The sight reminded Sadie of the first time Amelia came back from the sanitarium. She’d talked about how awful it had been, about a friend she’d made named Grace. At first Sadie thought Grace wasn’t real, that she was another personality.
But Grace had been real. She’d had as many problems as Amelia, and had been in and out of the hospital just as often.
The keys rattled as Jake twisted the lock, then the metal door screeched open. The concrete floor was cold and bare, the paint peeling off the pea-green walls. Foul words that would make her Gran roll over in her grave had been scratched above the bed, a disgusting figure of two people having violent sex etched above a dingy toilet, which had probably never seen Pine-Sol, much less bleach.
This was what her sister’s life had come to. Locked behind bars. Forced to pee in the open and sleep with the roaches on a disease-infested cot.
A plastic tray from the diner next door holding a cold biscuit and rubbery eggs sat on the floor, untouched. The tray was devoid of silverware, and she assumed Doc Tynsdale had ordered Jake not to let her sister have anything that could be considered dangerous or used as a weapon. The first time Amelia had spent the night in a cell, she’d tried to kill herself with a fork, so they’d learned to be cautious early on.
Hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat. Nope. Didn’t want the loony lady attacking the cops. Or killing herself before they could convict her and pronounce her death sentence.
“Sadie?” Jake asked quietly.
Her hysteria must have been showing through again. “Do you know what medication Dr. Tynsdale gave her?”
Jake placed one hand on the thick metal bars. “Whatever it was, it must have been strong. She conked right out, and I haven’t heard a peep since.”
Amelia was so still, so quiet that she looked dead. For a minute, Sadie held her breath, watching for her chest to rise and fall.
She blinked back tears. She wanted her sister back, talking, laughing...normal.
Then Amelia made a low moan, indicating she was alive. At least physically.
Sadie shuffled inside, not wanting to startle her, but worry made perspiration bead on her neck, and her hands felt clammy. “Amelia, it’s me, Sadie.” Just as she would approach a skittish colt, Sadie moved forward slowly, gauging her sister’s reaction. Amelia still didn’t respond, so she closed the distance, careful not to make any sudden loud noise.
Tension swirled in the musty air. The metallic scent of blood lingered on Amelia’s skin and permeated her hair.
Papaw’s blood.
Sadie felt the insane urge to ask for a damp cloth so she could wash the stench away.
Instead she scooted down on the side of the cot. “Amelia, it’s me, Sadie. I came to talk.”
She gently rubbed her hand across Amelia’s back in a soothing gesture, then eased the blanket from her head. Her sister shifted slightly and released another low moan.
Her hair was wiry and straight now, the russet strands tangled and unkempt. Sadie brushed a strand from Amelia’s cheek, as her grandmother used to do when she was little, and grimaced at the pale, bruised skin beneath her eyes. “Amelia, wake up and look at me. I need to know what happened with Papaw.”
The lump beneath the blanket shifted slightly, and Sadie urged her to roll over. For a moment, the familiar pain and guilt overwhelmed her. Why had Amelia suffered so much, while Sadie, her twin, was normal?
Her lungs tightened at the streaks of dried blood on her sister’s cheeks. Amelia’s face looked gaunt, and more drops of something brown were splattered across her forehead and chin.
For a brief second, anger at Jake for not letting her sister clean up rolled through her. Then she sucked it back. No emotions here.
Suddenly Amelia jumped off the cot, crouched on the floor in the corner, and hugged her knees to her chest. Her hair fell over the bloodstained cheek as she rocked herself back and forth. Then she began to twirl her hair around her finger.
“Amelia?”
“Who are you?” a tinny voice whispered.
Sadie knotted her hands. That voice didn’t belong to her sister, or to the person who’d called her from her grandfather’s house to warn her that Amelia was about to kill her grandfather. It was a little girl’s voice. A child about three. Sadie had met her before.
“Bessie,” she said, “is that you?”
Amelia’s head bobbed up and down, then she glanced around the dingy jail cell. “I wanna go home. I don’t like it here.” A lone tear rolled down her cheek, and she rubbed her nose with the back of a grimy hand. “I heard the chimes. One, two, three...they’re singing.”
The chimes—the wind chimes or the chimes of the clock? Sadie never was quite sure what her sister was talking about. She had an odd obsession with both, as if they were somehow connected.