Page 124 of We Already Dug the Grave

She shrugged. “Yeah. But I really thought he was my soul mate. Then, I was convinced it was Burt.” Frances snorted. Drummed her nails against the middle console between us. “I know better now, sister.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, but I was afraid I understood, because the entire time she was speaking, there’d been another whisper sliding from beneath the internal door. A flutter of wings behind my ribcage. Sister, sister, sister…

I glanced at Frances. She grinned brightly, a show of joy I wasn’t sure I could ever feel again.

“You,” she said, her voice full of conviction. “It’s always been you. I used to think that there was no love like romantic love, but that’s bullshit we’re fed from the moment we’re old enough to know about such things. The real truth is, there’s no love like sisterhood. You’re my soul mate. And I’m yours. And now we will be together forever and always. No matter what.”

No matter what. No matter the death left in her wake.

Once, these words from her lips would’ve been everything to me. Are they still?

The fluttering wings in my chest hardened to something like claws.

This was my baby bird. My sister. The person I’d sworn to protect. A woman capable of, and who’d done, terrible things. A person I’d loved unconditionally since the moment our parents brought her home from the hospital. Burt’s monster.

A cold-blooded murderer.

But also, if there was an ounce of truth to my sister’s words, then she was so much more than all of those things.

To read the fate of the person you loved most was to doom them to become your cursed thing. A fate never to be looked up from. The curse can manifest in many ways, and I’d thought it was the curse that doomed Casey. Yes, I loved him, but Frances was right. I’d not loved him most of all.

The leaves had been telling me all this time. Sister, sister, sister…

Those words, that whisper. No. They weren’t a cry, call, nor warning. They were an order. My sister was my responsibility, and it was my duty to spend the rest of my life making sure she’d never go unleashed again.

Frances said that now we would be together forever and always, no matter what. And we would.

Because Frances? She was my baby bird. A monster. And my true love.

But most of all, she was my cursed thing.

Chapter 49 Frances

Then

Frances and Milly huddled together, their arms around each other’s shoulders as they stumbled down the darkened forest path, neither of them leading the way. Briars scratched at Frances’s legs, and Milly’s foot caught a root, pitching her off balance. Frances steadied the both of them before they could crash to the ground. They didn’t slow their steps.

Milly wept openly, her gut-wrenching sobs chasing them through the woods.

She hardly ever cried. It shocked Frances at first, but mostly left her wondering why she herself wasn’t more upset. Why wasn’t she terrified? Or heartbroken? Or even, honestly, that worried?

If anyone should’ve been crying, it should’ve been her, right?

Shane’s hands had once roamed her body as he whispered how much he loved her, told her how smart she was and how special. Tonight, those same hands had found their way to her throat, cutting off her oxygen. He’d have killed her, and then her sister. Frances had understood this the moment she registered the wild panic in his eyes.

Panicked animals were always violent. Why should he be any different?

When Frances was little, she’d stumbled across an injured indigo bunting and scooped up the little songbird in her dainty, seven-year-old palms. She’d wondered what the pitiful thing would look like without its shiny blue feathers, but the moment she began plucking them, the injured bird fought like a hawk, its beady eyes gone wild.

It scratched and pecked and beat its wings, but Frances hadn’t dropped it until Milly ran outside and yelled for Aunt Hattie to come help, assuming Frances was trying to save the injured bird.

Aunt Hattie-May had lined a shoebox with pine straw and grass, making a temporary home for the bunting while she and Milly tried to nurse it back to health.

Frances had been silently disappointed at not finishing her experiment, but somehow, even at seven, understood she couldn’t tell Milly what she’d really been doing.

That’s how Shane had looked tonight, his eyes wild and his limbs flailing like a bird caught by a girl who didn’t care if she hurt him. Only he’d been the one doing the hurting.

Frances had been humiliated when his fingers caught her throat.