Girls of Brackenhill(21)

Hannah told Huck these stories as they walked. He took her hand, his arm slipped around her waist. He gazed at her with wonder, as if this made her seem like a wholly new, exciting person—a whole life’s worth of experiences he’d never known existed. It was a shame how exhausting she found it.

“You’ve never said anything about any of this,” he said more than once.

Hannah could barely explain it. “I didn’t remember much. I feel like . . .” Her voice drifted as she pushed open the heavy double doors into the library. The library—one of her favorite rooms. Ceiling-high bookshelves. Ladders on each wall. Rich red velvet couches that you could sink into. Lose hours of the day in. “I feel like Brackenhill was always a dream. It was this place of safety.” She couldn’t tell him more without telling him about Wes, and something inside her resisted that. Halted, like a screeching car. “The days after my sister . . . ran away. I don’t remember them at all.”

She’d never said that out loud before.

She never talked about the morning after: Aunt Fae calling for Julia, up and down the halls. The frantic call to the police and then a man in their kitchen who looked remarkably like Reggie, and she’d had the realization that he was Reggie’s father. A distinct memory of studying his face—his skin peach and ruddy with a smooth sheen, like a doll. He’d smiled at her and said something in a sugary voice—she didn’t remember what. In retrospect, it was odd her mother never asked. Never said, Tell me every detail. Instead, Wes retrieved Hannah. Hannah told her mother Julia had left, she’d seen her leave and tried to stop her but couldn’t, and her mother went to sleep and never woke up again. Lived the rest of her life half-awake.

Hannah, on the other hand, was left with two memories: Hannah, please, her sister’s dirty hand on the doorjamb, her face white. And the police officer with the shiny skin, speaking as though through water.

And then? Nothing.

A blank expanse of nothingness where her sister should have been. What had happened in those four days? She couldn’t seem to remember. And then watching the shrinking castle out the back window of the Buick, memories slipping from her mind like a slow leak of water.

She’d been questioned at some point, and she told the truth: she and her sister had fought, and her sister had run away. She didn’t tell them Julia had returned, dirty and pleading. She wasn’t sure if it was real. She’d had so many nightmares, sleepwalking episodes, and half-awake delusions that summer.

There had been flashes of Brackenhill in her life, even when she actively tried to avoid it: A Beatles song would bring with it the clarity of Uncle Stuart’s hands in a clay pot, a glare of concentration on his face. The smell of fresh basil would conjure Aunt Fae chopping chiffonade for a salad. But if she tried to invoke the days after Julia left, the blank nothingness would return.

The police questioned her. Her mother pleaded, quietly, desperately. She used to close her eyes at night, willing her mind to bring forth the days after Julia left. She had other snatches of memory: Aunt Fae crying, frantic, calling into the forest. Uncle Stuart, pale and stooped, coming in from outside and shaking the rain off his shoulders, eyes closed as he shook his head. Hannah didn’t remember if she herself had ever looked for her sister. Scoured the woods, their hiding spots, the trails, the river.

Then, months later, Julia’s purse was found on the riverbank downstream, a small denim backpack of a purse that she’d always carried. It held her license and a waterlogged lipstick, the zipper still closed. It still hadn’t been enough for the police to charge anyone. That was when the rumors in town had started. Fae was unhinged. Fae had been driven insane by Brackenhill. Fae had killed Julia in her sleep, for reasons unknown. What else could have happened? When her mother had told her that, years later, Hannah had laughed. The whole idea was preposterous.

Upstairs, she skipped Julia’s room entirely. Instead, her hand settled on the doorknob between Stuart’s room and her own and found it locked. It had always been locked, she remembered.

“I don’t have keys, but I’m sure they’re somewhere,” Hannah offered softly, the crystal knob still tight in her hand. Huck shrugged, asking only if the locked rooms were empty. Hannah had never known. She’d only asked about them once, never tried to pry open the doors.

“Julia knew, though.” Hannah closed her eyes, tried to remember how she knew that. Her sister had said it once: “I know what’s in one of the locked rooms.” Hannah hadn’t wanted to hear it. It was in that last summer of madness, Julia suspicious at every locked door, every whisper between their aunt and uncle. It had made Hannah crazy.

Back in the kitchen she stopped talking, the silence settling around them like a fog. The night had fallen, and the kitchen had grown dark, the only light emanating from the muted glow of the pendant above the sink.

Huck reached out his hand, cupping the steel knob on the basement door. “What’s down here?”

Her chest swelled instantly with fear, anticipation, excitement. The feeling preceding actual memory.

The labyrinth. Julia. The feeling of childhood, fleeting, magical, dangerous. What if she took Huck, descended the steps, and found a mundane set of rooms, immobile, perhaps odd or strange but not extraordinary in any way? What then? It seemed, at once, crushing and terrifying. She felt protective of the memory then. That afternoon with Julia, when reality had seemed to slip, when they’d both found magic at the same time and felt united in their excitement and shared terror.