Murphy wiped at the tears and shrugged. “I dunno. I’m … fine.”
The exhaustion in Mom’s face intensified. “I asked you girls about this. We went over everything.”
That was true. When Mom had gotten the phone call informing her that she was the lucky winner of the Bahamian Cruise Sweepstakes, she’d called Murphy and her sisters into the den and explained.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance,” she told them, “but I don’t have to go.”
How were you supposed to say “don’t go” to that?
So Murphy hadn’t. None of them had.
She wiped more tears and said, “I’m totally fine.”
Mom nodded hesitantly. Murphy could see she needed to believe.
“You have the emergency numbers,” Mom said, as though that made it better. Then she opened her arms to Murphy.
Hugging Mom felt like hugging a ghost—embracing a presence not fully there.
Eileen raised a hand when Mom turned to her, and said, “Not my thing.”
A flash of hurt crossed Mom’s face, and she glanced toward the hallway where Claire had run off, barricading herself in the bedroom. There was conflict in her light eyes—a decision unmade. Then, sighing, Mom turned to her purse and pulled out a printed plane ticket.
The time for deciding was, it seemed, over.
Mom rolled the suitcase out the carport door, down the driveway, and toward the family’s old-as-rocks Subaru.
“This is bullshit,” said Eileen, not loud enough for Mom to hear.
Eileen didn’t care, maybe, but it was bullshit. She took a final look at Leslie Sullivan opening the driver’s side door. When the car started, a song blasted from the speakers: Mariah Carey crooning about what she wanted for Christmas.
“Bullshit,” Eileen said again—softly, to herself.
She turned from the scene and walked away.
“Wait!” Murphy called. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye?”
But Eileen already had.
Murphy stayed where she was, hugging her jean jacket against the cold. Mom rolled down the window and waved one gloved hand out.
“Bye, sweetie!” she called. “I’ll see you in five days!”
The day after Christmas.
Murphy waved as the car backed out of the driveway and clunked off the curb. She squinted against the rising sun, watching the Subaru fade into the horizon. Then she kept standing there, watching, waiting … for what? A twist ending? A real-life magic act?
It didn’t come.
“It’s fine,” the last standing Sullivan sister told herself. “It’ll be fine.”
She was wrong, though.
At that moment Eileen was going outside to check the mail.
Claire, curled up with her phone, was looking at the Yale admissions portal.
And there was a dead body in Murphy’s room.
DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH
TWENTY-EIGHT Eileen
In the dream Eileen was younger. Twelve, maybe thirteen. Claire was there too, only she’d remained the same—seventeen, with a perfectly painted face and messy bun. Murphy was only a baby, dressed in a pink cotton onesie. She was strapped into a car seat, which was odd, because they weren’t in a car; they were standing on the shore. Eileen turned to see her mother by her side, wearing an uncommonly calm expression.
“I want you to take it in,” Leslie Sullivan told Eileen. “Sink your toes into the sand, enjoy it.”
Eileen did. She walked along the water’s edge. Houses dotted the shore with prominent gables colored like the sea: teal and white and deep blue.
And then, red.
The sun shone upon the nearest house, cutting through wind and rain, illuminating the redness of its walls, which only grew redder. Because the red wasn’t dried paint, but liquid, pouring out between the wooden slats, leaking from the windows, pooling beneath the doors.
“Oh no,” said Eileen, though it wasn’t a shock to her.
Somehow, she’d expected the blood. She’d known this was coming, because she knew this place. She’d been here before.
* * *
Eileen woke.
The air was frigid, and her rapid breaths emerged as clouds in the pale light of dawn. She felt around her body, grasping at soft sheets.
Then the memory returned. She’d stalked away from her fight with Claire, furious, and made her way upstairs to the bedroom at the end of the hall. She hadn’t been in the mood to suffer Murphy’s whining or to face her own guilt for yelling at the kid. Not in the mood to do anything without the aid of alcohol. The ache for it had been crawling up her throat, weakening her joints.
Claire had been savage. She’d cut into Eileen’s deepest, most hidden artery with surgical precision. Then she’d walked away.
Of course Claire had known.
Eileen had thought she’d been careful, sneaking the bottles into the house, imbibing only in the garage. Until Claire had called her