few moments to find the switch to the headlights of the car but when I did they shone like a beacon, slicing through the night’s ebony cloak ahead. I drive.
We pass the first house Luke and I had broken into. It sits, dejected and deserted, like a lonely ugly child at the playground that everyone has run off and left. I can make out the overgrown yard and the caved- in barn next to it as I drive by, not slowing. She isn’t there. I know where she is.
The next house is my destination and it is dark and still and silent as I kill the engine. The same dead tree sits upon the same tumbled down side of the same house, the same sunken porch is right where I left it, and I can even see the tire tracks of Luke’s truck. There is no hospitable light, no flickering candle or lamp to welcome me.
The butterflies in my stomach doing unbearable flips and somersaults now, I search Israel’s glove box and backseat to no avail. There is no helpful flashlight for my search. I leave the headlights of the Blue Beast on, shining brightly, and mere feet away from the front door. It is like a headlight, a spotlight on my destination. Through that front door. Through that front door and to my sister. I’ll make her see she has nothing to fear from me, that she can leave this place, that we can take her to meet her very own father, that we will live happily ever after.
It will happen. I can make this happen. If only I could leave the car.
It will happen.
It is so dark and I am so very cold.
********************
I have finally left the warmth of the car, leaving behind with it what seems to be all my courage and resolve. I am a strange mess of emotions as I turn the knob and push open the rusty, drafty front door. My stomach feels as though a hurricane is going on inside it, I am nauseous and shaky at the premonition of being so close to Rose that I almost touch her. I would not be able to explain to Luke or Israel or Dad why I know she’s here; she simply is as am I. We are breathing the same air, holding our breaths in the same places, as we find the valor to step forward and claim each other. The only difference is, I can’t see her. Yet I feel she sees me from somewhere in the dark.
I speak and I astonish myself by sounding very steady and sure. Inside I am a quaking mass of jelly but to anyone listening, I am granite firm and stable. “Rose? Rose Gray? It’s Sonnet, honey, I’m here to take you home. Rose?”
My steady, firm call echoes eerily in the stillness. The air feels thick with the hush that is nothing calling back to me. Nothing that answers me. Nothing that responds to my invitation.
I begin the climb up the staircase.
The stairs and what lies at the top of them is beyond the reach of the radiant headlights of the car outside. Five more stairs and I will be engulfed in darkness, swallowed by shadows of things I cannot see. Four. Three. Before I can lose what is left of my courage, I take the last two at once and am at the landing. My left hand grasps the old wooden rail with a desperation that I know turns my knuckles white even if I can’t see them. My other hand is clenched in a fist so tight that my nails make half moon shapes in my palm. It isn’t the darkness that is scaring me any longer; it’s the sound I can just barely make out. A soft whisper that at first sounds like a breath. A breath that becomes my name.
Sonnet.
“Yes!” I call. My voice is loud and painful to my ears.
Sonnet.
I nearly run to where I think I hear the voice. If my blind sense of direction is accurate, it’s the room with the mattress that I had been in earlier. The one I was sure had Rose on the other side of the door when I was with Luke, though he had heard no one. I fling the door open with such power that not only does it grant me entry, but it ricochets back again and slams shut with me on the inside. I can do nothing but stand still for