Carolina Moon

prison.
    Later on I heard my mother’s music. She would have been in her sitting room, writing letters, answering invitations, planning the next day’s menus, schedules, and whatever else she did as mistress of the house. My father would have been in his tower office, seeing to the business of the farm, and having a quiet glass of bourbon.
    Lilah snuck me in some supper, minus the peas. She didn’t coax and cuddle, but simply by that one small act stroked me. Bless her, she has always been there, steady as a rock and warm as toast.
    I ate because she’d brought it to me, and because it was a rebellion both of us shared, in secret. After, I lay there as the room grew dark. I imagined Mama brushing Hope’s hair as she did every night after bath time. She would have brushed mine as well, to be fair, but I wouldn’t sit still for it. She would have gone up to Papa after, Hope would, to say good night. And all the while she was doing what was expected of her, she was planning her own secret rebellion.
    I heard her walk down the hallway, and pause at my room. I wish—it does no good to wish, but I wish I had gotten up, opened the door, and browbeat her into coming in to keep me company. It might have made a difference. She would have felt sorry for me, and she might have told me what she was going to do. In my state of mind, I might have gone along with her, just to thumb my nose at Mama. She wouldn’t have been alone.
    But I stayed grimly stubborn in my bed and listened to her walk away.
    I didn’t know she left the house. I might have looked out my window any time and seen her. But I didn’t. Instead I scowled into the dark until I slept.
    And while I slept, she died.
    I didn’t feel, as it’s often said twins do, a break in the thread between us. I didn’t experience a premonition or dream of disaster. I didn’t feel her pain or her fear. I slept on as I expect most children do, deeply and carelessly while the person who shared womb and birth with me died alone.
    It was Tory who felt that break, that pain and fear. I didn’t believe it then, didn’t choose to. Hope was my sister, not hers, and how dare she claim to have been such an intimate part of what was mine.? I preferred to believe, as many others did, that Tory had indeed been in the swamp that night, and had run away and left Hope to face terror.
    I believed this even though I saw her the next morning. She came limping down our lane, early in the morning. She walked like an old woman, as if each step was an effort of courage. It was Cade who opened the door for her, but I had tiptoed out to the top of the stairs. Her face was pale as death itself her eyes huge.
    She said: Hope’s in the swamp. She couldn’t get away, and he hurt her. You have to help.
    I think he asked her in, politely, but she wouldn’t come across the threshold. So he left her there, and as I raced back to my own room, he went to look into Hope’s. It all happened quickly then. Cade running back down, calling for Papa. Mama ran down. Everyone was talking at once, and paid no mind to me. Mama took Tory’s shoulder, shook her, shouted at her. All the while, Tory just stood, a rag doll well used to, I supposed, being kicked.
    It was Papa who pulled Mama off, who told her to call the police right away. It was he who questioned Tory in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. She told him of their plans the night before, and how she hadn’t gone because she’d fallen and hurt herself. But Hope had gone and someone had come after her. She said all this in a dull and calm voice, an adult’s voice. And she kept her eyes on Papa’s face the whole time, and told him she could take him to Hope.
    I learned later that’s exactly what she did, led Papa and Cade, then the police who followed, through the swamp to Hope.
    Life was forever altered, for all of us.
    Faith lowered the pad, leaned back on the bench. She could hear the twitter of birds now, and smell the perfume of dark earth and ripe flowers. Slivers of sunlight shimmered through the tangled canopy of branches and moss to dapple on the ground in pretty patterns and turn the green light into something that just hinted of gold.
    The marble statue stayed silent, forever smiling, forever young.
    It was so like Papa, she thought, to cover the hideous with the lovely. A pretense, perhaps, but a statement as well. Hope had lived, she imagined him thinking. And she was mine.
    Had he brought his woman here? she wondered. Had the woman