My Sister and I Have Been Cursed Since Childhood

I found June in the linen closet with a towel pressed to her cheek and Owen Pike's photograph open on her phone. The morning light from the service window caught the new ridges along her jaw. They were fine as threads, pale against her skin, but I could see them from the doorway. I had seen the curse take hold before. I had watched our mother count the changes with her eyes and then look away. "Give me the phone," I said. June turned the screen facedown. "No." "Owen sent that to you?" "He sent it to the board." The towel slipped in her hand. For a second, I saw the dark mark beneath it, a bruise-colored bloom running from her cheekbone toward her ear. The curse had started there. By the end of the week, it would reach her mouth. I shut the closet door behind me. "Did you tell him?" "I told him what happens. I thought he loved me enough to hear it." I had no answer that didn't sound like blame. I had spent years making my own face into a kind of argument. Men had touched me, and the curse had rewarded me with smooth skin, bright eyes, and cheekbones strangers called striking. June had tried to keep hers untouched. Now she had trusted one man, and the change had begun. "What does the board know?" I asked. "That I'm unwell. That I'm hiding something. That I'm no longer fit to manage Salt House." She pressed the towel to her face again. "Owen says he'll explain it for me." I heard the lie in the offer. Owen had been telling us for months that he wanted to help save the hotel. He was also the local representative for Northline Hospitality, the company trying to buy it. Salt House sat above the slate beaches of Grayhaven Bay. Our mother had left it to us in a trust, with June as managing trustee and me responsible for communications. The board's vote to sell was twelve days away. If June was removed before then, the trust could be forced into a deal neither of us wanted. I reached for her phone again. "Don't," she said. "I need to know what he sent." "You'll make it worse." "Worse than him showing your face to the board?" She looked at me then, really looked, and I felt the familiar sharpness of being measured. June's eyes were still the same green they'd been when we were girls, but the lines on her cheek made it hard to pretend she was unchanged. "You're going to make this about what you can do with your face," she said. The words landed harder than I wanted them to. "I'm trying to help." "You've been helping yourself for years." I left before I answered. Downstairs, the hotel was already awake. A housekeeper pushed a cart toward the west wing. A delivery driver left two crates of coffee by the kitchen entrance. The board members were due at eleven for a site inspection, and I had promised to meet them in the main lounge. I could cancel the meeting. I could call our lawyer. I could ask June to let me speak for her. Instead, I went to the office Owen had used whenever he visited. The door stood ajar. On his desk, beside an untouched cup of coffee, lay a stack of letter-size papers. The top page was a draft press statement. The first line read: THE VALE TRUST NEEDS STEADY HANDS. Under it was a description of June's condition as "a sudden and troubling decline." There was a photograph clipped to the page. Not the one he had sent her. A closer one. The scars showed more clearly, and her eyes were closed. I put the paper back where I found it. Owen appeared in the doorway behind me. "You're early." "I work here." "You work on the story of the place." He glanced at the draft. "This is a private matter." "You took a private photo of my sister." "She asked me to help." "She asked you to marry her." His expression didn't change. "I still want to." I watched his mouth as he said it. His voice was gentle. His hands were clean. It was the sort of sentence that could sound true in a room with no evidence against it. "You're planning to use the photograph to remove her," I said. "I'm trying to protect Salt House." "From June?" "From a crisis she isn't equipped to handle." He moved past me and picked up the page. I noticed his thumb covering the line about Northline's offer. It was a small gesture, but it told me where he thought the danger was. Before I could ask what he was hiding, the hotel bell rang at the front desk. Owen smiled at me as he walked out. "We can talk after the inspection." I stayed in the office, staring at the empty place where his paper had been. June had once told me that a curse was only as powerful as the people willing to use it. I didn't know if she still believed that.