by Callie Hart
“I’m going to have to check into that, Miss Lang.” Sheryl was looking severely put out. “I don’t think I’ll have time on this trip. I really do need to get back to the dock. I should, by rights, take the children with me back to the center while this is all ironed out.”
“And if I’d rather they stayed here? With me?”
“It would be remiss of me to leave the children in a situation I thought was unstable.”
“Unstable? I’d say the environment is far more stable here, with me, than it would be in a group home.”
“Miss Lang…” Sheryl paused, giving her shoes her full attention for a moment while she thought with her mouth open. “Less than five minutes ago, you didn’t want these children. You mentioned nothing of the fact that Mr. Fletcher made you guardian over them. You only spoke out when you found out where they were headed, now I don’t mean to be rude, but they teach us to look for erratic behavior in people left to care for children at risk, and forgive me for saying so, but your behavior has definitely given me cause for concern. I’m not entirely sure you understand what you’d be taking on here, or that you’d be able to cope along for that matter.”
Upstairs, the door to Connor’s bedroom slammed hard, the loud shotgun sound ringing out, echoing through the house. Perfect. “Look. Sheryl. I know this situation isn’t perfect. I know there are probably families and homes out there for Connor and Amie that might be perfect for them, but I also know that separating them and keeping them in a group home for weeks on end, potentially months, is not going to benefit them in any way. I have extensive experience with troubled youths. I’ve worked with children the same ages as Connor and Amie for years. I will take care of these children. I can do it. I’ll fight tooth and nail to make sure they stay with me if it means they can stay together. Now, you can sit here arguing with me about what to do, or you can go and make sure you catch Jerry before he heads back to the mainland. I heard the storm’s likely to linger for a couple of days. Unless you want to spend two or three nights shut away in a room above the only bar on the island with no fresh clothes to change into, then I’d be hurrying if I were you.”
Playing on her desire to leave The Causeway was a cheap move, but it looked like it had worked. Sheryl shuddered when I mentioned being trapped in the bar. After a long moment where she studied me with watery blue eyes, she said, “All right, Miss Lang. But please bear in mind…I can always come back. It’s a hindrance, I’ll admit, but I like to take care of my cases. If you realize this task is beyond you, there’s no shame in calling and having me come take them. Likewise, if I think they’re in harm’s way, Ophelia, I’ll make sure both Connor and Amie are on that boat back to Maine quicker than you can blink. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, all right, then.” Sheryl got to her feet, holding her purse under one arm while she pulled out her cell phone. Sighing dramatically, she tucked the phone away and jerked at her blazer jacket, tugging at it in a ruffled kind of way. “I’ll see myself out. No, please don’t get up. I’m sure you’ll want to go and make sure Connor is all right now, anyway.”
It was a none too subtle hint, as if I might not realize that the young boy would need some sort of comfort after finding out his father had died. And after she had told me to give him a moment, too. I gave her a tight smile—one aimed to show civility but not much more in the way of manners.
“Naturally. I’m sure we’ll have cause to speak soon,” I told her, getting to my feet. Amie was still curled tight against my body, but she was still now, rigid, like a frightened animal.
“Unfortunately, I think that will be the case,” Sheryl muttered under her breath. I bit my tongue and rushed upstairs before I could say anything I would regret.
CHAPTER TEN
The Mirror Man
Linneman didn’t sound all that surprised when I told him I hadn’t left. When I asked him to sit on the paperwork I’d signed, releasing the children from my care, he said, “What paperwork?” in the awkward manner of a co-conspirator who was a little too stiff to pull off ignorance convincingly.
My mother, on the other hand, was nearly hysterical.
“What do you mean, you’re not coming back?”
“I mean, I’m not coming back. Not yet, anyway. The CPS woman was terrifying. And they were going to separate the kids. How could I leave them when—”
“I know you’re worried about them, Ophelia, but listen to me for a moment. You’re a good, kindhearted girl, but you empathize with other people way too much for your own good. People take advantage of it. This Ronan Fletcher guy knew you were a bleeding heart the moment he laid eyes on you, and then he put you in a position he knew you wouldn’t be able to walk away from. How is that fair?”
I sighed. “It’s not fair. I know that. But I can’t just leave them to go off to some gross, unclean, unsafe place, where anything could happen to them, and go merrily on my way now, can I? I’d never get another good night’s sleep again.”
There was a long pause, and then my mother said something that made me hang up the phone. It went something like this: “Ophelia, this isn’t because…you know. Because you can’t have children of your own? Amie and Connor…they’re in trouble, and they need someone to look after and care for them, but don’t get confused, okay, sweetheart? They aren’t your responsibility. They’re a job and nothing more. Once these six months are up, you’re going to have to walk away from them and say goodbye. I don’t want to see you getting hurt over something that can easily be av—”
She would have gone on and on for god only knows how long if I’d let her. She probably didn’t realize I wasn’t on the other end of the line for a solid minute.
