The saltbox was not shabby, like Hannah had first thought, but well maintained. Gray and white. The inside was dated but pleasantly clean and knickknack-free. The kitchen was bright with sunlight, the cabinets light wood and white and the Formica countertop gleaming. The house smelled like Pledge and cookies.
The woman busied herself with the teapot, and Hannah watched her buzz around the kitchen, withdrawing mugs, tea bags, sugar, milk.
“I’m Hannah,” she finally said.
“Oh dear, how rude. I’m Lila Yardley. I’ve lived here in Rockwell all my life. This house was the house I grew up in. I know everything there is to know about everyone.” She set all the fixings down on the table and poured them each a cup of tea, dunking a Lipton tea bag in each cup. “So you’re the sister, then? Not the one who was killed?”
“She ran away.” Hannah busied herself with milk and a spoon. “I guess to some it looks like I did too. It was too hard . . . after. And even now, it’s hard.”
“Well, sure. You were a child.” She shook her head, tsked as she stirred.
“Do you know anything about my sister, if you know everyone and everything?” Hannah asked it tongue in cheek but found herself holding her breath anyway.
“Not a thing, darling.” Lila reached out, her hand dry and warm on Hannah’s. “I know the old-old stuff and the new-new stuff, but the years after Fae moved up the mountain? Nothing. I know she had a daughter who died. Tragic. She kept to herself mostly. The child hadn’t started school, and Fae wasn’t the mommy-and-me-class kind of mother. People in town talked, of course. Called her eccentric, witchy. Silly, stupid things. I hated all that.”
“You didn’t believe she was a witch? Or she was cursed?” Hannah searched her memory for what the kids had said to her all those years ago. She hadn’t known why. They’d never told her about Ruby, probably assuming she and Julia had known.
“I always felt so bad for her. Fae was a child herself when she married Warren, had no idea what she was getting herself into. I thought when she got away from him, her life would get better, not worse.”
“Why did she marry him?” Hannah wondered aloud. Who would marry an angry, abusive drunk? The only way was if he didn’t use to be that way. If life had ruined him. Had he started drinking because of Aunt Fae? Had Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart’s affair turned Warren mean?
“Oh, well. Warren used to be a catch. Oh sure, he had tons of girlfriends from all over. Seemed to be plenty of women in love with Warren Turnbull. Some local, some from up north. I don’t even know where he met ’em all.” Lila pressed her index finger to her lips, thinking. “You know, before he pissed away his money, he was the only plumber in town. Every pipe in Rockwell was plumbed by Warren at one point or another. Even the hospital called him for backed-up toilets and clogged drains. He held a monopoly on the whole county, so he wasn’t rich, but he made a living. He was handsome too. A little rough and tumble, but nobody seemed to mind that.”
“How’d Fae and Warren meet?”
Lila looked up at the ceiling, searching her memory, her face twisted in concentration. “You know? I’m not sure. If I had to guess, I’d say a bar. Your Aunt Fae was pretty in her day. She came from Parksville, just down Route 17. In a town like Rockwell, everybody knows everybody, and your mama and your aunt Fae were just known. They were pretty girls from a respectable family. And everyone knew your grandmother. She was a county beauty, kind to boot, and real gem of a person.”
Hannah knew this to be true. She knew her grandparents had lived in Jeffersonville, in a Main Street duplex. Her grandmother had been a secretary at the high school before she’d died young at sixty-five from a sudden heart attack. Hannah’s grandfather had died a few years later from liver failure, his insides pickled in whiskey. He’d been a drunk but a jolly one. Functional alcoholic, they’d have said now, but back then he’d just been known as a widower, still in love with his wife, drinking to pass the time until he could see her again. He’d been a retired navy man, the owner of a local hardware store. When Mom had talked of her parents—which was infrequent—it had always been with fondness and a wistfulness that Hannah could never quite pinpoint.
“Then why did she leave him, do you know?”
“Well, Warren was abusive. He turned mean with age. Some men just do, you know? His anger became legendary. Most people stay out of his way now. All the women eventually left. Fae left; Ellie left. Everyone he loved left him.”
