Vi felt the rage roaring up again, the monster taking hold. “You knew! You knew and you never said anything?” Her tattletale brother had kept the biggest secret of all. “How could you?”
“I promised Gran,” he said. “I promised her I’d be the best brother ever. And I’d never tell you the truth. No matter what.” He was crying now, looking at Vi. “And you know what? I actually kind of forgot. That you weren’t really my sister.” He rubbed at his eyes, looked back to the burning building. “But Gran was right. She said one day you might do something bad. Something awful.”
Sirens were coming up the hill—they could hear them in the distance, faint at first, but getting louder. Soon the whole yard would be overrun with men in uniforms and fire coats, men wearing masks and air tanks on their backs. Men asking questions.
“I’m going to tell them,” Eric said, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “I’m going to tell them what you’ve done. I’m going to tell them all about you.” He looked so brave just then. So angry and defiant. Vi believed that whatever happened to him, wherever he went from there, he was going to be okay.
“Go tell them. Tell them the truth,” Vi said. “Look under my bed. There’s a file there. Show that to them. It proves what I am. What I’ve done.” Eric turned and ran toward the police cars and fire trucks that were coming up the road, red lights flashing in the rain. He was waving his arms frantically, yelling to them.
“Eric, wait!” Iris called, getting to her feet to chase after him.
“Let him go,” Vi said, watching him disappear around the corner of the building, thinking that was it—the last time she’d ever see her brother. And even though he wasn’t really her brother, even though he’d lied to her, her chest cracked open to see him go.
“They’ll come for you,” Iris said.
“Yes,” Vi replied, watching the first fire truck pull up in front of the Inn, followed by a police car. Then an ambulance and another fire truck.
“They’ll lock you up!” Iris said.
Vi smiled. “They’ll have to catch me first.”
“But—”
“Come with me,” she said.
Iris shook her head, looked away from Vi. Her eyes were full of tears. “There’s no way. We’d never make it. We’re just kids! Where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do?”
You’re my clever girl, Gran had always told her.
She was clever. But she was so much more than that.
A thirteen-year-old girl might not be able to get by in the world on her own.
But a monster could.
“Trust me,” Vi said. She looked down at the road. Eric was there, talking to a policeman. “Please. We have to go now.”
Vi touched Iris’s chest, just above her heart, running her fingers over the scar, the scar that she’d once longed so badly to touch. The scar that made them twins, bound them together.
“We belong together,” she said. “Don’t you see?”
Two broken girls who together made a whole.
Iris flinched, stepped backward, shaking her head. She looked at Vi as if she didn’t know her at all, her eyes frantic and full of fear.
And Vi understood then.
She truly was a monster.
And like any monster, she’d always be alone.
She pulled her hand away, then turned, took off running into the woods.
The Helping Hand of God: The True Story of the Hillside Inn Julia Tetreault, Dark Passages Press, 1980