Girls of Brackenhill(46)
“Why are you completely ignoring me this summer?” she’d asked her sister.
Julia’s hand pressed against her forehead, as though staving off a headache. “It’s not personal, Hannah, please. There’s a lot of shit going down. You can’t even know. You’re fifteen. The world isn’t like you think it is.”
“That’s so condescending. I know what the world is like, Julia, and since when does that matter to you? We’re a team. Against Mom, against Wes, exploring this castle, spending our summers together. That was the deal. Now I’m alone all the time, and I’m tired of it, and I want to know why.”
“I can’t tell you why, okay? Trust me. I’m sorry. It’s not what you think. It’s not a club you’re not part of. It’s bigger than that. It’s huge.” Julia’s hands went around in a circle, and Hannah huffed. Her sister had always been one for drama. Julia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You know how I see things sometimes?”
Hannah rolled her eyes. This again. Julia had read a book a year before about mystics and fortune-tellers, something about the dark arts, and since then she had claimed—too publicly for Hannah’s liking—that she could see people’s spirits. She could sense things. Events before they happened. People who had passed on. It was a cry for attention; anyone could see that. It was all ridiculous, and even Mom had lost her patience with it. “Yes. I know you say that,” Hannah said diplomatically, not sure where Julia was going.
“Something around here is fucked up. I think—”
“Julia!” The voice came from the woods, the path leading from the courtyard to the river. Ellie appeared at the mouth of the trail, her hair glowing in the moonlight. Then she was by their side, standing next to Julia. Ellie reached down and slipped her hand into Julia’s, so again, it was two against one. Julia offered a shrug, a helpless gesture.
Hannah cried out in frustration. “Why. Why are you always here? Always, always, always! It’s midnight.” Her black skirt, her red heels. Where could she be going in that get-up? Nowhere good. Ellie pulled at Julia’s hand, toward the trail. “You can’t go anywhere. It’s the middle of the night. You’re in your nightgown.”
Hannah felt impotent, twisted up and tied by loyalty. If she ran to get Fae, her sister would be pushed even further away. No one liked a tattletale, a snitch. If she let her go and something terrible happened to her (she imagined them falling drunk into the river, churning thick as a milkshake from all the rain), she’d never forgive herself.
Julia let herself be pulled away by Ellie, down the path, her flip-flops catching on the fallen sticks and branches. She glanced back once, her finger to her lips, her eyes pleading.
Hannah spent the whole night lying awake with worry. Waiting for her sister to return, to hear her footsteps in the hall, creeping into her bedroom. She never heard her. She went down to breakfast, bleary and exhausted. At the table sat Julia: hair wet from a shower, dressed in shorts, the string from her bikini poking out of the neck of a bright-pink T-shirt.
“Hi!” Julia said brightly. Fae bustled in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinet doors. Julia chattered on about a book she was reading, filling the silence with dragons and battles and princesses. Stupid, childish chatter.
“Where have you been?” Hannah asked between her teeth as she sat next to her sister.
“What do you mean?” Julia blinked innocently.
“I mean I waited all night for you to come home. You didn’t.” At her sister’s blank face, Hannah sighed frustratedly. “In the courtyard? I saw you, remember?” She didn’t even care if Aunt Fae got mad anymore. Hannah was tired of Julia’s secretiveness, tired of her games. “With Ellie?”
“Ellie!” Aunt Fae exclaimed, turning to them. Her face seemed to pale. “Is that true? Did you go out last night?” Her voice was fearful, cut with a skittering panic. She’d begun to question them, asking about their comings and goings when she never had before. Sneaking out of the house late at night would have made her sick with worry.
“Hannah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Julia shook her head, patted her sister’s hand. “You have dreams sometimes.” She held Hannah’s gaze then, her eyes clouded, impenetrable, almost gray with warning. “I don’t know what you think you saw, but I was sleeping in my room all night.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Now
When she came home from Lila’s house, Huck and Rink were nowhere to be found. She’d missed a call while she was driving; a voice mail told her that Serenity Acres, a hospice center twenty-five miles away, had called. They had an opening.
An opening. An opening at a hospice meant that someone had died. Hannah felt a certain kind of hopelessness at that. On one hand, her uncle would have a place to go. Comfort and care and twenty-four-hour monitoring for his last days on earth. On the other, a family somewhere was mourning the loss of someone they loved. Or perhaps—and this was even sadder—they weren’t.
The hiss-hum of Uncle Stuart’s ventilator could be heard from the hallway. Hannah paused, listening for the patter of Alice’s footsteps. When she was certain Alice wasn’t in the room, she pushed the door open. Stuart was turned slightly on his side, propped by a roll pillow. She knew Alice would be back shortly—she never left him propped for long. It was mostly to keep him moving, avoid bedsores, atrophy. His arm dangled off the side of the bed, his fingers curled and pale.