by Norah Wilson
“Going riding!” Brooke didn’t go through the gate, but rose above the frightened horse. She’d chosen a pure white stallion. A moment later, she descended onto its bare back, holding onto its white mane. Her black cast legs stood out clearly against the animal’s white coat. The frightened horse broke out of the stable.
Wait—broke out of the stable?
Unlatched! Maryanne realized with delight. All the box stalls were unlatched. But how had Brooke known?
“That’s dangerous!” Alex shouted.
“No, it’s not,” Maryanne said, moving over a stall and mounting a frightened horse. “Even if the horse throws you, it can’t trample you—”
“We simply rise rather than fall.” Alex’s voice rose with the thrill. And she joined her on the back of the black horse she’d mounted. Alex put her arms around Maryanne’s waist and Maryanne felt the strange eerie press of her cast.
The girls laughed as their horse bolted into the night to join Brooke’s. And the laughter rolled through Maryanne like it hadn’t rolled in months. Not since Jason.
And it felt wonderful—this abandon.
Physically, she could feel it, too. Oh wow, the wind wasn’t just blowing through her hair. It was blowing through her! The night’s cool breeze coursed through her black cast as the horses raced frantically down the Old Road. The night’s scents passed through her; the fine mists did the same, thrilling her. And the horse she rode—Oh, crap! Its heart was hammering. Its breath came in great heaves. Despite the cold Maryanne could feel the sheen of sweat on the animal’s back against her legs.
“It’s too much for the horses!” she cried out, rising immediately off the winded animal’s back. Alex did the same, and the now riderless horse just raced on.
“Brooke! Dismount,” Alex shouted.
“Not yet!” Brooke hollered from atop her white horse.
Maryanne and Alex raced to keep up, but even soaring as fast as they could, they weren’t fast enough to keep up to the galloping horse. Brooke’s horse rounded a corner, the sight of it obscured suddenly by the pines. And moments later when Maryanne and Alex also turned the corner, they saw Brooke’s cast hovering there in the middle of the road. The white horse was now a mere ghost of a vision as it raced away in the distance.
“Were you trying to kill it?” Alex’s accusation sounded more fearful than fierce.
“No! I was trying to ride it! Have some fun.”
“Right! And you just—”
“And I just had the time of my life!” Brooke answered. “Just like the two of you did.”
They hovered silently for a moment.
Brooke was right. Riding those horses had been exhilarating. Mind bogglingly wonderful! Yet even in the intoxication of these thoughts, even as Maryanne twisted and turned in the delicious night, even as she distanced herself from her pain and the guilt over her Jason memories, she knew they’d gone too far. And she knew she’d feel it even more tomorrow, long after the elation had worn away.
“Yes,” Alex said, suddenly. “Just like us. You’re right, Brooke.” She turned her face toward the sky. “Time we call it a night, though, don’t you think?”
Maryanne could feel it too. The heaviness that always came after they’d been out for a while was seeping in. “Homeward bound,” she agreed. “Back to Harvell House.” Then a thought occurred to her. “But what about the horses? Shouldn’t we... you know... catch them and take them back?”
“They’ll be fine,” Brooke said. “Besides, that’s the icing, remember? I want Seth to have to go out tomorrow to round them up.”
The girls laughed and started home.
Chapter 17
Bumps in the Night
Alex
She was late. But she’d be here.
Not for a minute did Alex think Maryanne would be a no show this afternoon. Not after the note she’d tucked into Maryanne’s hand as they’d passed on the stairs this morning:
Meet me at Heritage Park after school. And come ALONE.
We have to talk—A.
Still, Alex waited anxiously, even in this wide-open space. She was sitting in an ancient gazebo at Heritage Park—a little playground about half a mile from school, a mile and a half from Harvell House, which was in the other direction. It was too bitter cold of a day for anyone else to be at the Park. The swing seats had been taken down for the winter, and the old metal slides looked positively abandoned. But Alex was almost comfortable on the wide wooden bench.
