Chapter 48
Now
The sky was dusky and the mosquitoes were out in full force by the time we left that evening.
While Mama took one of Hattie-May’s pain tinctures and lay down to rest, Frances and I checked the house over and scrubbed away all traces of the two of us, then we got in the car and drove away.
At the end of the driveway, I slammed on the brakes and hopped out. My sister didn’t follow as I jogged to the fence post. The bones hung in the pink evening light, and I pulled one free from the twine. And then another. And then the rest.
For a moment, I considered bringing them with us, a replacement for the one that had traveled in my pocket for the past decade. In the end, I threw Ruth’s wards into the woods that ran along the roadside.
Frances was confident her in-laws would bury any impending news story concerning Burt’s death, but I wasn’t so sure. He was an Anderson shot dead, missing half his skull. That was news.
When reporters showed up to the property, having bones hanging on the fence would only fuel the media frenzy. I hated to think of what would be said about my aunts’ house. The bones would make it worse. Hattie-May and Ruth didn’t deserve that.
Frances watched from the car window. When I slid back into the driver’s seat, she said, “Guess the wards were useless in the end.”
“Guess so,” I said, though when I considered my sliver of bone I’d used to stab Burt, itself a stolen ward, I wasn’t so sure.
We drove in silence, and were at the last stop sign on the edge of town when four cop cars whizzed by, sirens blaring. I stole a glance at my sister, who stared at me, her expression unreadable.
Two hours later, on the interstate, I got up the resolve to ask my sister about something that bothered me. I’d worked it all out in my head, and almost everything made sense except for one thing.
Burt had manipulated us, had shown up and boasted this whole story to get us to turn on each other. It hadn’t worked. Except he’d taken one secret with him to the grave.
“Do you think he was telling the truth?” I asked. “About Casey, I mean. Do you think he truly never moved his body?”
Frances bit her bottom lip. “To be honest, I don’t think he did. Burt was cruel, but he had his limits. He took the helmet, but no way he’d have transported a decaying corpse.”
“I looked everywhere for Casey.” I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel. “He wasn’t there. None of him.”
“You must’ve been in the wrong place. Or maybe scavengers got him. I was in the car with Burt when we left that morning. Yeah, his nails were dirty, but I feel like there’d have been a smell or something if he’d, I don’t know, put Casey in the trunk.”
I nodded but said nothing, only stared out the windshield. I hated the flippant way she talked about Casey. I’d spent half my life feeling bad for abandoning him in the forest, but this—not knowing where he was—was worse.
“Oh, hey.” Frances grabbed my arm and pointed at a sign. “That place has good bathrooms, and I have to pee.”
I gave my signal and exited.
We pulled into the gas station and parked. Frances opened her door. “You coming in?”
“Go on ahead,” I said. “I need a minute.”
Frances shrugged.
Finally alone, I let tears slide freely down my cheeks. After this week, if I ever cried again it would be too soon.
Inhaling deep breaths, I tried to clear my mind, pushing away images of my great-aunt gasping on the ground. Of Ruth’s fluttering eyelids and Mama’s mangled arm. Of Burt’s body toppling, his mouth open in delight. Of his brains.
I rubbed at my face with my fingers and searched the glove box for a tissue to wipe my nose. There wasn’t one.
Frances’s tote still sat on the back seat. I pulled it into my lap and dug inside for a pack.
I didn’t find tissues.
Her wallet. A lip gloss. A pack of hair ties.
Then…
Driver’s licenses. Andrea’s and Blake’s. One of Burt’s IDs. His engraved wristwatch.
All the things that Frances said she’d planted near the creek. She hadn’t done it.
She’d lied to me.
But I’d been there. I’d watched her.
Except it had been dark and raining. I’d followed her down the bank, but had I seen if she’d left anything behind? I couldn’t remember. But this was proof she hadn’t.
I shoved my hand deeper into the bag until I felt something hard.
I pulled them out. Phones. Cheap, clunky plastic. The kind used as burners.
Why would Frances have two burner phones? But…I knew why.
I knew why, though I didn’t want to believe it.
To be sure, I opened my own cell and scrolled through my call log until I got to the number for the phony Puddle Creek detective. I pressed call.
The burner in my hand immediately began vibrating silently, and I remembered that too-perfect, artificial voice that had come from other end of the calls. I’d bet anything the other phone’s number was blocked.
Burt’s accusations played through my mind. Their little games. How Frances had chosen Blake and Andrea. How she had orchestrated everything. His little monster…
Then I remembered the other thing he’d said. How I’d been so ungrateful after she’d done me a favor and killed Casey.
My chest constricted, that flutter, that familiar stabbing pain grinding against my sternum. Burt was a liar. It couldn’t be true.
Except.
The helmet, Casey’s ring. No body…
What else… The whisper in my mind was soft but undeniable, words slipped beneath a door. What else? What else?
At first, I didn’t understand. But then clarity: Frances worried about her shoes while the corpse we made lay mere feet away.
Frances’s college roommate missing, never to be seen again.
And even my aunts’ old cat, the original Sarge, disappearing not long after we arrived.
That cat had a habit of scratching my sister… was it possible that she…
No. This meant nothing. She’d been so young. A traumatized teenager. A distraught college kid. A scared little girl.
