For a moment I thought she must be in the adjoining bathroom, her body barely registering beneath the blankets covering her. And once I saw she was there, I couldn’t tell if she was awake or asleep, looking at me, or eyes closed.
I took a step closer, taking in what I could of the room in the dim light. None of it seemed to have changed in my absence. There were the same elegant his-and-hers bureaus, the table and armchairs in the corner, the chaise lounge, and her collection of magazines filled with fashion advice.
The only thing different was the smell. The faint hint of his cologne mixing with her fragrance had long since faded, a sour, sickly smell replacing it.
The scent of a dying woman. The perfume of decay.
I felt more than saw the shift of her body in the bed and froze, feeling her eyes taking in what she could see of me in the dark. Assessing me as she always had. Scrutinizing with her critical eyes.
And then a voice from my past, weakened but unchanged, the high-pitched timbre curling around my birth name and sending a shiver of fear down my spine.
“Welcome home, Gisela.”
33
Gisela
“Tell me,”she said, struggling to sit up, the knit hat on her head too big, her dressing gown gaping open to reveal jutting collarbones and sunken skin flushed pink from either fever, the fire lit in the fireplace in her bedroom, or both. “Did my traitor of a sister help you?”
Every instinct told me to help. The sick and wounded were my responsibility. I’d taken an oath. I’d sung a song with my chosen sisters.
But I resisted.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, moving across the room to stand beside my father’s bureau, my eyes never leaving her. She, like my father, had always slept with a gun in arm’s reach. I could imagine her small silver pistol resting beneath her pillows, waiting for the moment to use it.
“When we got the news you were dead, two years after she and that husband of hers disappeared, there was a part of me that wondered,” she said. “Something about it. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but...” She shrugged. “The two of you were so close. So alike. If you wanted to be dead, I decided so be it. Your escort returned with a certificate of death and your ashes. I didn’t question it. Your father had one of his contacts investigate, but he came back with the same information. We had a funeral, a gravestone was placed, and it was done.”
It had been an elaborate plan with more moving pieces than I’d known about until it was all said and done. I remembered my terror. That my parents would find out. That they’d come for me—or at least send someone to collect me. But my aunt and uncle had every possible angle covered—from my fake pen pal and her family in California, the car crash that supposedly killed me and left my body burned beyond recognition, and the news reports in the papers. The escort that had come with me was one of my uncle’s people. The man sent by my father to investigate, also one of my uncle’s men.
The truth was, there had been no body in the car that went careening off a particularly windy coastal road at night. And the people I was supposedly with, friends of the fake family my parents thought I was staying with, didn’t exist. It had been a network of people and lies, feeding my parents information that made them feel as though not only was I in safe hands, but through me, they would be making a wealthy connection in America—one they might be able to use to their advantage in the future. My death didn’t sadden them so much as disappoint them because of the contact they’d lost because of me, their eldest, who in their eyes had always failed them.
“And did you grieve?” I asked my mother now.
“I wore black for as long as I could stand it. I never did look good in dark colors. Our friends were of course devastated for us. We received a number of lovely gifts. The Seidels offered us their summer home in Spain for a month.”
“Did you go?”
“Of course. It was very therapeutic. I found a gorgeous little desk for the guest room en suite.”
I inhaled, letting her words wash over me. Her eldest child had died, or so she had been told, and she’d gone to Spain to soak up the sun and shop. I hadn’t expected anything different from her, but it was shocking nonetheless. And of course there was no mention of Cat. How she’d coped. How the loss of her sister had affected her. Our parents probably hadn’t even noticed. That would’ve been Nanny Paulina’s job.
“Light some candles,” Mother said. “I want to see you.”
I knew she would want to see what had become of me without her to guide me, keep me painfully thin, groom me into the same kind of monster she was.
I felt around on the bureau and found a candle and a box of matches. I lit one, then noticed several more placed around the room and lit them as well before standing at the foot of her bed and taking her in as she did the same of me.
For someone who had never left her bedroom without a full face of makeup and every hair in place, wearing a beautiful outfit made especially for her, to see her now was shocking. Her blond hair was white, her face sallow and sunken, pale blue eyes cloudy, body emaciated to such a degree it was hard to look at.
“You’ve gotten fat,” she said and I nearly laughed.
I was not what anyone would call fat. Unless, of course, you were my mother.
“What have you done with your life?” she asked. “Where did you go? What ridiculous things did my idiot sister get you into? You were with her, were you not? Tell me now.”
“I’m not here to talk about me. I merely came to see you.”
“Because I’m dying?” She waved a bony hand. “You were always too sentimental for your own good. Too teary and pleading and tenderhearted. Always wanting to save something or someone that wasn’t worth our time or money. Like your little friend. What was her name?”