I tried not to think about what she’d said. I barely knew the kids; I wasn’t living in a make believe land where I’d adopted them as my own and we were all going to live happily ever after. They just needed to be kept safe, and it looked like I was the only way that was going to happen. At least for a little while anyway, until another arrangement could be formulated.
Connor refused to come out of his room. He lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, a rainbow striped hat pulled down low on his head, and he didn’t even blink. I sat with him for most of the morning while Amie slept in a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor at my feet, sniffling in her dreams. No matter how often I tried to talk to him, Connor wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence.
At midday, I left Connor’s room to go make some food for them, though I knew neither of them would eat, and I’d made it halfway down the stairs before a figure standing inside the hallway by the front door stopped me dead in my tracks.
Him again.
Ronan.
Leaning against the wall, shoulder butted up against the freshly painted cream plasterwork, dark hair tumbling into his eyes, plaid shirt rumpled and untucked—it was really him. It was Ronan.
I screamed, high and loud, scrambling, trying to run back up the stairs. “Don’t! Don’t come any closer!”
Ronan didn’t even flinch. He studied me with a cold, detached look on his face that made him look more handsome than ever, in a cruel, regal way that sent a shiver through my body. Shouldn’t he be more transparent or something? I had little to no experience with the recently dead, but I’d read a lot of horror novels as a teenager and ghosts were meant to be pastier and far less flushed in the face.
His cheeks were rosy almost, and his eyes were shining brightly, as deep and dark as ever. I couldn’t move my legs. I had to move my legs in order to run away from him, but they weren’t cooperating in the slightest.
I screamed again, hands grasping at the railing, barely able to keep myself upright.
“Jesus, woman. Hush your mouth.” Ronan pushed away from the wall, and then started toward me, anger pulling his eyebrows together into a frown. “You’re bellowing loud enough to wake the dead.”
He walked to the base of the stairs, shoving his hands in his pockets, and I nearly passed ou
t on the spot. “Don’t. I mean it. Don’t come any closer. I swear, I’ll—” I didn’t know what I was going to do. There was just no defending yourself against a paranormal force.
Ronan shook his head; for all the world he looked frustrated. His eyes flashed with impatience. “Ophelia. That’s your name, isn’t it? Look. I already know what you’re thinking, and I’m not Ronan. If we could please skip this part and move onto the less ridiculous part of our conversation, that would be awesome.”
“You’re not…?” He wasn’t making any sense. He absolutely was Ronan. The hair, the eyes, the savage curl of his lip that made me unreasonably weak at the knees. Admittedly, his hair was all over the place, disheveled compared to the slicked back hipster cut he usually wore, but even so there was no mistaking him. My mouth was hanging open. I knew it was, but I just couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
“Sully,” Ronan said. “I’m Sully, Ronan’s brother.”
“What?”
“Twin brother, obviously. We share a passing resemblance, or so I’m told.” He was being a jerk, his voice was thick with sarcasm, and I could see why. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Ronan. He was the spitting image of the man. I still wasn’t quite sure I believed the words that were coming out of his mouth. Identical twins were very real, of course—there had been two little girls in my class at Saint Augustus’s who used to have to wear name badges because they were so hard to tell apart—but this was insane. There was nothing to define the man standing in front of me from Ronan Fletcher. They were the same height, the same build. The way they held themselves when they leaned against a wall was exactly the same; they were carbon copy replicas of one another, not just two people who had happened to share the same embryonic sack.
“Linneman called and told me what happened,” Ronan…no, Sully said. I had to wrestle to get his name right in my mind. “I came by last night, but you seemed spooked. I thought you’d be less crazy if I came back during daylight hours. Looks as though I was wrong.”
Stunned, I took a step down the stairs, eyes locked on him, as though he’d vanish if I looked away. “I’m sure you can understand why…”
“I look like my brother. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. When I look in the mirror, I get to be reminded of him. Daily. So yeah. I understand. Now, like I said. Can we please move on? I’ve had this conversation more times than I can count, and it gets really fucking old.”
Slowly, I descended down the remainder of the stairs, trying to regain some of my dignity. Probably no chance of that happening in Sully’s eyes, but still, I had to try.
“Linneman didn’t mention that you were coming by,” I muttered, rubbing my slick palms against my jeans.
“That’s because I didn’t tell him. No point. He’d only have tried to talk me out of it, in that round about way of his, and I’d have ended up being rude.” Seemed like rude was a predetermined state of being with these Fletcher boys. I’d never have thought it possible, but Sully was even more prickly and unfriendly than his brother. “I don’t plan on being here long, either way,” he said, angling his jaw upward in a defiant, fuck-you fashion. “I came to tell you not to bother.”
“Excuse me?”
“Linneman told me what my brother did. That he wants you to hang around here on the island until I give in and decide to take care of his kids. I came over here to tell you not to bother. I won’t be taking them. He was crazy to think I’d ever be able to look after them. So you do what you have to do. I’m staying out of it.”
“Daddy?” From upstairs, Amie’s high, frightened voice echoed down the hallway. Sully’s eyes widened.
