Girls of Brackenhill

by Moretti, Kate

  A whisper.

  A giggle.

  The room seemed to echo with the spirits of little girls. The purple walls, the pink bedding. Tiny, quick footsteps across the plush carpeting.

  The music box on the dresser spontaneously played a sluggish version of “Clair de Lune,” the ballerina spinning slowly, drunkenly.

  And then, “Hannah.” And Alice stood in the middle of Ruby’s room, her face contorted. She didn’t even look like herself anymore. Her hair was wild, her hands steady, her face steel. She was slight but powerful, and Hannah found herself truly afraid.

  Alice lunged, the hunting knife at shoulder level, aiming for Hannah’s neck. Hannah ducked to the left, and Alice crashed hard into the window, the force of a full-body blow breaking the painted seal. Hannah watched in horror as it cracked outward, the glass splintering, the latch giving way, and the windows swinging wide for the first time in over twenty years.

  The knife fell to the courtyard below, clattering against the concrete. Alice’s hand shot out, gripped the window frame, her balance failing.

  Hannah could have saved her. Reached toward her, grabbed her hand, pulled her to safety. Alice let out a scream. It reverberated through the mountains.

  Hannah reached her arms out, not to save her but to push her.

  One second, Alice was screaming. The next, she was gone.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Now

  1:13 a.m.

  Hannah’s mind was blank. She sat on the floor of Ruby’s room, not looking out the window at the courtyard below. She didn’t know how much time passed before she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned her head.

  Huck.

  Hannah stared at his face. She knew it as well as her own but felt like she was seeing it for the first time. The long, straight nose. The heavy-lidded eyes. His eyebrows creased with worry. His jaw ticcing.

  “I called the police,” he said, indicating the window. “What happened?” A task man as always. Taking care of the business of the moment.

  Hannah closed her eyes, sank her cheek back to her knee, and said nothing. Didn’t know how to answer the question. Since when? Since 2002?

  “I’m sorry I left,” he continued, squatting down next to her. Rubbing his palm on her back. She leaned into his warmth. “I’ve been calling you for days. I finally couldn’t take it anymore and drove up here right after work.”

  “I texted you,” Hannah said, her voice floating.

  “I didn’t get any texts,” Huck replied softly.

  She believed him; she didn’t have a reason not to. She just wanted him to carry her away from Brackenhill, away from Rockwell. She wanted him to take care of everything for her, like he always had. She wanted the life she’d had before: before she’d known what she’d done to her sister, before she’d known that Fae had killed Ellie. She thought of Alice gasping her last breaths on the concrete below.

  “Alice killed Fae,” Hannah said to Huck. “So I killed Alice.”

  And there it was. She couldn’t just leave it all behind because she belonged here. Could murder be genetic? She was one of them. A killer, continuing the Brackenhill tradition. In fact, she was the worst offender. She’d killed Julia; then she’d killed Alice.

  Self-pity had never been her style, but maybe it was time to wallow a bit. Or at least self-sequester.

  “Hannah,” Huck said, uncertain what to make of her admission.

  “Hannah,” said a voice from the doorway.

  Wyatt.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Now

  “Hannah, are you okay?” Wyatt said softly. “I’ve been calling you all day. Your phone is never off for this long. I got worried.”

  “At one a.m.?” Huck asked amiably, his head cocked.

  “I’m fine,” Hannah said, tired of repeating herself. So tired of everything. She wanted to lie down on the plush carpet and go to sleep. “Alice is out there. I pushed her.”

  Wyatt held up a hand. “Hannah, slow down. What happened?”

  “She had a knife. She killed Fae. I followed her to the shed. She’s been sleeping in there. I confronted her about Fae, and she tried to kill me. I . . .” Hannah didn’t know how to explain the rest. The chase through the woods. The storm shelter. Julia. She closed her eyes. Skipped over it. “She chased me here. Tried to stab me. I pushed her out the window.”

  He knelt next to her, replacing Huck. Touched her shoulder, pulled away a bloody finger.

  “You should be seen at the hospital,” Wyatt said quietly.