“Ellie?” The name sent a jolt through Hannah. Ellie. Ellie. All that long auburn hair, wild around her face. Telling jokes in the center of the circle that first day at the pool. Ellie, Julia’s best friend that last summer, the two of them stealing down the path toward the river, tossing glances over their shoulders. Ellie, in the center courtyard at midnight, her skin blue in the moonlight, her skirt and heels both high.
“So sad, that one. Such a troubled young woman. But see, she was a child too. Caught up in Fae and Warren’s drama. She adored Fae. Then she’d been alone with Warren, and it was too hard. I don’t blame her for leaving. Although I wish she’d get in touch. Last I’d heard, she just wanted to forget Rockwell. Who could blame her?” Lila opened and closed her mouth, like she wanted to say more, but instead pressed her palms to the tabletop, her lips together. “You know, I don’t hate Warren; I’m probably his only ally around these parts. He had a horrific childhood. So now he spends all his days down at the bar. Drinking away his life, what’s left of it.”
Lila rambled on, but Hannah couldn’t focus. Ellie had loved Aunt Fae? She’d never even seen them speak to each other. “Wait, Lila. Who is Ellie? To Warren?”
“Oh, I thought you girls were all friends once upon a time. Ellie Turnbull. With the red hair? Well, maybe you didn’t know her. She left Rockwell the minute she turned sixteen. Had to be 2001?”
“We knew Ellie,” Hannah whispered, her mind reeling.
“Oh, well then, see? You already know. Warren was Ellie’s father.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Now
Back in the car, Hannah concentrated on deep breathing. She’d left Lila’s in a hurry, probably suspiciously quickly. She didn’t care. She needed to sort through the knot of new facts, needed time alone to unwind the skein of memories, coming furiously now.
Ellie, with the red hair, tough but so beautiful. Bright-red lips, tight skirts, high heels. Mean, caustic. That last summer, Ellie and Julia tucked away in Julia’s room, Hannah with her ear pressed against the door, trying to hear a whisper, a giggle, anything. Not understanding why she couldn’t come in, be part of it. Why couldn’t two be three? She wasn’t a baby, only two years younger. She knew about boys and clothes. She could have been part of them. Why? she’d wanted to shout at the time. Why was she so excluded? The isolation felt sudden, as if she’d been surgically extracted from her sister’s inner life. It had been whole and complete in a matter of a few weeks, and she’d been left alone in the castle night after night while her sister sequestered herself in her room with Ellie, who alternated between mean and forlorn.
Three days before her sister had gone missing, Hannah remembered finding Julia alone in the courtyard, her skin shining from the light of a bright full moon. Julia’s eyes had been wild. Her hair matted on one side, like she’d been sleeping on it. What time was it? Almost midnight. What had made Hannah wake up and look out her window to the courtyard below and see Julia, ethereal and white, in her nightgown? What had made her run down the spiral staircase, through the halls, and out the kitchen door after her? She’d just been standing there. Hannah could have sworn her mouth was moving, like she’d been talking. But to whom?
“Why are you completely ignoring me this summer?” she’d asked her sister.
Julia’s hand pressed against her forehead, as though staving off a headache. “It’s not personal, Hannah, please. There’s a lot of shit going down. You can’t even know. You’re fifteen. The world isn’t like you think it is.”
“That’s so condescendin
g. I know what the world is like, Julia, and since when does that matter to you? We’re a team. Against Mom, against Wes, exploring this castle, spending our summers together. That was the deal. Now I’m alone all the time, and I’m tired of it, and I want to know why.”
“I can’t tell you why, okay? Trust me. I’m sorry. It’s not what you think. It’s not a club you’re not part of. It’s bigger than that. It’s huge.” Julia’s hands went around in a circle, and Hannah huffed. Her sister had always been one for drama. Julia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You know how I see things sometimes?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. This again. Julia had read a book a year before about mystics and fortune-tellers, something about the dark arts, and since then she had claimed—too publicly for Hannah’s liking—that she could see people’s spirits. She could sense things. Events before they happened. People who had passed on. It was a cry for attention; anyone could see that. It was all ridiculous, and even Mom had lost her patience with it. “Yes. I know you say that,” Hannah said diplomatically, not sure where Julia was going.
