“How about the beard, Wes? Why did you shave your beard?”
Wes scratched at his bare face. “My wife—”
Bette didn’t let him finish. Furious, she stood and turned to leave, but Weston grabbed her arm.
“Didn’t you know her at all, Bette? Your sister. Would she have fallen in love with me if I were the man you’re claiming? Would she have fallen in love with me if I were a killer?”
Bette jerked her arm from his grasp. “You won’t get away with this, Weston. You think your pretty-boy bullshit makes you invisible, but I see you. I fucking see you.”
She stormed from the table, breaking into a run as she fled the cafe.
By the time she reached her car, tears flowed in rivers down her cheeks. She struggled to breathe, to contain the sobs, the cries that would contort her face and wither her body. She needed to be alone for those tears, in the car, or better yet in her bed.
She drove fast through town, running a red light and narrowly missing a pickup truck. The driver laid on his horn and flipped her the finger.
Bette barely registered him. When she reached her house, she ran inside, pounded up the stairs and collapsed on her bed. The sobs came then. Loud, furious, sobs that could break a person in two.
She stood and wrung her hands, pacing away from the bed.
Her eyes fell on a picture of Crystal on her bedside table. The girls sat in a field of flowers back to back. Long black hair and long red hair pressed into one mane of dark crimson.
“Damn it. God damn it,” she heaved, wanting to reach into the picture and pull her sister out.
“Crystal,” she whispered. “Please…”
But the phone didn’t ring as it had so many times in the past when Bette called out for her sister. Crystal knew when you needed her or if you’d run out of coffee creamer or if the dog in the shelter had parvo and you could adopt him, though he’d be dead within a year.
Bette remembered that sweet pup with the golden fur and the sad brown eyes, and she’d opted instead for the beagle dog, six months old, strong as an ox, as a gift for their father.
But they hadn’t left the golden puppy. Crystal had rescued him. He’d slept in her bed for four months and then, one morning, he didn’t wake up.
Bette slid to the floor. The pain clenching and unclenching, a constant desperate desire to know, to find her sister, to hold her. But no reprieve came. She could only sit on her floor, stare at her picture, and wish and wonder and cry.
“I could never do what you could,” Bette murmured, the picture clutched so tightly she loosened her grip for fear of shattering the frame.
If Bette had gone missing, Crystal would know where to find her. She’d have driven to Bette without pause, but she wasn’t Crystal, never had been and never would be.
17
The Northern Michigan Asylum
1966
Greta Claude
“Someday a white horse is going to come out of those woods and rescue us,” Maribelle said, lying long on a tree branch, stomach down, with arms dangling over the sides.
Greta sat on the ground pinching ants when they scurried up her tennis shoe. She crushed them and dropped their tiny bodies back into the grass.
“Rescue us from what?” Greta asked. “Daddy?”
“Daddy and this whole place. This whole evil place. Daddy’s a liar,” Maribelle whispered.
She sat up and climbed down from the tree, looking towards the path in the woods as if that white horse might just appear today.
They were twins; not identical, not in appearance nor personality. Greta’s hair was silver white and Maribelle’s was black as coal. Where Greta was subservient, Maribelle was defiant. Maribelle laughed loudly, twirled in the yard, snuck dolls out of the children’s ward in the asylum so she and Greta had toys to play with. Toys they kept hidden in a hollowed log in the woods because their father forbid toys, especially dolls.
“We wouldn’t have anywhere to go,” Greta complained.
“We’d go to a castle. A beautiful castle perched on a cloud. You’d only be able to see it on clear, sunny days. The castle would be made from pink crystal, and the beds would be filled with fluffy feathers, and for breakfast every day we’d get bowls of melon and strawberry milkshakes. Only special people could see it. Daddy’s eyes are black. When he looks at our castle, he’ll see nothing but clouds.” Maribelle tilted her face toward the sky and her long dark hair hung down her back.
“But how can you say that? This is our home. Daddy said a Claude must always stay here at the asylum, always pay homage to the land.”
Maribelle scowled and kicked the base of the tree. She bent over and grabbed a handful of pigweed. She threw the leafy stalks to the side and crunched them under her flat black shoes.
When she stopped, sweat glistened on her face.
“Did you see the lady in the black dress?” she asked.
Greta nodded and flicked an ant off her wrist.
“She was pretty,” Maribelle said, and her words sounded pinched, like she was trying not to cry.
Greta shrugged.
“Daddy has to feed the land, Maribelle,” she said, avoiding her sister’s tear-filled gaze.
“I found something in the basement.” Maribelle sat down next to Greta and fished in the pocket of her dress. She pulled out a small gold ring containing a red stone and a white stone.
Greta glanced at it, and her eyes widened.
“You should have put it in the black bag,” she whispered. “If anyone ever found it—”
“They’d know what Daddy did,” Maribelle finished.
18
Then
“Tell me more about this sixth sense you have,” Weston said. “How did you know that lady was sick today?”
Crystal and Wes had been grabbing salad fixings and wine from a little market near campus when a woman had paused in an aisle.
Moments before she collapsed, Crystal had walked close to the woman and snaked an arm around her waist. Weston had been startled, but almost immediately the woman’s eyes rolled back in her head and she lost consciousness.
Crystal gazed at Weston’s curious face and wondered how much she wanted to reveal.
“It’s something I’ve always been able to do,“ she admitted. “I sense things. Today with the woman in the store…” She bit her lip, warmth creeping into her face. “I saw a shadow around her, a darkness. She’s going to die.”
“She’s going to die?” he asked. “How can you know that?”
“I’ve seen the shadow before. I understand what it means.” She said the words, but didn’t look at him, feared he would sense all that she held back.
“You’ve seen the shadow and then those people have died?” he asked.
Crystal nodded. “Bette has likened the gift to being really good at trivia When does that ever come in handy unless you’re on Jeopardy?”
“Sure, if we’re talking about who was the forty-fourth president or the state bird for Minnesota,” he argued. “But you’re sensing when someone will die. That’s pretty significant.”
“We’re all going to die,” she murmured.
He gazed at her seriously, but Crystal leaned over the couch and draped her hair in Wes’s face. He put a strand in his mouth.
“Mmm, tastes like you. Be careful or I’ll eat you bald,” he told her.