  “Why aren’t you surprised?” Hannah asked him. He stood up.

  “We put it together today,” Wyatt admitted. “Actually, Jinny tipped us off. She’s the one who told me that Alice was Ellie’s mother. From there, it was easy. She’s not registered as a nurse. We were going to arrest Alice tomorrow. For Fae’s death.”

  “I killed my sister,” Hannah said. “I killed Julia.” She felt removed from herself, distant, watching the scene unfold like an outsider. She’d expected the words to be harder to say. She’d expected Wyatt to immediately arrest her.

  “Hannah.” Wyatt and Huck exchanged a look. They were saying her name like that again: like the day at the fish fry when they were kids, like Julia had in the tunnel.

  “I know what I did. I remember it. I didn’t for a long time, but I do now.” The sob crept up her throat, bubbled out.

  “Hannah, you’re not thinking clearly. Let’s not worry about . . . Julia now,” Wyatt said.

  “She’s down there somewhere.” Hannah indicated the basement. “I’m sure of it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I saw it. I saw her. She told me.” Had it been her mind or her sister’s spirit? At Brackenhill, you could never really tell. Huck ran a palm across his forehead, then through his hair. He didn’t believe her. Why would he? Why would anyone?

  “We’ll find her, okay?” Wyatt put his arm across Hannah’s shoulders, and she let him. She looked over Wyatt’s head at Huck, who stood a few feet away, his hands in his pockets. He looked from Hannah to Wyatt and back.

  He knew.

  Hannah was an adulterer and a murderer. And Huck knew.

  Maybe he’d leave her now. The thought was a relief. He could find someone with less baggage. He didn’t do baggage. She could stop pretending to be fine, to be whole. She could be one half again, the way it had felt for the last seventeen years, only this time openly.

  She was so tired of pretending.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Five Months Later

  Hannah wiped the countertop down in the kitchen, washed her single plate and fork. She gazed out the small window above the sink, sipping her coffee.

  The courtyard was no longer bursting with flowers, because February in the Catskills was brutal and killed all living things all the time.

  Hannah found that she quite liked the deadening, as she’d come to think of it. Alone in the castle she could hear herself think. The snow was thick and blanketed the grounds such that she could stand outside for an hour and not hear one single sound.

  She hadn’t visited Uncle Stuart during the last few days of his life. He’d died alone. With the woman who’d killed his wife. While Hannah chased some version of the truth, slept with her childhood boyfriend, and cheated on her fiancé, Stuart had died. Alice knew he had died and left him in the bedroom to follow Hannah. Had she at least been in the room when Stuart took his last breath? Hannah didn’t know and never would. Some questions haunted forever; that much Hannah had learned.

  Huck went back to Virginia alone, with his vague disappointment that she wasn’t who he’d thought she was. She wasn’t stable, reliable, put together. Huck didn’t do anger or rage. Hannah got to keep Rink, who ran around in the snow in the woods around Brackenhill. At Brackenhill, Hannah didn’t have a real job. She was home all day, and Rink could run miles if he wanted. Better for him than to be cooped up in a condo all day while Huck worked. Sometimes Huck texted her, just to check in.
/>   She said nothing to Huck about Julia. She didn’t revisit the topic. She just let him believe whatever he wanted about that night in Ruby’s room. Let him believe her confession was born of delusion. Trauma from the night with Alice. What harm would that do?

  “Did you sleep with him?” Huck asked her once and only once. His voice had been subdued, not angry. He didn’t do fiery shows of emotion.

  She’d spent much of her relationship with Huck pretending to be easy. Happy. Free. But the truth was she was tethered here, to a life she’d fled long ago, without any right to do so. And now, more than ever, she owed Julia—and Brackenhill—her time.

  “No,” Hannah lied. Why tell him the truth to only hurt him? She didn’t expect or seek forgiveness. Why give him those images, those intrusive middle-of-the-night thoughts?

  She needed something Huck could never give her: closure. She still hadn’t found it. No one had found it. Not dogs or metal detectors or sonar devices checking for soil disturbances or forensics teams or police. Wyatt said, simply, You didn’t do what you think you did.

