I start searching for my keys as soon as I get through the gate, struggling to find them in the gloom. The porch light comes on by the time I am halfway down the garden path, but despite it shedding a little light inside my jacket pocket where my keys should be, I can see they aren’t there.
I hate the idea of having to wake the whole house in order to get Zoe to let me in—it can be hard to get my niece to go back to sleep—but when I step up to the front door, I see that won’t be necessary. It’s already open.
There is always a heartbeat-length moment when you know that something very bad is about to happen, and you are too late to do anything about it. It lasts less than a second and more than a lifetime all at once, while you are frozen in space and time, reluctant to look ahead, but knowing it’s too late to look back. This is one of those moments. I have experienced only a few like it in my life.
I sober up fast.
The police part of my brain tells me to call someone, but I don’t. What is left of my family is inside this house and I can’t wait for backup. I hurry through the front door, switching on the lights in all of the downstairs rooms, finding each one as empty as the last. The rest of the doors and windows appear to be closed and locked. I check the alarm system, but it looks as though someone has turned it off. The only way to do that is by knowing the code.
There is no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle; if anything the whole place looks a lot cleaner and tidier than when I left this morning. Toddlers are experts at creating mess, but all the clutter and chaos I’ve grown used to has been tidied away and put back in its place. Everything feels wrong, and I’ve learned over the years to trust my gut about things like this.
That’s when I see it.
One of the smaller knives is missing from the block on the counter. I remember that it wasn’t there this morning either, or the night before. My house keys are here too, even though I’m sure they were in my pocket earlier tonight, before I went to Priya’s home. Maybe I did leave them here—the last few days are a sleep-deprived blur. Then I see the photo. It’s just like the one Anna said was stolen from her car, and it’s a picture that I remember taking twenty years ago.
The five girls are lined up and smiling at the camera: Rachel Hopkins, Helen Wang, Anna, Zoe, and a strange-looking girl I vaguely recognize, but whose name I can’t remember. They are wearing matching grins on their faces, and matching friendship bracelets on their wrists. But that isn’t all. Three of the five girls in the photo have a black cross drawn over their face now: Rachel, Helen … and Zoe.
I drop the picture—realizing too late that I should never have touched it—and run up the stairs two at a time. I reach my niece’s room first, bursting through the door to see that Olivia is safe and sound, tucked up asleep in bed. Her pillow, along with everything else in the room, is covered in a pattern of unicorns. She looks so peaceful that for a moment I think maybe everything is okay. But then I realize that the noise I just made would normally have woken her. Olivia is breathing, but she’s completely out of it.
I hurry along the landing to my sister’s room, but she isn’t there. All the bedroom doors are ajar, and I soon discover that each one is empty. The bathroom door is closed. When I try to turn the handle, it doesn’t open.
We haven’t locked this door for years due to an incident when we were children, and I don’t know where the key could be. I can’t remember ever seeing one. The rule in our house was always that if the door is closed, you don’t go in. I knock gently and whisper her name.
“Zoe?”
It’s so quiet that everything I say and do sounds loud.
I try to peer through the keyhole, but see nothing but black.
“Zoe?”
I say her name a little louder this time, before banging my fist on the wooden panels. When there is still nothing but silence, I take a step back and kick the door. It swings open, its hinges crying out as though in pain. Then I see her.
My sister is lying in the bath.
One of her eyes is open, and appears to be staring at something written on the wall; the other one has been sewn closed, a needle and thick black thread still dangling from her eyelid.
The water is red, her slit wrists visible just below the surface.
I’m sickened by the fact I already know what this is supposed to mean: turn a blind eye.
I’m sure the normal response would be to rush to the side of the bathtub and pull her out, but I can’t move. My sister’s head is slumped to one side at a disturbing angle, her hair is the same color as the perfectly still bloody water, and I don’t need to check for a pulse to know that she is dead. Zoe’s mouth is open, and I can see the friendship bracelet tied around her tongue from the doorway.