, but the moonlight also illuminates something else in the grave. I recognize it with the same chill as when I saw its twin during the search effort weeks ago. The one piece of evidence recovered in the woods, the placement of which I questioned but the police disregarded.
Sutton’s other white running shoe is half-submerged in the muck.
It’s her. My sister is dead.
My sister is coming toward me.
I run.
“Casey!” Sutton yells after me, but I only sprint faster.
The moonlight disappears as I’m engulfed by the forest. The wind stings at my tearstained cheeks as I weave between the trees. Sutton keeps yelling for me. I try to block it out. I try to ignore the desperation in her voice. The pleading. The pain. I stop and put my arms on my thighs, trying to catch my breath. I close my eyes, but I can’t escape her.
I see her alone in the dark. My mind remakes her screams in a horrific watercolor behind my eyelids. I see her in the water, the dirt. I taste it in my mouth.
I start to run again and trip over a branch. I hit the ground hard, rolling into a bramble bush. The thorns prick every inch of exposed skin, but that isn’t the agony that breaks my lungs wide open.
The truth hurts worse than any mortal wound.
The body in the waterlogged grave merges with my memory of Sutton submerged in the bathtub at home. I’m trying to remember, she said. The fish made a home around the corpse, like she made a home for Juliet. Do you think they remember?
Even the butterflies. Those beautiful bright wings that fluttered their way to wherever she was. They wouldn’t leave her alone. It was like they were intoxicated by her. Swarming her. Feeding off her.
Ma Remy did this. Her bracelet. Her promises to keep us together as long as we trusted we’d be reunited. Generations of Cureton love and loss cast inside a single pendant. I knew she was superstitious, but I never believed in the conjure and rootwork outside of Daddy’s academic interpretations. Herbs meant nothing to me beyond seasoning.
But I wanted Sutton back.
Even when I hated her, after I wished her dead with my own tongue, I needed my sister. I would have given anything to have her back. I would have traded myself. No matter what. Just like Daddy said.
Sutton finds me bloody and sobbing. She reaches for me, but I flinch away. “You died,” I say. “That’s you back there.”
I can’t see her face in the dark, but her silhouette nods. “Pastor David killed me,” she says. “But I came back.”
She attempts to touch me again. I don’t have the energy to move. Her touch is warm, far different from the cold enveloping me as the truth of Pastor David sets in. I trusted him. He always treated me like another daughter—Sutton too. Until now. She rubs my forearm in a calming manner and says, “I remember now. I know why I returned.”
“Why?”
“For you,” Sutton says. Her tone is almost annoyed, like the answer should be obvious. She squeezes my arm, and the pendant slides down her wrist to touch the skin of both of our arms.
“He was supposed to give me a ride,” she continues, “but when I got in his truck, I found the bracelet that belonged to one of the missing girls. He wouldn’t let me go after that. He brought me here and…” She looks back toward where her original body lies.
The grave she crawled out of.
“I was so scared,” she says.
“I’m sorry.” I’ve been forced to say those words to her a million times, but I’ve never meant them as honestly as I do now.
“I wasn’t afraid for myself,” she says. “There was nothing that could be done to save me. But I couldn’t stop thinking of you. When I was dying, it was your life that flashed before my eyes. I was gone, but you were still here. You were alive and in danger. Alone. You trusted him. My last thought was of you. I wanted to protect you. The next thing I knew was dirt and rain and lights and needles. None of it made sense. But then I saw you.”
“And you remembered me.”
“I love you,” Sutton says. “I’m sorry it took dying for me to say it to your face.”
I laugh through a fresh rush of tears. “I love you too,” I choke out.
She takes that as a cue to hug me. I start sobbing again, my chest shuddering against hers as she squeezes me tight. “I’m sorry,” she says, and I repeat the words. We stay like that for a few moments.
I tense, remembering. “Ruth.”
Sutton lets go of me and stands. Then she offers a hand to help me up. I take it, wincing at all the scratches on my body. She releases me, but something is left behind in my hand.
I bring it closer to my face to inspect in the dim light. My heart sinks. It’s Sutton’s fingernail. The entire thing. I grab her hand to confirm. “Does it hurt?” I ask her, frantic.
Sutton shakes her head.
It’s not even bleeding.
“Come on,” she says, dismissing it. “We have to help Ruth.”