  But she knew, down to her marrow, who she was. Who she’d been for seventeen years. What she was capable of. She remembered closing the door on her sister. It hadn’t been a vision or a dream. It had come back to her, full force.

  The days after, though. They remained blank. The castle growing smaller and smaller out the back window of the Buick, four days after Julia went missing. What had happened in those four days?

  Some questions haunted forever; that much Hannah had learned.

  Sometimes crimes weren’t mistakes at all.

  I’ll pick you up around 5, the text from Wyatt pinged. Hannah glanced at her watch. It was just after noon. Good, she had plenty of time. He tried with her—really he did. When she had told him that she and Huck had split up, his eyes brightened. When he touched her, she still felt something, a reverberation up her spine. But it wasn’t enough. She had to stay focused. Only after she found what she was looking for would she be free of Brackenhill. She had to break the cycle somehow.

  Another text: Do you mind if I bring Nina?

  Wyatt’s daughter, Nina, loved Brackenhill. She loved the forest, the river, the courtyard bursting with color. Hannah tried to dissuade her, tried to tell Wyatt once, “It’s not safe for her here.” Hannah, better than anyone, understood the lure of it. The magic. Having Nina in the house was exhausting. Hannah watched her every move. Nina, with her glossy dark hair, her eyes bright with curiosity. It was like holding a mirror up to her eleven-year-old self, seeing Brackenhill for the first time.

  Hannah still sleepwalked. She was getting used to it, that coherent dreaming. Knowing where she was and what she was doing while semiconscious. Floating around the castle in a nightgown, her very own ghost. She was growing into the role. The new eccentric who had taken up residence.

  “Come on, Rink.” Hannah motioned Rink to the basement door. He followed eagerly, happy to have a cameo in Hannah’s newfound purpose.

  Hannah ambled through the basement labyrinth. Never again had the rooms shifted. She’d long ago collected all the cards and stacked them up on one of the boxes. It could have been stress. Anxiety scrambled your thoughts, played tricks on the eyes. She no longer believed in magic, not the way she used to anyway.

  She believed in stress. She believed in the fallibility of the human mind. The ability of the mind to box up certain events and file them away in a locked cabinet. Throw away the key. She believed in the effects of sleep deprivation and emotional trauma. She believed in temporary psychosis. She’d spent the last six months reading psychology articles online. Wandering the grounds of Brackenhill, willing a memory to come rushing back. Furious and clenching when she could not.

  Despite Wyatt’s protestations, Hannah knew what she’d done.

  Sometimes when you push people, they break.

  Julia knew Hannah better than Hannah knew herself.

  Perhaps Hannah had confessed to her crime knowing Wyatt wouldn’t believe her.

  Julia hadn’t broken out of the storm shelter, run away, and lived happily ever after in some tropical paradise. There was only one outcome that made sense.

  Hannah had buried her.

  Hannah had slices of memory. It had always been there, but without context she’d always believed it to be a dream vignette.

  A shovel full of sandy dirt.

  The permeating smell of death, days old.

  How had Julia’s purse ended up in the Beaverkill? Again, there was only one answer. Hannah couldn’t remember the rushing water, the purse sailing through the air, the gentle swish as the current swept it away. She would have been the one to do it, but she had no memory of it.

  She had no memory of any of it.

  Hannah must have gone back. She had to have returned at some point and found Julia dead. She’d turned it over so many times in her mind and always came to the same conclusion. She’d returned to maybe let her sister out, and Julia had been dead. It was the only possible scenario.

  Wes came to retrieve Hannah four days after Julia went missing. She had no clear memories of those four days. Jumbled snapshots. Like photos that fell out of an album, mixed up and out of order.

  Four days wasn’t enough time to die of hunger or even of dehydration necessarily (although it was possible, according to Hannah’s research). As much as Hannah could figure, Julia had died trying to get out of the storm shelter. Perhaps something had fallen on her. Perhaps she’d cut herself trying to break down the door.

  She asked Wyatt. “There would have been remains, Hannah. You didn’t do what you think you did.”

