Damn,” said Eileen. “They told me that emergency brake was faulty.”
The sisters stood staring at the place where the van had been parked on the bluff’s asphalt incline. Now, it wasn’t there.
A real vanishing act. One that Murphy, with her bizarro magic obsession, could appreciate.
Claire, however, was making a choked-up sound, like she’d gone into anaphylactic shock. “How,” she wheezed. “How could it be gone?”
“I told you,” Eileen said, “the brake is messed up. Van must’ve rolled down the hill.”
“B-b-but—” Claire sputtered.
Eileen didn’t wait for an end to that sentence. She headed down the hill, calling back to the others, “It had to have stopped somewhere!”
Eileen would be lying if she were to claim, right then, that she wasn’t worried. Of course she was. The Caravan was a piece of shit that she hated wholeheartedly, but it was also (a) the sum of her life savings, and (b) their only way back to Emmet. It couldn’t be simply gone, and worse than that, it couldn’t have crashed. It had to be okay.
Eileen wouldn’t show that she was freaking out, though. Claire was clearly losing her goddamn mind, and only one Sullivan sister could lose it at a time. She had to keep it together for Murphy, and for herself.
It was slow going down the bluff—an effort that strained Eileen’s calves and nearly sent her tripping—but at last she reached the base of the hill. That’s where she found the Caravan.
The old junker was okay. From the looks of it, the van had slid all the way down the road, but it had curved inward, away from the cliffside, and ended up perched on a grassy embankment. Beyond that was a row of foreboding hemlock trees, a reminder of what could have been a sorrier end.
Yes, she knew her Caravan would run. Claire didn’t know that, though. Claire, who seemed obnoxiously determined to get them back to Emmet today, before Eileen had the chance to do what she’d come here to do. Claire didn’t know the trick of turning the key in the ignition just so.
In an instant, Eileen made her decision.
Turning to Claire, she said, “Of course it’ll work. Come on, get inside.”
They piled into the van, Eileen in the driver’s seat, Claire on the passenger side, and Murphy in the back.
Eileen slid the key in the ignition.
She turned it. Not the right way.
The engine sputtered, then died.
Eileen turned the key again.
The engine whirred. Then silence.
“What’s wrong?” demanded Claire.
“Hang on,” Eileen said. “This happens sometimes.”
She removed the key, making a big show of inspecting it. Then she jammed it in again and turned.
A guttural groan. No success.
“Fuck,” Eileen said, convincingly.
“W-w-wait,” said Claire. “What? All it did was roll down a hill. Why would that kill the battery? How could it be dead?”
“It’s a thirty-year-old dinosaur.” Eileen shrugged. “That’s how. Maybe the engine dropped out on the way down.”
“Don’t joke.”
“I’m not. That’s Murphy’s job.”
From the back seat, Murphy said, “Good one, Leenie.”
“Well, what are we supposed to do?”
Eileen detected a new surge of panic in Claire’s question. It almost made her feel guilty.
Almost.
“It’s fine,” she said. “The battery’s not dead. This just happens sometimes.”
“It just happens?”
“Yeah, Claire. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not a Tesla.”
“But … how do you get it to not happen?”
“The engine has to rest,” Eileen lied, with maximum smoothness. “That’s what the guys at the shop told me: You gotta let it rest for a while, after it’s been running for long periods of time.”
“For how long?”
Eileen squinted. “A few hours.”
“What?”
“Maybe longer.”
Maybe, her mind added smugly, until I get what I want from this house.
Claire was openmouthed. “How do you even know that’s the issue? How do you know it’s not the battery, or the … the … you know, the thing that starts the engine? Or the engine? How do you know we don’t need a mechanic?”
“Because I know my van.”
“What does that even mean? It’s not a person, it’s a machine. Are we supposed to wait until—”
“WOULD YOU TWO SHUT UP?”
Eileen started.
Fights with Claire were predictable. They had been for two years, ever since their shared bedroom had begun to feel too tight, and Eileen had moved into the garage, and Claire had begun watching YouTube religiously and “curating” an Instagram account. The fights began with a tiny conflict—the white specks on the bathroom mirror, or