by Everly Frost
“It was the night you killed her,” I said. “The night you wrapped me up in vines. She didn’t die that night.”
Alice’s paintings of my family lined the walls around us. I sought the painting of my mother. It would be so easy to let her take over. She could take my body and use my hands, arms, and fists, and I could fly up with the black crows to circle and watch and come back when it was over.
Her voice was so soft in my head, but I made it fade, because I had to do this. It had to be me.
I said, “You killed her.”
“Yes.” Edith’s lips trembled and she sank a tooth into them as though she hated what they betrayed. “I couldn’t do it for a long time. I kept hoping that her heart would give out. With every cup of poison, I hoped she would just… let go. But she never did. She never stopped fighting me. It was such a relief when she finally slipped away.”
Slipped into me. My thoughts lifted above the evil, sugary scent and the sound of thudding hooves outside, horses thundering closer and closer. I strode toward Edith, my fists clenched, but I froze, because her hands swept out from the folds of her dress.
She held a rope. It was long, thin, and supple. One end was wrapped around one of her hands. The other end dangled.
She snarled. Ever so slowly, she wrapped the free end of the rope around her other hand.
“Rebecca.” A gasp strangled in my throat as I remembered the thin, red line around my dead sister’s throat.
“She remembered too much. That last day when Alice sent us into town together, she told me she remembered more than the china doll. She started asking who I really was. So… The storm came. And the river swelled. Nature blessed me with opportunity. I knew she wouldn’t be found for days in that weather.”
Edith’s smile faded. “You, on the other hand, have defied me. Every. Single. Time.”
The rope spiraled and twirled, around and around.
I asked, “And Samuel?”
Her face crumpled, but only for a moment. “No, not my boy.” She recovered and took a step toward me. “I hate you, Meredith, I always have. You came back from the dead into your daughter. I hate you for making me kill you twice.”
I shook my head. The air moved in and out of my lungs. I didn’t know how I hadn’t seen it before. This woman. I’d seen her face every day, but how much changed with long hair and red lips, and eyes that shouldn’t have been brown. Aunt Alice had painted pictures, lush with color, to try and show me how different we were—that Edith couldn’t be my sister.
“I can’t let her live, Caroline. She stood between me and everything I ever wanted.”
“You’re not my sister.”
Her fingers twisted. “I was beautiful. He loved me.”
There was a knife in my words. “But Dad didn’t marry you. Even after you had Samuel.”
Sudden tears ran down her cheeks. She slithered forward, nodding to me. “Your father loved me. He did. I gave him a son and we were happy. But when she finally died… he changed.”
“He figured it out,” I said. “He found me in the vines and he knew what you did. He saw through your lies about my mother.”
“He stopped coming to the cabin. He said that if I wanted a life with Samuel, then I had to follow his rules. He called me his daughter. And that’s what I became.” She started to weep, her face crumbling. “And then I was trapped.”
The fog in my head wouldn’t clear. Blood pooled across my ankles. My vision blurred. I reached for something to steady myself, but there was nothing to save me.
I tried to do the math, calculate the years between Edith and I. Samuel was fifteen years old, which meant Edith had to be in her thirties, not her twenties like I’d always thought. How well she’d hidden it with girlish hairstyles and smooth skin. Even now there was barely a line around her eyes, but for the first time I saw what she’d suppressed. For the first time, she was allowing me to see her as she really was.
Beautiful. Cruel.
“How old are you?”
“A lot older than you!” She clutched the rope. “I’m sorry, Caroline, but I have to kill you.”
“Yes,” I said. “You probably will. But first, Edith, there’s something I have to do.”
There was enough clarity in my thinking to do this one last thing. I remembered Edith throwing a log onto a fire, telling me she was afraid of the flames.
I pulled the match and bottle from behind my back. As my head swam, I stumbled to Edith’s painting and smashed the bottle against it. Alcohol sloshed across her painted face, dripping from the bottom of the frame, forming a puddle dangerously close to my feet.
