The Night Sister by Jennifer McMahon Read Free Book Online

though nothing unusual had happened.
    Rose’s heart began to thump madly. She was surer than ever now that her sister had been out of bed last night; for some reason, Sylvie really didn’t want Rose to know it. This was the first time Rose could ever remember Sylvie keeping a secret from her, and Rose didn’t like it. Not one little bit.

2013

Piper
    Piper wheeled her carry-on through the terminal, passing rows of plastic seats, a crêpe restaurant, and a kiosk selling overpriced neck pillows and eye masks. Once she exited through the double doors out into the main corridor, she searched the small crowd for Margot. In the final weeks of her pregnancy, Piper figured Margot would be impossible to miss. She recalled the image of her sister from last night’s dream: Margot teetering at the edge of a hole, off balance.
    Piper blinked away the vision. She saw a couple embracing, a mother welcoming a college-age son home, a man in a suit holding a sign that said
Walker Party,
a cop scanning the crowd. No Margot. Piper was reaching into her bag for her cell phone when she felt a hand on her arm.
    “Piper?”
    She turned. The cop had approached.
    “Jason!” she said, realizing that the police officer was none other than her brother-in-law. It was more than the anonymity of the uniform—he looked thinner and much older than he had when she’d last seen him, two Christmases ago.
    Sometimes it was nearly impossible to remember him as being the same boy who’d followed the girls around that long-ago summer, a gangly kid, all arms and legs, with shaggy hair and pockets full of bugs. The boy who once wrote Amy love poems in secret code. Now and then she caught a glimpse of him in a boyish smirk, a shrug that made him look twelve again.
    “It’s so good to see you,” she said, and he gave her a stiff hug. He smelled like spicy aftershave and cigarette smoke. “But where’s Margot?”
    “Couldn’t make it,” Jason said, and looked away, his jaw tense. There were dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Come on,” he said, “let’s get you home. We’ll talk in the car.”
    Jason took charge of the small suitcase, and Piper struggled to keep up as he led her through the airport to the parking garage.
    They climbed into an old Ford Ranger pickup and rode with the windows rolled up, no AC. The sun beat down through the windshield and the cab was stuffy and hot, but Jason seemed oblivious; he didn’t even break a sweat. In spite of the heat, and the apparent lack of shock absorbers or much of a suspension system, Piper was grateful he’d come in his own vehicle and hadn’t picked her up in a police cruiser. Did London even have police cruisers? She couldn’t recall.
    Piper didn’t get home much. Margot usually came to her in L.A., thrilled to get away from their hometown for a week or two, to do all the touristy things: the tar pits, the Chinese Theatre, the Santa Monica Pier. She loved to study the architecture—Piper was continually amazed by her sister’s love for all things Art Deco, which couldn’t be more different from the old mills, farmhouses, and granite sheds of Vermont that Margot had dedicated her life to saving and preserving.
    Jason rarely came to California with Margot—too hard to get time off from the force, he said. Piper was always relieved when Jason didn’t join Margot. It wasn’t that she disliked him, but she never felt entirely comfortable around him, always felt she had to be on her best behavior, had to prove her place as the wise older sister. God knew that Jason had grown up with a different Piper, the big sister who did wild things, got Margot in trouble again and again, whether bringing her to her first keg party or introducing her to pot.
    The worst of it was, when the girls were in high school, Piper had thought Margot’s dating Jason was basically the stupidest idea she’d ever heard. Even told her, “You know, with him you’ll