Wes smiled and put the pig back down.
“She liked Poe?” he asked, trailing his fingers across several leather spines filled with the works of Edgar Allan Poe.
“Loved him. She used to recite Dream within a Dream to us before we went to bed at night.”
“I stand upon the shore…” Wes murmured the first line, continuing around the room.
He picked up a silver photo of their mother laughing as she kissed Crystal’s cheek. Crystal was three and her mother held her balanced on a hip. A wooden spoon, covered in chocolate frosting, poked from her free hand. Bette was standing on tiptoe, trying to lick the frosting as their mother’s attention was on Crystal. They’d been baking a birthday cake for their father and all three girls had flour on their faces and in their hair.
“You look like her,” Wes said.
Crystal gazed at the picture. She had her mother’s coppery red hair. But Bette had her brown eyes.
Nearly eleven years had passed since their mother’s death, and Crystal still felt a spasm of grief clutch her heart as she looked at the photograph.
“I like this room,” Wes told her. “All I have left of my dad is an old pipe and a few pictures.”
“What happened to all his stuff after he died?” she asked.
Wes shrugged.
“I don’t really know.”
“Dinner,” Bette called from downstairs.
“That’s our cue,” Weston told Crystal, taking her hand.
“You took him in mom’s room” Bette asked, when Wes disappeared into the bathroom.
Crystal looked up to find her sister grumpily opening a packet of sour cream.
“Sure, why not?” Crystal asked.
“Because you barely know him.”
Crystal shook her head. “Just the opposite, actually. I feel like I’ve known him my whole life. I feel like I’ve known him in lifetimes before.”
“But you haven’t, Crystal. You’ve known him for two months,” Bette snapped.
Crystal sighed, and moved closer to Bette, taking the sour cream packet from her hands and tearing along the perforated line. Their shoulders touched and Crystal pressed into her sister, leaning her head on Bette’s shoulder.
“Thank you for always protecting me, Bette, for always protecting all of us. But you can trust him. I feel his goodness, just like I feel yours.”
Crystal kissed her cheek and grabbed their plates, carrying them to the dining room table that Bette had cleared of books and paperwork for the first time in weeks.
“Time to switch the month,” Crystal announced, pausing at Bette’s calendar and pulling it from the nail it hung on.
She flipped it to June and returned it to the wall. It was a quirky cat calendar. June’s cat was a fluffy Himalayan lazing on a white stucco porch. A glittering Mediterranean city sloped toward the sea behind him.
As she shifted her eyes to the grid of days, the black numbers began to ooze down the page. Crystal gasped and stepped back. The dark tendrils pooled on the floor and then snaked across the tile towards her bare feet.
“Crystal?” Weston asked.
She jumped and her hands shot out, pushing him roughly away.
His eyes widened and he stumbled, bumping into the kitchen island.
Crystal spun back to the calendar, but the days of the month had returned to normal. Nothing seeped down the page. The cat continued napping in the image above, oblivious to the woman in another world watching him on trembling legs.
“Are you okay?” Weston asked, not touching her but clearly wanting to.
Bette watched them both from the doorway of the living room.
“What happened?” she asked, eyes shifting from Crystal to Weston.
Crystal shook her head.
“Nothing, I-” she gestured vaguely at the calendar. “I thought I saw a spider.”
Bette looked unconvinced. “Since when are you afraid of spiders?”
Crystal shook her head. “I’m not, it just startled me.”
Weston smiled and pulled her against him.
“My spider-fearing fire goddess.” He kissed the side of her head.
Bette looked like she might roll her eyes, but contained herself.
“Let’s eat,” Crystal announced. “I’m starving.”
“So, what did you think?” Crystal asked.
She hadn’t seen Bette for several nights — not since she’d introduced her to Weston.
Bette sat at her kitchen table, a flurry of notes spread out in front of her.
Crystal had stopped by after working at the coffee shop, bringing pastries and coffee to sweeten up her sister.
Bette stood and walked to the counter where Crystal had set the white paper bag. She extracted an almond scone and took a bite.
“He’s okay, a little gooey for my tastes, but…” Bette shrugged. “He’s better than the tuba player.”
Crystal laughed and threw a dried cranberry from her own scone at her sister.
“Hey!” Bette said, scrambling to grab the cranberry. “I just swept.”
“Better than the tuba player is hardly a compliment, considering the last time I saw him he was unconscious in my parking lot.”
Bette laughed.
“You’ve always attracted the crazy ones,” Bette said. “And you’re the one who didn’t call the cops when he started drinking from a bottle of tequila and playing his tuba beneath your window.”
Crystal hung her head and laughed. “Oh God, he was crazy, wasn’t he? But he’d been so nice to his grandmother at Hospice House. He had a good heart. I still believe that.”
Bette rolled her eyes. “That’s why you don’t date people you meet at work. Obviously, you haven’t learned your lesson since you’re now sleeping with one of your professors.”
Crystal grinned and hopped up on the counter, legs dangling over the side. “We’re doing a lot more than that.”
Bette wrinkled her nose.
“Eew,” she said, shaking her head and returning to her chair at the table.
“Not like that,” Crystal protested. “Oh, never mind.”
Bette set her scone on a napkin. “Oh yeah, the love thing. You realize he’s got a decade on you?”
“Nine years,” Crystal corrected. “He’s nine years older than me.”
“Which puts him at nineteen when you were ten, which definitely classifies him as a pedophile.”
“Stop,” Crystal moaned, flicking another cranberry at her sister.
It bounced off her forehead and landed somewhere in her long dark braid.
Bette grimaced and picked at her hair until she found it.
Crystal looked at her watch.
“I’ve got to go. I told Linda I’d pick up a shift at Hospice House tonight. The new girl called in sick.”
“Again?”
Crystal nodded. “She turns green every time someone throws up. I don’t think she’s cut out for hospice.”
“Apparently not,” Bette agreed.
“Hug me,” Crystal said, stopping next to Bette and offering to help her up from her chair.
Bette took her hand.
“Are we hugging now when we say goodbye?” Bette asked, wrapping her arms around her younger sister.
“Yes.”
They hugged for a long time.
Crystal pulled away, but paused at the doorway.
“I love you, Bette,” she said.
“I love you too, sis. I hope nobody dies on you tonight.”
Crystal blew her sister a kiss and walked out the door.
16
Now
Bette called the office of the professor she worked for and left him a message. She wouldn’t be in for the rest of the week, maybe not the week after. Her sister was her only priority.