Page 29 of Ink Blood Sister Scribe

From what Joanna and Esther could eavesdrop, the gist of their conflict had been this: Cecily was tired of living behind the wards. She was tired of living beholden to Abe’s books. She wanted to drop the wards and sell the books and open their doors to the world. Abe thought this was patently insane.

Esther and Joanna had discussed their parents’ fights but carefully avoided mentioning their own opinions, in part because it wasn’t necessary—each knew whose side the other was on. Despite the fact that her own mother’s murder could have been prevented by the wards, Esther had always made it clear that she did not plan to stay in Vermont forever.

When she left, she’d been making noises about applying to college—somewhere in Massachusetts or New York, she’d promised Joanna, somewhere close by. She’d buy a beater car and come visit, or pick up Joanna to take her away for long weekends.

“You can ignore yourcallingfor a few days, I’m sure,” Esther had said. “Long enough to go to a party or two.”

But then, in early November, a few weeks after she’d turned eighteen, Esther came into Joanna’s bedroom. It was late at night and Joanna remembered thinking it was strange that Esther was fully dressed in black jeans and combat boots, her hair pulled back. Joanna was already tucked beneath the covers, reading a novel about faraway misty islands and magic none of her father’s books could ever summon.

“Excuse you, you didn’t knock,” Joanna said, so teenaged the memory still made her wince.

Esther came and sat on the side of the bed. Her face was eerily still. Joanna laid her novel facedown on her quilted lap. The air around her sister felt charged.

“Esther, what is it?”

“Nothing,” Esther said. “Just wanted to say good night.”

“Good night,” Joanna said, half echo, half question.

Esther leaned forward and wrapped her in a hug, awkward because of the angle, her sharp chin digging into Joanna’s shoulder. “I love you, Joanna.”

“Love you, too,” Joanna said, bemused, patting her back. “Are you okay?”

“Fine, fine, fine,” Esther said.

The next morning, she was gone. So were all her favorite clothes and Abe’s new station wagon. No note, no explanation. In her wake, the house turned into a battleground. Abe went around with his eyes rimmed red, his jaw clenched against tears, while Cecily followed him, keeping up a relentless argument that varied in volume and pitch but had one central theme: lowering the wards.

“This is no way to live,” Cecily would say, her voice hoarse from shouting, begging, crying. “One child lost, wandering the world, no home, and the other locked up in this dungeon forever. It isn’t life, Abe! Let them come, let them come and take what they want, anything is better than this hell!”

During this time, Joanna stopped going to school. It would have been her sophomore year, but she couldn’t gather the energy to care, or leave the house. It felt like someone had reached into her chest and turned her heart to cold cement. There was a crushing weight in her lungs, and she couldn’t catch her breath. She got winded just walking down the stairs, so she mostly stayed in her bedroom, staring at the ceiling, replaying that last conversation she’d had with her sister, trying in vain to find clues.

In the chaos Esther had left behind no one noticed Joanna’s absences until it was too late for her to make up the classes she’d missed, and by then she’d decided not to return. Neither Cecily nor Abe could convince her otherwise, and later that year she got her father to sign the parental waiver so she could get her GED in Burlington... but in those long weeks after Esther left, school—and the future in general—had been the furthest thing from her mind.

Now, only half present, Joanna opened Esther’s closet door. She jumped violently back when something moved inside, but a second later laughed, hand on her heart. It was her own reflection. She forgot she’d pushed Esther’s old mirror in here, an enormous floor-length glass with a heavy wooden frame carved with grape vines. Cecily had loved this mirror, polishing the glass regularly and oiling the wood till it glimmered. Now it was dull with disuse. Joanna swept a hand over the dust and saw that her cat-induced smile still lingered on her face, her dimples coming out from hiding. They made her look young in a way she normally found off-putting, but today she didn’t so much mind. She let them stay as she dug around for the comforter.

Arms full of down, she paused on the landing. Her own bedroom was at one end of that hall, her father’s on the other. The only time she’d been in his bedroom since he died had been to search for his journals. She’d rarely gone in when he was alive, in fact, though she had paused at the door often enough to say good night, Abe nearly always awake no matter the hour, propped up in bed with his clunky laptop or a stack of documents or sometimes a novel—a book with a very different kind of power. Joanna would push the door open, lean in, and blow him a kiss.

“Get some sleep, Dad.”

“Right back atcha, Jo.”

If the cat came inside, her dad never would.

It was a nonsensical thought, but she felt herself having it all the same.

When she spread the comforter out on the porch, coiling it up so it looked inviting, it felt like she was making a choice. Making, perhaps, a change.

It was just after two by the time Joanna pulled up in front of her mother’s place. When Cecily first moved out a decade ago, she’d lived in a bottom-floor duplex that was dark no matter the hour and smelled relentlessly of vinegar. Now she lived in a small, neat farmhouse on twoacres of open land. Usually the land—and the house that sat on it—seemed staged by the Vermont bureau of tourism, so perfect was the image: the flat expanse of field stretching to the mountains, a sugar-white farmhouse with a pillared front porch and slate roof, a perfect little red barn.

Today, however, the uniform pewter of the sunken clouds overhead made the house look lonely and bare, the barn a smear of red adrift on an achromatic sea. One single alpaca stood in the pasture, head lowered to the brown grass. The rest of the herd must be in the barn.

The alpaca did not belong to Cecily—she rented out the barn and the fenced-in pasture to the animal husbandry department of the tiny college two towns over, and occasionally Joanna arrived to find students on the grounds, young people with bright eyes and loud, bossy voices who chattered about camelid vaccinations and toenail trims and other incomprehensible subjects. They treated both the alpaca and one another with competent, familiar affection, always laughing though Joanna could never figure out at what. Cecily kept inviting the students inside while Joanna was there, especially the shaggy-haired young men, but neither they nor the girls held any appeal; they all seemed somehow much younger than her, and much older at the same time, and looked at Joanna like they were taxonomizing her.

There were no cars parked here today.

Gretchen came running out to meet her, barking exuberantly, and Joanna tousled her brown ears, smiling at the dog’s excitement. Cecily had wasted no time in getting a pet once she’d moved out, and though Gretchen was getting on in years, the border collie mutt still moved like a puppy, play-bowing and leaping in excitement. She pranced around Joanna’s heels as they headed up the porch together, and Joanna let them both in after a quick rap on the door.

“In here!” Cecily said, and Joanna followed her voice to the kitchen, where Cecily was bent over the oven, peering inside. The whole room was warm and smelled deliciously like bread, a welcome change from the austere chill outside. “Almost done,” Cecily said, straightening, and cameover to kiss her, then wiped her own lip prints off Joanna’s cheek. “Take off your coat, angel baby.”

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