Page 49 of Persephone's Curse
I didn’t move for so long that I heard Clara stomping up the stairs, grumbling, emerging on the fourth floor, and huffing impatiently behind me.
“Hel-lo,” she said.
I turned around stiffly. My joints felt unlubricated. I felt like a wooden board, unbendable and frozen.
“She’s… not here,” I said.
I almost saidShe’s gone,but I stopped myself, because Clara was sometimes so young to me, even though there were only two years between us, it felt like the space between fourteen and sixteen was expansive and huge, a massive ocean I was even now still wading through. And in that moment, with her winter coat on and her hair a mess underneath her pale pink knitted hat and her eyes narrowed at me and annoyed, I felt this sudden need to protect her. To not cause her unnecessary worry and harm.
“What do you mean she’s not here?” Clara asked, still annoyed.
“I think she told me she was staying over Danielle’s house last night,” I lied.
It was the first name that popped into my head. Truth be told, none of us Farthing sisters were the best at having or keeping friends (a side effect, perhaps, of having three ready-made ones), but Evelyn and Danielle had met in kindergarten and were close enough that it wouldn’t be unheard of, if Evie spent the night there.
Of course no one ever spent the nighthere.
But that felt obvious. We had a ghost.
“Oh,” Clara said. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
“I forgot.”
“Okay. Well, I’m hungry. Can we go now?”
“Yeah, of course. Hey, can you send Bernadette up here? I want to ask her if I can borrow something.”
“I’mhungry,” Clara repeated, annoyed again. “Just take whatever it is you want to take.”
“I’ll be quick,” I said. “It’s important.”
Clara rolled her eyes and stomped back down the stairs. I counted the stomps as they grew quieter and quieter, then I counted the seconds before Bernadette started walking upstairs, then I counted her footsteps, and by the time she reached the fourth-floor landing, my head was full of numbers and when she spoke, I didn’t hear what she said, just a sort ofwhomp whomp whomp,like the sound the grown-ups made inPeanuts.
Bernadette’s expression darkened, she frowned, she pushed me aside and stormed into Evelyn’s room, then rounded on me again, put her hands on my shoulders. It felt nice, having her hands there. It made me confident that I was standing on the ground instead of floating into outer space.
“Where is she?” Bernadette asked.
“I don’t know. She’s gone.”
“Fuck. Fuck. Did you call her?”
“My phone’s downstairs.”
Bernadette pulled her phone out of the pocket of her corduroys and tapped the screen. She held it to her ear and we both heard it immediately—the buzzing.
Our heads swiveled into the room, toward Evelyn’s nightstand. I couldn’t move yet, but Bernadette crossed over to it and pulled the drawer open and there, of course, was Evelyn’s phone.
“Okay,” Bernadette said. “Something isn’t right.”
“Something isn’t right,” I repeated dimly.
“We have to call him back.”
“We have to call… What? Who? Henry?”
“Yes. Call him back, Winnie. It’s time to call him back.”
My body filled with an achy, throbbing panic.
