Chapter 5
Now
Spying on my sister was a slippery slope, but it wasn’t hard. While I’d run away and disappeared, she’d stepped onto the world’s stage. And though it had been a while, I couldn’t say this was the first time I peeked into her life.
I reactivated my incognito Instagram account.
My little sister had quite the following.
Mostly women who hoped if they imitated her skin care routine, wardrobe, or recipes, that they too could land a rich partner and a soft life.
There were no posts about the things she’d loved once upon a time.
No math jokes that no one would get or pictures of moss on trees or beetles on the sidewalk after the rain.
Her grid was stylized, all bright and clean. Aesthetic.
Years ago, I’d spent days—weeks—in the apartment, missing work, hiding behind fake profiles and staring at my sister’s life through photos, obsessing over how I didn’t fit into it.
In her profile pic, Frances wore a linen sundress and lounged in a pale blue Adirondack chair, bathed in rosy evening sunlight as she stared into the middle distance. Burt stood behind her dressed like a Vineyard Vines ad, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
Hard to believe a woman like that knew someone like me at all. I was probably nothing more than a wisp of childhood memory.
But now? Something had changed. My sister had stood on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol and broadcast our distress signal.
If whoever had given my boss that message had also contacted Frances, then maybe I was the only one who could help her, because I was the only one who could understand.
Wasn’t like our childhood was typical. We were connected by more than blood. We were connected by secrets.
There was no way it could all be a coincidence. Right? Because there was a body in a creek. A body. A creek! In Moss Grove, where Frances lived. And then that impossible name and then the signal and it’s like the universe was chanting in my ear, again again again!
Frances beckoning to me in our secret way made me want to reach for that closed-off place inside. Jerk open the internal door.
But it was useless. That place inside would whisper, it would rankle and tease, but it wouldn’t open.
The leaves refused to speak, the Sight refused to intuit anything beyond the most basic warnings: a flip of the stomach or shudder up the spine.
It wouldn’t answer questions. It wouldn’t even entertain them.
I’d tried and tried and tried with my own leaves.
It was always the same. Nothing but sister, sister, sister.
But what if…no… It couldn’t work. Could it? An idea took shape, unfurling in my mind like the trumpet-shaped blooms of the jimsonweed that grew in the fields near the fields near our childhood home.
Since running away not only from Puddle Creek but also from the girl I’d been, I’d not spoken a word to anyone about the Sight, or tea, or anything. I certainly hadn’t attempted to read another person, considering the trauma the Sight had laid at my feet. The very idea of it gave me chills.
I’d only reached for the tea, for that space inside myself, to glimpse my own fate.
This was different. My sister needed me. She was calling out to me. That stirring behind my ribs had been stronger this time. I’d not imagined it. Maybe it was a nudge. Perhaps I was supposed to do something…more.
She’s calling to me, asking for help. She must want me to look into her fate…
I felt cracked open by the thought.
I clicked on Frances’s profile, my heart thumping. I had to be sure. If I was going to do this, I had to be invited in. I would not break one of the rules.
I scrolled through her grid.
It’s there. And there. And there.
In the first three photos, curated and smiling and cheery, Frances’s hand was curled into the familiar sign.
I scrolled back weeks, months. Every once in a while, the hand gesture would make an appearance. She’d been signaling to me, and I was only seeing it now, on the same night I’d gotten the message and learned about the bodies.
That flutter at the internal door. The message at the diner. And now this: my sister asking for help. She had to feel it too—the pull on the invisible vine that bound us together. Fate demanding our attention. Giving the signal was her giving consent for me to peer into her fortune. Right?
I told myself yes. Yes, it felt right.
My sister and I hadn’t spoken in years, but I knew her, I knew her heart. I wouldn’t let her down. Not again.
Everything was lining up. The universe was nudging me forward. The Sight would come through. It had to.
Reading from afar wasn’t ideal, but neither was it impossible. All it would take was something of Frances’s to act as a tether and a fresh cup of tea.
Hope grew, that place inside stirring. If only it will help.
I ran to my room and dug into the bottom drawer of my nightstand, pulling out the plastic bag that held my only physical link to my sister. My childhood. My past.
Okay, sure, it might be weird to keep your estranged sister’s childhood hairbrush in your drawer. But she’d left it in my truck, and it was all I had of her. Maybe I’m odd, but the hairbrush felt special. The only thing I had from my past, from the girls we were.
And maybe a part of me, a small part that would never admit it, had been waiting for this moment.
Only a few strands of hair were tangled in the bristles, and those yellow threads were more precious to me than gold. Once they were gone, that was it. Without a tether, it wouldn’t matter how much my sister beckoned from afar. This path into my sister’s life would be closed for good.
I carefully extracted one of the delicate blond strands and brought it to the kitchen, where I laid it over a saucer. My heart pounded, and I reminded myself I wasn’t breaking a rule. She’s asking for help. And this is how I help.
Within a few minutes, the water was boiling. I poured it over the leaves, threading the hair through my fingers. I breathed in the steam and focused on that place inside, directing whatever force had chosen the women in my family as a conduit into the direction I wanted it to go.
As a kid, after learning that I wasn’t broken or alone, I’d delighted in being a part of something, in being linked to so many women in my family.
My aunts had called it the family gift, and the fact that my little sister—beautiful and whip-smart and so, so perfect—didn’t possess the Sight had secretly made it even sweeter.
Now I knew better. The Sight was a trauma passed to me from generations of Robbins women.
My sister was the lucky one.
Always had been. Always would be.
Until now, it seemed.
I focused my thoughts on Frances, on our good times: Running barefoot down the path to Aunt Hattie-May’s greenhouse, the soles of our feet tough as leather and our shins littered with bugbites.
Hiking down the wooded path to the small creek.
We’d dig in the dirt and splash in the water and chase frogs and water beetles.
Skipping rope, chanting rhymes about the hungry old willow that haunted our dreams.
I thought of our bad times too. Of overhearing whispers about Mama, of living in a town that visited our home on Saturday and preached us into hell on Sunday.
Of sitting with Frances on the hard bench outside our principal’s office at St. Mary’s and whispering that I’d always protect her. Of collapsing together in a teary heap, our cheeks sticky with blood, in the moment not sure if I’d kept or broken that promise.
The tea was bitter, but I drained every last drop, then peered into the dregs settled in the cup. At first, nothing. I focused, reaching for the internal door, dipping my fingers into the well of power, begging it to help. For intuition to pour out.
Nothing.
Of course nothing. Always nothing.
Tears stung my eyes as I walked to the kitchen to drop my mug into the sink, angry at myself for allowing so much hope, when I felt it. Faint and sluggish. An atrophied muscle. I coaxed the door open, caressed that skittish thing inside until everything else fell away.
Finally. I could see again. But peering into my sister’s fate was like squinting through a grimy window, something both familiar and distorted. And then a certainty.
A menacing laugh, a blooming tear of skin, and a cold metal weighing all too familiar in my hand.
I gasped, the teacup clattering into the sink.
I wasn’t sure what this meant, except for one thing.
Frances, my once-upon-a-time baby bird, needed me.