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How long had she been gone? She’d thought it was two days . . . three at the most.
“You can get in now,” her grandfather said.
“You fixed it.”
“Well, some of the damage is repaired. There’s still a ways to go before she looks good—”
Despite her cuffs, Nyx threw out a hand and squeezed his forearm. As she pegged him right in the eye, she wanted a hug from him, but knew that would not be coming—and not because of how things had been left.
There were other ways of connecting, though.
“You were right,” she said hoarsely. “Janelle was guilty. I am so sorry—”
Her grandfather shook his head and looked away, a ruddy flush turning his wrinkled face bright red. As if he might be, underneath the surface, every bit as emotional as she was. “Lie down across the seats if you can’t sit up. The sun is coming—”
“I was wrong. I’m so sorry—”
“Get in—”
“No,” Nyx said sharply. “We’re talking about this. Janelle was guilty. She killed that old male. She deserved . . . her sentence. I was wrong about what I thought happened with you turning her in, and I apologize. I thought . . . well, that doesn’t matter anymore.”
Her grandfather’s old eyes drifted to the horizon, which had a subtle, soon-to-be-deadly glow kindling. “Your sister has always been who she was.”
“I know that now.”
After a moment, he focused on her. “Did you see her, then?”
Nyx cleared her throat. “No. She’d died long before I got there.”
The trip back to the farmhouse took almost half an hour, and Nyx tried to ground herself in the familiar stretch of highway. In the low range of mountains. In the small town they passed through with its Sunoco station, and its garden center, and its diner.
But it was all a foreign country. She could barely read the signs around the gas pumps and understand what they were saying.
When her grandfather finally turned in to their farm’s long driveway, she sat up from her collapse against the back seats. In the milky headlights—one of which was blinking like it was about to short out— the house looked the same. There was the familiar front porch, and the rows of windows, and the roof, and the chimney . . .
She told herself this was her home. In her heart . . . she felt nothing. As much as she recognized all the details, this was a stranger’s house, her memories from inside and outside impossible to connect to.
The Volvo’s brakes squeaked, and her grandfather put the gearshift into park. When he got out, she fumbled with her door handle. Her fingers refused to grasp anything.
Her grandfather opened things up for her. And he reached inside, offering her his hand. “Let me help you.”
“I’m okay.” Yeah, the hell she was. Her voice was so thin, she could barely hear it herself.
Her grandfather took her arm anyway, and she relied on him to get out of the back. As she weaved on her feet, she glanced to the front of the car.
“So how did you fix it so fast?”
“You’ve been gone three days.”
Nyx turned her head to him—and cursed as a shot of pain ripped up her spine. “It felt like longer.”
It felt like forever.
The screen door slapped shut, the sound making her look to the porch.
As Posie raced out of the farmhouse and down the steps, her pink flowered dress and her blond hair streamed behind her. But she didn’t make it to the car.
She stopped dead halfway across the lawn.
As her eyes went wide, she dropped her hold on her skirting and clasped her mouth—and all Nyx could think of was . . . she didn’t have the damn strength for this. After everything she had been through, she didn’t have the energy to deal with Posie’s hysteria.
Nyx exhaled and shook her head—
With resolve, Posie seemed to collect herself, regathering that dress. And as she crossed the distance to the Volvo, her eyes were blinking quick, but there were no tears.
“Come on,” she said calmly, “let’s get you inside.”
As Nyx’s fragile, hysterical sister took hold of her arm, and quietly and with purpose, led the way to the house, Nyx went along without argument or a false show of strength. It was like the pair of them had traded whole portions of their personalities.
Or at least lent them for a little bit.
The stairs seemed next to impossible, and Nyx had to rely heavily on Posie to make it up the steps at all. And getting to the front door felt like she was sprinting ten full miles.
Inside the house, she looked around and again felt no connection to any of it. Not the rustic, handmade furniture, even though she had arranged the chairs and sofa and side tables. Not the photographs on the mantel or the painting on the wall, even though they all featured family members. And the rug underfoot was a total mystery.