She takes the lead as always. She retraces our steps to the clearing, her pace calm and determined. She doesn’t look back to check on me or assure I’m still following. She doesn’t waste any time.
How much does she have left?
This fingernail, Sutton’s excessive hair loss, her tired sunken eyes… The bracelet brought her back, but can it keep her here? Is she going to leave me again? Will she die again permanently, disappearing when her original body finally returns to the earth?
I blink against the moonlight as I reenter the clearing. Sutton waits for me at the makeshift bridge. She doesn’t look at her body.
“Do you have your phone?” she asks. “We should probably call someone.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket, but there’s no signal.
“I guess it’s up to us then,” she says.
She crosses the bridge and walks toward the lighted cabin.
I follow her.
TWENTY-FIVE
Yellow light glows through a single old window, half-frosted by time. The light flickers, likely from the fireplace slowly spitting smoke out of the chimney. Sutton reaches the building before I do, but she waits for me.
I rest my hand on the cold door handle and look back to my sister. The last time Sutton was here, she died. She never truly left. I’m afraid to open the door—not for myself but for what it could cost Sutton. Pastor David could be inside. I don’t want to lose her again.
But I don’t want to lose Ruth either.
The door is unlocked.
The pastor isn’t here. An ancient oil lantern sits on a rickety end table, and a dying fire, nearing the end of its wood supply, burns in the old fireplace. In the corner, Ruth lies on a cot. Her body is still. Her hands are folded as if in prayer over a book perched on her chest.
I rush to her, trying to wake her, but she won’t stir. I shake her again, and the book, a Bible, falls to the ground. I don’t give it a second thought. I shake her again.
“Please,” I beg. “Not you too.”
“Stop,” Sutton says, kneeling next to us. Her hand goes straight to Ruth’s wrist to check her pulse. It’s such a simple thought, but one my terrified mind was incapable of. “She’s alive. Check for yourself.” She replaces her hand with mine.
Ruth’s pulse is strong. It thrums beneath my fingertips, even though her body doesn’t react.
“He must have drugged her,” Sutton says.
Grandma’s bracelet.
“What is this?” I whisper.
“It’s me,” Sutton replies.
SUTTON
AFTERNOON OF
I pause before the crosswalk to tighten the laces of my running shoes. They’re getting loose, and the heel on my right foot keeps slipping even when I’m not running. I double tie it, but I’m glad I’m not actually exercising today. The next time I sprint, my shoe’s probably going to pop right off.
I pull my phone out as I cross the street to text Mom if we can get a new pair soon. I have enough to buy them myself, but if I go shopping with her, I can likely get a new sports bra and leggings too. She’ll probably drag Casey along, but I can handle that.
I wonder if school will have hired a new coach in time for cheer camp. It’s going to be hell getting back in the groove with someone new, but it will be worth it. I’m excited for us to take smart risks, risks that will challenge us to be better instead of sacrificing safety for show.
I press the wake button, but nothing happens.
I press it again.
A third time. The battery is dead.
I sigh. This isn’t really a surprise. I almost always charge my phone in my car at lunchtime, but I couldn’t do that today with my Jeep in Seattle. The last I heard from Andrew, he said he arrived safely and got his parking validated. I’m sure he’s texted updates since.
The Garden is only three miles away. I’ll ask one of the waitresses for a charger to plug it in when I arrive. There’s no other solution for the time being. I really hope the meeting with the mortgage expert went well. The organization assured me when we spoke on the phone that they’d helped hundreds of low-income first-time buyers purchase a home, but I won’t know if they were able to help the Prendergasts until he gets back.
If it doesn’t work, we’ll figure out something else. Coach isn’t the only one with connections to real estate. Maybe Dad knows somebody. Or Mom. She doesn’t love that I’m with Andrew, but it shouldn’t keep her from wanting to help his family. Maybe she’d find an angle for a news story. We’ll make it happen. Together.
I wonder if he’s texted. I hope he doesn’t think I’m ignoring him.
I walk along the road, and the closer I get to Bend’s End, the worse the sidewalks become. There’s only another hundred yards of paved walkway before the curb turns into gravel.
My fingers go to the pendant of Ma Remy’s bracelet again. The action should soothe me, but Casey’s face replaces any worries I have with frustration. I wish you were never born, I told her last night. I feel bad about it, but she wished me dead first. I kicked her out of my room when it looked like she was about to cry.
I didn’t want to piss her off.
