Page 58 of The Light Between Worlds

“Are there any untroubled girls?” I ask without flinching. “But yes. Ev had a hard time dealing with things that came up in life. Sometimes she couldn’t cope.”

Dawes taps his fingers on the arm of his chair. “And what did that look like? Not coping?”

I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to remember Evelyn’s darker times. “Sometimes she shut down. Stayed in bed. Didn’t eat, didn’t speak. Other times she went out at night—wandered until daybreak.”

Inspector Singh cuts in. “You mentioned she’d harmed herself before?”

I don’t like thatbefore, which implies that we know what’s happened to Ev, that this investigation is merely a formality.

“Yes. She cut herself, once. Had to have stitches put in. But there were other, smaller things. Leaving her coat off on the coldest days of the year. Going barefoot through a patch of briars. I’m not even sure I noticed everything.”

Inspector Dawes sits back in his chair and regards me for a moment. “Would you say you’re the person who knew your sister best?”

I think of the connections between Ev and me, the unseen years of shared history and upheaval. We’re bound together through time and across worlds, and nothing will change that. “Yes, I would.”

“But you left the country, even though you were aware she was unstable?”

I’m not sure if this is a question or a reproach, and Inspector Singh’s eyes flash to Dawes.

“Why is that, Miss Hapwell?” Dawes presses when I don’t answer.

“Excuse me for a moment,” I say. I make it past the typing pooland the front desk and into the bathroom, where I’m quietly and efficiently sick into the toilet. Goodness knows I’ve had practice, after all the weeks and months in which my nerves were frayed to a ragged edge, not knowing if Ev would still be down the hallway or across the room from me each morning. When the shaking stops, I sit on the floor, not caring a bit about the state of my clothes, and let the wall take my weight.

I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t hold up anymore, couldn’t watch Ev fall to pieces again, wondering if this would be it, if this time there’d be no putting her back together. Trying to keep us both whole was tearing me apart, and the bitter words that passed between us were just the excuse I needed to finally leave.

But I’m not sure I can live with this, either. With not knowing what’s happened to my sister. With the constant, draining guilt brought about by always wonderingwhat if.

What if I’d stayed.

The answer’s simple. Evelyn would still be here. I talked her back from the edge often enough to know that this is true.

Whatever’s happened, I might have worked a dark magic and banished her myself. These are my unforgivable sins—that I brought Evelyn home from the Woodlands and left her, and in my absence, she couldn’t cope.

I get up off the bathroom floor, rinse my mouth at the sink, tuck a peppermint under my tongue, and carefully reapply a layer of lipstick.

“Sorry,” I tell Dawes, settling back into the chair across from his. “Where were we?”

“Your reasons for leaving.”

“I had a scholarship,” I say, and I know my face is serene and unreadable. “A very good one. You can check the college records. I’d given up years of my time watching over Evelyn—I wasn’t about to give this up, too.”

It’s true I had a scholarship. I’ve got a decent enough brain. But I’d been offered one by Christ Church at Oxford as well, and that would have meant being minutes away from Jamie and only a short train ride from Ev.

The thought of the train ride, the phone calls I’d get, the dozens of panicked trips I’d have to take, is what made me cross an ocean in search of freedom.

Now here I sit, chained more tightly by guilt than I ever was by obligation.

“That’ll be all for now,” Inspector Dawes says. “We may have more questions down the road, though, and ask for your cooperation.”

“Have I not been cooperative already?” I lean forward in my chair, but it’s not the Philippa Hapwell I’ve become who leans—the one weighed down by her failures. It’s the Philippa who’s walked between worlds, and seen more than anyone can possibly know. When she leans, the motion is wide with meaning. “I would give anything—anything—to see my sister step through that door behind us, whole and well. I hope that, at least, is abundantly clear.”

“We’d never doubt it,” Inspector Singh reassures me. I gather up my handbag and gloves and hurry out before they can see how my hands shake, or divine that my stomach still roils inside me.

43

IT’S OCTOBER. I’M SEVENTEEN, AND ABOUT TO HAVEthe worst night of my life. Evelyn is fourteen, and it’s been more than three years since the Woodlands, since Cervus told us we’d never be called back.

I wake at one in the morning to a knock on my door. Not a gentle knock, mind you, a frantic pounding and a voice calling for me in a piercing whisper.