The Night Sister (6 page)

Piper wheeled her carry-on through the terminal, passing rows of plastic seats, a crêpe restaurant, and a kiosk selling overpriced neck pillows and eye masks. Once she exited through the double doors out into the main corridor, she searched the small crowd for Margot. In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Piper figured Margot would be impossible to miss. She recalled the image of her sister from last night's dream: Margot teetering at the edge of a hole, off balance.

Piper blinked away the vision. She saw a couple embracing, a mother welcoming a college-age son home, a man in a suit holding a sign that said
Walker Party,
a cop scanning the crowd. No Margot. Piper was reaching into her bag for her cell phone when she felt a hand on her arm.

“Piper?”

She turned. The cop had approached.

“Jason!” she said, realizing that the police officer was none other than her brother-in-law. It was more than the anonymity of the uniform—he looked thinner and much older than he had when she'd last seen him, two Christmases ago.

Sometimes it was nearly impossible to remember him as being the same boy who'd followed the girls around that long-ago summer, a gangly kid, all arms and legs, with shaggy hair and pockets full of bugs. The boy who once wrote Amy love poems in secret code. Now and then she caught a glimpse of him in a boyish smirk, a shrug that made him look twelve again.

“It's so good to see you,” she said, and he gave her a stiff hug. He smelled like spicy aftershave and cigarette smoke. “But where's Margot?”

“Couldn't make it,” Jason said, and looked away, his jaw tense. There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week. “Come on,” he said, “let's get you home. We'll talk in the car.”

Jason took charge of the small suitcase, and Piper struggled to keep up as he led her through the airport to the parking garage.

They climbed into an old Ford Ranger pickup and rode with the windows rolled up, no AC. The sun beat down through the windshield and the cab was stuffy and hot, but Jason seemed oblivious; he didn't even break a sweat. In spite of the heat, and the apparent lack of shock absorbers or much of a suspension system, Piper was grateful he'd come in his own vehicle and hadn't picked her up in a police cruiser. Did London even have police cruisers? She couldn't recall.

Piper didn't get home much. Margot usually came to her in L.A., thrilled to get away from their hometown for a week or two, to do all the touristy things: the tar pits, the Chinese Theatre, the Santa Monica Pier. She loved to study the architecture—Piper was continually amazed by her sister's love for all things Art Deco, which couldn't be more different from the old mills, farmhouses, and granite sheds of Vermont that Margot had dedicated her life to saving and preserving.

Jason rarely came to California with Margot—too hard to get time off from the force, he said. Piper was always relieved when Jason didn't join Margot. It wasn't that she disliked him, but she never felt entirely comfortable around him, always felt she had to be on her best behavior, had to prove her place as the wise older sister. God knew that Jason had grown up with a different Piper, the big sister who did wild things, got Margot in trouble again and again, whether bringing her to her first keg party or introducing her to pot.

The worst of it was, when the girls were in high school, Piper had thought Margot's dating Jason was basically the stupidest idea she'd ever heard. Even told her, “You know, with him you'll always be second best. The consolation prize. He's been in love with Amy his whole life, and you'll never be able to change that.”

She cringed now at the thought of saying something so cruel (even if it was absolutely true) to her own sister. Piper had no idea what, if anything, Jason knew about her unwanted relationship advice—but Piper knew, and that was bad enough.

Jason drove out of the airport parking garage and paid the attendant. His hands gripped the wheel tightly, his gold wedding band glinting in the sunlight coming through the windshield. He stayed silent.

Piper began to worry.

“Jason,” she said at last, “is Margot all right?”

He kept his eyes on the road. “She fainted this morning. I brought her in to the doctor, and they said her blood pressure is too high—it could be dangerous for her and the baby. She's got something called pre-eclampsia. He's ordered bed rest until she delivers. And depending on how she's doing, he might decide to induce her early.” He delivered the news in his cop voice—no sign of emotion:
Just the facts, ma'am.

“But she's okay?” Piper asked, her own voice squeaky and panicked.

“As long as she rests, listens to the doctor. We're only two weeks away from the due date, so hopefully it won't be much longer.”

Margot was one of those people who hated to sit still and always had at least five projects going at once. Being confined to bed must feel like a prison sentence.

“She must be miserable,” Piper said.

Jason nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. They came to an intersection with a gas station and a Friendly's restaurant. Jason turned right, and they passed big box stores and chain restaurants. He eased the truck into the left lane and headed for the highway on-ramp. It hadn't been like this when Piper was a kid: back then it was all farmland and houses.

