Page 67 of The Locked Ward

Families love to tell stories about themselves—yours did, anyway.

Most were about adorable things Annabelle did as a toddler, like call dessert “bazzurt.” Honey loved recounting the tale of how she won the title of Miss North Carolina.

Then there was the story about the time you tried to kill Annabelle by shoving her stroller into traffic.

That oft-repeated tale fostered bad blood between you and Annabelle from a very young age.

Family lore—which spread to Honey’s circle of cohorts and beyond—went like this: Honey, along with a nanny, was taking you and Annabelle on an errand.

You were walking because you were too high-energy to sit.

Annabelle was in the fancy Bugaboo stroller, the kind celebrities favored.

While everyone waited for the light to change to cross the street, you released the stroller’s brake and gave it a push.

The nanny yanked the stroller back just before Annabelle was hit by a car.

Evidence of your pathological envy, even as a small child.

It’s your very first memory.

If Honey hadn’t repeated the story so often, it wouldn’t have wedged deeply into Annabelle’s mind. But that origin story was what ultimately brought you and Annabelle closer together toward the very end of her life.

You’d barely spent any time together in two decades, ever since you’d left for boarding school.

You certainly didn’t meet for mani-pedis or call each other to chat.

You texted on the rarest of occasions. The last one you’d received from her came months earlier, a flat, two-word message: happy birthday.

So when your phone rang one afternoon, you were shocked to see her name flash on the screen. You answered, assuming something monumental had happened.

“I was just with my friend Taylor,” she blurted in a high, tremulous voice. “We were shopping, and her baby was in the stroller. Then, when we were waiting to cross the street, the stroller began to roll forward, even though Taylor put on the brake. I saw her do it.”

You sank down onto your couch, holding the phone close to your ear.

“The baby is fine, but she could’ve been hit by a car.

Taylor completely freaked out. And this older woman who saw it happen told her to sue the manufacturer—she said stroller brakes have this long history of being faulty.

We looked it up and it’s true. All kinds of companies have issued recalls because of it. Even Bugaboo, a long time ago.”

You closed your eyes as hot tears filled them. You understood what Annabelle was asking.

The sights and sensations of that long-ago day came rushing back to you—the heat of the sun on your bare arms, huge cars whizzing by, the stroller beginning to roll. The panic tightening your chest. Your little hands stretching up and closing around the handle.

You released the words you’d held inside for so long they’d atrophied into a hard, painful knot in the center of your heart: “I was trying to save you.”

The only sound you could hear for a long moment was Annabelle breathing.

Then she said, “I remember you telling that once to Mom. I must have been five or six. She told you if you kept lying about it, you’d go to hell. Who says that kind of thing to a little kid?”

You gave a bitter laugh. “If that was the worst thing Honey ever did or said to me, I’d consider myself lucky.”

You and Annabelle talked for a solid hour. The next day, you met for your first sisters’ lunch.

Yes, you told her to hide in the dryer. But Kyle Dawson turned it on.

Then Kyle told Annabelle you did it and said, if she told anyone, you’d threatened to duct-tape the dryer shut next time.

Annabelle and Colby stared at you, wide-eyed, while you stood by silently.

You were too scared of Kyle to rebut him.

You pushed Annabelle into the lake because she was being bitchy to you that day. The water was only a couple of feet high; it didn’t even reach her chest.

Siblings who fight and shout that they wish the other one would die? You’re far from the first sisters to do that.

Family stories are like the old game of telephone. As they get passed along, details blur and change. Embellishments are added.

But everything was seen by Honey through the lens of you as the villain and Annabelle as the victim.

That singular phone call created an opening in the membrane surrounding your old world with Annabelle, one filled with mutual distrust and antipathy.

It was why you came to her thirty-second birthday party. You wanted to celebrate her and your new, fledging relationship.

In those final days together, you and Annabelle had other conversations. Rewrote old scripts. Flipped the lens Honey had built for you both to see through.

“It was like she pitted us against each other,” Annabelle said one night. “I’m so sorry I was so awful to you… I’m ashamed. I hope you can forgive me someday.”

Her words seemed to ring through your apartment, tearing apart the remnants of that bitter old world and allowing light and warmth to flood the new one.

This is how close you became in that short amount of time: Annabelle was the only person you ever told about Mandy.