I lit the match and the painting ignited.
Her face burned, bright orange against dark blue.
Behind me, the rope slipped around my neck.
Chapter 23
BEFORE I DIED, I buried my mother’s voice and my father’s faithlessness. I tied a final ribbon in Rebecca’s hair and threw wide a fishing line with my half-brother, Samuel. I soaked up Timothy’s weeping heart and imagined the baby I would never hold. I broke free of the cruel vines. Last of all, in my head, I whispered Nathan’s name over and over until my air was gone.
What if Nathan lives?
It was my mother’s voice, clear and soft, asking me the question I didn’t want to hear. My mother. She was there in front of me, draped in blue. Not buried or burned, her eyes cutting through me, slicing my thoughts like a whip across my skin.
If he lives, would you leave him?
Her stern face drew so close to mine it could have been part of me again. I wanted to protect you. I tried to keep you and Nathan apart. But he loves you, Caroline. More than you love yourself. Would you die now and leave him to the burden of sadness?
Her blue eyes were like icy lakes. Would you leave him like I left you?
No.
No, no, no.
Then fight, Caroline. Fight this shadow and fight the next. Fight all the shadows that cast darkness across your life. Always. Never stop.
For the briefest moment, her hand brushed my cheek, and then she was gone.
This time, I knew that she would never come back. The other me—my mother—was finally gone.
I rammed my elbow into the shadow that held me tight.
The breath shrieked out of Edith’s lungs and for a sheer second, the rope loosened. I shoved backward with the strength of every memory of Nathan, with the strength of every smile Rebecca ever gave me, of Samuel’s yearning to be a man, of my father’s stubborn will, and the fury of my mother’s final scream.
We fell backward together, the heat of the flames creeping around our tangled legs. She felt fragile beneath my back, as insubstantial as the shadow I’d feared, and the rope slipped further. At the same time as I gasped a breath into my empty lungs, I twisted, seizing the moment of surprise, dropping the entire weight of my torso and arms and fists across her upper body. Her eyes widened before I slammed my head into hers.
She slumped, unconscious.
Pain crashed through my forehead and I screamed it out of my body, needing to get up. My feet were hot and my legs—were they burning? Were Edith’s? I twisted again and the fiery painting came back into view, Edith’s face dripping like hot wax.
Then, someone grabbed my shoulders, shouting. It was Robert West. I’d heard the horse’s hooves approaching but thought I’d only imagined them. Now he was here, and Jack too.
Jack beat a rug up and down on the flames, fanning my face as the thick material suffocated the fire. The flames were gone. Edith’s picture dangled, a burned face on the blackened wall.
The floor moved and the room tilted as Robert slid me over his shoulder. Wooden veranda boards passed under me and I strained my head to catch a glimpse back into the room.
Edith lay in a crumple of black, a smear of blood on her forehead where I’d cracked my head against hers.
Behind me, Jack dragged my father’s body. Edith’s pearls slid off his chest to the floor, crackling under Jack’s boots
, popping and rolling across the rug.
“It’s all right, Miss Caroline,” Robert said, right at my ear. “I couldn’t save your sister… But I will save you.”
Leather seats rushed up at me, and Jack’s shout came through muffled. “Quick, help me get him inside, then let’s get out of here. Edith will wake up any minute.”
The door slammed, and I rested down among shadows and sunlight, both slanting across the back seat in turns.
There was a lurch, the roar of the engine, and I left my home behind.
I swam upward, focusing on the ceiling of the compartment. It had a blotchy stain on it that I’d memorized since we started our train journey to the city. Three endless days of drifting between sleep and wakefulness, of rocking interspersed with the never-ending click-clack of the wheels. Mostly, my company was the sunlight, sloping in through the window, sometimes in lines, other times pouring in golden pools. Sometimes, there was a flash of green—a tree—but mostly the bare sky. Other times, the staff would come in and pull the blind closed, but I made them open it again.