“Piper,” he said, sounding solemn and coplike. “I know this…situation with Amy has got to be a blow. The whole town's reeling, and Margot's taking it really hard. I remember how close you three were when you were kids.”

Of course. Of course you do,
Piper thought, unbidden.
Because you were there, watching from the shadows, spying, always trying to catch Amy's eye. But you never really did, did you?
She shook off her own cruel thoughts, realizing that he had paused and was waiting for an answer. She nodded, not knowing what she was expected to say.

“I don't want you upsetting Margot with any talk about Amy. I don't want her to read anything more about it in the paper or watch the news.”

“Okay,” Piper agreed. “Before we get there, is there anything you can tell me? Anything about what happened?”

“It's an ongoing investigation, so no.”

“Is there a chance Amy didn't do it? Any chance at all?”

Jason sighed. “I don't want to believe it, either. But all the evidence points to her.”

“It's just so hard to imagine—you know?—that Amy was capable of doing something like this.”

He shook his head, glassy eyes focused on the road ahead. “I guess you never know what someone's capable of.”

“The little girl,” Piper said. “Amy's daughter? Is she okay?”

“As okay as can be expected, considering we found her hiding out on the roof, her whole family dead inside.”

“God, how awful,” Piper said.

“She was just like a statue out there in her pajamas, blood on her feet. God, she looked so much like Amy out there—like Amy back when we were kids.” Emotion finally began to creep into his words—his voice rose and cracked. “Anyway, when I found her out there, she wouldn't move. I had to carry her back inside. She could barely talk at first, couldn't stop shaking. A state of shock—that's what the doctors said.”

“Poor thing,” Piper said, trying to remember the girl's name. She'd never met her, but had gotten updates about Amy's kids from Margot, seen the pictures and news Amy posted on Facebook. Piper was embarrassed to ask Jason, not wanting to admit how out of touch she'd become with her once-upon-a-time best friend.

They drove the rest of the way mostly in silence, their few attempts at small talk quickly dying. Eventually, she and Jason both gave up and just stared out at the scenery. When the exit for London came up, Piper remembered Amy's telling her once that it was the highway that ruined the motel:

“Before the highway came, people just came through along Route 6. There was so much traffic then. My grandma Charlotte said they had guests every night, and were full most weekends. My mom and her sister, Sylvie, they had a full audience for their crazy chicken circus. People came to see Lucy the cow. Once the interstate opened, people stopped coming, just zipped right on by. There was no reason to come to London anymore.”

Piper got that. When they moved to London after her parents got divorced, Piper felt like she'd been dropped in the middle of nowhere—a regular ghost town, full of closed shops and restaurants that were now boarded-up buildings with sagging roofs and broken windows. Even now, as they drove through town, she wondered what would bring anyone here, how her sister could possibly have stayed. Margot worked for a nonprofit historical-renovation organization; her job was to give out grants so that historic buildings could be maintained. She was always talking about how London was undergoing a renaissance—young families were buying some of the gorgeous old houses and fixing them up; a developer had bought a bunch of the buildings downtown, and there were plans for a yoga studio, a coffee shop, and a brew pub. But Piper didn't see signs of any of this actually coming to fruition and thought her sister's optimism at times bordered on delusional thinking.

The storefronts along Main Street were still mostly closed. A few were open: an antiques shop, the London House of Hair Salon, and a Dollar Store. The old Woolworth's still stood; though there were boards over the windows, through the cracks you could see the lunch counter. There were two gas stations (one that advertised Mrs. Cluck's famous fried chicken), a tiny library in a stone building, the Congregational church, and a VFW post. At the edge of the downtown sat the granite fire-and-police-department building. Jason cast an eye toward it and gave a guy in a uniform a wave.

They bumped along the road, which was full of potholes and frost heaves, badly in need of repair. They were following a school bus, and Piper saw a girl looking out at them through the back window. Her friend whispered something in her ear, and the girl turned, laughing. Piper remembered riding in the back seat with Amy, getting off at the motel, running up the washed-out gravel driveway toward the kitchen, where Amy's grandma Charlotte would be waiting for them, a cigarette between her lips and
Guiding Light
on in the living room, the volume up as loud as it could go so she wouldn't miss anything as she moved from room to room. She'd have a plate of cookies waiting—biscuits, she called them in her English accent.

“My grandparents were both from London,” Amy told her once with a grin. “London, England, and London, Vermont.”

But the school bus did not slow this time. It sped past the motel sign, which now leaned backward, as if it had been struck by a truck at some point. Piper read the familiar words as she and Jason drove past—
Tower Motel, 28 Rooms, Pool, No Vacancy
—but now the letters had faded from red to a pink so pale you could only just read them. Beyond the sign, on the other side of the driveway, was the crumbling tower. The kids in the yellow school bus all turned their heads to look up the driveway, still full of police cars and vans. Piper held her breath.

