Girls of Brackenhill(35)
“It changes everything,” she’d snapped. Later, she’d apologized, and he’d hugged her. His mouth landed somewhere between her cheek and her ear in a distracted kiss before he disappeared outside again. He didn’t have the tolerance for this kind of thing: digging through dusty bedrooms, old secrets. His life was ordered, measured, line itemed.
When he was gone, she listened for a moment to make sure he wouldn’t return. She crept to the end of the hall, the turret room at the other end of her hallway, facing Valley Road. She tried the doorknob and found it locked, as she’d expected. The door was antique, and the lock would have been locked with a skeleton key, but despite a cursory search around the kitchen, Hannah couldn’t locate one. She found a small rusty screwdriver in the kitchen drawer, though, the wooden handle chipped and broken, and went up to jiggle it in the keyhole, pressing the tip of the screwdriver against the pin. The lock popped fairly easily, and the door swung open, banging against the wall before she caught it.
She felt immediately like she was doing something wrong. Like she needed to avoid getting caught. By whom? Alice, perhaps? Alice seemed to slip in and out of the castle soundlessly, appearing suddenly, without warning at the most unexpected moments. Well, so what? This wasn’t Alice’s house. It was Stuart’s now.
Behind the door was a child’s room, painted in bright periwinkle blue. The walls coated in a swirl of plaster, like clouds, the ceiling painted to mimic a bright summer sky. The bed had a canopy, white chenille coverlet, lacy curtains, and giant pillows with ornate ruffles. The bed held a throng of stuffed animals: bears and rabbits and puppies in shades of brown and gray. A purple plush blanket was folded neatly across a large cedar chest.
Hannah cracked the lid on the cedar chest a few inches and peered inside. Stacks of clothing and blankets. She moved to the dresser and armoire and opened the drawers: jeans and dresses and shirts and sweaters. Winter mixed with summer clothes. Small socks and little-girl panties. The armoire held the same—winter coats and bathing suits and sandals and boots. The room smelled musty, and everything was coated in a thin layer of dust. Not twenty-five years of dust—clearly Aunt Fae had cleaned the room periodically.
The dresser held a music box. A small ballerina twirled when she opened it, and she heard the opening notes of “Clair de Lune.” In the top drawer, Hannah found a small leotard, tights, ballet flats. Little Ruby had been a ballerina. The bookcase contained children’s books: Dr. Seuss and Berenstain Bears and Roald Dahl. An easel sat in the corner, untouched paints and dusty paper, a collection of paintbrushes in a pristine, seemingly unused mason jar.
Hannah didn’t know what she was looking for, exactly. She wanted to understand why she’d lived in this house for five summers after Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart’s daughter had died and had no idea this room was here, no idea that Ruby had even existed. Aunt Fae had always been secretive, private, but Hannah’s room had shared a wall with a child’s room, and she hadn’t even known it. She could have read these books, painted on this easel. She chastised her own selfishness, but still, a strange feeling of abandonment persisted.
Hannah went to the window and looked out, wondering if Ruby had fallen out her own bedroom window. The window opened outward, joined in the center by an antique latch. She tried to turn the latch, but it seemed to have been either painted shut or cemented together with moisture and age. The windows were old: single pane, drafty. She gazed down at the cement patio below that led into the garden and tried to imagine a child falling. She couldn’t—didn’t want to—envision it. How had it happened? Had Fae been with her? Had she lived with guilt as well as grief?
The ballerina stopped twirling, the music stopped, and Hannah moved to the dresser to shut the music box. From underneath the ribbon-tabbed lid of a jewelry compartment, a corner of yellow stuck out. Hannah lifted the lid. A folded piece of paper. She opened it. A birth certificate.
Ruby Anne Webster, born February 2, 1991, to Fae Summer Turnbull (mother) and Stuart G. Webster (father).
Turnbull? Had Fae and Stuart not been married at the time of Ruby’s birth? Also, Fae and Trina were sisters; they shared a maiden name, and it wasn’t Turnbull. It was Yost.
There was only one explanation. Fae had been married to someone else.
Hannah left Ruby’s room as she had found it, closing the door softly behind her. She tiptoed down the second hall, the one facing the forest, and paused in front of the room next to Uncle Stuart’s. It had been Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart’s study, with floor-to-ceiling bookcases and a stately mahogany desk. A rolltop secretary stood along the wall, and Hannah lifted the slatted door to find the desk stuffed with paperwork. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she pulled the stack out and sat on the old oriental rug and started sifting through. Bills, tax paperwork, piles and piles of medical records, all jumbled together. She sifted them into piles, pulled a new pile down, and began the same process. When the desk was emptied, she had seven piles—categories of paperwork—organized loosely by date. Nothing jumped out at her. Nothing on Ruby, everything labeled Fae Webster.
Hannah didn’t even know why she was bothering to do this. What did this have to do with Julia? The body in the woods? Aunt Fae’s crash? Probably nothing. But there were so many secrets accumulated over the years, jumbled together like the papers in Aunt Fae’s desk. Hannah took a deep breath.
She’d spent the last decade and a half avoiding any thoughts of Brackenhill. Existing with her mother at surface level. Even with Huck, she tried to stay even, easy, happy. She buried any longing to know about her past because it seemed difficult, even tragic. Life was easier lived without tragedy. She also carried guilt—for that last fight with Julia. For not knowing if her sister had truly come back to her room that night, pale white in the doorway. For not chasing her down, helping her, stopping her. For not remembering the end, for not coming back to Rockwell sooner. Everything she’d done in the past seventeen years felt wrong, like she should have done the complete opposite. She should have called Aunt Fae.