“Something around here is fucked up. I think—”
“Julia!” The voice came from the woods, the path leading from the courtyard to the river. Ellie appeared at the mouth of the trail, her hair glowing in the moonlight. Then she was by their side, standing next to Julia. Ellie reached down and slipped her hand into Julia’s, so again, it was two against one. Julia offered a shrug, a helpless gesture.
Hannah cried out in frustration. “Why. Why are you always here? Always, always, always! It’s midnight.” Her black skirt, her red heels. Where could she be going in that get-up? Nowhere good. Ellie pulled at Julia’s hand, toward the trail. “You can’t go anywhere. It’s the middle of the night. You’re in your nightgown.”
Hannah felt impotent, twisted up and tied by loyalty. If she ran to get Fae, her sister would be pushed even further away. No one liked a tattletale, a snitch. If she let her go and something terrible happened to her (she imagined them falling drunk into the river, churning thick as a milkshake from all the rain), she’d never forgive herself.
Julia let herself be pulled away by Ellie, down the path, her flip-flops catching on the fallen sticks and branches. She glanced back once, her finger to her lips, her eyes pleading.
Hannah spent the whole night lying awake with worry. Waiting for her sister to return, to hear her footsteps in the hall, creeping into her bedroom. She never heard her. She went down to breakfast, bleary and exhausted. At the table sat Julia: hair wet from a shower, dressed in shorts, the string from her bikini poking out of the neck of a bright-pink T-shirt.
“Hi!” Julia said brightly. Fae bustled in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinet doors. Julia chattered on about a book she was reading, filling the silence with dragons and battles and princesses. Stupid, childish chatter.
“Where have you been?” Hannah asked between her teeth as she sat next to her sister.
“What do you mean?” Julia blinked innocently.
“I mean I waited all night for you to come home. You didn’t.” At her sister’s blank face, Hannah sighed frustratedly. “In the courtyard? I saw you, remember?” She didn’t even care if Aunt Fae got mad anymore. Hannah was tired of Julia’s secretiveness, tired of her games. “With Ellie?”
“Ellie!” Aunt Fae exclaimed, turning to them. Her face seemed to pale. “Is that true? Did you go out last night?” Her voice was fearful, cut with a skittering panic. She’d begun to question them, asking about their comings and goings when she never had before. Sneaking out of the house late at night would have made her sick with worry.
“Hannah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Julia shook her head, patted her sister’s hand. “You have dreams sometimes.” She held Hannah’s gaze then, her eyes clouded, impenetrable, almost gray with warning. “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I was sleeping in my room all night.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Now
When she came home from Lila’s house, Huck and Rink were nowhere to be found. She’d missed a call while she was driving; a voice mail told her that Serenity Acres, a hospice center twenty-five miles away, had called. They had an opening.
An opening. An opening at a hospice meant that someone had died. Hannah felt a certain kind of hopelessness at that. On one hand, her uncle would have a place to go. Comfort and care and twenty-four-hour monitoring for his last days on earth. On the other, a family somewhere was mourning the loss of someone they loved. Or perhaps—and this was even sadder—they weren’t.
The hiss-hum of Uncle Stuart’s ventilator could be heard from the hallway. Hannah paused, listening for the patter of Alice’s footsteps. When she was certain Alice wasn’t in the room, she pushed the door open. Stuart was turned slightly on his side, propped by a roll pillow. She knew Alice would be back shortly—she never left him propped for long. It was mostly to keep him moving, avoid bedsores, atrophy. His arm dangled off the side of the bed, his fingers curled and pale.
Hannah pulled the desk chair up to the bed and covered Uncle Stuart’s hand with her own, angling it back slightly to rest on the mattress for support. “Uncle Stuart, it’s Hannah.” His eyes fluttered above the breathing mask but did not open.
“I found an opening for you. I don’t want to send you away. You understand, don’t you? Are you mad, I wonder?” Her voice was quiet, and she rubbed the papery skin on the back of his hand. She felt her eyes tear, her throat sting. “You can’t want to live like this. This isn’t a life. This is . . . torture.”
She looked around the room. The curtains were drawn, but through the slit in the middle, she could see the rosy glow of twilight.