“Jesus,” she hissed out as she let the breath go, looking beyond the news trucks to the tower. It had been in terrible shape when she was a girl but was even worse now, leaning so precariously to the right that it looked as though it were reaching toward the house. Most of the stone battlements at the top had crumbled or fallen off. There were two boards and a
No Trespassing
sign nailed over the doorway, and the word
Danger
had been spray-painted on the wall above the arch.

Piper's skin went cold. Jason had slowed to a crawl.

“Sorry,” Jason said. “I guess we should have come the back way.”

“No,” Piper said, “it's fine.”

But it wasn't. It wasn't fine at all.

“Margot might have mentioned it,” Jason said, gripping the steering wheel a little more tightly. “But Amy left a note…well, not a note, really, just something written on an old photo. It said, ‘29 Rooms.' Does that mean anything to you?”

For the first time since he had picked her up at the airport, he looked directly at her, his brown eyes studying her, watching for a reaction. And once more, she was twelve again, being grilled by the pesky kid who followed Amy around like a puppy dog—a boy who was a laughingstock, not just to Amy but to them all.

She paused for a moment, pretending to search her memory, then shook her head slowly.

“No,” she told him, holding eye contact, her face a mask. She wished, with all her might, that they'd never found that goddamn photo; that she had never heard of the twenty-ninth room, had never seen it with her own two eyes. “It doesn't mean anything at all.”

Jason was quiet for a moment. She had no idea if he believed her.

“The photo itself,” Jason went on at last, “we figured out it's Amy's mother, Rose, and Rose's sister, Sylvie, when they were kids, about eight and twelve. Sylvie, she went missing not long after she graduated from high school. Did Amy ever talk about her?”

Piper shrugged. “Once or twice, maybe. She said Sylvie ran away. Went off to Hollywood, maybe.”

And, for half a second, she was sure she could feel Amy's hot breath against her cheek, hear her singsong voice as she whispered in Piper's ear:

“Liar, liar.”

Margot and Jason's bedroom was painted ivory with sea-foam trim. Like the rest of the house, it was decorated with framed antique photos of a London long gone—a shot of downtown showing the old A&P market, a photo of an old dairy farm along Main Street.

Margot was propped up in bed against fluffed pillows like an invalid queen, surrounded by everything she could want or need within reach: a stack of paperbacks and baby magazines, bottled water, the TV remote, cell phone, a pile of protein bars and apples. There was also a collection of old, yellowed newspapers in plastic sleeves. She was reading one, with a masthead across the top that said
The London Town Crier.

She tossed aside the paper she was holding and squealed, “Piper! You're here!” as though she hadn't been expecting her sister at all.

Piper plunked herself down on the bed and they embraced. Piper felt Jason's gaze boring into her back.

“What's with all the old papers?” Piper asked. “Don't tell me it's for work!”

Margot gave a sly smile. “Not exactly. A little side project I took on for the historical society. I'm organizing a collection of old
Town Crier
s for display. They were published here in town by the ladies' auxiliary in the fifties and sixties. It's amazing stuff, really. If you read between the lines, you get this incredible history of the town.”

Margot's face lit up whenever she spoke about London's history. Piper relaxed; she hadn't realized just how worried she'd been about her sister on the drive from the airport until she saw her with her own eyes. Margot was stuck in bed, hugely pregnant and quite a bit puffier than usual, but she was still Margot, getting excited about a stack of dusty old papers.

Piper picked one of the papers up and scanned the front page. It was dated March 12, 1952. The lead story was about the talent show held at the high school. There was also a recipe for Mrs. Minetti's famous three-bean casserole.

Piper glanced at the photograph of a farm on the wall to the left of the bed. There was something familiar about it. She studied it for a moment before realizing it must be the old Slater farm that sat on the Tower's land before Amy's grandfather tore down the barn and built the motel. She recognized the house and the hill behind it. It was strange to see it as a blank landscape dotted with Holsteins, no sign of the crumbling stone tower or rows of motel rooms.

It seemed an odd, even unsettling choice of a photo for Margot to hang in her bedroom, especially now. Piper looked away, not wanting to draw attention to the photo or her realization of what it was.

“Can I get you anything, hon?” Jason asked, reaching down to take Margot's hand.

Margot shook her head. “No. Piper's here now. You can go back to the station. I'm sure they need you there.”

He stood in the doorway, hesitating, shuffling his feet like a little boy.

