Page 140 of The Sister's Curse

I couldn’t look away.

Deep in my soul, I knew I was responsible for his death.

I’d been a killer since the beginning.

I told Nick. I told Nick about that killing and about the Rusalka. Maybe I told him because I wanted to drive him away, because I felt the need to be punished. He just listened, holding my hand.

“You had a head injury,” he said quietly, and I couldn’t refute that. It was certainly more plausible than believing I had become a supernatural creature.

“But I remember that man in the woods, the one I ordered my mom to kill.” My voice was low, fragile.

“You were a child,” he said. “You couldn’t have known your mom would do that.”

“But I’m responsible.”

“No. You’re not.”

I disagreed. But we tended to come at things from opposing angles. He did everything he could to preserve life. I was…not like that. I was something different. And I still wasn’t sure what I’d become.

—

The last green flash washed over my mind’s eye in the last week of summer, when the sun had turned south again and the days were beginning to shorten perceptibly. The water drizzling from our taps was cool and clean once more, smelling of nothing.

My dad returned without warning. Mom and I came in from hanging laundry, to find him sitting on the couch in the living room, unmoving.

“Dad!”

I flung myself at him, overjoyed. He smelled like wood smoke and flowers. I didn’t ask where he’d been. I was just glad he was back.

“How’s my favorite daughter?” He chuckled, ruffling my hair.

Mom slipped away from the room, as if she’d never been there. And I felt that absence, that hole. She retreated into herself once more, becoming cold and silent as a stone.

In the days that came, I told Dad about the poison. In my desire to impress him, I even told him what had become of the polluter, what I had done. Pride beamed on his face.

“You mustn’t tell anyone,” he told me, resting his hand on my shoulder.

“Why not?” My brow wrinkled.

He crouched before me in the kitchen. “Because you must not ever say anything that gets our family into trouble, all right? What happens in the family stays in the family.”

I agreed.

I glanced up at the kitchen witch figurine that hung over the sink. It had been there ever since I could remember. The witch’s beady black glass eyes followed me, always watching me, no matter where I stood in the room.

My mom had slipped away, though. She’d become distant with the return of my dad. It was as if Dad and she were part of a binary star system; only one could approach at a time.

I missed her. I felt that I was not only my father’s daughter, but also hers.

—

I drove down to my mother’s house and left a note in her mailbox.

I didn’t know if she’d meet me. I didn’t know what I expected.

I couldn’t confront my father. I had to be at peace with that. I had to know that all my love for him could never have changed him, could never have brought him to the light. I could never have stopped his killing. I could never know what he thought about all of those deaths. He was dead, and there was no coming back from that.

But I could confront my mother.