On the third day, I shifted to find Jack crouched next to the bed, one weathered hand resting on the edge.
“We’re almost there, Caroline. Your aunt’s waiting at the station.”
I frowned and my stitches puckered with the movement. “Aunt Alice? I thought she went back to England.”
He gave me a tired smile. “She’ll tell you about that, not me.”
He made to stand, but I grabbed his arm. “You promised.”
His mouth worked over his words. “I did, didn’t I?” He rubbed his jaw. “All right, I’ll tell you what I know. And then I’ll tell you what I think I know.”
“Did you know about Edith?”
He settled down on the floor. “Not a chance. Look, I didn’t start working for your father until you all moved out to the ranch. The story I knew was that your mother was very ill, fragile. I was told your parents had four children and a fifth on the way. I didn’t meet your mother until after Samuel was born, and she was… she was beautiful and headstrong, and she had this fire in her eyes.” Jack stopped and looked away.
“How could I not remember?” I thumped my fist against the hard palette. “How could I not know that Edith wasn’t my sister?”
Jack turned back to me with a sad look in his eyes. “You kids were young then, Caroline. Real young. Rebecca was only six years old when Sam was born, and you were barely four. I never saw Edith.” He tipped his head. “Your father said that Edith was looking after your mother so she never came outside to play like you did. I don’t think I saw her until you were twelve or so, and by then… well, she must have been in her mid-twenties, but she dressed young and behaved like a girl.”
I glared at the ceiling. “Then who was she?”
“Don’t know for sure, but, if I had to guess, I’d say one of the staff. Been there from the beginning, so you children wouldn’t question her presence. Must have gone after your father and his money as soon as she could.”
“Hah.” The laugh tore from me. “No wonder Dad was so angry at Timothy.”
“Yeah.” Jack’s voice went quiet. “But Victoria’s nothing like Edith.”
He suddenly took my hand. The wooden box rested down on my stomach.
“You told me to give that to Timothy,” Jack said. “But you can give it to him yourself.”
I stared at the box and thought about the other thing I’d told him to do. “What about Nathan? You promised me you’d keep him alive.”
Jack held my hand. “He’s a fighter, Caroline. I’m going to leave once we’re at the station. I’m going to find somewhere new, maybe even find a wife, even though I’m a bit old for it. Robert West knows some people who are looking for a stable master so that’s where I’ll start.”
He started to leave, but I stopped him. “You were in love with her—my mother.”
“Who wasn’t? But in the end, she wasn’t herself. There was this one time she ran down the garden path silent as the moon, slipped past everyone without anyone knowing. She ran all the way to the dam and stripped off, buck naked, and threw herself in. I was riding by and heard the splash. She didn’t want to come back up. Fought me all the way…” He smiled suddenly, but it was a smile filled with regret. “It was the most glorious moment of my life, pulling her out of that water.”
“Edith was drugging her.”
The sadness in his eyes changed to the darkness of anger. “That would explain it.”
“Do you think my father knew?”
He knelt beside me again, pulling my hand into his. “Caroline, your father was a fool, but he didn’t wish your mother harm.”
I squeezed his hand. The train blew its horn. I realized that there were buildings and people outside the window now. I shoved the box back at Jack, ignoring the pain of my stretched wounds as I threw him a glare. He shook his head at me. Then the medical unit arrived to carry me out.
Aunt Alice rushed toward me as two paramedics lowered me into the waiting wheelchair. Her lavender perfume engulfed me as she cradled me. Her first words were lost in the noise, but the look on her face was enough for me. I lifted my arms and hugged her back.
She stroked my hair. “You’re safe now, Caroline. Edith can’t hurt any of us anymore.”
I ignored the passengers pouring around us. “But she’s still alive, she’ll come after us.”
