The Wicked Sister Quotes

“Only it’s not Trevor. It’s the bear. Huge. Powerful, healthy, and strong. Every bit as big as I’d imagined. The bear swings its massive head from side to side and chuffs and takes a step toward my sister. I want to let it kill her for all she’s done. But I am not my sister. I point. “Behind you. The bear. It’s come back.” Diana smiles her disbelief. “I’m serious. Look.” She turns. The bear rears up on its hind legs and paws the air, then drops to all fours and chuffs. She shoots. It stands up on its hind legs and claws at its chest and roars. Drops to all fours and keeps coming. Diana shoots again. Still the bear keeps coming. I don’t understand. She killed White Bear with two well-placed shots from my Remington, yet multiple shots fired from a rifle that’s larger and more powerful won’t bring this bear down. I watch, utterly riveted, as the bear who should have been dead continues to run toward my sister. Its fur becomes lighter and lighter. Diana shoots again and again. Yet the bear keeps coming. By the time it leaps onto my sister and sinks its teeth into her throat, the bear is completely white. I cover my eyes. Wait for her scream. Instead, a raven calls. I open my eyes. The bear is not white. My sister is not dead. It’s an illusion. Another vision. A trick of the light. There’s only me, one very dead black bear, and my sister shooting like a madwoman into its carcass. I dive for Charlotte’s rifle without thinking and flatten myself behind her body and shoot. Diana falls. She doesn’t get up.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“Anyway, I’ve done this before. This is how I survived those weeks that I was lost. I sheltered in a bear’s den. I remember.” I tell him everything: how my sister made me shoot the rare albino bear I had befriended, how I ran into the woods after I killed him because I was afraid that she was going to shoot me, how I found the den and crawled inside, how the sleeping bear kept me warm. I don’t tell him that it was White Bear who warned me to run away, or that a raven eventually led me to safety.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“suffered so much at my sister’s hands. My parents must have known that something was seriously wrong with their older daughter. They should have done a better job of protecting me. I understand that many parents are unwilling to deal with a problem child and end up denying or minimizing their bad behavior—even becoming so swept up by the dangerous child’s charms that they actually favor them over their less exciting and charismatic siblings. But understanding why my parents didn’t look out for me doesn’t make it right. They should have seen what was going on, should have taken steps to stop it. It should never have come to this. My parents lost everything at Diana’s hands. Now I’m about to lose everything as well.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“used to think that this was normal, and that my secondary status was because I was the second child, until one of my therapists pointed out that doing everything my sister told me to do, even if some of it was risky or downright dangerous, was my attempt to claim my share of my parents’ attention. Until then, I would have said it was more a matter of self-preservation.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“The victory feels hollow—not because I don’t believe that Peter is sincere in granting me this concession, but because of the dreadful circumstances that sparked the battle. If Diana had a visible handicap such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, or if she was missing an arm or a leg—even if she had a better-understood psychological condition such as schizophrenia or if she was bipolar, it’d be different. There are support groups for families dealing with these issues. People would understand. They’d offer help. But no one is sympathetic to the mother of a psychopath. To the mother of a girl who tried to kill her infant sister. A girl who let a toddler drown in a swimming pool. Or did Diana push the boy in?”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“I don’t disagree. Unfortunately, there is no standard test for psychopathy in children. And to be perfectly honest, many psychologists believe that psychopathy can’t be identified in young children at all. But a growing number, including me, believe that psychopathy is a distinct neurological condition and that the primary traits can be identified in children as young as five. The most significant factors we look for are what we call callous-unemotional traits, which distinguish fledgling psychopaths from children with ordinary conduct disorders who are also impulsive and who exhibit hostile or even violent behavior. To the best of our current understanding, the results are conclusive. Diana is a psychopath. I’m sorry.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“Then it hits me. Ravens live up to seventeen years. If this pair are the same birds who nested here when I was a child, this means that they were alive the day my parents died. The raven is saying that I don’t have to struggle to regain my memories. They will tell me what they saw. What they know. Obviously, the testimony of a pair of ravens is never going to hold up in a court of law, but if they can point me in the right direction, I can present any new evidence I find myself. I nod to show that I understand. “Later,” I whisper.