The Night Sister (27 page)

“Lou?” Piper called, stepping into the trailer, carrying the duffel bag stuffed full of pink and purple clothes. She'd knocked, but when no one answered, she'd let herself in. She found the girl sitting at the kitchen table, squeezing thick ribbons of chocolate syrup onto bread.

Piper had run to the drugstore (spending no time at all on rectal-thermometer selection), then back to Margot's, where she found her sister sound asleep. She'd deposited the plastic Rite Aid bags on the floor near Margot's bed, and left her a note:

“Going to watch Lou for a couple of hours, then off to Foxcroft. Back by dinner.”

“That your lunch?” Piper asked the little girl. Lou was wearing the same clothes she'd been in the last time Piper had visited her. Her hair was in tangles.

Lou stuck two pieces of chocolate-covered bread together to make a sandwich and smiled up at her. “Want one?” she asked.

“No, thanks,” Piper said, looking around the kitchen. “Where's your aunt Crystal?”

Lou frowned slightly, then took a big bite of her sandwich. “Don't know,” she said, mouth full. Chocolate sauce dribbled down her chin.

“Did she leave already?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Really? When?” Piper asked.

“This morning. She got mad at me. Said she was going to call Social Services and find some other place for me to go.”

“What? Why on earth would she say that?”

Lou shrugged. “Because of Ray, I guess.”

“Ray?”

Lou nodded her head. “They got in a fight. About me. He doesn't think I should be here. Not enough room, he said, for three people, so he went out last night to go stay with a friend.”

Piper cringed at the thought of their fighting like that in front of Lou. And how could Crystal even think of getting rid of Lou, much less say it to her face? Didn't she realize she was all Lou had?

“Let me just see if I can reach Crystal,” Piper said, smiling and pulling out her cell phone.

She dialed Crystal's cell, got voice mail, and left a terse message. “I'm at the trailer. Maybe I misunderstood, but I didn't think you had to leave for work until one. Lou says she's been by herself since this morning. Call me when you get this.”

“Is Crystal in trouble now?” Lou asked.

“No, sweetie. I just wish she hadn't left you on your own like this.”

Lou nodded. “I don't like it here,” she said. “I want to go home. I want my mama.” Her eyes filled with tears.

Piper took Lou in her arms and held her, stroking her tangled hair. “I know. I'm sorry.”

They stayed like that a few minutes, Lou snuffling into Piper's shoulder, and Piper wondering what she could possibly do to help this girl.

“Well,” she said at last, when Lou pulled away, rubbing at her red eyes, “let's see if I can find something to fix for a proper lunch.” She began opening cabinets and found very little: canned string beans, boxed macaroni and cheese, microwave popcorn, a dusty box of chocolate-cake mix. “Do you like macaroni and cheese?” she asked brightly.

“Mmm-hmm,” Lou said, stuffing more of her sweet sandwich into her mouth.

Piper made lunch, chattering brightly about the most neutral topics she could think of—Piper's love of macaroni and cheese when she was a kid, the beautiful weather this time of year, how different Vermont was from Los Angeles, which is where Piper lived, did Lou know that? She cleaned up the tiny kitchen while Lou wolfed down the gooey orange noodles and soft green beans like it was her first meal in a week.

“How about we pour you a bath and get you into some clean clothes?” Piper asked. “I brought you lots of choices. You had a lot of nice things in your closet.”

The girl nodded gratefully.

It took Piper fifteen minutes to scrub out the tub well enough that she'd feel comfortable putting Lou in it. With Lou hovering in the hallway, Piper continued to make cheerful chitchat while she worked, doing her best to mask her disgust. Finally, she poured a hot bath, got out the soap and shampoo (she even found some peaches-and-cream bubble bath under the sink and added it to the tub). She consulted with Lou, and they picked out a clean outfit of Lou's very own clothes. “Call me if you need anything,” she said, closing the bathroom door.

She tried Crystal's cell phone again—no answer. She didn't bother leaving another message, but used her phone to get online and look up the number for the Mountainview Lodge, where Crystal worked. The woman at the front desk told her Crystal hadn't shown up for work. “When you do find her,” the woman said, “tell her not to bother coming back to work. Our manager's pretty pissed. He's putting an ad in the paper for another girl to come clean.”

Great. Just great.

“You doing okay in there?” Piper called to the closed bathroom door.

“Can you help me wash my hair?” the girl asked.

“Sure.” Piper opened the door and stepped into the warm bathroom, which smelled powerfully of artificial peaches. Lou was lying back under a blanket of bubbles. Her hair was wet, and she smiled up at Piper, reminding her of some sweet water creature—an otter, maybe.

