Ninety Days to Save My Sister Chapter 1

It was ten years after my sister died that I finally learned the truth. She hadn’t run off to work in some textile mill across the state line when she was seventeen.

My Uncle Ray had taken ten thousand dollars in cash and delivered her—still clutching her acceptance letter to the state teachers college—to a man living in the deep timber up in the hollow.

The morning she tried to run, she had hidden in the collapsed tractor shed behind the old gravel lot.

Seven-year-old me found her first.

I had clutched the cellophane-wrapped tangerine hard candy she pressed into my palm, turned around, and hollered toward the house:

“Uncle Ray! June’s hiding out here!”

Three months later, my sister died on the dirt floor of that man’s cellar.

Everyone in our hollow said she was just fragile, that she took her own life.

It wasn’t until ten years down the road, packing away a box of her water-damaged high school textbooks, that I found a folded letter wedged inside the spine of an old literature reader. The pencil lead was smeared into gray ghosts by dried tears.

On the very last line, she had written:

I don’t blame Annie. She was only little. She didn’t know.

Then my vision went white, and when I opened my eyes, I was standing in the wet weeds outside the tractor shed all over again.

“June. It’s me.”

I pushed back the rotting pine board, keeping my voice down to a harsh whisper.

The interior reeked of damp hay, motor oil, and mildew. In the darkest corner, curled into a ball, sat a figure.

June had her knees pulled tight against her chest. Her arms were covered in bramble gashes, and her eyes were swollen nearly shut from weeping.

When she saw me, her knuckles shook. She reached into the pocket of her faded denim jacket, pulled out a small, cellophane-wrapped tangerine candy, and offered it with a trembling hand.

“Annie, baby,” she whispered. Her voice was cracked and raw, sounding nothing like a seventeen-year-old girl. “Take the candy. Go back inside and tell Uncle Ray you didn’t see me anywhere.”

The wrapper was faded orange, slick with sweat. Exactly like the first life.

In that life, I had taken the candy and sold her out before the sugar even melted on my tongue.

“I don’t want the candy.”

I knelt down in the dirt, reaching out to wrap both of my small hands around her freezing fingers.

June froze, staring at me.

“June, listen to me,” I urged, the words tumbling out fast and urgent. “Run east. Cut behind the dry creek bed, go through Mrs. Gable’s cornfield, and hit Route 9. There’s a shoulder on the highway. You can flag someone down.”

Her lips parted, but no sound came out.

She just stared at me. It was the exact gaze from that letter—the crushing, impossible mixture of protective tenderness, raw terror, and quiet despair.

“How do you know that way, Annie?”

“I just know. June, please, you have to believe me.”

She didn’t move. Instead, she pushed the candy into my fingers again, trying to curl my small fist around it.

“You’re only seven,” she murmured, tears spilling over the dried scratches on her cheeks. “This isn’t for you to carry. Uncle Ray… you don’t know what he’ll do if he gets angry.”

Across the gravel yard, the heavy thud of work boots crunched against the stones.

Uncle Ray’s voice carried through the thin mountain air: “Annie! Where’d you run off to, girl?”

June’s hand clamped over my mouth, shoving me flat into the moldy hay.

Her whole body was vibrating with terror, her collarbone pressing hard against my shoulder blade.

“Don’t breathe,” she breathed into my hair, so soft it wasn’t even sound.

The crunching grew louder.

Through the warped gap between two weather-beaten boards, I saw Uncle Ray’s steel-toed boots stop just outside the threshold. Three feet away.

He flicked a lighter, the yellow flare briefly illuminating the weathered, leathery crease of his cheek.

He wasn’t looking for me.

He was hunting her.

“June-bug,” Uncle Ray said, blowing a stream of gray smoke into the damp air. His tone was level, conversational, the way he sounded when calling us down for Sunday supper. “You’ve been out in these woods a full night and day. Copperheads are waking up, and the frost gets mean after dark. Harlan Cross’s place might be a bit rough around the edges, but he’s got food on the table and heat in the stove. You give him a baby in a year or two, and life settles down just fine.”

June’s fingernails bit into the meat of my arm through my flannel sleeve.

I bit my bottom lip until I tasted iron, not daring to twitch.

“Your mama and daddy are dead and buried,” he went on, crouching down so his face was level with the rotting wood. “I raised you and Annie on my own dime. Ten years of feeding you, buying books, buying shoes. Annie’s got school coming up, too. Where do you think that cash comes from?”

He tapped his cigarette ash against the doorframe.

“Your uncle ain’t doing you wrong, June. You’re just being ungrateful.”

June’s hand slowly slipped from my mouth.

I felt the sudden absence of her warmth as she stood up.

“June—” I gasped.

“Stay down, Annie,” she whispered.

She kicked aside the rotten straw, shoved the pine board open, and stepped out into the dying dusk.

Her shadow fell long and frail across the weeds.

Uncle Ray looked up, tapped the tip of his cigarette against his heel, and let out a satisfied grunt.

“Good girl. Knew you’d come around.”

He reached out a thick, calloused paw to grab her forearm.

I lunged out of the shed, throwing my whole weight around June’s waist, screaming at the top of my lungs: “She’s not going! You can’t make her go to that man’s house!”

The easy smile vanished from Uncle Ray’s face.

He looked down at me, his small eyes narrowing into dark slits.

“Annie. What did you just say?”

“She’s not going!” I screamed, clinging to June’s sweater. “She got into college! She got the letter in the mail! You’re selling her!”

The backhand struck me across the cheek with the force of a swinging plank.

The yard spun. I hit the gravel hard, gravel digging into my palms, the hot, metallic taste of blood flooding my gums.

June threw herself over me instantly, shielding my head with her arms.

“Don’t you touch her!” she shrieked, her voice tearing at the seams. “She’s seven years old!”

Uncle Ray stubbed out his smoke beneath the tread of his boot. He reached down and hauled June up by the collar of her jacket like she was a sack of seed corn. His voice didn’t rise; it remained terrifyingly smooth.

“Look at what you’ve done, June,” he said quietly. “Look at the filth you’ve put in this child’s head.”

He dragged her toward the house, her boots scraping useless lines in the dirt.

June twisted her neck, screaming back toward me one last time:

“Annie! Go in the house! Mind your uncle, Annie!”

I sat alone in the mud, staring at the little tangerine candy shattered beneath the dirt.

The only difference this time was that I hadn’t betrayed her.

Yet the outcome was exactly the same.