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“scan the pages quickly, feigning interest until I come upon a line drawing of a child next to a picture of a massive rifle, and then I really am interested. I read the associated paragraph: After the daughter was recovered, the M.E. examined the girl and found no evidence of bruising on her limbs or torso consistent with having fired a Winchester Magnum. Given the size of the weapon relative to the girl’s height and weight as well as the lack of physical evidence, the M.E. ruled that the daughter did not fire the rifle. My heart pounds. I place the folder carefully on the table and wipe my hands on my jeans and stick them under my legs to stop them from shaking. I don’t understand. I shot my mother. I killed her—I know I did. I’ve seen myself standing over her body with the rifle so many, many times.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“The thing you have to understand about memories associated with childhood trauma is that the brain processes these differently than normal ones, sometimes burying them so deeply a person doesn’t even realize that the reason they’re struggling as an adult is because of something that happened to them when they were a child.” What I don’t tell him is that I don’t want to remember those days, and never did, which no doubt was a big factor in my therapists’ collective failure. If whatever happened during that time was so disturbing that my brain felt the need to erase it, I don’t want to know.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“Okay if I smoke?” I ask, buying time so I can choose my words carefully from the mental script I’ve prepared. There’s so much riding on this interview. Trevor has to understand that my parents were as happy as any two people could be, that my father would no more kill my mother than Romeo would have killed Juliet. Once I establish that, I can tell him who did.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“I’ve seen too many people spill their guts in group therapy believing that this will make them feel better, only to discover that revealing their deepest, darkest secrets invariably makes things a thousand times worse. Once you know that someone’s uncle molested her while her stepfather recorded it so they could sell the videos on the dark web, or that the cute guy you had a crush on when you were fourteen spent the first seven years of his life believing he was a girl because that’s how his mother dressed and treated him and at sixteen he was still struggling with gender issues, or that your new roommate’s parents tracked every morsel of food that passed her lips and if she gained so much as half a pound, she had to work out for hours in an exercise room that was more like a torture chamber, it’s hard to forget. I remind myself I want to do this. Trevor may have initiated this interview, but I am here by choice.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“Scotty” is not his real name, by the way; I only call him that because of his obsession with Star Trek, the same way he calls me “Ursula” because of my love for bears. Scotty’s brother, Trevor, is also waiting on the sofa. My stomach does its usual flip-flop when I see him. I knew he would be here, of course—he and I have an appointment to talk privately after the movie—but I can’t help the effect he has on me. Trevor Lehto is twenty-eight, ten years younger than Scotty and two years older than me. Today he’s wearing a lumberjack shirt with the sleeves turned up to his elbows, Converse sneakers, and jeans, which work well with his brown hair and eyes and a scruffy beard that manages to look both natural and groomed. I also have brown hair and eyes and am wearing jeans and plaid because this is practically the uniform for men and women in the U.P., but Trevor pulls off the look in a way that people tend to notice. I’m reasonably certain I’m not the only person at the hospital who has a crush on him.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“and through it all, always, always in the front of my mind and deep in my heart burns this terrible truth: I am the reason my parents will never see, smell, taste, laugh, or love again. My parents are dead because of me. The police ruled my parents’ deaths a murder-suicide perpetrated by my father. All the news reports I’ve been able to find agree: Peter James Cunningham (age 45) murdered his wife, Jennifer Marie Cunningham (age 43), for undetermined reasons, and then turned the rifle on himself. Some speculate that I saw my father shoot my mother and that’s why I ran away; others that I found my parents’ bodies and this is what sent me over the edge. I would have told them that I was responsible if I had been able to speak. When I came out of my catatonia three weeks later, I made sure that everyone who would listen knew what I had done. But to this day, no one believes me. Not even the spider.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“My therapists say I’m suffering from complicated grief disorder and promise I’ll get better in time. My therapists are wrong. I’m getting worse. I can’t sleep, and when I do, I have nightmares. I get frequent headaches and my stomach hurts all the time.”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister

“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t going away. —ELVIS PRESLEY”
― Karen Dionne, The Wicked Sister