Authors Note:

This chapter starts moving everything kind of fast. I'm not sure if it works well. CC would be greatly appreciated.

Chapter Two

Carrigan had always been in trouble for one thing or another ever since I could remember. When we were little she used to steal things from Mom; her makeup, clothes, nail polish; and food from the kitchen. She also got into trouble at school a lot. Talking back to teachers, going to places she wasn't supposed to, things like that. But ever since she started high school that all stopped. Now she was a saint at school and was never home. She went out with an endless stream of boys, coming home from each date looking more miserable than she had the last. She didn't explain and I didn't ask. That's how things worked in our house.

"Do you remember your mother?" I asked her nonchalantly as we got ready for bed that night.

"Why?" she said icily, changing into an oversized t-shirt.

I shrugged, sitting on my bed, not wanting her to know how badly I wanted to know about her mother. "I think it's sad that you never really knew her. I just hoped you have some memories of her."

She stared at me a moment. "You're weird, Stacey." She sighed. "Yeah, I remember her a little bit."

"What was she like?"

"She was," she paused, taking a seat on her own bed, trying to find the right words. "She wasn't like anybody else. I remember she was always smiling, but it wasn't a real smile. It wasn't from happiness. It was like everything amused her." She broke off. "That's all I really remember. I remember our house; our yard, really. It was big and she never mowed it so it was like a jungle. She used to call it that. And she'd chase me through the weeds. She loved the backyard. And I remember her hair."

"Do you miss her?"

"Of course I do. She was my mother." She was looking at me as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. And maybe it was.

But if my mother suddenly died tomorrow, I wasn't all that sure that I would miss her.

That was the end of that conversation. Carrigan turned off the light without another word and said a haughty "'night," and that was that.

I layed down, my eyes staring at the ceiling, my mind still on a beautiful woman with my name. How did she die? The question I was scared to ask.

The rest of the week was uneventful. Carrigan finished her exams, and I went through my last week of sixth grade, and it was summer vacation at last. Two and a half months free to lie around the house and do nothing. As long as my mother didn't sign me up for another stupid day camp. I think I'd complained about it enough the year before for my father to argue with her on my behalf.

It also gave me an opportunity to wander around the house looking for anything that would tell me something about Anastacia Angelique Roberts. I hadn't dared yet to snoop around my parents bedroom, which was where there were sure to be something, since my mother was always home. But I vowed the next time she went to the store that would be my top priority.

Summer also found Carrigan to be a constant absence from our house. I was sure she was with one of her many boyfriends. She, too, had no friends. I'd wondered more than once if we were both cursed.

"Talk to her, Reed, or send her away!" I heard my mother scream at my father, one night after Carrigan had broken her curfew.

"I will not send her away!" he yelled back. "She's my daughter and she always will be."

"And I am your wife! And I will not deal with that under my roof! You talk to her and make her behave."

I didn't hear anything after that. What was it they thought Carrigan was doing? I had an idea, but I didn't think Carrigan would. I remembered hearing one of my fathers friends tell him once, "A girl that beautiful that young is heading for trouble." What did that mean? Just because she was pretty she couldn't control herself? I didn't like thinking about it. Any of it.

I heard the front door open late that night. I glanced at the clock. Two-forty-one. Oh, you are in trouble, I thought.

And that was when Mom and Dad began to yell. I didn't pay much attention to that. I focused my eyes on the ceiling and concentrated on finding patterns in the paint, which was getting harder and harder to do as their voices got louder and louder. Finally it ended in a "you're grounded for a month!" and I heard her stomping up the stairs. I didn't bother pretending to be asleep.

She pushed the door open, slamming and locking it behind her, then threw herself on her bed and began to cry.

"Carrigan," I began gently.

"Shut up! I don't' wanna hear it! Not from then, and especially not from you!"

I looked down and started chewing on my finger, trying to figure out how to approach her. "I just wanted to ask you what you do when you're out all the time. Do you do bad things like they think you do?"

She calmed down and stared out the window. "Megan thinks I'm a whore and I do drugs. And I think she's got Dad convinced."

Whore. I wasn't sure what that meant but I could tell it definitely wasn't a good thing. The drugs though… "Do you?" I asked.

"No," she said in a voice so soft, I almost couldn't hear her.

"Then what do you do?" I said in the most non-accusing tone I could manage.

"I hang around them. Sometimes they kiss me or touch me, but nothing else. They're all determined to be the first to do it with me."

"Sex?" I actually managed to say the word without giggling. I was still such a little kid.