Piper got down on her knees and poured some shampoo into her hands, then began to massage it into Lou's hair. “Okay, rinse,” she said, and down the girl went, submerging her whole head and face under the water. “Conditioner now,” Piper said when she'd popped back up. “It'll help us get those tangles out.”

She worked the thick conditioner in. “Let it sit a minute,” Piper said, rinsing her hands in the murky water of the tub, then standing to dry them on a towel. Lou reached up to touch her hair, frothy with milky-white conditioner. Piper noticed purple bruises on the girl's arm and wrist.

“Lou,” she said, keeping her voice calm, “what happened to your arm?”

“Nothing,” Lou said, plunging it back into the bubble-topped water.

“Sweetie,” Piper said, crouching down at the edge of the tub, “can you show me?”

Lou shook her head hard and fast.

“Did someone do that to you? Did someone hurt you?” Piper suddenly thought about the outfit Lou had been wearing—long pants and a long-sleeved shirt, whereas most kids her age were running around in T-shirts and shorts, thrilled to be out of winter clothes at last. Winters in Vermont were long and hard, and the minute the weather changed, people embraced it and didn't look back.

“Did…did Crystal do that to you?”

Lou shook her head again.

“Are you sure?”

“It wasn't her,” Lou said, looking down into her fading bubbles.

“Who, then? Ray?”

Lou's lower lip started to tremble. She sank down low into the water until her ears were under the surface, her face just breaking it. “Mama,” she said. “It was Mama.”

Then she submerged herself completely and held her breath for so long that Piper was sure the child was trying to drown herself.

At last, she popped back up and began to scoop handfuls of bubbles and sing. Piper stood up on rubbery legs and left the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her. Her hands were shaking, and her mouth had gone completely dry.

Maybe Amy had been a monster after all, a woman capable of child abuse. Murder, even.

A
fter the bath, Piper and Lou unpacked Lou's things, and Lou seemed to delight in telling her the story of where she had gotten each article of clothing and stuffed animal. Piper made them microwave popcorn, and they watched cartoons on the living-room couch. When it was almost five, Piper sneaked out of the room to call her sister.

“Shit, Margot, I'm not sure what to do here. Crystal's completely AWOL. No sign of this Ray guy—I don't even know his last name. I can't just leave Lou here like this.”

Piper kept her voice low. She was in the kitchen, with her cell phone pressed against her ear, and Lou was in the living room, with the TV blaring some horrible cartoon in which characters shaped like sushi were pummeling each other.

“Just bring her here,” Margot said. “She can keep me company while you run up to the nursing home. When Jason comes home, we'll figure out what to do. I think he's got some contacts at child protective services.”

“They'll put her in foster care!” Piper protested.

“Which might mean she'd go into a clean, stable home where she'd be taken care of, right?”

“It just seems so awful,” Piper said.

“More awful than leaving her alone in that trailer?”

Piper didn't respond.

“If you have a better idea, I'm open to hearing it,” Margot said.

I keep her,
Piper thought.
I bundle her up and bring her home to California with me. I could keep her safe. Get her some grief-and-trauma counseling. Give her the life she deserves.

“Look, just bring her to our house, and we'll sort it out. Get her out of that shithole.”

“Okay,” Piper said. “We're on our way.”

O
ne hour later, Lou was sitting cross-legged on Margot's bed and teaching her new rules for Crazy Eights, cards fanned out expertly in her hands.

“Fours are a skip card,” she explained, eyes lit up, clearly delighted to be teaching an adult. “I play one, and the next player's turn gets skipped. Queens make the game reverse directions. If you play a jack, the next player has to pick up four cards. Get it?”

“I think so,” Margot said. “Why don't we just start playing, and you can help me out as we go along?”

Lou nodded enthusiastically.

“Are you sure you two will be okay for an hour or so?” Piper asked. Jason had called to say he'd be working late. There had been a bad accident out on River Road—a tractor trailer had overturned. Margot hadn't told him about Lou. She said he'd probably be pissed off about it on the phone, but once he came home and was with her, saw how adorable she was, it would be impossible to blame Margot and Piper for deciding to take her in. What else were they supposed to do?

Piper had left a note for Crystal on the kitchen table: “Took Lou to my sister Margot's. 185 Hillstead Rd.” She'd added Margot and Jason's home number and her own cell-phone number. “CALL ME!” she wrote in all caps, underlined.

“We'll be fine,” Margot said. “Won't we, Lou?”

The little girl nodded. Her hair was combed and pulled back in a French braid Piper had done. She still smelled faintly of peaches. She wore jeans and a long-sleeved pink shirt with a sparkly peace sign on the chest. Margot seemed to be loving the company, and Lou had taken to Margot right away. She had squealed with delight when Margot let her feel the baby kicking.

“How about if I stop and pick up a pizza on the way home?” Piper suggested.

