by Everly Frost
“You’ve done your job, son. Go and get yourself cleaned up. I’ll need you ready to ride again at daybreak.”
“Yes, sir.”
I met Nathan’s eyes as he closed the door. His look was hooded, his eyes dull.
“Where is she, Harry?” Alice squeezed the life out of her shawl as Dad paced the length of the room.
He ran his hands through his hair. “She could be back in town, and if she’s there, she’ll be safe. The townsfolk will put her up for the night. I know they will.”
“But, if she’s not?”
Edith slid into the room with a steaming cup of tea. “Your tea, Dad. Just the way you like it.” She held it out to Dad, but he didn’t even glance at it so she put it on the mantelpiece instead.
He said, “She’s out there somewhere in this hellish storm. Lost, hurt, worse.”
His eyes flickered to me. Was he remembering the day he found me wrapped in vines? Was he wondering if he had to save another of his daughters? He thumped the mantelpiece with his closed fist. The tea sloshed. A drop of dark liquid splashed to the floor. “Where is she?”
Edith glared from Dad to the cup of tea he failed to acknowledge. “Maybe at the bottom of the river.”
Before she could move, his hand whipped out. He threw the teacup to the floor at her feet, where it smashed.
Alice jumped out of her chair and rushed to Edith, trying to pull her away from the shards, but Edith slapped Alice’s hands away. She pinned Dad with eyes like a hissing cat’s. Then she turned on her heels and stalked out.
Dad’s chest heaved. His fists clenched and unclenched over and over. Then he dropped his head into his hands and slumped into a chair.
Chapter 18
MOONLIGHT STREAMED INTO my bedroom—a cold, blue light. I hid under the bedclothes and tried to think of sleep. Everyone else had gone to bed. There were no lights flickering, but I knew they weren’t sleeping.
The treacherous rain hadn’t eased, even now. A whistle of wind slithered under the crack beneath my window, an echo of the roar lashing the world outside. I wondered, with fading hope, whether Rebecca was quietly asleep somewhere, unaware of the turmoil she’d created.
Over in the corner of my room, the rocking chair swayed.
I pulled the covers over my head, alert and awake. I couldn’t stop thinking about the horse in the belting rain or the look in Edith’s eyes when Dad threw the tea at her feet. The other me curled up with me, quiet and trembling, waiting for daybreak.
I finally fell asleep and awoke with an engulfing fear for my sister.
Driven from bed, I dressed without waiting for Victoria and hurried downstairs. Timothy and Dad were already in the living room, bleary eyed and grim.
Dad’s face was worn. “We’ve had word. She’s not in town.”
My heart plummeted. The room began to spin. The other me began to wail. I struggled to hear Dad over her cries.
He continued. “They’re assembling a search party today. We’ll spread out across the ranch. If we don’t find her today, they’ll drag the river tomorrow.”
I choked back a sob as he disappeared. Timothy raced to my side, tears running down his cheeks.
“We can’t give up hope, Caroline. We thought you were dead once, but you came back to us. She will, too.”
“I don’t know, Timothy. I have such a bad feeling.”
He gave me another hug before he followed Dad. I wanted to go with them, but by the time I made it to the stables, they were all gone. I went out to the Lodge and knocked, just in case Jack or Nathan was still there, but there was no answer. I rested my head against the door for a moment, rainwater seeping through my hair. I caught sight of the muddy hem of my dress. I didn’t think Aunt Alice would care today.
Samuel wandered past, head down, holding his shiny fishing rod aloft, heading for the dam. I followed him to sit on a dirty rock while the old shed creaked behind me. I sunk my feet into the pockets of mud and silt.
