Eileen rose from the couch and, with care, tugged an object from her left pocket—not the gum pocket, the alcohol one. The flask was half empty, and she decided she could spare a whole half of that tonight. Sure, it was more than usual, but this was a special occasion. Eileen needed the liquid courage to see herself through her clerical task.
She crossed the parlor, surveying the stacked boxes, and took a pull of the liquor, allowing it to burn down her throat. Then she pocketed the flask and got to work, taking down one box, removing its lid, and sitting with the contents.
At the moment it was only electric bills and tons of old issues of The New Yorker. Eileen wasn’t deterred, though, and she wasn’t thrown off the scent. What she was looking for might be wedged between an insurance bill and an old Christmas card. There was no knowing.
As she sat, meticulously sifting, a memory came to her. One of her very own “remember whens.” She’d been thirteen, and Claire had been twelve, and they’d decided to walk the forty-five minutes from their house to the Emmet Walmart in an unusually sweltering August heat. Claire had needed shoes for the start of school; she’d worn her only pair of sneakers down to peeling rubber.
“I don’t know what I want,” she’d told Eileen. “It has to be good, though. It’s seventh grade; I need to make an impression.”
Eileen had told her impressions didn’t matter, and she should just be herself. Claire had told Eileen she sounded like Mr. Rogers. Eileen had said thank you for the compliment. It hadn’t been a fight. They’d bantered, goaded, teased—but they hadn’t fought back then.
“I don’t know what I want,” Claire had repeated as they entered the store, stepping into the cool bliss of air-conditioning. “I’ll know what it is when I see it, though.”
Those words echoed in Eileen’s brain, relevant five years later, as she sat in darkness, with only firelight to illuminate her search.
She needed an answer to this question: Am I the daughter of a cold-blooded killer?
She didn’t know in what form she’d get the answer.
She only knew she’d know what it was when she saw it.
DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH
TWENTY Claire
Claire. Yoo-hoo!”
It was a rude awakening. Claire’s joints were stiff as marble, skin ice-cold, and here was Murphy hanging over her, red curls tickling Claire’s nose. This close, Claire could smell her sister’s stale morning breath.
“Murph, stop.” Claire swatted her away.
“Whoa, sorry!” Murphy threw up her hands. “I tried nudging first. You’re a hard sleeper.”
That wasn’t true, though. The past month Claire hadn’t slept well at all. Before the early admission decision came in, she’d been kept awake by jumpy anticipation. Then the rejection had come. Claire hadn’t been sleeping hard for a while.
Who knew that what she’d needed to do for a good night’s sleep was drive through the middle of the night, be sleeted upon, and break into a dead man’s house?
A life of crime, she thought wryly. The new Ambien.
“What time is it?” Claire asked, pushing out of her quilted cocoon.
Murphy shrugged. “You were the one with the phone. It’s light outside, though.”
She pointed to the parlor’s row of windows, through which gray light illuminated rain hitting as hard against the house as it had the night before. Claire grimaced.
“Yeah, still storming,” said Murphy. “I bet the whole town’s going to flood.”
“Comforting.” Claire rubbed her temples.
At this rate the Caravan had most likely been swept off the side of the road and cast into the ocean.
You’re being pessimistic, warned the internal voice of Harper Everly. Excellers don’t think negatively. They’re not sarcastic, either. You must—
Claire punched the voice in the face. For the first time in over two years, she wasn’t listening. She’d made her decision yesterday, when she’d smashed up her phone. Today, she would do and be whatever she pleased.
“Where’s Eileen?” she asked, glancing around the parlor. Her eyes landed on a figure slumped against the opposite wall.
There was an open box in Eileen’s lap. Her head was lolled to one side, mouth hanging open. Though Claire couldn’t see the drool from this distance, she could imagine it well enough. She rolled her eyes. What did Eileen hope to find in this house? A tall stack of hundred-dollar bills?
“Leenie,” she called across the room.
Eileen didn’t stir.
Murphy tsked and said, “She’s a harder sleeper than you.”
Claire’s stomach let out a gritty howl. She clutched it, wincing at the gnaw of hunger coming on fast.