Nightshade Read Free

had kept going to her job as a cashier at the drugstore right up until the day the Rite Aid people had taken over and let her go. She’d even looked for another job, but by then the sickness had been starting, and she just couldn’t do it. After that, she’d had to let Joan and Bill take care of her.
    But she hadn’t liked it — she hadn’t liked it at all. Not that her daughter Joan did a very good job helping out, either. Even though she tried, Joan had never been able to clean her house quite the way Emily liked it, and as for the shopping — well! Most of the time she didn’t bring Emily half the things she wanted, and there were always other things that Emily was absolutely certain she hadn’t asked for. Well, at least Joan didn’t try to make her pay for all those things anymore. Emily had set her straight on that right away. “Don’t you look at me like I’m crazy!” she’d told Joan the first time she’d found all the wrong things in the grocery bag. “And don’t think I’m going to pay for all this, either!” She’d brushed aside the list Joan had shown her, too. All it did was prove that Joan had learned how to copy her handwriting, which at least explained why there was money missing from her checking account every month. Joan had lied about it, of course, but that hadn’t surprised Emily at all.
    After that, she’d started hiding money in her house, where Joan wouldn’t be able to find it. Then Joan had tried to trick her by offering to hire someone to “help” her. Emily had known right away what that was about — Joan just wanted to get someone into her house to hunt for her money! But Emily hadn’t fallen for it. It wasn’t long after that that she’d seen people — people that looked sort of familiar, but to whom Emily couldn’t quite put any names — walking by her house, spying on her. After one of them waved to her — just like he knew her! — Emily had started keeping the curtains closed.
    Then they’d started coming to her door, talking to her like she was supposed to know who they were. She’d shut the door in their faces, and after a while, when she stopped answering the door at all, they stopped coming. But she knew they were still watching her, so she stopped going out of the house.
    She liked that much better, because she no longer had to worry about anything. And she wasn’t alone either, not really.
    She still had her memories, and after a while it wasn’t like they were memories at all. Sometimes, when she was fixing supper she’d make enough for two, and set out a place for Cynthia, too. She had a dim memory of Joan telling her that Cynthia wasn’t coming home, but Emily had known that wasn’t true — it was just another of the ways Joan was always trying to trick her. Besides, Joan had always been jealous of her sister, ever since she was a little girl. So Emily simply ignored what Joan said, certain that Cynthia had just gone away for a little while, and would be back any day now.
    So she stayed in her house, and after a while one day seemed just like another, and one week blended into the next, and the months and the seasons and the years all ran together.
    And Emily waited for Cynthia to come home.
    Today, though, something was different.
    Something didn’t quite feel right.
    But what was it?
    She peered dimly at the frying pan that was sizzling on the front burner, in which a quarter of an inch of oil was already bubbling. She tried to remember what she’d been intending to do with the skillet and the hot oil. Make breakfast?
    She wasn’t sure. In fact, she wasn’t really certain what time it was. But it was light out, and she was hungry, so it must be morning.
    Then, from the front of the house, she thought she heard a sound.
    Cynthia!
    She must finally have come home!
    The frying pan immediately forgotten, Emily pushed through the swinging door that led to the little dining room that was furnished only with a worn oak table so small that even