Girls of Brackenhill

by Moretti, Kate

  They’d always been a tiny bit transactional. Can you pick up Rink’s meds? Sure. Sushi tonight? Yes, the place on Circle Drive. Hannah assumed most relationships fell into this pattern. She’d always felt a streak of pride in it: Look how functional we are! Trina had done everything; Wes contributed nothing. After Wes left, after Julia disappeared, Trina fell into a state of disrepair, and Hannah filled in the gaps. Her teenage years were benchmarked by dysfunction. There was something satisfying about her and Huck’s partnership—they were a well-oiled machine. No messy emotional glitches, no meltdowns on the bathroom floor, no shattered glasses against the walls. They didn’t even squabble about housework. What she couldn’t get to Huck would do, and vice versa. If she put laundry in, he’d hear the buzzer and deftly switch it. She’d come home from grocery shopping to find him folding her shirts the exact way she liked them—which was slightly different from how he liked them, but he complied.

  They would have been perfect parents.

  Would have been?

  The thought jarred her. The engagement ring still glinting on her finger. The scrying ring on the other hand. The wedding date not set, the wedding itself rarely discussed in detail. The idea of a wedding so attractive to both of them—she assumed, anyway—but perhaps not the actual mess of it. He’d asked her once, “How many people on your side?” And that was all it took. She’d never brought the wedding up again. He had a list. He’d made it one night over wine. Aunts and uncles, cousins and childhood neighbors turned Thanksgiving tablemates. Some of them Hannah had met, but mostly not, and Huck regaled her with stories about drunk uncles at Saint Patrick’s Day parties and an older aunt who wrapped up half-used beauty supplies at Christmas: shampoo and blue clamshell bath soaps with dried bubbles still on them (once even the curl of a black hair, and Huck and his brothers had howled for years at the “pube-soap Christmas”). Hannah sat next to him looking at bouquets on her iPad, something innocently impersonal, and laughed hollowly at Huck’s stories and wondered if she’d feel this kind of joy once his family became her family.

  And yet he didn’t ask. He didn’t ask how Stuart was or any details of the investigation. She should have told him the latest: that Wyatt thought that Fae’s accident hadn’t been an accident. It should have come out unprompted. That Warren thought that Aunt Fae had killed Ellie.

  He’d talked about his work, how sorry he was that he’d had to leave. How he missed her. How he wished he could have stayed. He asked if there had been any word on the bones. She said no. He asked when she was coming home, and she said she didn’t know.

  Then Dave interrupted, and Huck had to go, and that was the end of it.

  Hannah snapped the leash on Rink, and he skittered to the back door, impatient. He hadn’t been walked for days. Hannah had let him out once to run, but afraid he would come back with another bone, she’d whistled him back after ten minutes, limp with relief when he’d returned empty mouthed.

  She dragged Rink away from the courtyard, toward town. Away from the path that led to the river, away from the castle. A path on the north side of the castle had been overgrown. She remembered it well; it had been her preference as a child. One path led to the river, well traversed and visible from the castle windows. This one, hidden in the back, led nowhere.

  What if Warren was right? What if Fae had killed Ellie? Wouldn’t that give Warren motive to do something to Julia? Or even Fae herself? But why almost twenty years later? What was the point of driving Fae off the road now?

  As she pushed into a clearing, the greenhouse came into view. Hannah exhaled, remembering Stuart in there, surrounded by glass, the windows fogged and the top of his head only partially visible. She used to love to sit on a stool inside the greenhouse and watch him. The summer sun would beat down, the slanted roof that faced east gathering the morning and midday light, beaming onto her uncle’s head, making him bead up with sweat while he worked. A classic rock radio station would play on the transistor, and Stuart would sing softly to himself and to her.

  “This is the Who,” he’d tell her. “Everyone knows ‘Pinball Wizard’ and ‘My Generation,’ but do you know ‘Tattoo’ or ‘Disguises’?” He’d wipe sweat from his brow, leaving a thick streak of dirt from forehead to ear.

