Page 107 of Persephone's Curse
“We lookedeverywherefor you, we weresonervous,” I said. “What was the note going to say?”
She closed her eyes for the length of four heartbeats, one for each of us, then she opened her eyes again and looked at me and said,“… and I love you always.”
… and I love you always.
And she would always love us, loveme,no matter what I did, no matter what terrible decisions I made. Wasn’t that what it was to be a sister?
“This is too much, Evie,” Bernadette said, hooking the necklace around her neck.
Clara held up her own necklace so it caught the weak, gray, morning light from the window, and let the pendant twirl and twirl around. “It’s so beautiful, Evelyn,” she said, and she caught the still-spinning pendant between two fingers, then brought the whole thing to her chest, hugging it.
Evelyn stood up from her seat on the couch and walked over to me. She took the necklace out of my hands, gently moved my hair aside, and clasped it around my neck.
“Always,” she said, then leaned over and hugged me so tightly that I felt suffocated by her, I felt the insides of my wrists itch, I felt safe and happy and protected and exactly where I was supposed to be.
It was—despite everything—a really lovely Christmas.
We wore pajamas until the late afternoon, we ate a hundred pancakes each, we played nonstop Christmas music, we opened presents from our parents and from Aunt Bea and gave presents in return.
We did our best to ignore the heaviness that poured out of the black tear in the sky, even though Mom complained of a persistent headache and Aunt Bea kept pausing and staring out the window, as if she knewsomethingwas there but couldn’t quite tell what it was. Dad remained perfectly fine, remained solidlyDad,and by three o’clock he’d dressed in an array of new Christmas gifts (argyle sweater, four pairs of socks, wool scarf, earmuffs Clara insisted weremade for him) and had settled in to read the book I’d given him (A Gentleman in Moscow).
After dinner Mom announced that the neighbors a few houses down had invited them over for a cocktail hour, but “I don’t really feel like going, do you, honey?”
“We should go,” Dad said. “It’s Christmas!”
“How would we even get there?” Mom asked, peering out the window. “The snow is up to my eyeballs.”
“We’ll tunnel through,” Aunt Bea said. “Like squirrels.”
“It’s only five houses down,” Dad said. “It will be a little adventure.”
“Do we have to go?” Clara asked.
“No, no,” Mom said. “You’re not invited.”
“Thank god for that,” Bernie said.
So the adults got dressed and Dad grabbed a shovel fromsomewhere and carried it over his head like a spear or a sword, in the style of someone going off to fight a noble battle.
“Snow is really heavy,” he said once he’d made a pathway down exactly two of the brownstone’s front steps. “I don’t think you girls realize that.”
“You’re doing an excellent job,” Mom said from the doorway. She and Aunt Bea were drinking glasses of white wine and seemed dedicated to either finishing them there or carrying them to the neighbors’, whatever came first.
Henry, who up until then had made himself scarce, appeared on the stairs next to me, where I was sitting and watching the entertainment. I smelled jasmine before I saw him, and when his arm touched mine, I got a chill down my spine that had nothing to do with the still-open front door.
“Hi,” I whispered, quiet enough that no one else would be able to hear me.
“Hi,” he whispered back.
Dad wrestled his way down the remainder of the stairs and Mom and Aunt Bea finished their wine and handed the glasses to Clara, who went and put them in the kitchen. We all called goodbye and Bernadette shut the front door and Clara brought the wineglasses back, each filled to the brim with more chardonnay.
“Cece, honestly,” Bernadette said, but took one of the glasses and had a long sip, before turning to Henry and me and saying, “When are you two going to tell us whatever it is you don’t want to tell us?”
Evelyn was sitting on the rug in front of the fire, and she turned her face toward us then, and she looked so beautiful with the firelight reflecting on her cheeks, dancing in her eyes, and I knew inthat moment that I would have to be the one to tell her. I would have to be the one to tell all of them. It would have to be me.
“I’ll make some tea,” I said.
What a Farthing thing to do, to make tea when the world was ending.