“Okay,” he said at last, “but you call me if you need anything. Anything at all. And, Piper,” he said, locking her in a gaze, “remember, what Margot and the baby need is rest. And calm.”

“Got it,” Piper said. “I'll take good care of her, Jason. I promise.” She gave him a warm, convincing smile, but his steely gaze told her he wasn't buying it.

He came over and gave Margot a gentle kiss on the cheek.

“If you get a headache, or get nauseous, have double vision, or any kind of pain, call the doctor.”

“Of course,” she said. “Now go. All your worrying is raising my blood pressure!”

He gave a sheepish nod and left the room. They heard him in the kitchen, filling a travel mug with coffee. Piper noticed another collection of photographs on the dresser. There was Margot and Jason's wedding picture, both of them looking so young and happy; one of Margot and Piper as little girls, sitting under a Christmas tree; and one of their mother, the day she graduated from law school. Their mother had gone on to work as a public defender, then opened her own practice. She'd died at forty-six of a brain aneurysm. Probably had been there for years, the doctors said—just bad luck, or possibly untreated hypertension, that caused it to rupture one spring day as she crossed the parking lot of Garden World, her cardboard tray of pansy and petunia seedlings spilling to the asphalt.

Piper turned away, her stomach twisting in that old, familiar way when she thought about how unfair life could be. It wasn't right that their mother—who had never smoked, barely drank, worked hard but not too hard, always chose the nonfat everything, took her vitamins, went to Jazzercise religiously even when Piper and Margot had teased her—hadn't been at Margot's wedding, wouldn't be here to see the birth of her grandchild.

There were no photos of Piper and Margot's father. He'd remarried not long after the divorce, moved to Dallas, and started a whole new life, complete with four new children—including a set of identical twins—with his new wife. When Piper and Margot were kids, there were court-mandated visits twice a year, but as time went by, a mutual understanding seemed to develop that this second family was his real family now; Piper and Margot and their mother had just been a trial run. Now they were down to awkward phone calls at Christmas. Piper wasn't sure Margot had even told him he was going to be a grandfather.

Jason called out one more “Goodbye,” then went out the front door and started his truck in the driveway.

As soon as he was gone, Margot took Piper's hand.

“You know, it was Amy who gave me this box of newspapers,” Margot confessed, her voice low and conspiratorial. “She stopped by my office last week. It was a surprise, really—I hadn't spoken to her in ages, and she just showed up in my office. She'd found the papers up in the attic at the house. Apparently, her grandmother—you remember Charlotte?—was the editor of the
Town Crier.
”

Piper thought of poor old Grandma Charlotte shuffling around in her billowing housedress, doing her best to keep the house going, to take care of Amy—both of her own daughters gone—a ghostly shadow of the woman who had spent the early part of her life running the motel her husband had built.

“No kidding?” Piper said, picking up the paper again; she knew she shouldn't be encouraging this, but she couldn't dim her own curiosity. Still, she needed to try. For Margot and the baby.

“Hey, look at this: the secret ingredient in Mrs. Minetti's three-bean casserole is diced frankfurters. Talk about gross!”

Margot was undeterred.

“Amy
also
wanted to talk about the possibility of getting a grant to help save the motel! She'd been taking some business classes at the community college and had this idea to reopen the motel with a retro theme. She'd actually written out a really solid business plan.”

“Wow,” Piper said, setting the old newspaper back down. “Ambitious.”

“Yeah,” Margot said. “And this was just
last week,
Piper. Tell me, does that sound like a woman getting ready to go on a killing spree? To kill her whole family and then herself?”

Piper shook her head uncertainly. Margot went on.

“I mean, I know she had some other stuff going on—her mom, for one.”

“Rose? What happened with her?”

“From what little Amy said, it sounded like some kind of dementia. It's so awful. Remember how Rose was never really around when we were kids? But then, a few years ago, Rose shows up at the motel and moves back into the house. She isn't drinking, and seems totally fine. According to Amy, she and Lou really bonded. I saw them around town together all the time—at the market, going for ice cream. Amy and her husband worked a lot, so Rose was with Lou and Levi after school every day. It was like Rose had a second chance—she wasn't a mother to Amy growing up, but she was grandma of the year.”

Piper nodded, suddenly remembering a recent batch of photos Amy had posted on Facebook—an older woman sitting with the family, opening gifts on Christmas morning; the same woman playing dolls with a little blonde girl who must be Lou. Piper hadn't recognized Rose—she'd never met her, had only ever known Amy's mother as the little girl in the photograph standing beside her sister, Sylvie, clutching a chicken. But she could see it now.