  The greenhouse now was a ghost town. Pots half-filled with dirt crowded the benches, the skeletal remains of brittle sticks shooting up from the soil. The floor was covered in a film of grit, a few clay pots upturned or broken. Animals, maybe. Not Stuart; he’d been meticulous.

  By the time Hannah arrived in June, Stuart would be ready to move his starter plants to the garden bed: tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers all started from seed, sometimes while there was still a smattering of snow on the ground. By August, the greenhouse would be largely unused, holding some heat-tolerant herbs but mostly waiting for his winter planting: turnips and swiss chard. All his starter plants had been labeled with Popsicle sticks in his jagged handwriting with half-uppercase, half-lowercase lettering.

  At one time, Hannah loved learning about the plants: their growth patterns and needs, which vegetables were drought resistant, which fruits needed acidic soil (blueberry bushes, blackberries, rhubarb—which was actually a vegetable), and which vegetables needed to stay dry (broccoli, asparagus). It all seemed complicated and yet reliable. Blueberries needed acidic soil, full sun, good drainage. That never changed. If they needed that when she was eleven, they would need that when she was thirteen. Fifteen. To Hannah at the time, it had seemed solid to invest in plants. Their needs were predictable and well documented. People could change like quicksilver. Julia was proof.

  Julia, on the other hand, could never be bothered. She didn’t understand the appeal. The greenhouse was hot and dirty, and Uncle Stuart’s taste in music was terrible, she said.

  Out the back door, a path wound down the mountain and eventually led into town. There was a short unpaved driveway that intersected with Valley Road. The north-facing wall of the greenhouse was wood, not glass, with one small round window above the sink. Rink jumped up, his paws on the sink, to lap at water that had puddled on the counter. Hannah shooed him off and peered out the round window.

  A mint-green truck was parked in the driveway. She’d forgotten Uncle Stuart’s old utility truck. Rarely used on the road. She’d only been in it once. He’d sometimes used it to transport flowers from the greenhouse to the courtyard. The path between them was wide, and at one point it had been well traveled. It was easier, he said, than making twenty trips on foot.

  Hannah tugged on Rink’s leash and let the wooden door bang behind her. The truck had rust along the front grille and running board. She opened the driver’s-side door with a creak; the inside stank like hot vinyl and sweet antifreeze. She opened the glove box and pulled out the owner’s manual. The truck was a 1989 Dodge Ram. Hannah closed her eyes, her mind reeling.

  1989 Dodge.

  In front of the truck, she bent down and studied the passenger-side fender.

  A dent. She followed it with her fingertip all the way down to the bumper. A streak of black. She scraped it with her fingernail, and it curled up easily. New. Paint transfer.

  She studied the ground. Two oil stains: one large, one small, mere inches away from each other. In a few days or weeks, the two spills might have pooled together, forming one indistinguishable puddle.

  She pulled out her phone and took a picture.

  “Hannah!” Wyatt loped toward her, and Hannah stood. His gait was urgent, his hand motioning her toward him. Hannah stood rooted to the ground, her legs frozen. Her mouth went dry. She could tell by the look on his face that it was something big. They’d found Julia, perhaps.

  “Alice thought you may have come out this way.” Wyatt stopped when he reached the driveway, the truck between them. He’d half jogged there and was breathless. “They ID’d the skeleton. We know who it is.”

  She knew it before he said it.

  “We were right. It’s Ellie Turnbull.”

  CHAPTER FORTY
-EIGHT

  Now

  “It’s all connected, isn’t it? Aunt Fae, Ellie, probably even Julia,” Hannah repeated, a broken record, a parrot.

  “Maybe, yes. You have to be careful,” he said softly. “Can you please back off the amateur investigation now?”

  “I’m fine.” Hannah’s response was rote; she’d been so used to saying this for so long she wondered what it even meant anymore. She was fine. Fine could mean any number of things: she was alive, at least. Was that fine? “How did it happen?”

  “Blunt-force trauma to the back of the skull. She was hit with something.”

  “Was it Warren?”