She just refuses to understand.
All day I’ve wondered if explaining why the bracelet was so important to me would change anything. I know she thinks I’m a materialistic bitch, but maybe if I told her about the day Ma Remy promised me the bracelet, she’d understand. I could explain the story of our family. But would she even believe me?
Traffic roars beside me. I try to put more space between myself and the road, but it’s a fruitless effort, like talking to Casey.
She hasn’t trusted me in years. I could drop all my defenses and ignore every time she’s screwed me over, and she’d recoil from me like a vampire from a cross.
There’s no point in trying to explain myself. It doesn’t matter.
Ma Remy willed the bracelet to both of us. I offered to share it; It was Casey who drew a line in the sand. She always does. There’s no room for compromise with Casey. You either agree with her, or she thinks you’re against her.
A red truck honks as it passes me, then pulls over. I can’t see the driver but make out a decal on the back window. Heights Above Church.
Shit, shit, shit. I can’t believe Casey enlisted Ruth to track me down. They don’t even have their licenses! I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for teens with only a learner’s permit to drive with other underage people who aren’t family. I tug my sleeve down to cover the bracelet.
I’m trapped.
The engine idles. I wait for Casey to jump out. She doesn’t.
When the window lowers, neither my sister nor her best friend greet me.
It’s Ruth’s dad. “Sutton Cureton,” he calls. “What are you doing on this side of town?” He punctuates the lighthearted scolding in his voice with his trademark smile, the same one plastered on billboards leading in and out of town.
I let out a relieved breath. I may not love Pastor David, but he’s a far more welcome sight than his daughter right now.
“Don’t you have a car?” the pastor continues, judgment in his voice.
It’s going to take me even longer to get to the diner if I stop to chat with him, but I would never live it down if I snubbed him. I look both ways and cross the street.
I don’t like David Heights. I never have. There’s nothing wrong with him, but it feels like he has no personality outside praising God. Casey and I used to joke about it together, mimicking him, but Casey got more sensitive about criticizing him since his wife died.
Grace was incredible. She was the sweetest person and still had a backbone stronger than most bridges, especially against her husband. Most of the time. We never mocked her.
If anything, Pastor Heights’s holier-than-thou attitude got worse after his wife passed. He got more extreme in his preaching. The audacity of some of the things he felt emboldened to say stopped seeming like they were from the Bible and instead came from his opinions. I avoid church now more often than not.
“I loaned my car to a friend,” I tell him as I lean against the open window. “I’m heading to get it back.”
“Where?”
“The Garden diner in west Bend?”
His brow furrows. “That’s a long walk.”
“Not really,” I say. “It’s only a few miles.”
He shakes his head. “You wouldn’t know this,” he begins conspiratorially, “because you’re such a good girl, but this isn’t the safest area.” His tone is the same false disbelief he’s perfected for his live streamed sermons. “There’re a lot of people not living up to their potential. I don’t know if I feel safe letting you walk alone. Let me give you a ride.”
“I’ll be okay,” I insist.
“Can’t you humor me?” he asks. “As a father? I don’t know how I’d face Isaiah if something happened to you.”
I begin to protest again, to assure him that I’m fine, but I can’t quite get the words out. I remember Andrew’s own apprehension about this part of our plan. He was worried about me walking alone because of other girls who disappeared from the area recently.
Tamika Horn and Imani Brenton. I met Tamika’s mom before Imani’s disappearance. Andrew and I joined the volunteer effort to put up missing person flyers.
I squeeze my phone in my pocket. I’d probably be fine if it were charged, but if something happened now, I wouldn’t be able to call for help. Can you even track a phone if the battery is dead?
“You got me,” I concede. I walk around the truck and pull open the passenger door. Climbing in, I say, “It’s cheating to use my dad against me though.”
“You could say I have a special connection with fathers.” David winks and laughs at his own joke, and then he pulls back onto the road.
“It’s good to see you, Sutton,” he says. “I see your sister more often because of how close she is with my Ruth, but I’ve always known you girls to be smart. Kind. Respectful, you know?”
I nod, then mutter, “Yes. Thank you.”
“You respect your elders. Not everyone does.”
“Do you have a phone charger?” I ask.
He gives me side-eye for the interruption, but his perfect smile doesn’t falter. “I’m not sure,” he admits. “Ruth is always borrowing them, but you’re free to look.”
