Dear Sister

Chapter 14

"Letter came for you," Doreen said, and dropped it on the breakfast tray like it was a dead bug.

I stopped chewing.

"For me."

"Your name's on it." She stood there with her hands on her hips. "Came up with the milk cart. Driver said a girl at the Silver Creek post office handed it to him personal and gave him a coin to bring it straight here."

I picked it up.

The envelope was cream-colored. Good paper. The kind that costs more than the postage.

I knew the handwriting before I turned it over.

"Something wrong?" Doreen said.

"No."

"You've gone white as a sheet."

"I said no."

She looked at me for a second, then went to the window and started pulling the curtains like she had business over there.

I opened it.

Ella,

I know you hate me. I know you probably burned this before you read it. But I had to try.

Dad's been drinking. He won't say what happened that night but he hasn't slept and he keeps asking if anybody's heard from you. Mom's ring is gone off the shelf and he noticed. He cried, Ella. I've never seen him cry.

I've been to the pack office three times asking about the Culling list. They won't tell me anything. They won't even tell me if you're alive.

If you're alive, write back. One line. Just tell me you're breathing. I know what I did and I know I don't deserve it but I'm still your sister and you're still mine.

Kate

I read it twice.

Then I folded it and put it on the tray and ate my eggs.

"You gonna answer it?" Doreen said, still at the window.

"Does it look like I'm answering it?"

"It looks like you're eating eggs with a face like a wet Tuesday."

I finished the eggs. Then I picked the letter back up and read it a third time.

Something was wrong with it and I couldn't find it.

Not the apology — the apology was fine. Kate could fake an apology in her sleep. Not Dad's been drinking — that was true, that was just facts.

It was the ring.

Mom's ring is gone off the shelf and he noticed.

My mom's ring was on my finger. It had been on my finger since four in the morning on the day I left. My father had stood in the yard and watched me walk to that car with it on my hand.

So either he'd forgotten, which was possible, or Kate hadn't asked him, which was also possible.

Or Kate had never talked to him at all.

I turned the envelope over.

The return address said the post office in Silver Creek. That checked out. But under it, on the flap, somebody had written a number in pencil. Small. Neat.

104.

I sat up straight.

"What's the matter?" Doreen said.

"Nothing."

"You said that already and you lied that time too."

I got up and walked to the fire and held the envelope up.

104. It could be anything. A house number. A postal code. Some clerk's little mark.

But it was in pencil and it was on the outside of the envelope and it wasn't in Kate's handwriting.

I put the letter in the fire.

I watched Kate's words go up in a curl of orange and I felt exactly nothing. Not sad. Not satisfied. Just a flat, clean nothing, like a fever breaking.

The envelope I kept.

I folded it up small and put it in my pocket, and then I went and knocked on the wall twice.

---

He came through the door four minutes later with his sleeves rolled up and his hands still wet from washing.

"What's on fire?" he said.

"Nothing."

"You knocked twice."

"I lied." I pulled the envelope out of my pocket. "I need you to look at this."

He took it. Turned it over.

"Kate," I said. "My sister. She sent me a letter."

"You burned it."

"It was garbage. That's not the part I need you to look at."

He got it. His thumb found the pencil mark. He rubbed it and it didn't come off.

"One-oh-four," he said.

"Is that a room?"

"There's no room one-oh-four in this castle. Floors are numbered, rooms are named." He flipped the envelope over. "It's not a postal code either. Whoever sent this is using their own shorthand."

"Kate doesn't know anybody in this valley."

"Then somebody here knows Kate."

The room got very quiet.

"She's never been here," I said. "She's never left Silver Creek in her life. She's got a sister who sells clothes and a boyfriend with a truck and a whole personality built around being the prettiest girl in a town of nine hundred people."

"Then how does a girl in Silver Creek know which driver to pay." He held up the envelope. "The milk cart goes up the ridge road three times a week. It comes to my kitchen door for exactly four minutes and then it leaves. It doesn't stop at the post office. It doesn't take personal mail. Somebody told her that route."

"Or somebody handed it to the driver on the ridge."

"Same problem." He set the envelope down on the table. "Whoever it is has been inside my wall line long enough to know the milk schedule."

I sat down on the bed.

"There's more," I said.

"Of course there is."

"The letter says my father noticed my mom's ring is gone." I held up my hand. "It's on my finger. It's been on my finger since the day I left and he watched me walk out with it."

Lucifer looked at my hand for a long moment.

"So she lied about talking to him," he said.

"Or she lied about everything." I pulled my hand back. "Or it's not from Kate at all."

"It's her handwriting?"

"...Yeah."

"You're sure?"

"I've read a thousand notes from her. Grocery lists. Notes on the fridge. Ella don't touch my stuff." I rubbed my eyes. "It's her handwriting. But that's the easy part, isn't it? That's the part you do when you want somebody to believe the rest of it."

He picked up the envelope again and turned it over twice and then went to the window and held it up to the light.

"There's something else," he said.

"What?"

He brought it back. The flap. He tilted it so I could see.

"There's a crease here and here," he said, pointing with his nail. "Somebody opened this after it was sealed and closed it again. And over here—" He turned it. "The glue's been re-wet. You don't do that unless you read it first."

I looked at the crease. Then at his face.

"You've done this before," I said.

"I've been a king for eight years." He put the envelope down. "Do you know how many letters come to this castle? Two years ago I got one from a man I'd exiled, apologizing for everything, begging to come home. Beautiful letter. Made me cry."

"What happened?"

"There was a woman's name in the postscript that I never mentioned to anybody. Two weeks later she was dead and her house was burned." He looked at me. "Somebody wrote the letter to find out if I still cared about her. Then they used the answer."

The fire cracked.

"So somebody in this castle read Kate's letter before I did," I said. "And left a number on it."

"Or somebody wrote it and had your sister copy it."

"She wouldn't—"

"You said it yourself. She's the prettiest girl in a town of nine hundred." He leaned on the table. "Pretty girls get used."

I sat there and stared at the envelope.

Then I stood up and picked up the tray.

"Where are you going?"

"To do my job. Mrs. Crane's got me on the west corridor again." I got the door open. "You find out who's been in your wall line and I'll find out why my sister's writing letters she didn't want to write."

"Ella."

I stopped.

"One-oh-four," he said. "If it's not a room and it's not a postal code, it's a page. A ledger line. A cell number in the guard tower. Something in this house has a number on it and I'm going to find it."

"And when you find it?"

He picked up his coat off the back of the chair.

"Then we find out what it costs," he said. "Everything in this valley costs something."

He left.

I stood in the doorway with the tray in my hands and let out a breath.

Then I carried the tray down to the kitchen and put it on the counter and said nothing to Mrs. Crane about the letter, and she said nothing to me, and she gave me the bucket.

I scrubbed the west corridor for four hours.

The guard was back at the blue door. He didn't look at me. There was a newspaper folded on the floor next to him and every so often he'd pick it up and read the same page and put it down.

I got to the end of the corridor near the end of the day and I rinsed my brush out in the bucket.

And then I looked up.

There was a door at the end of the corridor that I hadn't scrubbed in front of. It was painted the same gray as the wall and it had a brass number on it, and the number was painted over.

I scraped the paint off with my thumbnail.

104.

Chapter 14 Ends