They could have talked back at Harvell House, but Alex didn’t want to run the risk of being overheard. She could have told Maryanne to meet her at the little mall. It would have been a helluva lot warmer there, and they could have found a little privacy in an empty corner of the food court. But the food court was too closed in. And all those people... Just thinking about it was enough to send Alex’s anxiety soaring.
Dammit! She hated that feeling—that need she had now to control her surroundings. To ensure an escape route. To avoid situations where she could be confined or hemmed in. And yes, to be able to run, if she had to.
It was getting worse.
In school, she parked herself at the seat closest to the door in every classroom. Usually front row, to the snide amusement of Leah, who shared a few of her classes. The rare times when she’d had to take a seat in the middle of the classroom, had been torturous. She’d broken into a sweat she was sure everyone had seen. Struggled to keep her breath going in and out, without anyone noticing. She’d fought the panic as she tried to concentrate on what her teachers were saying. Fought it so damned hard.
A sudden gust sent a flurry of dry brown leaves rattling through the gazebo. Many of them got caught with the litter of leaves already inside the structure, and they just seemed to blow around and around the enclosure as if seeking a way out. The rustle they made within the roar of the wind seemed like a whispered plea for release.
Alex stood. She unlatched the gazebo door, swung it open and kicked a bunch of the leaves out onto the ground before she latched the door again.
The bench was cold, but her butt was so numb from having sat on it so long, she barely felt the discomfort when she sat back down. But she did feel Connie’s diary rise against her from inside her pea coat pocket as she repositioned herself on the bench. “Hey Connie,” she said automatically as she fished the diary out from the assorted pens, balled-up tissues and coins in her pocket.
She let the diary fall open where it would and began reading. Whether by chance or because she’d read the passage so often, it opened to one of the entries where Connie recounted an assault. But this time, the words on the page gave way to sickening, humiliating mind-pictures. Not of Connie’s assault, but Alex’s own.
She closed the book, wishing she could close off these new memories as effectively.
Yes, it was coming back to her. Another piece had broken back in when her cast returned from that midnight horse ride. Her heart pounded now as she relived it yet again. He’d pushed her face-down on the floor, using the jacket to cover her head and pin her arms as he came down on her, his weight covering her back, trapping her... That goddamned coat! The same one she’d found beside her when she’d wakened. The one she’d wrapped around her nakedness when she’d made her way back downstairs from the attic. She’d shoved that old coat into a black garbage bag and thrown it into the dumpster behind the house. It was long gone. But now, blinking back the tears, Alex wished she had it back.
She’d burn the damned thing.
Alex pocketed the diary as she saw Maryanne approaching.
Maryanne waved widely, as if signaling her presence from miles across the prairie, rather than a few hundred feet across Heritage Park. Alex nodded, but kept her hands deep in her pockets, the left one wrapped tightly around the diary.
Alex would not have been caught dead hanging with a girl like Maryanne Hemlock in her old life. Of course, chances were Maryanne would be making a wide berth around Alex if they’d met last year.
Old
life... Had it really been just a handful of weeks ago?
Since the nightmare of the rape? Since she found poor Connie’s diary?
Since she’d decided to try to turn her life around?
After a few cyber-silent weeks, Alex had finally messaged her Halifax friends. Well, not every one of them, of course. But Anika and Chelsea.
She didn’t tell them—hadn’t told a living soul—about the attack, but she’d told them how she was changing her ways. No more drinking every night. No more drugs—and thank God she’d not gone so far down that road that she couldn’t turn back. No more crime, petty or otherwise. No more raising hell. Chelsea had messaged back, “Yeah right!” Anika hadn’t replied at all. But seven days later, Alex had received a small package in the mail. A tiny, tidily-wrapped cardboard box addressed to Alex Robbins, Harvell House, Mansbridge, N.B. That was all. No postal code, no street address. But that was all you needed in this small town.
She’d opened it slowly, though she knew by the return address that it was from Anika.
