Daughter of Deep Silence

by Carrie Ryan

  And not once had I responded.

  He nods, sharply. “Libby.” That’s all he says. No “hello” or “nice to see you after all these years.”

  No “I missed you.”

  I frown at the small kernel of disappointment I feel. Not at his cold reception, but that he falls so easily for my deception. It makes me feel sorry for Libby, that she’d once loved this guy with the kind of intensity that only exists when you fall in love for the first time.

  And he can’t even recognize that I’m not her.

  For a moment, neither of us moves. He stands blocking the door and I stand on the wide porch, the hired car idling behind me.

  “Welcome home.” He practically spits the words as he turns and stalks into the house, leaving the door open.

  SIX

  I follow Shepherd into the house and find myself in a marble-draped foyer. To my left, a wide curving staircase leads to the second floor while ahead of me the foyer spills into a massive living room.

  The entire back wall is a row of alternating windows and French doors that lead to a large flagstone patio curving around a sparkling blue pool. Beyond that lies a low row of dunes and then it’s the ocean, stretching out into forever.

  I cross to the windows and press my hand against the cool glass. Even from here I can feel the slight vibration of the waves crashing to shore and a shiver passes through me, the remembered taste of salt sharp against the back of my throat.

  Now it begins, I think to myself. Go.

  “Go!” Libby screams. “Jump!”

  She already has one leg over the railing and I follow, a horrified sense of impossibility as I teeter over the black emptiness below. Libby must sense my terror of heights and before I can think about what I need to do, she shoves me, hard.

  My body twists and I flail.

  The drop is interminable and I wait, wait, wait for the slap of water that I can’t see. I’m nothing but dark and rain, screams and blood, and then I’m water. I sink down and down and even farther down, the life preserver not buckled tight enough and ripping free. My lungs already burn as I kick to try to stop my momentum.

  Sound comes back more as physical force than anything else. A chug-chug-chug of the ship engine and I wonder how close I am to being chewed by the massive propeller. It seems impossible that I’m so deep in the water but with everything so dark I have no idea how far it is to the surface or even which way is up. I’m pretty sure I won’t make it. Already my lungs are bucking, every cell screaming to inhale now.

  My fingers touch the air first and I claw at it, bring my chin free long enough to gasp and choke before going under a wave. I kick hard, flailing to stay afloat. The hull of the ship towers over me, the propeller chug-chugging close enough that it pulls at me like a current. I scour the surface for Libby but the night is too thick with dark and rain to see anything but the Persephone.

  Her lights flicker, a burst of smoke and fire roaring near the bow. Even from down here I hear the panic, as thick as the salt in the air.

  “Libby!” I scream, but the sound is swallowed by a wave and then another, ripping me farther and farther into the black emptiness.

  At first I try to swim after the ship, thinking that somehow the nightmare will break but it’s useless. And the more energy I expend, the harder it is to keep my head above the swells and I know it’s only a matter of time before I have nothing left in me to fight.

  I wait for the life rafts to descend. To see others jump like I did. I wait to not be on my own any longer. But the more time passes, the more distance grows between me and the Persephone. The more I realize how alone I am.

  I’m pulled from the memory almost physically, Shepherd’s warm hand circling around my shoulders. My palm has turned rigid against the window, fingernails like claws scratching the glass. As though I could rip the past from my head, rip the sea from the world.

  “Libby?” He says the name on a whisper.

  He’s so close behind me that I catch a hint of his warm, soapy smell. I can almost feel the way his breath quivers, gently brushing the delicate hairs along the nape of my neck.

  I blink, swallowing several times before I’m composed enough to face him. There’s a hesitation in his expression, one laced with concern. “You okay?” The edge to his voice that had been there earlier is only slightly blunted.

  I pull away and move toward one of the chairs. “Sometimes the ocean—it’s too much,” I tell him, rubbing my hands over my bare arms. He sits across from me, a gleaming glass coffee table festooned with family photos between us.

  None of me, of course. At least not at first. It would have been too easy for someone to later compare them and note the differences. My jaw is wider, eyes are duller, nose sharper. All changes easily attributable to the passage of years or explained away by the excuse that I’d been injured when the Persephone sank and had undergone some reconstructive work.

  I twist the ring around my finger as I stare at the sea of Libby’s faces, trying to control the nerves flooding through me. Trying to convince myself I can pull this off.

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” I finally say, breaking the awkward silence.

  He lets out a snort, practically rolling his eyes. “I live here.”

  “I know. I just . . . thought you . . . might be out.” I lift a shoulder. “Managing one of the other estates or something.” I’d thought that perhaps he would have wanted to avoid me. I should have known better.

  Shaking his head, he pushes to his feet and paces to the window. His shirt is so worn that I can see the shadowy ripple of the muscles between his shoulder blades tensing as he grasps at the back of his neck.

  “I’ve been running the conservation efforts,” he says. “Like fighting with the state over a couple hundred acres on the mainland they set as forever wild but are now trying to sell off for a strip mall. Which you’d know if you bothered to get in touch. Or to come home at all in the past year.”

