The door creaked open, revealing a long-forgotten room Jack hadn’t seen in nearly thirty years.  It was coated in a thick blanket of dust and stank of mildew and sickness, and perhaps something more sinister underneath.  The blue paint that once brightened the walls was now dull and peeling; the wooden floors were splintered and rotten.  They groaned with each step he took, reawakening distant memories he’d kept tucked away in the back of his mind since the day he left this haunted place.

He sighed, shoulders shuddering with trepidation and age.  Even after all this time, Jack still half-expected his little sister to be sitting in the sunken, discolored mattress in the center of the room.  He could almost see her looking up from her journal, reassuring him with her slight, gentle smile as he entered.  

“Bit of a mess, now isn’t it?” Fiona said, shrugging.  Jack cleared his throat and nodded, waking from his thoughts.

“Yeah, it is.  But it’s nothing that we can’t fix.”  

“Was it your room?”  Jack wiped his eyes awkwardly.  He hadn’t told her about Isadora.  In fact, he’d hardly told anyone.  False sympathy wasn’t anything he wanted to hear more of; he’d heard enough of it lately every time someone brought up his parents or this wretched inheritance. That was the thing about condolences, they didn’t work like stitches.  They didn’t close the still-stinging wound in his heart.  

But Fiona wasn’t like most people was she?  Ever since they’d met on the stormy coast, she’d been Jack’s best friend, supporting him through thick and thin.  She knew him better than anyone, knew exactly what he needed in any situation.  Certainty this time would be no different, right?

He faced her, eyebrows pinched with tension, before opening his mouth to speak.

“It was my sister’s,” he said finally. 

“You have a sister?  Since when?”  Jack looked at her.

“Had.”

“Oh.”  There was a heavy pause.  Jack’s heart sank deep into his stomach, like a stone dropped in murky water.  He already regretted saying anything; he could practically sense the pity radiating from Fiona’s hollow face.  He forced himself not to cringe as his friend opened her mouth to speak, anticipating some kind of generic apology or halfhearted response.

“What was she like?” she said instead.  Jack blinked.

“You really want to know?” Jack asked, voice shaking during the second half of the sentence.  Fiona nodded, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder as Jack took in a heavy breath. 

“She was extraordinary,” he said, hesitantly at first, but it wasn’t long before he found his thoughts flowing from his mouth, each detail unchecked and uncensored, as if a dam had been broken.  “She loved weaving, and writing in her journal, and going to the beach.  Her favorite color was blue; it reminded her of the wild ocean waves and the open sky on a cloudless summer day.  We used to sit under that sky together, you know.  We would have picnics and run around through the tall grass.  I would put wildflowers in her hair, and she would smile, and nothing would matter.  

But then she got sick, and I couldn’t stand to be around it.  That pale face and crooked smile…they weren't hers anymore.  She would cough up blood and stare into space and cry about monsters who weren’t ever there.”  He buried his face in his palms.  

“Tell me, Fi, would it be terrible to admit that I was afraid of it all?”  

Fiona stared at him, mouth slightly agape.

“Jack…”

“Fiona, she was only seventeen.  She needed me, and I turned away.”

“And you were only nineteen, and you were scared,” Fiona said earnestly.  “You can’t blame yourself.  I know you, you’re a good person.  And I’m willing to bet you were the best brother, too.”

“It was thirty years ago.”  Jack shrugged, a bittersweet smile crossing his lips.

“Yeah,” Fiona said, squeezing his shoulder, “well, some scars stick around for a while.”