“You were what…twelve?”
She shrugs.
I take a step back, bumping into my chair. “You’re sick. I can’t believe I let Max go to your house. How could I have ever come back here?”
Everything I’ve ever known about Cora but wouldn’t admit to myself unleashes at me with tsunami force. Am I so stupid or just always hopeful the truth is better than my perception of the world? Just like with Riley. I’d hoped he’d come to his senses. Calm down enough to see things were over and we’d be better off apart. But no. I stayed until it was too late, until the truth revealed itself with tragedy.
And here I am, back in Bury. Back in the very house where I’ve always denied who I suspected my sister really was.
“What about…” I start, then move around my chair until it’s between us.
“Where are you going?” Cora says.
“What about any others?” I ask. “After Caleb. Where there others?”
Cora smiles, no teeth. “Are you asking if, in the last two decades, I’ve somehow managed to completely control the desire that possesses me? Well, sure, Rose. Of course I’ve controlled it. Easier than quitting smoking. Is that what you want to hear?”
That answer is enough for the vomit to finally release from my stomach. I bend over and heave vodka and bile onto the thick and undoubtedly expensive area rug.
“Oh, for chrissakes,” my father says. “You and your puking. Just like when you were a baby.”
I wipe my mouth, rise, and immediately get in his face. “Are you kidding me? Are you even listening to what she’s saying?”
“You need to calm down,” he says.
“No, I won’t calm down. Your daughter…my sister…just admitted she’s a killer.” I’m only vaguely aware how loud my voice is getting. With each notch of volume, I’m increasingly unsatisfied, like an itch that gets worse the more you scratch it. So I keep getting louder. “She murdered Caleb Benner. She murdered that dog. And our family cat. And she… Who knows what else she’s done. Who else she’s killed.” My father seems the craziest one here because his face is as calm as it was when we began the discussion. “Your daughter is a fucking murderer and you…you act like it doesn’t matter.”
Cora’s voice breaks my focus on my father. “I never said any of those things.”
I turn to her. “Then say it now. Admit what you’ve done.”
She narrows her eyes for a split second. “Why? Why is it so important you hear me say what you want me to say?”
We lock gazes and I break first, and consciously or not, the first place I redirect my attention is to the phone on the table.
“What is it?” Cora asks.
“What?”
I’m incapable of hiding the guilt on my face. I lean down to reach for my phone, but Cora beats me to it. She swipes it off the table and takes a step away from me.
“That’s mine!”
“I don’t care,” she says, dragging her finger across the screen. “God, not even a pass code, aren’t you just…”
She stops talking, and I know it’s now too late for me to do anything. The app I was using to record was the last thing I viewed before turning off the screen, which means it’s the first thing to display.
“You little bitch,” she says.
My father says, “What is it?”
She flashes the screen to him. “The little cunt is recording us.”
“Oh god, Rose.” My father sounds more disappointed than angry, which digs into my bones. From an early age, I was conditioned to not disappoint him, and even if I don’t truly care what he thinks, it still triggers a reaction in me I can’t avoid. “Why would you do something like that? We’re family. Families don’t break trust like that.”
It’s his voice. His tone. His simple statement of admonishment. This is what finally breaks me. Snaps my mind as easily as the most brittle and smallest of branches of a long-fallen tree. I’m not just loud anymore. I’m an explosion.
“Stop talking about family! Our family is shit, and you act like it is the only thing keeping the world together.” I jab a finger at my sister. “She’s trying to frame me for what she did to Caleb! She’s a criminal, Dad. A murderer. And apparently you knew it the whole time, so what does that make you?”
Remnants of puke in my mouth, the bite of tears in my eyes. I try to fight the heat roiling my face. And my father. He’s as cold as the snow outside.
“You could have said something for the last twenty-two years,” he says. “But you didn’t. So don’t tell me how innocent you are.”
“I was fifteen. Can you imagine what that was like for me?”
“You’re not fifteen anymore, Rosie. Haven’t been in a long time. So where’s your conscience now?”
I want to tell him he’s right and that I’ve already asked myself the same thing, and I’ve already come up with an answer. I want to tell him the reason I’m going back to Milwaukee is to stop all this hiding. That’s all Bury is, after all. A place to hide. A fortress of my past. I’m done.
I’m done.
I’m about to tell him these things when I’m jolted by a horrible noise.
I look over. Cora’s left my peripheral vision and walked ten feet over to the far side of the study, next to the unlit fireplace. She’s swinging an iron fireplace poker with both hands, smashing it against the floor. I can’t comprehend why she’s doing this until I see what it is she’s striking.
My phone.
She’s shattering my phone into a thousand pieces.
All my recordings are gone.
All my innocence erased.
All I have left is my anger. Twenty-two years of rage. A lifetime of guilt. And a sense of needing to put the universe back into place.
For the first time in my life, I am my sister.
The monster with