  Hannah said nothing.

  Instead, she spent hours in the storm shelter, trying to shake something loose. Any memory remained locked up tight. Just one image: dirt sifting over the curve of a spade with a red handle.

  You might never find her. Wyatt’s voice was gentle when he said it, but the words always felt like a slap. She knew what he thought: that she was broken and maybe even crazy. He encouraged her to see someone. Talk to someone. Hannah admitted he was right about that. And yet if she confessed, even to a therapist, would she go to prison? Then who would find her sister?

  She’d tried to make sense of the after: She’d gone back to Plymouth. Her mother had stayed in her room, prayed for Julia’s return, and barely spoken to Hannah. Her stepfather never again came into her room, never laid another finger on her. She went back to start her sophomore year of high school. Did she just pick up where she’d left off?

  No.

  She shunned her friendships. Tracy and Beth had been confused, then distraught, then later, after months, indifferent. She’d been the girl whose sister disappeared. Died. Hannah remembered floating through the rest of high school. Probably failing but getting a pass for being so wrapped up in tragedy.

  Her sister should have graduated. Hannah had one sharp memory, one moment where she might have held tight to the memory of what she’d done. The guidance counselor had called her down to her office and presented her with her sister’s graduation cap. “You should have this,” she said. She meant it to be kind.

  Hannah had cried. “It’s my fault.”

  Everyone thought she meant it to be dramatic. Maybe metaphorically. Maybe because they’d fought. The guidance counselor had clucked sympathetically and placed her hand on Hannah’s head. “Darling girl,” she’d said.

  She saw a therapist only once: a young twentysomething blonde woman in a bright office who clicked her pen relentlessly. She looked astonishingly like Julia. The same blonde curls. The same graceful flit of her hand. Hannah never went back.

  Hannah pushed through the green door and followed the tunnel that wound approximately a hundred yards. The length of a football field. A few months ago, she’d strung up heavy-duty construction lights. With the flick of a button, the tunnel illuminated, bright as a snowy Catskill morning.

  As far as she could see, she’d dug wide holes—trenches, really. The floor of the storm sh
elter itself had already been completely unearthed, the newly turned dirt a raw reddish-brown color. She’d dug a perfectly measured four feet down.

  It had taken her months. If she didn’t find what she was looking for in the tunnel now, she’d go back to the beginning, back to the shelter in the little hill, and dig another four feet down. If she had to.

  She’d do it forever. She owed it to her sister.

  She owed Julia that much.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Nina

  Spring 2020

  Nina loved the sounds of the forest. There was a bird in the distance that called every afternoon. It sounded like a bike horn that Mom had gotten her for her tenth birthday. Hannah said it was a crane.

  Nina sat on the forest floor in a clearing she’d found last weekend. Everything felt different. New and fresh and alive and magical. Like anything was possible here. She could forget about school, about Quinn Palumbo and her band of mean girls that stole the key chains off her backpack when she wasn’t looking. She could forget about her best friend, Abigail, who was sometimes nice and fun and happy and sometimes not. Dad said her parents were divorcing, so Nina should have patience with her.

  Nina understood divorce. But now Dad lived here, with Hannah, who was her third-favorite person, and then on weekends, she sometimes got to live here, at Brackenhill, which had quickly become her absolute favorite place. Her bedroom had a princess bed with a canopy and everything.

  At Brackenhill, she just got to be alone. She got to be herself.

  Sometimes the girl would find her. She lived “down the hill,” the girl told her.

  Today the girl found Nina lying in the middle of the clearing. Her eyes were closed, and she was waiting for the crane. Hannah had told her cranes were creatures of habit—they lived in the same places every year. Fed in the same streams and rivers. This crane felt like hers. She hadn’t seen it yet; she’d only heard it.

  The girl lay next to Nina in the grass. They both listened for the crane, and when they finally heard its call, ehrrrrret-a-ret-ret, they gasped and laughed. Nina stood, brushing the dirt from her legs. She had to get back. Hannah would be making dinner. Hannah worried about her roaming the forest by herself.