Page 22 of All These Beautiful Strangers

“What are you doing tomorrow?” I asked.

“What is it, Saturday?” she asked. I could picture her lounging on her dorm bed, picking at her fingernails. “Hopefully, practicing my two favorite deadly sins: gluttony and sloth,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“Uncle Hank called me the other day,” I said.

I lied because I didn’t want to alarm her by telling her that he had come to see me, or mentioning the pictures.

“That wacko?” Seraphina asked. “What did he want?”

“Well, you know how Grandma and Grandpa Fairchild always have that thing every year for Mom’s birthday?”

There was a pause.

“Yeah,” she said.

“He wanted me to come,” I said. “Actually, he wanted both of us to come.”

There was another pause on the line, this one longer. The lady behind the counter rang up my items slowly and put them in a paper bag.

“Seraphina, you still there?” I asked, holding the phone between my chin and shoulder as I handed the cashier a twenty from my wallet.

“I don’t understand why you want to go, I guess,” Seraphina said.

I mouthed, Thanks, to the lady behind the counter and headed out the front of the store onto the sidewalk with my purchases.

It was a fair enough question, and the truth was, if it weren’t for the pictures, I wouldn’t have wanted to go. But I had seen the pictures, and those pictures had unsettled me. I wasn’t sure what they were all about, what they meant, but they raised questions. Questions I couldn’t leave unanswered. But I didn’t know how to make Seraphina understand that without telling her everything, and I didn’t want to do that over the phone.

“I just think it’s time,” I said. “I mean, they’re still our family, whatever our mother did.”

The thing was, I had to go back to Hillsborough. I had to go back to the house on Langely Lake. I had to talk to my mother’s oldest friend, Claire. And maybe if my sister was there, and I could explain everything to her, we could do this together.

“I don’t know,” Seraphina said. “I’m fine seeing them at Christmas and stuff, but it feels weird to go to something that’s all about her. And Dad would be pissed if he found out.”

“It’s just for one night,” I said. “If we hate it, we can leave, I promise.”

There was a sigh. A long drawn-out breath.

“If I figure out the train schedule, will you come?” I asked. “I can pick you up in Hillsborough.”

“I suppose I can practice my deadly sins another time,” Seraphina said.

“You are the picture of virtue, my good sister,” I said.

Drew knelt next to my desk drawer and worked the lock with the ends of two large paper clips.

“Fuck,” she said. “It broke.”

She tossed the broken paper clip on the floor and reached for a fresh clip from the pile next to her.

“Don’t push so hard,” I said as I sat on my bed and pulled on a pair of black booties. Drew had to steal Ren’s sealed file from the counselor’s office for her ticket, so she was practicing on my locked desk drawer. I’d overheard enough of the lock-picking tutorials she’d watched on YouTube to get the gist of the process.

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Drew said as she inserted two fresh paper clips into the drawer’s lock and tried again.

I glanced at the time on my phone. It was nearing eleven o’clock. In my closet mirror, I checked my all-black ensemble: black jeans, black booties, black tank, black pullover. How convenient that all black was both practical for late-night burglaries and stylishly classic.

There was a loud click and I looked over to see Drew pulling my desk drawer open.

“Nailed it,” she said.