I lift my brows, waiting for her to say more, but she doesn’t.
Silently, I finish the cookie. Take a sip of the hot chocolate—rich and creamy, not too sweet, whipped cream as soft as a cloud. Rachel’s still not talking, just nibbling at a cookie, acting like a total freak show.
I let the uncomfortable silence simmer for as long as I can before it starts making me itch. “Rachel… are we okay?”
And then I laugh, because how the fuck can we possibly be okay?
“Sorry,” I amend. “I just… Okay. First of all, thank you for the goodies. Second—and third, fourth, and maybe tenth of all, if we’re keeping score—I know you’re mad at me. And I know it’s not just about the witchcraft. My track record is… spotty, to say the least. But this feels different, Rach. It really does.”
“That’s the thing, though, Lizzy,” she finally says. “I’mnotmad at you. Not really.” She tucks a leg up and turns toward me. Deep purple shadows bloom beneath her eyes. She doesn’t meet my gaze. “I’m mad at Dad for dying before you ever met him. I’m mad at Mom for what she did to us. For giving up when things got hard. For thinking we’d be better off without her, thinking we wouldn’t be able to handle this. I’m mad at Kate for never pushing back, for letting me get away with so much shitover the years, all those times I really needed someone to give me a reality check. I’m mad at every piece-of-shit foster parent who took advantage and pretended to help us, and all the social workers who didn’t see through it or didn’t care enough to try. But most of all, I’m mad at myself.”
I wait for her to finally look at me so I can nod and smile and let her off the hook. I’ve done it so many times over the years—always accepting her rule as law, making excuses for her outbursts, for her desperation to control everything. Perfection at all costs, even when I felt like it would choke the life out of all of us.
She doesn’t look, though. Just keeps talking.
“I knew there was more to this house than meets the eye,” she continues. “More to Mom’s death than what the so-calledlawyerwas saying. I knew it the moment I passed the sign on the road into town—Graves Hollow Welcomes You. I could just…feelit. This strange tugging in my chest, a sense of deja vu. I kept getting flashes from the past. Mom, coming back from the woods in the middle of the night, covered in mud, twitching and frantic. The house shifting and change right under our feet. Doors appearing and disappearing, the food prep, the flowers outside. I have these memories of the sun shining bright in our backyard even as the rest of Graves Hollow was blanketed in snow.”
“Does Kate remember it too?”
“We’ve never talked about it. She tried a few times over the years, especially as we got older, but… I don’t know. I always shut her down, same as I shut you down.”
“Why?”
“I guess I was trying to convince myself it was just a trauma response. That we made it all up because we couldn’t deal with the fact that our father died young and our mother gave us away.” She takes a tiny sip of hot chocolate. “Our first night back, when Helena showed up… I remembered her, too. Not clearly,but her voice and face… there was that flicker again, you know? She was part of our lives before. Part of those memories I’d tried for so long to bury. And even though Mom was dead and we were here, standing right in the middle of our personal ground zero, I still couldn’t open up the floodgates. I wasn’t strong enough, Lizzy. I couldn’t let the past take over. Not after… last time.”
I set down my mug, my hand trembling. We’re approaching that dangerous line—the one that always burns us whenever we get too close. For so many years, I was the only one willing to try. The only one who let herself get scorched, hoping it would make a difference.
I close my eyes, remembering the infamous “last time.” The Incident.
Three years ago. Kate had an art show. Her first one ever—some exclusive little gallery in Manhattan. She worked so hard curating her pieces—sculptures she’d been working on for years. I was flat broke and couldn’t afford the flight, but Kate wanted her sisters there no matter what. She bought my plane tickets.
It was the first time I’d seen them in person since I’d moved out to California a few years earlier, and I got into town two days early, just so we could hang out and catch up. They played tour guide, took me to all the New York hotspots. I had a blast.
But the night before the show, something just… came over me. I started asking all these questions about Mom, about our past. I asked if we could drive up to Grave’s Hollow. I wanted to confront the woman who’d abandoned us. To demand the answers to questions we were never allowed to ask.
My sisters were frantic. We got into a huge argument. Kate tried to play peacemaker, but that backfired; Rachel flipped out on her too. We all went to bed angry. Ate breakfast the next morning in separate diners. Went off and did our own things for the afternoon.
A couple of hours before the show, Rachel texted me with her version of an apology.I know things got a little heated last night. Let’s put it aside and focus on Kate. This is her big night. OK?
I didn’t respond. As the gallery opening drew closer, Rachel sent me a barrage of texts, demanding to know whether I was going to blow off Kate’s big night. Telling me what a shitty person I was. A shitty sister.
I didn’t blow it off. I arrived, right on time.
Fucking hammered.
I could tell my sisters were nervous. That they’d rather I just disappear. Not long into the show, Rachel and I got into it again. I was making a scene, but at that point, I didn’t care. It felt like an out- of-body experience, like watching someone else’s life blow up.
I remember telling her I was getting an Uber to Graves Hollow that very night. That she couldn’t stop me from seeing my own mother. My childhood home.
At that point, I didn’t even want to go, not really. Especially not by myself. It just felt like I’d committed, and I couldn’t back down. I ranted at her like a toddler throwing a tantrum, Kate trying to avoid us, trying to talk to potential buyers about her art while I made a huge scene.
And finally, Rachel just shook her head and sighed.
In the end, it was her last words, the final twist of the knife that did it.
God, Lizzy. Why do you always have to be such a burden?
She wasn’t even mad when she said it, either. Just… defeated. Like I’d been this huge weight around her neck for her entire life. Like my very existence had drained the life right out of her.