"Yeah. Sex. And tonight they almost did. They held me down, but then Blake came over and stopped them, and he drove me home." She paused. "I would've done it with him, for that, Stacey. I guess that does make me a whore."

I didn't understand. She was talking to me like I was an adult, something I wanted, but suddenly I wanted nothing more than to be a stupid, naïve child. I didn't like this strange, adult world. "Carrigan, you're my sister and I love you. And you're making me really worried about you. Mom wants to throw you out. Please don't give her a reason to."

She stared at me then, her green eyes still shining with tears. She really was beautiful. I knew I'd never look like that.

She kicked off her shoes and crawled under her blanket, still fully dressed.. "Night, Stacey."

"Night, Carrigan."

The next couple days passed, Carrigan on her best behavior. She did whatever my mother asked her and didn't talk back at all. But she was somewhat cold to our father. Angry at him for siding with Mom, I guess. And then Mom went to the store.

This would be tricky to do. I hadn't counted on Carrigan being home. Not that she would tell on me, but I didn't want her to know what I was up to.

Checking to make sure she was busy watching TV (soap operas; she loved them for some inane reason), I quietly crept upstairs and into the master bedroom. I didn't go in there much, hadn't since I'd stopped crawling in bed with them after having nightmares. It had probably been a couple months since I'd actually been in there at all. And I didn't have a clue where they kept anything.

I looked at the clock. Mom had been gone fifteen minutes. She'd gone to Walmart, so she'd be at least an hour. That gave me some time.

The closet first, I decided, pulling open the door. There were several storage boxes, each neatly labeled in my father's messy handwriting: Books, research papers, photographs, and several others. I pulled out the photographs from the bottom of the stack.

Blowing the dust away I lifted the lid. Inside were a mountain of photo albums. The first one was from several years ago when we'd all gone to Disney World. I smiled at the memories. That had been fun. But it was no time to relive the past. I was on a mission. I went through the pictures quickly, trying not to spend too long on any one. Then I found them.

Dad's high school yearbooks. He had four; three from Garden Bridge High School, which was a local high school and I knew my father'd gone to it. And then one from South Water High.So, he spent three years going to school here, and his senior year somewhere else. I checked the address. It was in South Carolina. I didn't know he'd ever lived in South Carolina.

It was a thin book, there weren't a whole lot of students. I flipped to the seniors. There he was, Reed Morrow, his handsome face smiling shyly at the camera. My eyes scrolled down the page for Roberts, there was one, Jeanne Roberts. Pictured was an average looking girl with dark hair. No Anastacia. Then I checked the junior class, and again, there was one Roberts. And there she was, Anastacia Roberts, every bit as beautiful of Carrigan, the same girl in the photograph. She had a smile like Carrigan had said, like she was amused, not from happiness. I hadn't noticed that in the other photograph. I'd have to see it again.

I flipped through to the endpaper. Few people had signed it, but I found what I was looking for, in large, loopy scroll in the back.

To Reed who likes to read,

I wish you health and happiness, and the fame you deserve. You need not worry about me, love, for I am a poor country girl who knows how to survive. I've survived for sixteen years, I'm sure I will make it through a few more. Are you angry at me, perhaps? I do not blame you. I suppose if I were you I would be angry at me, too. But you need not worry about me. And don't worry about Dearest Father, either, for he is at Death's doorstep. It is only a matter of time.

Do not fret, and do not think of the Hell that is South Water. Move on and enjoy college and the many women I am sure will find you attractive. And then, one day, we will me again, lover, and on that day, well, I'll surprise you.

Farewell,

Anne who likes to swim and does not like to read

That was…weird. To say the least. Not what I had expected at all. It was signed Anne and not Anastacia, so it was possible it wasn't her, but my parents had called her Anne, that was what they knew her as. I was so confused.

Daddy'd been angry with her. I wonder what about. I looked at the clock. It had almost been an hour. I'd wasted a lot of time trying to get the photograph box. I left the yearbook out and put everything else back, and carefully put everything back where I found it. Then I rushed to my room, hiding the yearbook under my mattress, lest Carrigan find it. Then Mom came home.

That was close.

I ran downstairs to help her.

"Stacey," she called to me. "Go check the mail. I just saw the mailman out there."

Wordless I went to check it. And that was when the letter came.

It was pretty stationary, purple with fairies. Or faeries, as that spelling seems to be more popular. I don't know the difference. It was addressed to Carrigan Morrow, and it was from Lace Trelawny from South Water, South Carolina.