The Familiar Dark - Amy Engel

THE END

They died during a freak April snowstorm, blood pooling on a patchy bed of white. Afterward, some people said the killer must have kept an eye on the gathering gray clouds. Taken the weather as a cue to strike and picked the moment when everyone else was huddled indoors, shivering in their optimistic shirtsleeves and muttering about global warming. Armchair detectives trying to make sense of something that would never be anything but senseless. They were wrong, of course. It had nothing to do with the weather. The girls could have told them that, if the girls had been capable of speaking.

Izzy died first, dark brown hair tangled over her face and one eye peeking out between the strands. A slow blink, gaze trained on Junie’s face. Another blink, focus fading. Junie waited for a third blink that never came, watched blood unspool in the space between them. She tried to reach for Izzy, meaning to shake her back into the world, but couldn’t make her own hand move. It felt weighted down even though she couldn’t remember being tied up. Couldn’t remember anything, really. Why she was here or what was happening. Only a dim, distant terror that pulsed along with her fading heartbeat. She pushed a sound out of her ruined throat, a name, a plea, a prayer. But it never made it past her lips. A bubble of blood popped and spilled over. The snow pressed cold against her cheek.

“Shhh . . .” a voice said. “It’ll be over soon. Shhh . . .” A hand on her head, stroking her hair.

She tilted her eyes upward, the only part of her body she could seem to move. Saw the edge of the swing set, a branch coated in white, the flat, iron gray sky. Last time she’d been here was with her mother. They’d had ice cream that melted down their hands faster than they could eat it. Hot, sweaty dusk and fireflies. Swinging side by side and Junie’s mother jumping off her swing at its highest arc, blond hair whipping out behind her, throaty laugh cutting through the air. Telling Junie the secret was not to think about it. Close your eyes and fly.

Mama. The longing tore through her like a barbed hook, her body bucking once against the ground, her hand spasming into a fist. I want my mama. She smelled her mother’s perfume, a spring garden doled out a single drop at a time to make the bottle last. She heard her mother’s voice, whispering comfort into the shell of her ear. She tasted salt, tears on her lips and blood in her mouth. She knew this was the end, and couldn’t believe it was coming so close to the beginning. A sigh shuddered out of her. Watch me, Mama. I can do it. She closed her eyes and soared.

ONE

I’d had one eye on the clock all day. Had taken heaps of shit for it, too. Every time I’d leaned over the counter to pick up an order, Thomas had swatted at my hand with his grease-spattered spatula. “You got somewhere else you need to be?” he asked, tsking under his breath. “Yeah, somewhere better than this crap hole,” I shot back, laughing when he went for me with the spatula again. That was about the only good thing I could find in having worked in this dump for more than a decade: I didn’t have to mind my manners anymore.

“It’s almost five o’clock,” I called out, after watching the minute hand creep around the clock one final time.

“What’s your hurry today, anyway?” Louise asked, retying her apron around her thick waist. “You’re like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Keep it up and you’re gonna give Thomas a heart attack. You know he hates it when we’re distracted.”

I threw a glance back through the pickup window, winked at Thomas, who couldn’t quite manage to keep his scowl in place. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Antsy, I guess.” Maybe it was the strange, unexpected weather. Yesterday had been a budding, whispery green, the air scented with wildflowers. Today snow had splattered against the diner’s plate glass windows, tiny swirls sneaking inside every time someone opened the door. But now the sun was starting to peek out from behind the cloud cover, just in time