I don’t see anything like a cord in the console or cupholders.
He continues talking. “Accepting assistance is an important virtue.”
Nothing there. I check the glove compartment next.
“That’s why God placed me here.”
Nope. I move on to the pocket of my door.
“To help even the most sinful see the light.”
No luck. I’m about to give up when I stick my hand in the space between the seat and console. My fingers slide against the leather until they brush the carpet. Then I feel something.
It’s thin. Like a small cord.
Yes.
I pull, but my joy is short-lived. It’s not a charging cable. It’s a beaded bracelet, like the kind kindergarteners make. The rope gets caught on the seat as I tug, and it breaks apart. The beads slip off the cord, but not before I read the letters falling from my fingers: TAMIKA.
The automatic car locks engage before I can move. I look up at the pastor, a single flower bead and the limp cord left in my palm.
His expression is almost sad. “I guess I was wrong about you, Sutton,” he says. “Maybe you aren’t the girl I thought you were.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Sutton reaches toward the body and holds the decaying arm as she tugs Ma Remy’s bracelet free. She slides it on her wrist and rubs the pendant with her thumb. Then she closes her eyes and bites her lip, taking a deep breath.
When she opens her eyes on the exhale, she looks directly at me.
I recognize the remnants of the clothes Sutton was wearing when she disappeared, floating in the decaying muck. I step back, reaching for something to stabilize me. I feel dizzy. My knees shudder under the weight of Sutton’s piercing gaze. I should be used to her attention, but this time is different. She isn’t studying me. She isn’t watching my movements and decisions to mimic them, to understand me, to get ahead of me.
Sutton looks up at me like she knows me. And I know her.
“Casey,” she says. Her voice is soft and raw in the same breath. She says my name like a prayer. It holds the same intensity as her watering eyes, like I’m a freshwater spring after she’s spent days in a desert. Like she hasn’t seen me in ages.
It can’t be.
“No.” I take another step back, shaking my head. “No,” I say again, and then again, and again, each time inching farther away. Sutton begins to stand, to move away from the thing in the dirt—or the thing moves away from Sutton’s body. I don’t know. I can’t.
Please. Please, I just want my sister. I never wanted this shadow of my sister, this echo of who Sutton used to be. But she clawed out of her broken body and crawled back to me.
The imposter steps toward me. The moonlight glitters on Ma Remy’s bracelet as she reaches for me, but the moonlight also illuminates something else in the grave. I recognize it with the same chill as when I saw its twin during the search effort weeks ago. The one piece of evidence recovered in the woods, the placement of which I questioned but the police disregarded.
Sutton’s other white running shoe is half-submerged in the muck.
It’s her. My sister is dead.
My sister is coming toward me.
I run.
“Casey!” Sutton yells after me, but I only sprint faster.
The moonlight disappears as I’m engulfed by the forest. The wind stings at my tearstained cheeks as I weave between the trees. Sutton keeps yelling for me. I try to block it out. I try to ignore the desperation in her voice. The pleading. The pain. I stop and put my arms on my thighs, trying to catch my breath. I close my eyes, but I can’t escape her.
I see her alone in the dark. My mind remakes her screams in a horrific watercolor behind my eyelids. I see her in the water, the dirt. I taste it in my mouth.
I start to run again and trip over a branch. I hit the ground hard, rolling into a bramble bush. The thorns prick every inch of exposed skin, but that isn’t the agony that breaks my lungs wide open.
The truth hurts worse than any mortal wound.
The body in the waterlogged grave merges with my memory of Sutton submerged in the bathtub at home. I’m trying to remember, she said. The fish made a home around the corpse, like she made a home for Juliet. Do you think they remember?
Even the butterflies. Those beautiful bright wings that fluttered their way to wherever she was. They wouldn’t leave her alone. It was like they were intoxicated by her. Swarming her. Feeding off her.
Ma Remy did this. Her bracelet. Her promises to keep us together as long as we trusted we’d be reunited. Generations of Cureton love and loss cast inside a single pendant. I knew she was superstitious, but I never believed in the conjure and rootwork outside of Daddy’s academic interpretations. Herbs meant nothing to me beyond seasoning.
But I wanted Sutton back.
Even when I hated her, after I wished her dead with my own tongue, I needed my sister. I would have given anything to have her back. I would have traded myself. No matter what. Just like Daddy said.