“Is that…that’s the little girl?” He looked like a rabbit trapped in headlights.
I nodded. Glancing over my shoulder, I tried to catch sight of her, but Amie was still making her way down the corridor, footsteps uncertain and timid. “I get that you’re a little freaked out right now. But…maybe you’d like to meet—”
I turned back to Sully, but he wasn’t there. The front door was yawning open, and the man was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a short woman in her late twenties, maybe early thirties with bright red hair and a black woolen hat was standing there in his place, an awkward look on her face. She glanced over her shoulder, scowling.
“I see you met Sully, then,” she said. Entering the house, she held out her hand, her scowl transforming into a small smile. “Hi, I’m Rose. Ronan hired me to help you take care of the children? Mr. Linneman came to see me yesterday. He told me what happened. I’m sorry I didn’t come straight over. To be honest, I was in shock. I’ve known Ronan all my life. I just…couldn’t quite believe what he’d done.”
“Tell me about it.” I shook her hand, blinking furiously. I must have looked very strange. “I’m sorry, I’m still reeling from…” I pointed out the door after Sully, trying not to look quite so stunned.
“Yeah. He has that affect on people. How about I make you a coffee, and we can go over a schedule or something? I can give you a little more information about the last remaining Fletcher brother while I’m at it.”
******
Rose was full of freckles. She was also full of hair-raising facts about Ronan and Sully. They’d both been troubled teenagers, both of them prone to fighting and inciting mayhem. In 2004, once they’d completed their degrees, they joined the military together as officers, and that seemed to calm them down a little.
She told me no one really knew what happened, but everyone had been shocked when Sully returned to the island and Ronan married Magda out of the blue. Sully had shut himself away and refused to interact with anyone on The Causeway unless they were ordering furniture from him, and Ronan hadn’t been seen again. Not until he’d shown up a week ago with no Magda and two children in tow.
“I used to envy Mags so much,” Rose said, taking a sip of her coffee. “She was my best friend in high school, y’know? She was so desperate to get out of here, so desperate to leave. She moved to New York when Sully and Ronan went out there to study, and she just never came back. I visited her once or twice before the whole mess with Ronan.”
“I’m sorry? The whole mess with Ronan?”
Rose blanched. “Oh, well, yeah. I mean, Magda didn’t start out with Ronan. She was dating Sully when they moved out to New York.”
Oh. Good. Lord. I supposed that explained a lot.
Rose continued, oblivious of the fact that the information she’d just imparted had blown me away. “Mags tried to get me to move out there with her. I couldn’t do it, though. I knew I wanted to teach here on the island. I studied English literature and language at Beal College in Bangor, and then I came right back here and got a job at the school. That was it for me. I still think about it, though. What my life would have been like if I’d upped and left to live in the city with her.
“The local newspaper ran a story on Ronan when he was awarded that medal from the army. That was probably the last time I spoke to Mags on the phone. I’d called her because the article said Ronan hadn’t even attended the ceremony to collect the damn thing. That they’d had to send it to him in the mail.” Rose shrugged, finishing her coffee. “I wanted to congratulate him, to tell him how proud we were of him here on the island, but he wouldn’t even take my call.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Journal
March 15, 2000
This journal smells like the tack shop we bought Topper’s bridle from. I love it. Dad said it was too boyish for me, but whatever. It’s my money. I can buy what I like with it. Sully says he’s going to wait until I’ve filled every single page, and then he’s gonna steal it and read it. Such a jerk. He’d better not. Sully James Fletcher, if you’re reading this, you’re going straight to hell. Do not invade my privacy or I’ll saw your balls off with a rusty butter knife!
Should probably make the same threat to Ronan, but why bother? He’s too busy plotting out his “Great American Road Trip” to think twice about anything I scribble in here. And good, too! At le
ast I only have to worry myself with one of the Fletcher boys. So…I don’t know. I guess I’ll only write in here when I have something important to say. The book’s too nice to waste, and I’m a sixteen-year-old girl. Seems a shame to cover the pages in shit about boys and high school drama. I want to be able to look back through this book in forty years’ time and be proud of the moments I’ve recorded here.
I hope by then I can say I’ve lived a life worth writing about. I hope by then Sully and I are married, and we’ve had kids of our own. I hope we’ve traveled the world. Seen everything there is to see. I hope we’ve come back to the island and built a new life for ourselves here, and I can ride every day and Sully can make things in his workshop. That would make me happy. That would make me very happy indeed.
M
M for Magda. I’d been mistaken; I’d thought the journal Ronan left for me to read was his, but it wasn’t. It was his wife’s, and the very first entry on the very first page confirmed all too clearly what Rose had told me: Magda had started out in love with Sully. I could have guessed the problem between Ronan and his brother had stemmed from a woman somehow, but I’d had no idea it would be Ronan’s dead wife. What strife that must have caused. And how? Magda was sixteen when she wrote on the first page in her diary. Flicking through the occasionally brittle, occasionally damp smelling book, I skipped to the very last entry in the journal, only three quarters of the way through, and noted the date.