It was a pendant. A small silver one with a rose stone quartz pendant attached. Anika had made it herself, of course. Alex had looked up the stone’s meaning: carries soothing energy, provides comfort to those with a wounded heart.
Leave it to Anika to somehow know without knowing. Alex had worn it ever since, always under her tees and sweatshirts, and when she lay down in her small bed and stared up at the ceiling, she positioned the stone to lay exactly over her bleeding rose tattoo.
Maryanne stopped just short of the gazebo steps, her hand still on the low door’s latch. She looked up at Alex huddled inside. “You look pale as a ghost.”
“As opposed to dark as a Heller.”
Neither of them chuckled.
They were down from it now, the exhilaration of the last cast out. As usual, Brooke had seemed no worse for the wear, but Maryanne had that jittery thing happening again. And Alex... well, she’d had a few jitters too, but hers were from the shock of those new memories. Now came the repercussions of what they had done. Along with that sickening, guilty feeling.
“I see Mr. McKenzie was driving a loaner car again this morning,” Maryanne said. “All six-foot-something of him crunched down behind the steering wheel of a Smart Car.”
“His sister’s,” Alex said. “That’s what I heard. Rumor has it he had one drink too many, the other night, swerved off the Old Road and into the ditch. Busted the radiator and some other stuff.”
“Gotta love those rumors,” Maryanne said, then cringed. “I wish we could say the jerk deserved it.”
“Sure. The jerk deserved it.”
“Come on,” Maryanne said. “You know what I mean.”
Yeah, she knew. Though Mr. McKenzie was a complete tool, Maryanne’s swoop down on him could have had more serious consequences. That’s why she’d asked Maryanne to meet her here today, without Brooke. Because the casting was getting out of hand.
But Alex didn’t feel nearly as bad about McKenzie’s car as she did about the Walker horses.
It took almost a full day for the two animals to be recovered. The white stallion had been found miles down the river, the black one miles beyond that. They both were exhausted, had cuts and abrasions on their legs from running wildly through the woods. And both, according to the vet from Fredericton, were probably ruined now. He’d never seen horses so skittish. Terrified of even a touch. This same vet had just last week checked the animals out and proclaimed them in perfect health.
Not anymore.
It had taken six men—including Seth and Bryce—to get the horses into their trailers and both had nearly knocked themselves senseless against the walls of it as they drove back to the Walker farm. Even back in their familiar stalls, they stood trembling.
“Ruined!”
That’s what Seth had said when he’d burst through the door of Harvell House that night.
He’d come looking for Brooke, spouting accusations.
“You did this! You unlocked the gate and let the horses out!”
She’d smiled. Brooke had sat in the parlor, cool as anything, denying Seth’s accusations. Denying that she’d been anywhere near those horses, or the Walker farm.
“Really, Seth,” she’d drawled. “Whatever would take me way out there to your farm? I mean, now that you’re with Melissa. It’s not like we’ve got something going on behind her back, right?”
Seth’s face had turned crimson, as if he badly wanted to say something but was forced to stay silent. As if every second of that silence notched up his temperature. And his fury. But Brooke obviously had him by the short and curlies. Which probably meant they did have something going on the side, and if he persisted in accusing Brooke, she’d do some talking of her own. With an avid audience—a room full of teens, not to mention a now-threatening Patricia Betts, and an imposing looking John Smith—Seth had backed down.
Yet as Seth had slammed the door to Harvell House on his way out of the building, the smart-ass smile on Brooke’s face trembled ever so slightly.
“Some kids say it was the Mansbridge Hellers that spooked the horses so bad.” Maryanne kicked a foot through the small mound of leaves at her feet.
“I doubt if it’s just the kids saying it’s the Hellers. Lots of superstition around this town. Lots of... old stories.”
“Like Ira Walker’s stories? Was he the only one who saw Connie? I bet not.”
Alex ignored Maryanne’s pointed stare. She hadn’t called this little meeting to talk about local lore. This wasn’t about Connie. It was about them.