Water splashed as he waded in and threw his line with a fierce determination, as though he was throwing his soul into the dark water. I remembered him sliding beneath the surface when he was little. I shuddered, but there was another memory there too, an image of myself slipping under, not even taking a breath, just wishing for the air to leave my lungs so I wouldn’t float up again…
I shook my head. That didn’t happen to me…
There was movement behind me and Victoria appeared. “Miss Caroline, your aunt wants you to come for lunch.” Her lips compressed just a little as she spoke, her hand folded across her stomach like she felt ill.
“Already? All right. Sam. Come on, it’s lunch time.”
He packed away his fishing rod, his basket empty, and threw a pebble into the dam. I watched the water swirl and thought of the river they would drag tomorrow if they didn’t find my sister today.
A gunshot split the calm.
My knees jerked. I slipped and caught my elbow on the rocks. Samuel shouted. He pointed out over the dam, away over the pasture beyond the rise. I registered Victoria reaching out and pulling him away from the water’s edge.
I’d cut myself, but it was shallow. “Victoria, take Sam back to the house, I’m going to see.”
Sam pulled away. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, Samuel. We don’t know what that was. You could get hurt.”
“Well, you shouldn’t go either, then.” He threw his fishing rod down. “She’s my sister, too. You all treat me like I don’t exist, like I don’t care. I’m not a boy anymore. I’ll be a man soon and then I’ll be the one with the gun.”
I choked on a sob. Sam’s face blurred and disappeared behind my tears. Beyond the curtain of my hair, his silhouette beckoned me to come with him.
“Are you coming, Caro, or not?”
I threw my head back. “Yes, I’m coming. Victoria can you take…?”
The dark-haired girl was already next to Samuel. She flushed, but stood her ground.
“All right.”
I strode past them, picking my way through the grass. The ground cover never had a chance to grow too long on our ranch. Dad rested the paddocks so they weren’t eaten down and overrun with weeds, but the path we made to the rise wasn’t hard going. I found myself half walking, half running.
Down on the flat land was a huddle of horses and men. One of them gestured in our direction and all of a sudden they were all looking at us. Someone ran to a horse, mounted, and headed in our direction. I thought I recognized Nathan among the men still down on the flat land, standing very still, watching us.
The mare shuddered to a stop in front of us and Timothy stayed in the saddle, his face shadowed with the sun behind him.
“We found her horse. Don’t go down there, Caroline. It’s not pretty. We had to put it out of its misery.”
Samuel strode past Timothy, ignoring the flick of the horse’s tail and his older brother’s glare. “I’m going down.”
“Sam, mate, you really don’t want to go down there. That horse—it was cut up really bad…”
“So?”
“Sam, it was cut up just like Cloud.”
As he said it, Timothy’s eyes swiveled away from Samuel and rested on me.
I took a step back.
Samuel clenched his fists. He took off his hat and beat it against his leg. Then he turned back toward the house, his jaw clenched. He started to run.
My heart lurched. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“She wasn’t with the horse, Caroline. We’re going to keep searching the ranch.” He tried to steady his jittery mare. “Look, someone has to tell Aunt Alice why there was a gunshot, otherwise she’ll panic.”
“I’ll take Samuel back and tell Miss Alice.”
Timothy gave Victoria a grateful smile, but it faded when he looked at me again. “Don’t come down, Caroline.”
Past Timothy to the men and the horses, I looked all the way over the flat land and the dead horse and way away into the dark woods. They wo
uld build a fire now for the black horse.
“No, I won’t go down.” I picked up my skirt and hurried after Victoria and Samuel, desperate to hide away in the house with the doors closed against the smell of burning.
The next morning it was still dark when I got up, but I couldn’t sleep. They were going to drag the river this morning.
I dressed in my old riding clothes and didn’t recognize myself in them. I stood in front of the mirror and stared at myself. At some point, I’d changed. At some point, I’d shed my old self and formed a new one. I took the ragged riding gear off and pushed it to the very back of my cupboard. I pulled on my new riding pants and jacket. I finished just as Victoria arrived.
There were dark rings under her eyes and the edges of her mouth were pinched. “Are you going with them?”
I nodded and hurried downstairs, where I gulped down a piece of toast.
At the stables, Dad, Timothy, Jack, and Nathan had already saddled their mounts. Robert West was there, too, something crushed in his fist—a petal caught between his fingers. I remembered all the blooms in Rebecca’s hair over the past weeks and my heart bled for him.
I grabbed a saddle, but Dad blocked my path. “I don’t think you should come with us, Caroline.”
“I won’t get in the way.”
His eyes softened. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
I looked down at his boots, cracked and worn. I thought about when those boots were new, about a time when his face wasn’t so lined, about a time before he found me dangling in vines—a time before his wife died in a blue room. I stood up on tiptoes and kissed my father on the cheek. “I’m coming with you.”
He caught my gaze for a moment before I raced to saddle a horse.
When I emerged, they were already riding off, but Nathan waited for me. “Are you really sure you want to come with us?”
I answered him by urging the mare into a canter and we rode in silence after that.
When we reached the river, it looked like most of the men from town had come out to help. I kept myself at a distance while Nathan worked with them.
The men threw in the heavy ropes and nets at intervals and drew them back out, shouting instructions, their words quick and harsh as if they dreaded today’s catch. Watching them, the other me and I held our breath, waiting and wondering when we could exhale. The men fell into a rhythm and became silent as they worked, except for the occasional curse when the nets caught on something.
The mare became restless, and I led her along the river a little way, the other me faltering along with me, like she was the lost one. At this part of the river, it was calm at last—quiet and still.
I focused on my feet and the whooshing of the mare’s breathing as I chose my path through the tall grass. I walked so far that I couldn’t hear the splashes of the ropes anymore and I realized that my father was right—I didn’t want to be there after all.
Birds called in the thicket, but I couldn’t see them. One of them sang, and it was such a peaceful, calm sound that I stopped and closed my eyes. It called again—two notes sidling into the hush, sneaking into the black space behind my eyes, mingling with the sound of water tumbling over stones.
There was something in the river that didn’t belong.
Right there. Next to the spot where I’d stopped. Long grass concealing it, but all it took was one step forward to clear the grass and the riverbed came into view.
I opened my eyes and wanted to close them again, shut them against what I saw.
Her black hair spread across the stones, lulled by the water, her face tilted and her eyes closed. Her body was half in the river and half on the grey pebbles at the edge, as though she was a pretty doll someone had dropped and left behind.
Rebecca! No. My dearest one!
The other me was screaming.
I fell to my knees and crawled into the water, kneeling beside her, my hands hovering over her face and body. Sand and mud were splattered all over her. The river plucked at her clothing, tugged at her hair, pulled gently at us both. Debris was caught beside her neck—a bit of rope that floated away as I tried to pull her up and out of the water, to hold her in my arms.
I didn’t know I was the one who was screaming until the men ran to me and pulled me away, and then I heard it, the raw sound shrieking from my mouth, crashing in my ears, scalding ice across my tongue and inside my cheeks, burning out of my lungs.
The other me.
Me.
Both of us.
Screaming at once.
I registered Nathan’s pale face, then my father, bent and weeping. He shoved the men away and snatched up her limp body, bellowing rage into the sky.
My legs were made of the mud that covered my sister’s fingers, every strand of grass pricking my wet skin. I moved, the scream following me while the mare wandered behind, and a long time later I arrived at the house and my father trudged up the front stairs with Rebecca’s body in his arms.
Aunt Alice rushed to the door, wailing and crying, but Edith stayed in the darkness behind her, holding Samuel like a shield.
That night, I threw on my raincoat and ran out into the wind and rain, my legs pounding the ground, beating through the piercing raindrops. There was a dim light on at the end of the Lodge. I headed for it, knowing Nathan would be there. The door was shut and bolted against the evil weather and I pounded on it, waiting outside in the heavy splashes from the roof, the din of rain once more pelting onto iron.