  “We don’t know. Would he have dragged her body up the hill behind the river? Or the mile and a half from town up this trail?” Wyatt indicated the trail behind her. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “That’s true for everyone but—” She stopped. It seemed unimaginable to her that Aunt Fae would have killed Ellie. And if she’d killed Ellie, could she have also done something to Julia? Nothing about this felt real or true. The Aunt Fae she remembered would have never killed another person, much less her own niece.

  “Fae and Stuart, yes.” Wyatt’s eyes were clouded, unreadable.

  “Are they your only suspects?”

  Wyatt paused, rocked back on his heels. “I shouldn’t talk about an open investigation, Hannah. You know this.”

  “You can tell me if they are on your list and if there are others.”

  He held her gaze before saying, “Yes. And yes.”

  “So everyone in town thinks my aunt Fae is a murdering lunatic, and now the police do too.”

  “That’s not what I said. It’s not an unreasonable path of investigation, that’s all.” Wyatt stepped toward her, placed his hands on the hood of the truck.

  “He’s been saying for twenty years that he followed Ellie up to Brackenhill that night she left,” Hannah persisted. “He could have followed her, hit her here, buried her.”

  “Hannah, we know.” Wyatt was gently reminding her that they had it under control. That anything she thought of would have already occurred to the police. To Wyatt. She was being treated like a petulant child. Hannah’s impatience flared.

  “We should talk—” Wyatt started to say, his neck flushed.

  “This truck belongs to Warren. I have the title back at the house,” Hannah said at the same time, remembering what she’d found only moments before and cutting Wyatt off. If he wanted to “talk,” Hannah did not. “It also has black paint transfer.” She gestured behind her. “And it’s been recently moved.” She hadn’t meant to cut him off, but now that it was out there, Wyatt’s eyes sparked in interest.

  He cocked his head, seemingly impressed. “How can you tell?”

  Hannah showed him the photo of the oil stains under the truck. One large, one small. Currently two distinct stains, but not for long. He whistled.

  “How did Warren’s truck end up here?”

  “I think Fae just took it when she left him. As far back as I can remember, they’ve had this truck. But I’m not sure. It might mean something . . . or nothing. Either way, Warren knows it’s here.”

  “Who else had access to it?”

  “Well, Warren, obviously. But the keys are in the visor, so theoretically anyone.”

  “Who would know the keys are in the visor?” Wyatt murmured, more to himself.

  “Everyone in Rockwell does that,” Hannah said, her voice tinged with bitterness. Small-town mentalities and habits she’d shed long ago. She tried to envision her neighbors in Virginia, or Huck, leaving the car unlocked, never mind the keys inside. Ridiculous. They locked the car doors in their own driveway, their house doors when they were home. They had doorstep cameras. She lived a more deliberate, less carefree life. Arguably more considered. Did that equal happier? It should have.

  “We’ll get it tested. I’ll get it towed today,” Wyatt said decisively. “It’s fairly simple to figure out if the paint matches Fae’s truck. From there, we can process the interior: DNA, fingerprints, that kind of thing.”

  Wyatt retrieved his cell phone and called the state police, asking for a forensic team and a tow truck. He turned away from her, and she could only hear snatches, irritated bursts of the conversation.

  “They can’t come out until tomorrow. Downside of small towns: we’re at the mercy of the state police. The state lab is busy; this is a lower-priority case. Unfortunately.”

  “Why is it lower priority?” Hannah asked.

  “The possible crime is several weeks old. Could be a hit-and-run. It’s not a blatant murder. Missing persons are the highest on the list—it’s a ticking clock. It makes sense, but still . . .” Wyatt splayed his hands helplessly.

  “I just don’t understand why it’s taking so long to determine if it was an accident or if someone did this to her.” Hannah balled her fists, frustrated.

  “It’s not that simple. They had to do a full investigation on her truck, which was demolished. Make sure, as much as possible, that everything was working properly at the time of the crash—brake lines weren’t cut and whatnot—collect and test paint transfer, and it wasn’t until the results started coming back that we thought it might be something other than an accident. You have no idea where your aunt was going? We think she was going pretty fast.”