“We’re going too far. This... this casting out is getting out of hand.”
Maryanne’s foot stilled on the gazebo’s floor. Her posture turned defensive. “What do you mean? You’re not taking this away from me.”
“Don’t play stupid,” Alex snapped, pointedly looking down at Maryanne’s locked fists. “Look, the other night Brooke attacked Seth and that—”
“That was Brooke, not me! Not us!”
“We’re terrorizing animals! And running teachers off the road! Maryanne, I’m scared we’re going to—”
“What are you really scared of, Alexandra Robbins?”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Answer the question!”
How could she? That question had surprised her. Caught her off guard. Cut her straight down to her gut.
“I’ve seen the way you look before we cast. I’ve seen the way you come back in.” Maryanne’s tone was suddenly lowered, almost sympathetic. And yes, curious. “What happens to you out there?” She turned toward Alex, so they were facing each other on the bench. “What is it that comes back in with you, Alex? That doesn’t come back in with Brooke or me?”
Alex started to turn away, but Maryanne shot a hand out to grip her jacket. “Tell me, Alex. What happens to you?”
Alex leapt up, pulling away from Maryanne. “Nothing! Nothing happens to me out there! It’s just the same for me as it is for you. Nothing more, nothing less.” She took a calming breath. “Look, I’m not saying we should stop casting out. But we have to be more careful. Rein it in. All of it. And Maryanne, you and I have to watch out for Brooke. Watch over her.”
Alex stood there while Maryanne studied her for a silent moment.
Finally, Maryanne released her breath on a sigh. “Okay,” she said, her shoulders relaxing.
Alex shifted her weight from one cold foot to the other. “Okay what?”
“Okay, I’ll stop pushing you.”
“And... ?”
Maryanne rolled her eyes. “And okay, yes, you’re right. It is getting a little out of control, and yes, we do have to watch Brooke. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Exactly what I wanted to hear.” With that, Alex started for the gazebo’s door.
“Alex?”
She paused, her hand on the latch. “Yeah?”
“What happened to Connie Harvell? How did she die?”
Alex whirled around, simultaneously pat
ting her coat pocket to make sure Connie’s diary was there. It was, shoved in with the tissue and pen and coins. She closed her hand around it.
“Is that why you’re scared when we cast out?”
“No,” Alex whispered. “That’s not it at all.” It took every ounce of her strength to turn away again.
“Then tell me. How did Connie die, Alex?”
She stopped in her tracks. Her hand trembled around the diary, and the diary trembled within it. But Alex knew she would have to tell Maryanne and Brooke. She’d known it for a while of course, but she knew it thoroughly now that Maryanne had asked her. Now that it was on the table.
Alex unlatched the door and stepped down onto the brittle grass. She lifted her face to the darkening sky and closed her eyes. “I’ll tell you. I’ll... I’ll read it to you.”
With that, she started to walk away.
“When? Alex... when?”
She kept walking, leaving Maryanne’s question hanging, but the answer was, tonight.
Chapter 18
Little Lily Michelle
Alex
Alex sat in the attic in flickering candlelight, with Brooke at her left and Maryanne at her right. It was near one o’clock in the morning. They were all tired, irritable. But all had a single purpose in mind.
Tonight there was no banter between them. For a change, the other girls didn’t hassle Alex to hurry up or instruct her to leave nothing out. Tonight Brooke sat without pressing and prodding and poking, and Maryanne was as patient as she could possibly be, though she practically vibrated with anxiousness.
Alex opened Connie’s diary. She hadn’t used a bookmark or, God forbid, dog-eared a precious page. She didn’t need to. As if guided by some kind of physical memory from her hand going here so often, she opened the diary exactly where she needed to.
And she began to read.
It’s been two days since I’ve been able to pull you close to me again, Dear Diary, and I couldn’t wait to hold you and tell you all my secrets. I’ve missed you—more than I should and more than is logical—but you’ve been my only companion these last long months in this attic. The only one to know my voice. You and the child in my belly.
