“No, sweetie. I’m a survivor. And everything was fine until you moved back to town. Now bad things are happening, and it’s all your fault.”

As I stare at my sister, I try once again to reconcile this woman with the little girl I knew. My big sister, who I can remember smiling as a child. Cora didn’t change overnight. It was a gradual shift, one I didn’t notice, until the seventeen-year-old version was the person she was meant to be all along. This person standing in front of me is the true Cora. I don’t understand it, don’t like it, but I can’t change that simple fact. Imagining my sister as an adult version of the sweet, happy child I once knew is like picturing Hitler dying of old age after an uneventful life as a painter.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask her. “Do you want me to move away? Is that it?”

“I don’t really care what you do, Rose, as long as it doesn’t involve disrupting all I have here.”

“And what is it you have? Some vapid, plastic existence? Your daughter has a poster of Lizzie Borden on her bedroom wall. Does that make you happy?”

“I’m letting her be the person she wants to be,” Cora says.

“And what if she turns into you?” I ask. “Is that what you want? Are you counting the days until she’s seventeen? Are you waiting to see if she’s capable of doing what you did? What would you do then?”

This lands a punch, but her reaction is subtle. A couple blinks, a tighter smile. But rather than answer me, she turns and walks a few steps away, closer to the trailhead and the surrounding woods.

Her figure is backlit by a solitary streetlight, and she glows like some kind of fallen angel. The snowfall is lighter now, and through the flakes, I watch as she reaches into her purse and retrieves something. Facing away from me, she lowers her right hand and I see the silhouette of what she’s holding. A knife. Thin and long. She just holds it at her side in her gloved hand, loose. Stares out into the dark, into the distance, as still as a mannequin gathering dust.

I have no idea if the knife is for effect, but she’s surprised me, which is the last thing I wanted. Cora is ten feet away and I ease a few steps backward. This scene should be as improbable as a bad horror movie, but if I drew a line through all the moments of our collective past, it’s obvious that this is where it all leads.

“This place is special because he’s out there, somewhere,” Cora says to the night.

That statement alone chills me more than the snow. Scares me more than the knife.

“Caleb?” I say.

“Daddy told me once. Said this is where he brought him.”

Revulsion of the memory of that night overcomes me, but I can’t back away. In fact, I reverse course, start walking toward Cora because I don’t know if the recorder on my phone is picking up what’s she’s saying. I slide the phone out of my front pocket and palm it against my thigh.