Page 65 of Persephone's Curse
We walked closer to the back of the house, to the wide windows, and Clara put a hand on my arm and said, “Evelyn,” and for a moment I thought she had called me by the wrong name but then I saw her, our sister, sitting on a bench in the middle of the yard, facing the wall of dormant jasmine bushes, sitting unmoving in the snow, which had just begun to fall again.
It was Clara’s painting come to life. It was so beautiful and socreepyand so impossible.
Clara took off running down the stairs. We’d all been so shocked at the cold air in the house that we hadn’t taken our shoes off, we’d have to vacuum before Mom got home—
“We have to vacuum,” I said weakly, but Bernadette didn’t answer; she pushed past me and followed Clara down the back stairs. My heart was racing, beating far too fast to be healthy, pounding in my chest so hard ithurt,and I wondered if I was having a heart attack.
Clara reached Evelyn first, of course, and dove into her arms, collapsing on the bench beside her and hugging her so tightly I felt phantom arms around my own body.
Bernadette and I didn’t hug her, just came up to the front of the bench and stopped, staring at her, perhaps not looking the friendliest. I felt happy to see her, of course, relieved, of course, but also deeply, profoundly enraged.
Evelyn looked different.
Her hair was longer? Or shinier? Her eyes were different. Darker. Her skin was clear, porcelain doll skin, unblemished and smooth. She was sitting very straight, hugging Clara back somewhat noncommittedly, an expression of… I couldn’t decipher it. What was she feeling, my prodigal sister? I couldn’t begin to guess. But also, Iwas sorelieved. She had been a ghost and now she was here, now she was back and everything would be okay.
“Evelyn,” Bernadette said finally, as Clara pulled away, wiping tears from her cheeks, her shoulders bouncing up and down with tiny sobs of happiness. “Wherewereyou?”
And Evelyn took a deep breath, and there was something in the way she breathed that was different, there was something aboutherthat was different, she was my sister but also I felt like I hardly knew her. I kept thinking that to myself, over and over,I hardly know you, I hardly know you, I hardly know you…
She shifted a little, on the bench, folding her hands on her lap. She was wearing clothes I didn’t recognize. A dark green linen dress, long sleeved and buttoned up to the Peter Pan collar. Flakes of snow were starting to collect on her shoulders; the flakes were so thick and fat that I could make out their details. A memory of sitting in front of the fireplace cutting snowflakes out of folded pieces of paper, my sisters close to me, the smell of hot chocolate, my father dolloping whipped cream on top. She must have been so cold, she didn’t have a coat—
“Evelyn, are you cold?”
“Evelyn,” Bernadette said, louder than me, so loud in the quiet of the snowfall as she said again,“Where were you?”
Evelyn looked up at her then, at both of us, but her eyes took a moment to focus. “I went to find him,” she said finally, and not to beat a dead horse, but her voice was different, too, everything about her wasdifferent,almost… changed? And it was like she was coming out of a dream, maybe, or a trance, she kept blinking her eyes over and over, her movements slow and strange and lethargic, like she was moving through something thick and tangible.
“Henry,” Clara said. “Is he here?”
“Henry,” Evelyn replied, moving her head to look around her. “Where am I?”
“Our backyard,” Bernadette said. “You’re in our backyard, Evie.”
“We tried to come back… He was with me… He was right…”
She tried to stand up, but her legs buckled, she fell sideways, and I caught her. She melted into my arms like she had no strength left.
“He was with me,” she whispered into my hair.
“Where?”I asked, holding her tightly. “Where were you, Evelyn?”
“I went to find him. I went to bring him back, but… I don’t know where he is now. We were together, he wasright there,but he didn’t make it back…”
She pulled away from me. She was very pale and shaking a little.
“You went to find him,” Clara repeated. “Evelyn, do you mean, like…”
“In the Underworld,” Evelyn said.
“In the Underworld,” I repeated, trying incredibly hard to keep my voice completely devoid of emotion.
“I was there for three years,” Evelyn said. “Has it been three years?”
“Three days,” Bernadette said. “You’ve been gone for three days.”
“We tried to come back,” Evelyn said, and her voice was so quiet we all had to lean in to hear her. “We tried to come back, we tried so hard to come back, we kept trying and trying and trying and then… And now I’m back and… He was with me. He was with me and now he’s not here. He’s not here he’s not here he’s not here…”
And she leaned into my arms again, and she buried her face in my neck, and she kept saying it over and over and over:
