Girls of Brackenhill

by Moretti, Kate

  Help.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Now

  Hannah had stumbled home from Jinny’s with a blinding headache and gone straight to bed. Jinny said it was common for divinations to bring on migraines. Hannah had never had a migraine in her life, and what she’d seen was hardly a divination. It was an overactive imagination brought on by fatigue. Stress. Emotional burnout.

  Julia’s word came back to her: Help. Over and over and over again. She tried to reconcile the vision—it was, simply, a vision. An apparition. Hannah had never been particularly susceptible to suggestion, but Jinny was persuasive. She was taken in by Jinny’s store, her reasoning, her voice, the candles, the incense, the room. What was starting to feel like desperation clawing under the surface. All her random digging the past few weeks. She’d almost forgotten what home felt like, what normalcy felt like. She wanted to find Julia. She wanted, for the first time since she was fifteen, a sense of closure. She wanted Huck and her life and her job back, but this time with no tether to the past. No shadowy, unknown parts of her, just a clear understanding of what had happened that last summer, what happened to her sister. She’d go to therapy if she had to. She could do that. Huck deserved an emotionally balanced wife, and right now, she was anything but. Her insides felt wild all the time, her mind careening like a roller coaster.

  Sleep was elusive. Hannah had started going to bed early right after Huck left—three days ago, or was it four?—sometimes around nine o’clock, her body exhausted. She woke up several times a night, her heart pounding, blood running fast in her veins. Visceral dreams—not nightmares but something more real. Waking up all over the house, the yard. The other night she came to in the basement, the overhead fluorescents buzzing and flickering like a strobe. She stood in the center of the maze of small rooms, unsure how to get back upstairs. She made her way through a series of small doorways, only to realize that she was heading toward the back of the house, not the stairwell, and had to pivot and return the way she’d come. She felt fluttered fingertips against her neck, a chorus of whispers chasing behind her. When she’d finally stumbled up the stairs, heart in her throat, she’d slammed the basement door and stood in the kitchen, sweating. It had been four in the morning.

  Hannah was afraid that one day soon she’d come to consciousness standing thigh deep in the Beaverkill. If she drowned, who would know? Who would find her, call the police? If she told Huck, he’d make her come home. She felt like she was making progress—more than Wyatt, perhaps, at least concerning her sister. She wasn’t quite ready to leave it behind and . . . what? Return to Virginia no better off than when she’d left? No.

  But today she woke up here, in Uncle Stuart’s room.

  “Do you know?” she was asking when she came into consciousness, her voice disconnected, floating, wholly unlike her own. Hannah was sitting next to his bed, her fingertips rubbing the lace trim of her nightgown. On this chair. Seemingly in the middle of a sentence. Now what?

  She absently touched her hair, flying away in all directions. A brief panic, a time slip. The sense that she’d been sitting in this room for hours, not minutes, curtains drawn. Like waking up from a nap and looking at a clock in a darkened room: Was it night or day? Had she missed work? Except here, at Brackenhill, there was no work.

  Uncle Stuart opened his eyes, blinked furiously, and nodded his head. He was last conscious two weeks ago. Right after she arrived. So she waited here in this impending-death waiting room. The transfer to hospice could kill him, Alice had warned. They had until Monday to decide. The facility had agreed to hold the room for a week. Today was Thursday. Friday, maybe. The days were running together. Would he die first? This was the order of the day. Yesterday Alice said his breathing was becoming labored.

  He had an infection now. Probably starting from an abscessed tooth. Seemingly minor inconveniences to healthy people were fast-track death sentences to hospice patients. The day before had doctors in and out. They’d talked about transferring him to a hospital. He was on IV antibiotics, Alice reported later.

  Uncle Stuart grunted, his hand lifted, and he pointed toward the closet. What had she asked him? Whatever it was, he knew the answer. He was awake. And not unconscious with his eyes open but actually awake.

  Hannah sucked in a breath, her palms slick from nerves. “Hi,” she said.

  He blinked at her, the ventilator hissing. His face was white in the early-morning light, with a shock of greasy gray flattened against his crown. The veins in his neck, his hands, twitched with life, even while he appeared skeletal. Hannah resisted the urge to hug him, pepper him with questions, never knowing the day he’d be conscious for the last time.

  Hannah made her way to the closet door and opened it. Fae’s clothing, dresses and blouses and slacks. Not many but enough that Hannah wondered where she would have worn all this stuff. She’d never, as far as Hannah knew, held a job.

  The bottom of the closet held a lockbox. She picked it up, turned, held it up for Uncle Stuart to see. He wagged his finger, like a nod, in her direction, and she brought the lockbox back to his bed. The lockbox wasn’t, in fact, locked, and a simple twist of the handle resulted in a click as the lid sprang open.

  Where did Brackenhill come from?

  That had been the question she’d asked him, only half-awake. It came back to her now. The memory of walking into Uncle Stuart’s room, sitting in the chair, and holding his hand came back in full, like she’d been conscious.

  The lockbox contained only one document. It was folded in thirds, yellowed on the edges, and protected in a plastic sleeve. She extracted it carefully, pinching the brittle paper between her thumb and forefinger, before unfolding it on the desk, running her thumb along each crease to flatten it.

  Title Deed across the top in ornate calligraphy.

  This mortgage, made the sixth of May one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two, to Randall Foster Yost in consideration for the sum of five thousand dollars . . .

  Yost. Not Webster.

  Yost was her mother’s maiden name. And Fae’s. Brackenhill wasn’t Stuart’s; it was Fae’s.

  Which could only mean one thing: unless Fae’s will said otherwise, Brackenhill belonged to Hannah.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Now

  Get a grip.

  Hannah folded the deed and shoved it back in the lockbox. She stored the box back in the closet and turned to see Alice standing in the center of the room. Where had she come from? What time was it?

  Hannah said it out loud: “What time is it?”

  Alice paused. “Six thirty. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d start PT early,” she said.

  Six thirty in the morning, then? Hannah felt the room tilt; her vision swam.

  “Are we still doing PT?” Hannah cleared her throat, trying to get her bearings. Did they do physical therapy on a man who had days left to live?

  Had Alice seen her rummaging through the closet? Did it even matter? It was Hannah’s house, not Alice’s.

  Alice stared at her disapprovingly. “Well, death is unpredictable. Keeping him moving keeps him comfortable, in the long run. If there is a long run.”

  Alice set her bag down, smoothed the front of her shirt. She wore scrubs: this time, they were pink with white bunnies. Her nursing clogs were bright white, new looking. Her face pinched, severe. Hannah realized she’d never seen her smile, not once.

  Hannah took a deep breath. Then another. She was still in her nightgown. “Why don’t you meet me in the kitchen in ten minutes? I’ll get dressed. Let’s have coffee.”

  Alice blanched. Recovered. Gave a quick nod. “Of course, Miss Maloney.”

  “Alice, really. Please call me Hannah.”

  In the kitchen, in jeans and a T-shirt, Hannah busied herself making coffee. Scoured the refrigerator for fruit and came up with croissants, three days stale. She needed normalcy, a conversation with another adult who wasn’t Jinny, speaking in cryptic riddles, or Uncle Stuart, not speaking at all, H
uck, trying to tell her that all her hunches and suspicions weren’t rational or based in fact. Or Wyatt, making her stomach clench and her breathing hitch. Alice was a nice, neutral normal. N-N-N.

  Hannah felt a giggle bubble up. God, she was cracking up.

  “Something funny?” Alice said behind her, and Hannah whirled. Alice’s head was cocked to the side, her expression thoughtful.

  “No. Maybe. Yes.” Hannah closed her eyes, then opened them. “I’m thinking of leaving soon. Not immediately, but you know, I have a life to return to.”

  Alice smiled for the first time, revealing a browning canine. How old was she? Sixty? Hannah guessed. No. Fifty at the most. “Of course you do.”

  “I don’t know what to do here,” Hannah confessed, arranging the croissants on a plate on the island. “Alice, how long have you been here? Helping Stuart?”

  “Well, I’ve been helping Fae since Stuart took a turn for the worse, which was about a year ago last January. So eighteen months or so.”

  That January Hannah had been promoted. She’d been newly in love with Huck. They’d moved in together in February, so they would have been consumed with plans. Her life, a few hundred miles away, and Fae had been hiring a nurse, feeding her husband baby food. Changing diapers? Who knew. Hannah’s stomach lurched.

  “Fae was kind, gave me a chance. I had been down on my luck,” Alice said. “Looking for a new start. You know what that’s like.” Her tone was quiet, light even, but Hannah shifted uncomfortably.

  “Well, yes, she could be generous,” Hannah said blithely. She remembered Fae from her childhood: stern but loving, giving with her time and patience, laughing more freely than her mother ever had, but with that certain tinge of sadness.

  “Oh, for sure. The most generous person I know. But . . . people in Rockwell, well. They never got over what happened to your sister. To this day, there are people who believe Fae had something to do with it.” Alice shook her head, her mouth set in a line. “This town is a cancer. Everyone has too much time on their hands, their lives too miserable.”

  “Do you think that?”

  “Of course not.” Alice’s reply was quick, too quick.

  Hannah looked out the window, to the courtyard: the blooming flowers, the climbing morning glories taking over a small trellis in the center, their vines curling and wild. “What do you believe happened?”

  “Well, it was before my time here. I guess I assumed she ran away. I don’t know. There were rumors of abuse . . . at home.” Meaning in Plymouth, Hannah thought. “I stay out of Rockwell. Too much gossip. I live a few towns away.”

  “There was no abuse,” Hannah offered, but it felt thin. There was Wes. Had he come into Julia’s room at night? She’d never said. Then again, Hannah hadn’t asked. There was neglect. That was the same thing, wasn’t it? The memory surfaced, unbidden: Julia tucking them in at night, an empty box of chocolate chip cookies lying on the floor, their mouths grainy, coated with sugar. Their mother had been at work. Wes asleep—or what Hannah later figured was passed out—on the couch. It hadn’t been an unusual memory. That was what struck her, that it had been so ordinary. Julia, eleven, telling Hannah that it was ten o’clock and too late to be awake if they had school tomorrow. Children parenting children.

  A change in subject. Hannah said, “So what do I do now?”

  Alice paused. Then, “Well, you’re next of kin. When Stuart dies, you’d just have to come back.”

  “When will that be?” Hannah asked, her voice growing urgent. She touched her forehead. “I just have to . . . I think Brackenhill is making me batty. It’s so isolated up here. I’m not used to it. I haven’t had a bout of sleepwalking in years.”

  “You sleepwalk?” Alice looked up, her eyes wide.

  “I used to as a child. I haven’t in a long time. Until now.”

  “And you think this is because of Brackenhill?” Alice’s voice was skeptical. Hannah felt a rise of defensiveness.

  “I assume it’s stress related. The house, the bones, Uncle Stuart, my sister . . .” Her voice trailing.

  “Ah yes. Any progress on that front?”

  “Some. Maybe? Detective McCarran keeps me informed. The bones were not . . . Julia. My sister.”

  Alice looked thoughtful, studied her hands. “What do you think?”

  What did she think? She had no idea. She had snippets, gut instincts, moments that felt like real discovery, then . . . nothing. The vision of Julia at Jinny’s, bloodied and helpless. Ellie running away, and now, according to Wyatt, possibly buried on the grounds, pregnant? She had a scrying ring. A deed to a house that might or might not be hers. She had a whole host of memories that haunted her at night. A longing for a man who was not her fiancé that was keeping her awake, her nerve endings electric. She had pieces; that was all. Tiny little pieces of a mystery that wasn’t hers to begin with.

  “I think I have to leave, Alice. I have to go back to my life. This is not my life. This is . . . an interruption.” She’d been at Brackenhill for fourteen days, and she was no closer to finding out what had happened to Julia. Aunt Fae’s accident investigation had been quiet. Even the remains in the woods could be identified without her help. Uncle Stuart was still alive, if barely; Aunt Fae was not. She was sleep deprived, growing more isolated and delirious by the day. Alice felt like a refuge, a friend.

  “Then why don’t you?” Alice questioned, not unkindly.

  “I’ve been avoiding Brackenhill for so long. I feel like I have one chance to get to the truth. One chance to get closure, and justice for Julia. And I’m squandering it because I’m tired and falling apart.” It was the truth, and the frustration of it felt like a basketball in her gut. The coffee mug slipped from Hannah’s hands, shattered on the slate kitchen floor. Hannah jumped, let out a little scream, and then felt ridiculous. Alice immediately bent down to clean up the mess.

  Hannah bent to help her, sighing.

  “You know, there is always more than one chance. Always,” Alice said softly, slices of porcelain cupped in her hands. She held Hannah’s gaze, steady and intense, and Hannah had no idea if that was true. She’d certainly never been given second, third, fourth chances. Not from Julia, who’d run away the moment their bond had irreparably fractured. Or from Trina, who’d fumbled through her days, bleary eyed, with barely an air-kiss to the top of her head as they’d passed in the hallway on Hannah’s way to school. Or from Fae, who’d never reached out. Never tried to call, write, contact Hannah in any way after Julia had left. Or even now, from Huck, who’d left for home when things had gotten tough. Hannah felt steeped in self-pity and pathetic.

  She almost said as much to Alice but stopped herself. Alice stood, her palm resting on Hannah’s head, her face unreadable. She gazed out the window to the garden, or perhaps the trail beyond that led to the rushing Beaverkill. Finally, she said, “I think you should go home.”

  “What?”

  “You have to take care of yourself, you know. I can call when Stuart passes.” When she turned and met Hannah’s gaze, her eyes seemed black, obsidian like Julia’s stone. “I think you know this. But it’s just no good for you here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Now

  The idea that she was leaving had wormed its way into Hannah’s brain since yesterday, and suddenly she was clearheaded. She could sleep, think, plan.

  It was Saturday. She’d take the day, pack and clean. Wrap up loose ends, say goodbye to Jinny. Maybe Wyatt. Leave tomorrow and be home in time for Labor Day. Picnics and barbecues with their friends.

  She tried to call Huck a few times. Sent a text: I’m coming home tomorrow. Can we do something fun? Maybe call the Wallers? The Wallers were their neighbors, slightly older than them and a bit further in life: They’d married. Patty Waller was pregnant. Nice, normal people to spend the last weekend of summer with.

  But by noon, Hannah found herself standing in front of Pinker’s Bar, the Beaverkill a rushing echo far behind it. She hadn’t made the choice to co
me; it seemed to have happened subconsciously. An instinct. She had nothing left to lose here, now that she’d decided to leave. Why had she come? What did she hope to gain? A lone Bud Light sign buzzed and flickered in one window, the other blacked out with a taut shade.

  The answer was complicated. On one hand, if she left everything open, without trying to connect all the dots, she’d return to the same half-hearted life in Virginia that she’d left behind. The lies in her past still lies. The secrets untold. But if she did all she could, if she put forth the effort, she could return with a clear conscience, a feeling she’d done all she could but sometimes the truth stayed buried. That was that. Lies and secrets would still exist, but she’d have done her part to ferret out the truth. She could proceed with Huck, free. Nothing tethering her here to Rockwell. And besides, no one would expect her to stay on with Stuart indefinitely. No one expected anything of her at all.

  Inside, the bar smelled like wood and liquor. A haze of smoke sat heavy in the air, making it hard to see and breathe. Two men hovered against the wood, faces drawn, nearly identical. One had an angry red scar that switchbacked across his cheek. He’d been cut with something blunt—the scar was jagged. This, Hannah suspected, was Warren.

  She bellied up to the bar next to him, leaned half-sitting, half-standing, against the chair to his right. She folded in on herself, scrunching her shoulders, careful not to touch him.