Except, what if it did? As singular moments, each on their own, excuses could be made, but stitched together, they told a story. Sister sister sister.
These licenses in my hand. These burner phones.
Frances not wanting poison. Her wanting Burt in Puddle Creek. Burt knowing we weren’t at the motel.
Sister sister sister… Was it a cry, a call, or a warning?
The gas station door opened, pulling me back into the moment. Quickly, I shoved everything back to the bottom of Frances’s bag and tossed it in the back seat.
And there was Frances stepping onto the sidewalk, always beautiful, even now under the sallow gas station lights.
The passenger door opened and my sister—my baby bird with claws—slid into her seat. I stared at her, unable to form words.
“Hey.” She tossed me a pack of peanut M&M’s and grinned. “Ready to go?”
I looked at the candy in my hand, then back at her.
“You’re being weird.” Frances frowned, and said as if she were joking, “What’s wrong with you?”
What’s wrong with me?
Everyone I cared about was hurting. Hattie-May couldn’t walk on her own.
Her leg might be broken. Possibly, Bunny had said, her hip and a rib too.
Elderly people died from less. Ruth, always boisterous, had been unnaturally quiet, her rough edges buffed away in one afternoon.
She’d said nothing, blinking rapidly, staring into space even as Mama embraced her for the last time.
Her head had lolled back into the headrest. Bunny held back tears as she’d fastened her seatbelt, and Bunny never cried. Ever.
And Mama…
Mama who’d gotten her life back and was already going back to prison and, fuck, I’d not allowed my mind to go there when we’d sat across from each other at Hattie-May’s table, but Tennessee was a death penalty state.
This was all the fault of an evil man. A man Frances had brought into our lives.
How did I know to show up here? Burt had asked. I’d not wanted to believe it, but there was no denying now Frances had told him to come. She’d orchestrated the entire thing, just as he’d claimed. He was evil…but what did that make her?
Because she wasn’t acting like a desperate woman who’d made a plan to save her own life, and that plan had gotten away from her. There’d been no remorse in her words or face.
My brow furrowed. My sister had asked what was wrong with me?
The answer, everything. Everything was wrong with me.
The bigger question, the important question, was why the hell was nothing wrong with her?
You’re ready to kill for her and you don’t even know her. Burt had said it with pride, but now his words echoed like a warning.
“Seriously, Milly. You’re kind of freaking me out,” Frances said, twisting the top off a bottle of water.
“I’m—” Screaming inside, terrified, don’t understand anything anymore… “I’m fine.” The lie was stubborn on my tongue, but I forced a smile.
“Good.” Frances reached across the middle console and gave my forearm a squeeze. “You know, you probably don’t remember, but that night, after you killed Shane, you made me a promise.”
She waited for me to say something, but I only nodded, not trusting my words, though I did remember that promise. Had always blamed myself for breaking it and thought it was why Frances had locked me out of her life for so long.
“You promised you’d never leave me. I’d been so upset when you disappeared that morning without me,” she said.
That morning after Casey died…or possibly that morning she killed him…
“But I understood,” Frances continued. “Eventually.”
I cranked my car and pulled us back onto the highway.
“Part of me always knew we’d end up back together like this. It’s all I’ve wanted for so long. I was such an idiot. You know, I really believed Shane was my forever person?”
“No.” I pushed my brows together. “No. You weren’t an idiot. You were a child. He was a predator.” Of all the things my sister was, no matter what she’d done or become, this at least, was still true.
She shrugged. “Yeah. But I really thought he was my soul mate. Then, I was convinced it was Burt.” Frances snorted. Drummed her nails against the middle console between us. “I know better now, sister.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but I was afraid I understood, because the entire time she was speaking, there’d been another whisper sliding from beneath the internal door. A flutter of wings behind my ribcage. Sister, sister, sister…
I glanced at Frances. She grinned brightly, a show of joy I wasn’t sure I could ever feel again.
“You,” she said, her voice full of conviction.
“It’s always been you. I used to think that there was no love like romantic love, but that’s bullshit we’re fed from the moment we’re old enough to know about such things.
The real truth is, there’s no love like sisterhood.
You’re my soul mate. And I’m yours. And now we will be together forever and always. No matter what.”
No matter what. No matter the death left in her wake.
Once, these words from her lips would’ve been everything to me. Are they still?
The fluttering wings in my chest hardened to something like claws.
This was my baby bird. My sister. The person I’d sworn to protect. A woman capable of, and who’d done, terrible things. A person I’d loved unconditionally since the moment our parents brought her home from the hospital. Burt’s monster.
A cold-blooded murderer.
But also, if there was an ounce of truth to my sister’s words, then she was so much more than all of those things.
To read the fate of the person you loved most was to doom them to become your cursed thing. A fate never to be looked up from. The curse can manifest in many ways, and I’d thought it was the curse that doomed Casey. Yes, I loved him, but Frances was right. I’d not loved him most of all.
The leaves had been telling me all this time. Sister, sister, sister…
Those words, that whisper. No. They weren’t a cry, call, nor warning. They were an order. My sister was my responsibility, and it was my duty to spend the rest of my life making sure she’d never go unleashed again.
Frances said that now we would be together forever and always, no matter what. And we would.
Because Frances? She was my baby bird. A monster. And my true love.
But most of all, she was my cursed thing.