Page 120 of The Sister's Curse

I stepped back from the telescope to give Nick his turn. Gibby leaned against me, and I realized he had something on his collar.

My heart thundered as I knelt to remove it. It was a velvet jewelry box, tied to Gibby’s collar with a ribbon. Nick must have slipped it on when I was distracted by the telescope.

Nick sat on the picnic blanket, feigning innocence.

I opened the box. It contained a ring, a solitaire diamond set flush in a platinum band. It was the ring he’d proposed to me with a year and a half ago, when I’d said no.

“I can’t imagine having a relationship this honest with anyone else,” Nick said. “I want us to be together for the rest of our lives, whatever it takes.”

I stared at the ring, gleaming starlike in my hand. I could say no, and my world would be the same as it always had been—dangerous and solitary.

But if I said yes, I would be saying yes to closing this chapter and opening another, to something new and different. And I’d have the person who best understood me by my side.

I looked at him, holding Gibby, and Gibby’s tail thumped on the ground.

There was a lump in my throat.

“I need…I need to think about it,” I whispered.

“I understand.” His face was still shining, hopeful. Hopeful that I’d come to the right decision. “Take the time you need.”

I nodded.

I glanced toward the back garden. Two reflective fox eyes watched me pretend to be civilized.

27

Trace Evidence

I couldn’t sleep, curled in Nick’s arms, sandwiched between him and Gibby. All was quiet, perfectly still. I listened to the dog snore and felt Nick’s breath tickle the back of my neck.

Things were changing. I could feel it. Perhaps all the havoc with this case was a sign from the universe for me to get the hell out of Dodge. We hadn’t talked about it any further, about Nick moving to the city and me following him. I thought we had time. I thought for a moment about what would happen if we went beyond the city…What would happen if we moved west, to land where the sky stretched from horizon to horizon? What if we went to the ocean?

There was part of me that couldn’t do that. At least not until I made peace with this place.

I slithered out from between Nick and Gibby, slipped on my shoes, and stepped noiselessly outside. I walked to the back garden, where the fox was waiting for me among the wilted lettuce and the sunburned tomatoes.

Sinoe watched me with shining eyes.

I wanted to tell her about how I’d fucked up with her mom, how I’d let things get so bad. How I had nothing left and I was sorry. So sorry.

But she was not here for that. She turned and trotted off to the forest.

I followed.

Fireflies hung low, gathering close to the ground. I followed the fox, sweeping through Virginia creeper and past black raspberries. I could feel my pulse, slow and steady; for a moment, I was thinking of nothing. Not of my failures or the future, just tracking with the fox.

Hunting.

Green washed over my vision like an aurora. I remembered hunting with my mom.

We slipped through the forest, following a light in the distance. Not fireflies this time, but headlights. Headlights shouldn’t be this deep in the forest.

We crept up on the man who was our quarry. We’d been tracking his movements for weeks, the man and his Jeep filled with barrels of sickly sweet chemicals that killed everything they touched. We’d come to know his tire tracks, how they crossed the two-lane road into the forest at one of two access points. He always came on Monday and Wednesday nights, after midnight, when the moon approached the horizon.

There was no moon tonight. The forest was black and looming, thick and teeming with anger.

We crouched behind honeysuckle, watching as he rolled from the back of the Jeep big drums that hit the ground with a bang. He shoved one, two, three, four, five drums to the forest floor. One rolled within ten feet of our hiding place, but I remained frozen,watching. Mom was still and silent, her pupils dilated large and black like a cat’s.