“You understand, right? I can’t take care of you, Uncle Stuart. I don’t know how. I have to go back to work, or I’ll be fired, eventually. Alice can’t be here twenty-four hours.” She took a deep breath. “I have regrets; do you? Why did we stop talking? Why did I think I had so much more time?” It was selfish, unforgivable.
Hiss-hum. Hiss-hum. Hiss-hum. The steady beeping of his electronically displayed heartbeat.
“Why didn’t we ever know anything about Ruby? How did she really die? Did Fae spend her whole life feeling guilty about what happened?” Hannah felt emboldened by the silence; the darkness of the room felt like a tomb. She had so many questions. “Was Aunt Fae Ellie’s mother?” The question had come so late—Hannah couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought about it before. She blamed lack of sleep; her thinking felt underwater. “Aunt Fae was at least Ellie’s stepmother, but neither of you ever talked about her. Or to her. She came to this house! So many times. Nothing about this makes sense.” She laughed shrilly, the sound echoing in the oversize room. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
And she did. Her real life, in Virginia, felt incredibly far away, like it had happened to a wholly different person. She could barely remember Huck and their lazy weeknights, dinner at the pub down the street, walking home hand in hand, woozy from wine and stomachs full of greasy french fries and burgers. Falling into bed, the feel of Huck against her skin. Waking up with Rink’s nose wet against her cheek. The texts from friends, the constant swirl of activity that filled her days. Her job: matching stock photos and fonts to elicit the exact response she wanted. All while Uncle Stuart had lain up here dying, the seeds of truth of her sister’s disappearance slowly dying with him. Even if he didn’t know everything, he must have known something.
She’d always assumed that if she wanted the time, she had it. It all seemed so vapid now. Stupid. Worthless.
“How did you and Fae even meet? How did you get this castle? Where did it come from?” And then the things she couldn’t ask: What do I do now? She felt like she’d opened a Pandora’s box and let all the questions out, the ones she’d held tight for so long and those she hadn’t known to ask, and she’d never be able to leave until she answered them. Until she knew what had happened that summer and everything that had led up to it.
“I can’t lea
ve,” Hannah said, breaking the silence across the dark bedroom. Huck had finally returned from his walk in the woods. A late night this time. He’d been grumpy, short with her. She’d made them pasta and pesto using basil from the garden. The herb garden was bursting and fragrant, the smells reminding her of Aunt Fae.
“What happened to you?” Hannah had barked when Huck had come through the kitchen door at almost nine o’clock. She’d called his cell phone, but it had gone straight to voice mail. There was never great service on the mountain.
“Rink ran away. Took me forever to find him.” Huck was in a foul mood, his jeans and boots muddy.
“At least he didn’t dig up any bodies this time,” Hannah had quipped, and Huck had simply grunted a reply. She’d eaten the pasta alone while Huck had showered.
Brackenhill was getting to him, Hannah thought. It was isolating up here, the woods, the drafty castle. No one had been sleeping well. Rink had had everyone up the night before barking like crazy, running back and forth in the hall, and because of either lack of sleep or circumstance, Hannah had burst into tears at the whole ordeal, and Huck had snapped, “Get it together, Hannah.” It was the first time he’d ever talked to her like that. But Hannah got it: Brackenhill made everyone edgy. Nervous. Hannah had taken to guzzling wine in the evening before bed to knock her out. She’d hoped to sleep deeply enough to ward off sleepwalking episodes.
“I know,” Huck now replied softly. He found her hand under the covers and squeezed her fingertips. “I don’t want to leave you up here alone, though.”
“I won’t be alone; I’ll have Rink.” Hannah knew it wasn’t enough for Huck, but he had clients to appease. He’d been fielding relentless phone calls from his crew: he was the customer Zamboni, the one who solved the problems, smoothed everyone out. Everyone wanted to know where he was—one of his largest clients was an industrial complex on the outskirts of DC, and it was time to strip the beds and install fall plants. It was a job that took almost a week alone, and they had asked for an upgrade to the front entrance and were willing to pay, but Huck had been unavailable. His fiancée’s dying uncle held precious little water.
Girls of Brackenhill Page 15
