Page 11 of The Sister's Curse

“It was a girl. Your sister.”

My brain boggled at the idea of having a sibling…a sister. How could she tell it was a girl, with all that blood?

I took a step toward her. “I can call the doctor…”

“No.” She shook her head and blew out a plume of smoke. “It’s done.”

I struggled with question after question, and settled on: “How?”

She grimaced. “It’s that water. We’ve been drinking it for weeks.”

“What? The water…the water killed your baby?”

She stared straight ahead, unemotional. “There’s orange juice in the fridge. Drink that instead. And turn out the light.”

“What happened to the water?” I asked quietly, turning the light off and retreating to the doorway.

“I don’t know.” I couldn’t see her eyes in the dark, just her long,pale fingers spread by her nearly empty pack of cigarettes. “But I mean to find out.”

—

I awoke to a key scraping in the lock. I sat upright in bed, and turned on the bedside light. Gibby rushed to the door. I glanced at the clock. Almost five.

Nick let himself into the kitchen, and negotiated with the dog about the amount of slobber that was appropriate for a greeting. His keys jingled on the countertop, and I heard the rattle of a treat bag, then crunching.

Nick came into the bedroom to sit on the edge of the bed. His scrubs bore mysterious stains, his dark hair was tousled, and his stubble had grown in.

I didn’t dare ask if he’d lost the boy. I waited, and silence stretched between us as the entanglement between our cases thickened like spiderwebs. We came from opposite realms. He was a scientist, believing in the things he could see and quantify. I was steeped in dreams, memory, and bizarre flashes of intuition held at arm’s length. Our worlds usually remained separate. We both knew it was trouble when they intersected.

“The boy who almost drowned…he’s in a coma. I don’t know how—if—he’ll wake up. If he survives, he’s going to have a long road to recovery.” His voice thickened. Nick brimmed with compassion for other people. He hurt when they did. He understood their pain. I didn’t…not always. I thought I understood Nick’s pain most of the time. I really tried to. But for everyone else…I hoped I did a good job of acting like I did.

“I’m glad to hear he’s got a chance,” I said at last.

“He was really lucky that you were there, and that the volunteer fire department was only a mile down the road,” he observedquietly. He ran his fingers through his brown hair, a gesture he made when he was disturbed about something.

“Are you okay?”

“Something’s not right about what happened.” When he said this, I trusted him. Nick was an exemplary ER physician. He noticed all the small details.

“What did you see? The scratches?”

“Yeah. He had fresh scratches on his body, lower legs and ribs. And I suctioned mud out of his lungs.”

“I pulled him from a pond, tried to get the water out.”

“Right. He should’ve had water in his lungs, but not mud. For him to have mud, he would have had to be pressed into the mud and trying to breathe it.” He looked at me with clear hazel eyes. “A kid that small can’t dive that far down on his own.”

My instincts were correct. Something was wrong about the case. “So, you’re saying this was attempted murder.”

Nick nodded.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t want it to be true.

“Hey. What’s going on?”

An injured child was bad, but Nick knew me well enough to know there was something else bothering me.

I took his hand in both of mine and opened a sliver of my world to him. I told him about the weird feelings I had about the pond, about the green flash. I told him about the thing I perceived in the water, how it felt as if Mason had been held down.