  I stare at my hands clasped in my lap, chagrined. Cecil passed away seven months ago, not long after I’d returned to boarding school in Switzerland for my senior year. He’d been cremated and buried in the family plot, but I hadn’t been there for the funeral. I’d been so devastated by his death that I wasn’t strong enough to attend.

  He was the last family I’d had. The last one who truly knew my past. Who truly knew me, who I was, where I’d come from.

  I couldn’t have pulled off being Libby anyway—especially not around those who’d known her before. And I couldn’t risk failing. Not with so much at stake.

  Shepherd has every reason to hate me for missing the funeral and deciding to stay in Europe during all the breaks. Like me, he was also mourning. He’d been six when Cecil and Barbara took him and his brother in—Cecil was practically the only father Shepherd had ever known.

  “I’m sorry.” I drop my eyes. “I just couldn’t face it then,” I add, my voice cracking. I take a deep, wobbling breath. While most everything about me is a carefully composed amalgamation of subterfuge, my heartache over Cecil’s death is real. “I should have been here.”

  Silence descends between us until Shepherd sighs and rubs a hand across his close shaven head. “Libby—” he starts, but then he presses his lips together. “I mean . . . it’s been four years.”

  “I know,” I say.

  He steps closer, agitated. “Four years.”

  I know what he wants me to say. He and Libby had grown up together. They’d been best friends. And as they’d grown older they’d fallen in love. He may not have thought that Libby died out there on the ocean, but he’d still lost her all the same.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell him again.

  His eyes widen and he almost laughs. Like this is all too much for him. “So for four years I hear nothing from you. You don’t even bother coming home. And suddenly now?” He crosses his arms. “Why are yo
u really here?”

  The question startles me and at first I think I’ve failed at convincing him that I’m Libby. That he’s somehow figured out my underlying motives and that my plan is ruined before I’ve even begun.

  But then I see the desperation in his eyes and I understand: He wants me to have come back for him. Some part of him still loves Libby. Still wants her.

  He’s looking at me as though I’m the answer to his everything. The last person to look at me that way was Grey, and just thinking the name causes an angry rod of steel to slide down my spine.

  Sometimes the best lies are wrapped in the flavor of truth. “Because I thought it was time to stop running away from the past.”

  SEVEN

  It’s impossible to be in this house and not think of Libby. Pictures of her adorn the living room: as a baby, as a toddler missing her two front teeth, her face scrunched up in concentration as she learns to ride a bike. She stands next to a gleaming brown horse and holds a trophy for dressage, she leans against Shepherd on a ski slope on some impossibly high mountain.

  But the picture I keep coming back to is the one of her at the beach. It’s hard to be sure, but she looks to be around thirteen, probably just a few months before the cruise. Her back is to the camera, sun-pinked shoulder blades drawn tightly together, as she races into the crashing waves.

  There’s no hesitation, no fear. Her head is tilted slightly to the side so that I can barely catch her profile. She’s beaming, mouth open with laughter, and I wonder who or what, just outside the edge of the photo, has caught her attention.

  It’s the last picture of her and it sits in a place of honor on the mantel. I’m standing, staring at it, when a woman clears her throat behind me. “Sorry to interrupt, Miss O’Martin.”

  I turn to find Cynthia the party planner, with her clipboard clasped in her hands. She’s one of those middle-aged women who looks unnaturally bony. Her black hair is cropped short on one side, with a perfectly smoothed swoop of bangs across her forehead that’s starched with enough product that it could withstand a hurricane.

  She’s the most-sought-after event planner in the South and though I’ve paid her an exorbitant amount for the fund-raiser, I doubt she realizes that I’ve been mentally planning tonight for years.

  “I was just . . .” I gesture at the photos. “Lost in memories.”

  She smiles. “I understand.” Her eyes slip past me to the portrait over the mantel: Libby as a baby clutched in her mother’s grasp while Cecil kneels with his arms around both. “You look like your mother.”

  It’s an easy compliment to make and likely a hollow one. Even so, I allow a bit of a shy blush to dust my cheeks. “Thank you—that means a lot to hear.” I glance back at the portrait. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t miss her.”

  “I’m sure she’d be quite proud of the woman you’ve become,” Cynthia says. “Lord knows when I was your age I wasn’t nearly as put together.”

  I laugh. “I find that hard to believe.” Her lips twitch and I know I’ve won her over.

  She holds up her clipboard, a line of neat blue check marks march down the side of the list. “We’re almost through with the setup. Is there anything else you want to go over?”

  I shake my head. “I defer to the experts on these things.” I wave my hand around the room. In the past few hours while I’ve unpacked, they’ve moved most of the furniture out, replacing it with high top tables draped in starched white tablecloths. In the center of each is a square vase filled with flowers from various counties around the state. It’s a nice touch. “This all looks great,” I tell her.

  “Thanks.” She smiles and starts back for the kitchen.

  “Oh, there was one last thing,” I call after her. I grab a bottle of bourbon with a rounded bottom and a stopper in the shape of a horse and jockey from a nearby table. “I found this in my dad’s study. It was one of his favorite labels and I think I remember reading somewhere that it’s Mrs. Wells’s favorite as well. I just wanted to make sure it made it to the bar in case she or any other guests wanted some.”