  Hannah shook her head. Wyatt had been keeping after her for weeks now—Are you sure you haven’t spoken to your aunt and uncle recently? Did he think she was lying?

  “Well, it sucks,” Hannah finished for him, and he nodded in agreement.

  Wyatt shifted, his reluctance to leave a clue. His fisted hands were shoved into his jeans pockets, and he scanned the horizon behind her, his eyes unfocused.

  There was something else, Hannah realized. Another fact to relay, another bomb to drop. He’d done it enough times in the past few weeks—hell, the past few minutes—for her to know what it looked like when he was stalling. Looking for the words.

  “Remember how you thought you saw Ellie in 2002? The year that Julia disappeared?”

  “I didn’t think I saw her; I’m sure I saw her—all summer long. The night Julia went missing, in fact. I’m not crazy, Wyatt.” She took a deep breath. “You saw her too.”

  “I didn’t, Hannah, and I don’t think you’re crazy. Just hear me out.” He sighed. “She was definitely pregnant at the time of death. Pretty far along, at least over thirty weeks. Have you ever heard of the term coffin birth?”

  Hannah shook her head. A wave of nausea swept over her.

  “It’s pretty gruesome, I know. But when a pregnant woman dies, sometimes the baby is expelled after death. We found fetal bones in Ellie’s grave. Some were inside the pelvic region, some outside the body. Which suggests a partial coffin birth. She was not buried with a small child; she was definitively pregnant when she was buried. You can also tell by the pelvic bones if she’d given birth alive. She hadn’t.”

  Hannah must have looked horrified, because Wyatt touched her arm. “I’m telling you this for two reasons. First, Reggie is on leave. We were able to run DNA on the fetal bones. Reggie was the father.”

  Hannah’s hand flew to her mouth. Reggie and Ellie? Well, what did she really know, anyway? So much must have happened between September and June that Hannah knew nothing about. Just a regular reminder that the summers that had meant so much to her had been so transient and fleeting to all the others. Including Wyatt? She didn’t know.

  She did know that Reggie had been a creep of a teenager, and it seemed like he’d taken that into adulthood. “Is he a suspect?”

  “I can’t tell you that,” Wyatt said evenly. “But even if he isn’t, he’s too close to this case, and finding out his child . . . well, there is some expected trauma, that’s all. Plus he has his own family now.”

  Wyatt rocked back on his heels, letting her absorb the information. He took a deep breath and continued. “But more important to you specifically, once we identified the remains as Ellie, we were ab
le to subpoena prenatal records. She’d been to see a doctor. She was pretty far along.”

  “Okay,” Hannah said.

  “The records were from August 2001. Do you understand?” he asked.

  She did. Ellie was pregnant in 2001 and killed while pregnant. That meant she’d incontrovertibly died in 2001. It didn’t change the fact that Hannah saw Ellie a whole year later, all that summer and on August 1, 2002, the night Julia disappeared. That she saw them leave together and never come back.

  Hannah had never allowed herself to consider that any of the mysticism she’d experienced at Brackenhill was real. She’d pushed away the instinct, the creak, click of the doors at Brackenhill, the basement maze shifting rooms almost in front of her eyes, the feeling of being watched, of never being alone. Hannah had rationalized waking up all over the grounds: in the woods, the basement, Ruby’s room, the river. She’d brushed aside that the hair on the back of her neck stood up or the way Ellie had made her feel all those years ago: vulnerable and afraid. She’d scoffed at Jinny with her potions and her crystal balls and her smudges. Even when Hannah saw Julia in the vision, she’d made excuses for it. She was tired. She was stressed. The vision hadn’t been real; her sister hadn’t been in pain. Her sister hadn’t been pounding on a door, blood on her fists. Her sister hadn’t died in horror. And yet.

  Ellie had worn a black skirt and red flutter top and high heels. It was the same outfit as the night in the courtyard. The same outfit she’d seen her in that whole last summer—how could Hannah not have noticed?

  But Ellie had been real, at least to Julia and now to Hannah. Ellie had been as real as earth and soil and river and stone.

  It was possible that she just hadn’t been alive.