He pulled open the door but I didn’t wait for him to speak.
“Is Jack here?”
“He and Robert helped your father take…” He stumbled over the words ‘the body.’ “Take her to town for the doctor to pronounce—”
“Is anyone else here?”
“No.”
“When will they be back?”
“In the morning. There’s no way they’ll try to come back tonight. Why do you—?”
I pushed him inside and closed the door. I ran to the lamp and turned it off and stumbled back to him. I kissed him like a frantic thing, wanting to fill the wound in my chest with skin and hands to forget that my sister had died, and think only of fierce lips and entwined limbs. I didn’t care whether the other me went away or whether she stayed. I didn’t care whether shadows grew in the corners of the room and crept along the hay and between the rafters.
He pried me away, but just enough to speak. “Caroline, you just lost your sister.”
“Don’t talk about her. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Is that why you’re here? So you don’t have to think?”
I tugged at his clothes, but he caught my hands and made me stop. I took a breath. My head dropped onto his chest, heart pounding loud in my ears. “Is that wrong?”
“No. But I don’t want you to be here because you want a way out. Not because you want an escape. It won’t make you forget, Caroline. Nothing will make you forget. You’ll still have to remember.”
It was too dark to see his expression. I filled my head with his breathing and the strong beat of his heart. “I’m here because I want to be here. But I want to forget, too.”
“Caroline… When we went out today, all I thought about was you. What if we were looking for you?”
I remembered his pale face, the way he moved all day as though the air was thick—as though something gripped his feet, pulling him down.
There was an edge to his voice. “I don’t understand what’s going on here. How did she end up in the river? Did she go down with the bridge? How did her horse survive? And why would she come back in that kind of storm? I can’t say I knew her very well, but that’s not like her, is it?”
Now I wished the light was on so I could see his face. The sound of his voice made my head spin. He asked me the same questions that darted through my head and evaporated under the force of loss.
I couldn’t think.
I curled my fist into his shirt. “There’s nobody else here. My family’s asleep. Au
nt Alice has finally stopped weeping, and Samuel has stopped crying, and now they’re all asleep.”
I tilted my head back. “Nobody’s here.”
I kissed his chin. “I want to forget, and this time we don’t have to worry about my dress.”
He hesitated. Then he brushed his cheek against mine and turned to kiss the tears sliding between our faces. I drew in the gentle touch and kissed his mouth and soon we were naked together and even though Nathan kept our bodies apart, never completely together, I lost myself in those heady moments, spinning in sensation and warmth.
But he was right, because afterwards, I still had to remember.
A tiny bundle of fresh blooms rested in Rebecca’s hair as she lay in her coffin. Someone had put them there to kiss her pale cheek. I took off my muted black glove to touch her forehead one last time.
She was so very pale, just a hollow form, not my sister anymore. The funeral house had dressed her in black, a severe garment with long sleeves and lace at the wrists that covered her hands, and a high neckline also tipped with lace. She would have hated it, but it didn’t matter because she wasn’t there.
“Rest well, dearest.” I closed my eyes and spoke into the air, because that’s where she was. As my eyelashes fluttered open, something caught my eye.
Under her collar was a thin, red line, so fine I thought it was part of the lace. I leaned a little closer, but my vision blurred. I’d cried too much and I couldn’t focus properly anymore.
My father stood behind me and I took his hand for a moment as I passed. Robert West sat at the back of the church with his head down. I remembered the day I first saw him and how my sister blushed at the top of the stairs.
I stumbled. Someone caught my arm before I tripped. It was Timothy, with red eyes and a stern mouth. I dropped into the seat next to him.
They closed the coffin lid and my sister was gone.
Chapter 19
AUNT ALICE SAT frozen in her chair, shoulders drawn back, eyes forward. Only her hands moved, touching the canvas with strokes that were broad and sweeping, then gentle and detailed.