“No, Caroline. She thinks I’ve gone back to England. She thinks Victoria was sent away—”
“But what about Timothy and me? She knows we’re alive.”
“That’s why Timothy has a lawyer cutting off all funds, transferring all ownership. All we need…”
From the crowd of people, Jack appeared. He handed Alice the box, giving me a stubborn look.
“The birth certificates.” Aunt Alice sighed, clutching the box to her chest, still with her other arm around me. “I did try to get copies.”
I remembered the day we’d walked around the garden with the cattle braying and Edith pulling weeds from the earth like she was snatching veins from her own body. “The letter that came that day?”
“Yes, but they’d only send yours. I had no power to access Edith’s. Legal issues. The lawyers were working on it, but we ran out of time…”
“Aunt Alice, won’t she come to the house? Doesn’t she know where Dad’s houses are?”
“Were,” Aunt Alice corrected. “I sold all of his old properties and acquired new ones. What’s more, they’re owned by a web of companies and it would take an expert to figure out that the companies belong to you. It was all done without her knowing.”
“Then… you knew about her? All along?”
She shook her head, a tear rolling down her cheek. “No, dear. When I first contacted your father, he told me very little. Later, he asked me to take care of the sale of his houses as a matter of convenience. It wasn’t until much later that he told me the truth. That Edith was not my niece. That they convinced your mother to call Edith their daughter. All of it because of Samuel.” Her expression became drawn. “At a terrible cost.”
I shook my head. “We can’t hide forever.”
“She’ll never leave that house, Caroline. She has nowhere to go and no money. Her son is dead. Your father told me she’ll never leave the place where Samuel died.”
As her earnest eyes met mine, my heart was bleak. I blocked out the noise from the crowd of travellers on the platform, still moving, still talking, and going on their way.
I remembered the flames and Edith’s melted picture. “I wanted her to burn in the fire she feared.”
Jack laid his hand on my shoulder and his determined eyes met mine. “I’ve delivered the box. And the boy. Now I’ve done everything you wanted.”
He turned and walked away, and I knew I’d never see him again.
I called after him. “Try to forget about her, Jack.”
He paused, but walked on.
Chapter 24
I WAS NOT one person but I
am whole now. A whole person made up of cracks and fissures, so many small pieces that threaten to shatter.
I wake to a wail and I clutch at the warm body next to mine, taking deep breaths, afraid of the shadow in the corner of the room, the shaft of light sliding around thick curtains, until I place the sound. The room comes into focus and I slip out of bed into the blue moonlight.
“Caroline?”
Two hands slide around my hips, tugging me back. I twist and bring one of them to my lips, touching it to my cheek for a moment.
Nathan’s mouth curves into a smile, although his eyes stay closed. “Come back.”
I lean over to kiss him and his bristles scratch my chin. “The baby’s awake.”
His grin grows wider as he jokes. “That brother of yours, he should get a nanny.”
I nuzzle his cheek, before I slip from the bed, pull on my nightgown, and pad down the hallway to the nursery.
Victoria’s there already, snuggled upright with the baby against her chest. As she strokes the little girl’s head, the ring on her finger catches the light. I creep in to sit beside her and she gives me a smile.
It took me a long time to get used to the house in the city.
After the train journey, we arrived at one of the new houses. I didn’t let myself remember that time on the train. It was surreal to be greeted by Aunt Alice and Victoria at the train station and to learn that my father had sent them, not away, but to this house.
As if she reads my thoughts, Victoria looks up from the baby girl to whisper. “Your father was a good man. In the end.”
I don’t answer. I can’t.
She wraps the baby in a blanket, but the little girl protests. At Victoria’s tired sigh, I reach out my arms. “I’ll take her. You go back to sleep.”
Victoria hesitates and then accepts, and I stay to sit in the rocking chair, a lulling movement, as my niece sniffles and eventually closes her eyes. Finally, I place her into the crib and turn off the lamp, making my way in the dark.