  Cynthia takes the bottle. “I’ll personally make sure Mrs. Wells is offered a glass when she arrives.”

  With a nod of thanks I retreat upstairs to get ready. I take my time, making sure every detail is as it should be, my eyes sweeping back over my appearance, probing for any flaws.

  After the rescue I’d had my chin sharpened and palate widened, my teeth veneered and my eyebrows reshaped. Thanks to bimonthly highlights and keratin treatments, my hair is shiny smooth, cascading to my shoulder blades in dark waves. With the help of tinted contacts, my eyes take on a darker brown tint that I then emphasize with purple-tinted mascara. Properly applied bronzer takes a bit of the roundness out of my cheekbones and highlight powder lengthens the appearance of my neck.

  I watch myself smile, the corner of one side tilting higher, just like in all the photographs downstairs. Anything even remotely Frances has been steadfastly and systematically eradicated.

  Everything about me is perfected and polished, and thoroughly, thoroughly Libby.

  Though becoming her on the outside may have been a bit of a struggle in the beginning, it’s now merely a set of routines and habits. I’ve been practicing for so long that most of it is secondhand. Convincing Shepherd of my identity was my first test. Tonight will be the second.

  If I can pull it off—if I can convince Grey and his father that I’m Libby—then the rest of my plan will fall easily into place. And if I fail . . . I shake my head, refusing even the possibility.

  Before heading downstairs, I reach for my purse and slip free an old, tightly folded piece of newspaper from my wallet. I open it carefully, smoothing down the edges, and stare at the old me.

  According to her gravestone, Frances Amelia Mace died on March 21, 2011. She’d just turned fourteen the week before. The newspapers ran her photo along with all the other passengers who died on the Persephone.

  I collected all the articles, hoarding every clip I could find—anything that mentioned Frances Mace. At night, when the rest of school was in bed asleep, I’d pull an old metal lockbox from under my bed and spread the yellowing pages across the floor.

  A hundred Franceses all staring back at me. Perpetually frozen in time. Just a girl—nothing special about her. Only child. Midwestern roots. Awkward smile.

  The picture wasn’t the most flattering and I felt sorry for that. All over the world people would remember Frances as she existed in the class photo taken at the beginning of eighth grade: slightly blurry, one of her earrings tangled in her brown hair at that unfortunate stage of being grown out, braces peeking between chapped lips. Eyes hesitant, as though the man behind the camera had promised to count to three but snapped the photo on two.

  Anyone glancing at that picture would know exactly what kind of girl Frances had been. Normal. Average. Typical. She’d had crushes on boys and flirted clumsily. The first time she’d held hands with a guy, she focused more on the sweat of her palm than the feel of his fingers laced with hers.

  She’d spent hours texting and chatting with friends, dissecting conversations with guys for deeper meanings. At night, she’d daydreamed elaborate scenarios that would inevitably throw her and the boy of her dreams together—trapped in an elevator or an avalanche or on a deserted island.

  There was nothing in her life she didn’t approach with a fearful passion, one eye trained on those around her, always anticipating their potential judgment; the other eye trained on the wilds of her imagination. The unrestrained belief that nothing in life would ever truly be off-limits. That it was only a matter of time.

  It hadn’t seemed fair how quickly she’d been forgotten. For a few months her various social media accounts had displayed notes of shock and sorrow over her sudden death. People posted photos of her and shared their favorite memories. But eventually those had faded. Her frien
ds had grown and changed, struck new allegiances in school. Moved on.

  I envied them at times. Being able to forget Frances. I’d been unable to. In the early days after the Persephone, Frances’s rage and pain became so overwhelming that daily life was impossible. Cecil took care of her then, in a remote European hospital with an army of nurses and specialists—therapists and drugs.

  And then one day, I’d been standing in front of a mirror staring at a stranger. I wasn’t yet Libby but I was no longer Frances. I hadn’t gained back weight after the rescue, I no longer had the energy to brush my hair. Nightmares stole sleep at every opportunity.

  All I could do was replay the attack on the Persephone endlessly. Trying to find the clues I’d missed, the ones that would have allowed me to save my parents. Hating myself. No—reviling myself and wishing I’d died out on the ocean instead of Libby.

  Knowing I didn’t deserve to have survived.

  The same emotions rolled through me unceasing: rage, despair, horror. All with an undercurrent of helplessness. That was the one I could never escape: the helplessness.

  And in that moment, staring at myself, despising myself, wishing myself dead, one word began glowing in the back of my mind. The only brightness in the black I’d plunged myself into.

  Truth.

  Another, darker word followed quickly after.

  Revenge.

  Whispering the words aloud had been like lancing an infected wound—the relief was immediate, the pressure finally relieved. The words were a box into which I could put all those crushing emotions. A way to store them for a while as I figured out how to recover.

  Because suddenly I knew what to do. I saw a way forward. I decided that I would fight. I would use rage to push back the ragged edges of my grief. I would become Libby, I would recover my strength, I would bide my time, and I would plan.

  Then one day, I would put those plans in action.