I’d snapped and snarled and told Dad those seven days had been the best in my life, and he told Rachel, “She’ll turn out just like her if you don’t do something.”
“What is it?” Mandy’s eyes now searched my face like spotlights, illuminating all the hidden corners. She’d started doing that. For weeks, I’d catch her watching me, as if she was waiting for something. As if I would break out in blisters, spontaneously combust, disappear.
“Nothing,” I said, my traitor cheeks flushing the same pink as my cupcake. “A road trip sounds brilliant. Where will we stop along the way?”
“That’s why it isn’t ready yet. I’m still working out the route.”
I smudged a finger into the icing, licked it. “It’s a great birthday present,” I told my sister. “Thank you. And for the books.”
“I’m glad you like them.”
I puffed out my cheeks and said, “Your timing is kind of spooky, actually, because I kind of accidentally came out to Rachel this morning.”
Mandy’s face went through several expressions that I couldn’t read before settling on a sort of resignation. “Don’t worry, Deena,” she said. “Whatever she said, Rachel will come around eventually.”
“Mandy, Rachel didn’t—”
“She’s just still trying hard to hold on to her plan for you, but she’ll understand it’s changed soon enough.”
“Her plan?” I repeated.
“You know,” Mandy said. “She likes to think of you as the perfect blank slate for everything she never got to be. A wife and mother with a worthwhile career. She’s probably planned your and Finn’s wedding and picked out your babies’ names already. She just wants you to get the life she couldn’t. As a nice, normal girl.” Mandy made air quotes; these were Rachel’s words, not hers. A lump formed in my throat at hearing, for the second time today, the very phrase I couldn’t get out of my head.
Mandy brushed her hair behind her shoulders with one sweep of her arm and said, rather grudgingly, “It’s because she loves you, you know.”
“I know she does. It’s just I am a nice, normal girl, you know?”
Mandy laughed. “If you say so, kid.”
“I do.” I stroked the spines of the books. “Although—I’m not sure Dad does anymore.”
Mandy stared at me. “What do you mean?”
The fury on my father’s face flashed into my mind. “He heard me,” I said, the words heavy. “He came into the kitchen as I was telling Rachel.”
She sat up abruptly. “He what? Are you sure?”
Our father’s words echoed around my skull. Deviant lifestyles. Disgusting. No daughter of mine.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”
Suddenly Mandy’s face was stricken. “No. No. No, no, no. Deena, you can’t tell anyone else. Nobody else can find out.”
“What?”
She clutched her head, shook it, her hair tangling in her fingers. “If it were just me and Rachel . . . but if Dad knows—” Mandy took a breath. “Do you remember when we went up to Donegal for your tenth birthday?” she asked.
“Of course. Our infamous road trip. I was just thinking about that a few minutes ago, actually.”
Mandy sat forward, hands on her knees, bracing. “Do you remember what I told you on the last night?”
Sand and salt, fire and bone.
“No?” The word was a question. I remembered the bull skull. I remembered her telling me the bull would protect me, keep me safe. I remembered feeling enchanted, but mystified.
“Do you remember what I told you about our family?”
“Not really. Sorry.” But a memory was dredging itself from my unconscious, ringed in salt. “Yes,” I said. “Sort of. Did you tell me some kind of story about a family curse?”
Mandy nodded deep. “The Rys family curse.”
We knew next to nothing about the Rys side of the family because Dad never talked about them. When we spoke about our family, my sisters and I, we meant the MacLachlans, our mother’s kin. We rarely saw them—each as self-righteous, pious, and judgmental as the last. They’d taken Dad in with approving, welcoming arms.
I shrugged, bemused. “The Rys family curse. Remind me.”
“Bad things happen to the bad apples in our family,” Mandy said, her eyes unfocused, her voice trance-like. Small pinpoints of unease prickled along my skin.
“You were saying something about bad apples when I first got here, right? What was it again?”
“You know the kind,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “You’d know them a mile away. The ones who don’t look like the others, don’t act like the others. The ones who don’t conform, don’t follow the rules, don’t go to church on Sunday. The ones who run away, make their own lives. The ones who drink too much, talk too much, don’t work enough or at the right things. The ones who dress differently, love differently, think differently. Our family tree protects its good seeds, keeps them safe. But the bad apples get shown the door. Shunned, ignored, talked about in hushed whispers. They get pushed off the tree, breaking every branch on their way down. And once they’ve fallen, once they’ve been cast off the family tree, that’s when the curse comes to them.”
“The curse.”
“It happens at the age of seventeen. Like some kind of fairy tale. If you’ve lived a life on the straight and narrow, the curse may never find you. But, if you’re considered rotten by the rest of the family, you’re doomed.”
I stared at her. “Doomed? What does that mean exactly?”
Mandy stared right back. “It means deaths and disappearances. Terrible losses and tragedies. Things you’ll carry with you always.”
“But, Mandy—”
“I’m telling you, Deena, if the family thinks you’re rotten, you’re doomed.”
The rain battered at her bedroom window.
“You’ll know for sure if you hear the banshee scream.”
The icing of my birthday cupcake was pastel paste on my fingers, sticky and too sweet. “The banshee,” I repeated. “This is a metaphor, right?”
“It’s not a metaphor. There are three of them. The first is the one whose screams mark you as cursed. Then you’ll find gray hairs fallen from the second’s bone comb tangled on the threshold of your home. You’ll know there’s no hope left when the third scores your skin with her sharp nails as you sleep.”