Sutton finds me bloody and sobbing. She reaches for me, but I flinch away. “You died,” I say. “That’s you back there.”
I can’t see her face in the dark, but her silhouette nods. “Pastor David killed me,” she says. “But I came back.”
She attempts to touch me again. I don’t have the energy to move. Her touch is warm, far different from the cold enveloping me as the truth of Pastor David sets in. I trusted him. He always treated me like another daughter—Sutton too. Until now. She rubs my forearm in a calming manner and says, “I remember now. I know why I returned.”
“Why?”
“For you,” Sutton says. Her tone is almost annoyed, like the answer should be obvious. She squeezes my arm, and the pendant slides down her wrist to touch the skin of both of our arms.
“He was supposed to give me a ride,” she continues, “but when I got in his truck, I found the bracelet that belonged to one of the missing girls. He wouldn’t let me go after that. He brought me here and…” She looks back toward where her original body lies.
The grave she crawled out of.
“I was so scared,” she says.
“I’m sorry.” I’ve been forced to say those words to her a million times, but I’ve never meant them as honestly as I do now.
“I wasn’t afraid for myself,” she says. “There was nothing that could be done to save me. But I couldn’t stop thinking of you. When I was dying, it was your life that flashed before my eyes. I was gone, but you were still here. You were alive and in danger. Alone. You trusted him. My last thought was of you. I wanted to protect you. The next thing I knew was dirt and rain and lights and needles. None of it made sense. But then I saw you.”
“And you remembered me.”
“I love you,” Sutton says. “I’m sorry it took dying for me to say it to your face.”
I laugh through a fresh rush of tears. “I love you too,” I choke out.
She takes that as a cue to hug me. I start sobbing again, my chest shuddering against hers as she squeezes me tight. “I’m sorry,” she says, and I repeat the words. We stay like that for a few moments.
I tense, remembering. “Ruth.”
Sutton lets go of me and stands. Then she offers a hand to help me up. I take it, wincing at all the scratches on my body. She releases me, but something is left behind in my hand.
I bring it closer to my face to inspect in the dim light. My heart sinks. It’s Sutton’s fingernail. The entire thing. I grab her hand to confirm. “Does it hurt?” I ask her, frantic.
Sutton shakes her head.
It’s not even bleeding.
“Come on,” she says, dismissing it. “We have to help Ruth.”
She takes the lead as always. She retraces our steps to the clearing, her pace calm and determined. She doesn’t look back to check on me or assure I’m still following. She doesn’t waste any time.
How much does she have left?
This fingernail, Sutton’s excessive hair loss, her tired sunken eyes… The bracelet brought her back, but can it keep her here? Is she going to leave me again? Will she die again permanently, disappearing when her original body finally returns to the earth?
I blink against the moonlight as I reenter the clearing. Sutton waits for me at the makeshift bridge. She doesn’t look at her body.
“Do you have your phone?” she asks. “We should probably call someone.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket, but there’s no signal.
“I guess it’s up to us then,” she says.
She crosses the bridge and walks toward the lighted cabin.
I follow her.
TWENTY-FIVE
Yellow light glows through a single old window, half-frosted by time. The light flickers, likely from the fireplace slowly spitting smoke out of the chimney. Sutton reaches the building before I do, but she waits for me.
I rest my hand on the cold door handle and look back to my sister. The last time Sutton was here, she died. She never truly left. I’m afraid to open the door—not for myself but for what it could cost Sutton. Pastor David could be inside. I don’t want to lose her again.
But I don’t want to lose Ruth either.
The door is unlocked.
The pastor isn’t here. An ancient oil lantern sits on a rickety end table, and a dying fire, nearing the end of its wood supply, burns in the old fireplace. In the corner, Ruth lies on a cot. Her body is still. Her hands are folded as if in prayer over a book perched on her chest.
I rush to her, trying to wake her, but she won’t stir. I shake her again, and the book, a Bible, falls to the ground. I don’t give it a second thought. I shake her again.
“Please,” I beg. “Not you too.”
“Stop,” Sutton says, kneeling next to us. Her hand goes straight to Ruth’s wrist to check her pulse. It’s such a simple thought, but one my terrified mind was incapable of. “She’s alive. Check for yourself.” She replaces her hand with mine.
Ruth’s pulse is strong. It thrums beneath my fingertips, even though her body doesn’t react.
“He must have drugged her,” Sutton says.