“Pepperoni!” Lou chirped.

“Pepperoni it is,” Piper promised.

“Maybe just a salad for me,” Margot said. “Believe it or not, I'm still not all that hungry.”

“Okay,” Piper said, “I'm off. I'll be back in an hour or so.”

“Where are you going, anyway?” Lou asked, looking at Piper over her hand of cards.

“Out to visit an old friend,” Piper said. She thought it was best not to mention that it was Lou's grandmother she was going to see. She'd heard Rose and Lou had been close, but didn't know the details of what had happened to their relationship when Rose became ill. The last thing the little girl needed was to be reminded of another lost family member.

Lou smiled sweetly. “Tell her I said hello,” she said, and in that uncomfortable instant, Piper was sure Lou knew exactly who she was going to see and why.

Foxcroft Health and Rehab smelled like sour milk and boiled meat. Grim-looking women and a few equally grim-looking men in scrubs walked the halls, pushing carts full of medications, snacks, and clean linens. Somewhere off in the distance, an out-of-tune piano was being played inexpertly.

Piper followed Marge S., the aide she'd met at the front desk, through a warren of corridors. They passed a nursing station where an overwrought-looking woman in Tweety Bird scrubs was on the phone saying, “I understand your position, but
you
need to understand that is simply not an option for her right now.” Piper followed Marge S. down a hallway with residents' rooms on both sides. Each door had a bright sign announcing the names of the residents. Some were decorated with stickers and posters of puppies and kittens. One door had a wreath of artificial flowers. There were a few doors with bright-red stop signs bearing further instructions. They stepped around medicine carts and people napping in wheelchairs. An ancient-looking man in a colorless cardigan shuffled by, but stopped short when he saw Piper.

“
There
you are!” he cried with delight. Piper smiled nervously and kept going.

“Here we go,” Marge S. said at last.

Rose Slater,
said the sign. There was no second name, and when they entered the room, Piper saw the other bed was empty, stripped down to the bare mattress.

“Rose, honey, you have a visitor,” Marge S. announced.

The woman in bed looked up, fixing her dark eyes on Piper. Her skin was thin and white, but taut and remarkably free of wrinkles. She wore a hospital nightgown and robe. She looked younger than Piper had imagined, and though Piper had never met her before, she would have recognized her as Amy's mother. From pictures, Piper had always thought Amy looked more like her aunt Sylvie, but now she saw that Amy had her mother's delicate nose, her brow, and her cheekbones.

Rose stared up at Piper with unblinking, cool eyes.

There was a TV across from the bed, dark and silent. A rolling table held a hairbrush, a water cup, and a plastic pitcher. Beside the bed, a small bureau. On it was a wind-up clock, ticking loudly, and a large glass jar, which Piper recognized at once. At the bottom of the jar lay the ruined luna moth.

“You're not her,” Rose said, voice faded, but clear.

Piper couldn't tell if she was disappointed or relieved that Piper wasn't who she'd been expecting.

“Ms. Slater,” Piper began, “my name is Piper. I was a good friend of Amy's back when we were kids.”

Rose nodded. “I remember.”

Piper nodded, too, though Rose couldn't possibly remember her—they'd never met. Maybe Amy had talked about her?

“I'll leave you two alone, then,” Marge S. said. “If you need anything, just push the call button. And remember, Rose, if you want to get out of bed for any reason, you need to
call
first; otherwise, that pesky bed alarm will go off.” Marge S. turned to Piper and said cheerfully, “Our Rose likes to go on walkabout!”

“Thank you,” Piper said, watching the woman hurry out of the room and into the chaos of the corridor. An alarm was beeping shrilly as a resident hollered for someone to call her a taxi.

“I wonder,” Rose said, “if you know anything about my granddaughter, Lou.”

Piper smiled. “She's fine, Ms. Slater. She's an amazing kid. I was with her all afternoon. She's someplace safe, I promise.”

“Safe?” Rose said. “Really? When Jason was here, he wouldn't tell me a thing.”

“Jason? Jason Hawke?”

Rose nodded.

“He came to visit you here? When?”

“Yesterday morning,” she said. “He thinks I'm senile, you know. Psychotic, even. That's what he wants to believe. What Amy wanted to believe, too. But the truth is, I'm the only one who knows what's really happening. I'm the only one who sees things for what they are.”

“Can I ask you a few questions?” Piper said, moving closer to the bed.

“Isn't that why you've come? To hear about Sylvie?”

“And Amy and her family,” Piper said.

Rose nodded. “Yes. Amy. I tried to warn her. She didn't listen. She locked me up in here instead.”

“Warn her about what?”

Rose looked out the window into the growing darkness.

“They'll be coming with my medicine soon,” she said, her dark eyes flicking back to the door. “We don't have much time.”