Page 20 of The Sisters of Crimson House

“You couldn’t have told me that yourself a year ago?”

Miranda stared at her, her face slack with shock. “Has it been that long?”

“Time flies when you think your sister might be face down in a ditch.”

Miranda gave her a sad smile. “I figured you would be mad. We might as well get this part over with.”

“‘This part’?” Was this what it felt like to have an aneurysm in real time? Charley was nearly speechless with fury. “You think we’re just gonna have a little back-and-forth and then hug, all is forgiven?”

Miranda shrugged.

Charley put her face in her hands to keep from screaming. Deep breath. “Okay,” she said, calmly. “One last time, Miranda. What have you been doing? And don’t say you were taking time off in France,” she warned.

“You’re not going to like it.”

“Try me.”

A beat.

“Taking time off in France,” Miranda said.

“Stop. Lying!” Charley yelled. She felt so much heat raging throughout her body, she was afraid it might shoot out through her eyes and incinerate her sister. She wished it would. “And you were so busy with your vacations, you couldn’t call?”

Miranda drew her knees to her chest, defensively. “No. The work just became too much. Too much for my body and my spirit.”

“Okay. Well, I sure hope your body and spirit are feeling fabulous now. I can’t even imagine how hard this has all been for you.” It was like arguing with the model on a wellness brochure. What a deeply unserious conversation.

Miranda sighed, steadying herself. Charley could see with some satisfaction that she was irritated. “Didn’t Celeste write you to let you know?”

“If you mean sending generic postcards that gave me no information and stopped a year ago, then yes.” She would not give Miranda the satisfaction of knowing that she’d kept every postcard, scrutinized the generic images of the French countryside, the lavender fields at sunset, a wheel of cheese positioned artfully next to some grapes for any information that could betray her sister’s whereabouts. “Where is that old bat, anyway? Is evil masterminding her full-time gig now, or are her body and spirit also on vacation?”

“I don’t know.”

Charley fell silent. That was unexpected information. At her lowest, when she’d allowed herself to think about Miranda on this storied vacation, Celeste forever lurked in the background. They lounged in robes at a white-walled spa, Celeste paging through an Architectural Digest and wearing sunglasses indoors. They took morning walks to look at the sea and talk about the migration patterns of local birds. They did not talk about her.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“We didn’t always get along, Charley. It could get difficult.”

Charley noted the tiniest of pauses before difficult, sensed an ocean there.

“I think the break was as much for her as it was for me.” So Celeste had abandoned both her charges. That tracked with what Charley knew of Aunt Reaper.

“Don’t be mad at Celeste, Charley,” said Miranda, as if reading her mind.

“Don’t be mad? She kidnapped you! She took you away from—” Me. She wouldn’t say it. Wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. “Your family.”

“Celeste is family, too, Charley.”

“She kidnapped you!”

“She didn’t kidnap me, Charley. It was my idea to leave.”

The words were quiet. The words were an atomic bomb. Of all the emotions she’d tried to process over the years, the only thing she could hold on to was Celeste as the villain who had wrested away the innocent Miranda. Because if Miranda was innocent, Charley couldn’t hate her, too. Not completely.

“Charley?”

“Don’t.”