Margot continued. “Then Amy says that, all of a sudden, her mom got confused, paranoid, not sure what was real and what wasn't. They just couldn't risk it—not with the kids. So they put her in a nursing home about a month ago.”

“Terrible,” Piper said. “Does she know? About Amy and her family?”

Margot let out a breath. “Jason said that a couple of officers went to talk to her early this morning, to tell her what had happened out at the motel. According to them, she didn't say a word. Acted like they were invisible.”

“That's so sad.”

“Maybe. But maybe she's got it easy. She doesn't have to deal with what's happening.”

Piper looked up at the photo of the old Slater farm and noticed that there was a figure standing by the barn in the back left corner. She couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman, only a shadowy smudge in the shape of a person.

Margot looked up at Piper, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. “If only we'd tried harder. We should have been there for her. Should have stayed close. I think that maybe, when she came to my office, she was reaching out to me—to both of us.”

“What?”

“She asked about you. Wanted to hear what you were up to. She seemed…I don't know…kind of nostalgic. Like she missed us.”

Piper shook her head; she could no longer act like none of this was striking a nerve.

“
Missed us?
She didn't want anything to do with us after that summer, Margot. She made that clear. She's the one who cut all ties, and acted like she barely recognized us.”

She remembered passing Amy in the halls at school, how Amy would avoid catching Piper's eye, making a point to look anywhere but at her. How Amy walked right by Piper on the school bus every morning and afternoon, calling to her new friends at the back of the bus, and ignoring that Piper had saved her a seat.

“But she needed us,” Margot said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand, “and we weren't there. Maybe this…this
nightmare
wouldn't have happened if we'd tried harder.”

“That's insane. How can you think that?”

Margot was crying hard now. “I never understood,” she said, “how you could turn your back on her so easily.”

This was too much. Piper wanted to scream,
I'm not the one who turned my back,
but she just bit her lip. She recalled what Jason had said about keeping Margot calm, not letting her get worked up. She was doing a wonderful job so far.

“Look at you,” Margot sobbed. “You don't even seem upset by what happened. It's like you don't care at all.”

It was true that once Amy broke things off and started to ignore their calls, Piper was too hurt and furious to keep trying. It seemed…pathetic to keep calling and leaving notes, begging Amy to talk to her, to keep saving Amy a seat on the bus. If Amy didn't need Piper, Piper sure as hell didn't need Amy. Amy had slammed the door shut, but maybe Piper went ahead and added a few locks for good measure.

Piper took a deep breath and put her hand on her sister's arm. “Of course I care, Margot.”
Too much,
she thought. That was always the problem, wasn't it? She smiled at her sister and added gently, “It's just that one of us has to keep her shit together. And at the moment, it's me.”

Margot laughed weakly.

“I flew all the way out here as soon as I heard about Amy, didn't I? But, honestly, right now my biggest concern is you and the baby.”

“I appreciate that,” Margot said. “I do. It's just that I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, and God knows I can't talk to Jason about it. And that
message…
Written on that old photo of Rose and Sylvie, the same one we found in the suitcase that summer, for Christ's sake,” Margot said.

“I know,” Piper said.

“I can't help thinking that someone—or something—is out there. That you and I are in terrible danger.” Margot rubbed her stomach. “The baby, too.”

Piper shook her head, leaned in to stroke her sister's hair. “We're fine. We're together. We're safe. And there's nothing out there trying to get us. What happened to Amy…it's terrible, horrific, but it has nothing to do with you and me.”

“But Amy left that message for
us,
Piper—because we'd understand it. Whatever happened out at the motel that night has something to do with what we found!”

Piper felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

“Margot,” Piper said, “seriously, I'm sure the cops are right—Amy was depressed, or mentally ill, and something just snapped inside her. It happens.”

Margot shook her head and scooted back on the bed so she was taller against her backrest of pillows. “Jesus, Piper! You don't really believe that, do you? You don't really believe that Amy would be capable of something like this? Her own husband and son?”

“Other than generic Christmas cards and Facebook, I haven't seen or talked to Amy in years. I don't know her at all.”

She felt a lump growing in her throat.

Margot plucked at the covers. “You're wrong.” Her voice was calm now, low and serious. “You knew her better than anyone ever did.”

The statement hung in the air between them; for the first time, Piper wondered how much her younger sister truly knew about everything that had gone on between her and Amy that summer.

“But we were kids then. People change. I've changed.” She swallowed hard. Had she changed that much? Does anyone, really? “I can only imagine Amy had, too.”

“Changed enough to become a killer? A crazy person who would
slaughter
her own family? And then blow her brains out?”