Girls of Brackenhill

by Moretti, Kate

  The door to Stuart’s room was ajar, and Hannah pushed the door fully open. Huck hovered in the doorway.

  The room was unchanged. Hannah, for a moment, felt a vertiginous déjà vu: Fae ambling out of the en suite bathroom and, upon seeing Hannah, pressing her hands together, rings clicking, and giving her a big smile. Her long, colorful caftan flowing around her. The sound of her voice echoing in Hannah’s ears.

  A large four-poster bed took up the center of the room, pushed against the far wall. The canopy Hannah remembered from childhood had been removed, leaving only the wooden posts. Flanking the bed were intricately carved armoires with large ball feet, reaching almost to the ceiling. The amber wood glowed in the beam of a night-light. The red brocade curtains were drawn, so although the early-morning light had begun to illuminate other parts of the castle, Stuart’s room remained dark.

  Stuart lay in bed, his eyes closed, just as she’d imagined him: thin and frail, the sound of a pump drowning out his labored breathing. An IV pole next to him held a bag of fluid, plastic tubing connecting to his left arm. An oxygen tank sat on the opposite side, emanating a quiet hiss.

  She spoke quietly. “Uncle Stuart, it’s me, Hannah.”

  He didn’t move or flutter his eyes. His face was gaunt, his hair wispy. He was only sixty-two, but he looked ninety. His mouth hung open inside the oxygen mask, and she could see the scrim of white stubble beneath the green elastic. Hannah reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. She was shocked by the bumps and knobs of bone protruding under the skin. A small blue plastic box on the IV pole displayed numbers: 70, 90, 65. Pulse and blood pressure. Both abnormally low.

  Hannah wondered what she would do if the machines started beeping right then. Would she attempt CPR? Did she even remember CPR? It had been years since she’d been trained—the summer after Julia had disappeared, she’d lifeguarded at the community pool. She could vaguely recall the steps: chest compressions, followed by two breaths. Or was it four?

  Hannah tried to feel something: remorse, revulsion, fear. She pressed her hand farther into her uncle’s shoulder, willing him to wake up, open one eye, but he did not.

  A folding chair sat in the corner, and she pulled it up to the bed. Bent her head close to his ear. He smelled sharp, medicinal.

  “Uncle Stuart,” she whispered again. “It’s Hannah. Aunt Fae was in a car accident.” Hannah slid her fingertips underneath his palm. His hand was cold but dry. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.” Nothing.

  She looked at Huck and lifted her shoulders. What do I do?

  He shook his head, held his palm up. After crossing the room, he touched Hannah’s back, his hand warm. She leaned into it for the first time since they’d arrived in Rockwell. His touch felt welcoming. Comforting. Hannah felt her throat constrict. There was so much he didn’t know, couldn’t know, about her life here. So much she couldn’t tell him, even if she’d wanted to.

  She had to get them both out of here as soon as possible. Their relationship had felt so perfect. Pristine in its bubble. And now Brackenhill would leave its smudgy fingerprints all over everything.

  In the distance, down the hall, or in another part of the castle entirely, Hannah heard it: the soft opening of one door, the closing of another.

  Creak, click.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Then

  2001

  “Do you think Mom would let us live here?” Hannah asked.

  “You mean go to school? In Rockwell?” Julia was lying on a double inner tube, pale-pink toenails kicking up a quiet plume of water against the side of the pool. She wore a red polka-dot bikini and a large straw hat she’d found in one of the bedrooms. The pool was in the backyard through a barrel vault from the courtyard. It was old, square, with faint moss along the edges and a spray of weeds shooting up through a jagged crack in the deck. The water, though, was warm and clear, reflecting the faded blue swirls stamped into the concrete below. “Could you imagine this place in the snow? Aunt Fae said once they didn’t leave the house for almost a month. We’d lose our minds.” They’d only been into town a handful of times. The road leading down the mountain was treacherous in good weather, the switchbacks sending Mom into a tizzy every June and August, cursing as the Buick rattled against the narrow gravelly shoulder.

  Hannah tipped her face up to the sky. The sun beat down, hot and bright for the first time in a week. The castle was a glorious place to spend a summer. Until it rained for seven days straight. “I think I’d like it. It would be cozy.”

  Julia’s face was turned away, her eyes closed, her voice whispery. “This place is a lot of things, but cozy isn’t one of them.”

  That, at least, was the truth. It was magical. Beautiful. Eerie. Looming.

  “Hannah, do you ever see anything here?”

  “Anything like what?”

  “I don’t know. This place isn’t . . .” Julia’s voice trailed off, her eyes staring at some distant point. “It isn’t what it used to be. I feel like I’ve started to feel something bad here.”

  “I don’t care how bad it feels; it’s still better than Plymouth.” Hannah shook her head. Her sister was so dramatic. Sometimes Hannah thought Julia did it for attention, always talking about auras and energy, her voice floaty. Even back home, sometimes Julia would talk about spirits and seeing things, a vague reference with her hand waving. It made their mother impatient, even frustrated.

  She thought of their house back in Plymouth, Pennsylvania, squat on the dusty road, two bedrooms, one bathroom, no air-conditioning. The roof that leaked, the sound of water dripping into hallway pots any night it rained. Mom driving the rattling Buick into Wilkes-Barre, where she worked at PJ Whelihan’s next to the mall. Wes asleep on the sofa, the stink of him as he exhaled. Like BO and cigarettes, which he wasn’t supposed to smoke anymore on account of his COPD. The way he swept all the butts into a coffee can, which he emptied into the toilet before Mom came in the door. She’d caught him once, and the fight had lasted long into the night. “If you lose your disability, we’re sunk. You know that, right?” Mom’s voice had been panicky. Her mother never panicked. She never yelled, screamed, slapped. Her voice was always measured, pleasant.

  The girls had never known their real dad. He’d left Mom with a colicky infant and tantruming toddler and the long-held belief that when things got tough, people left, as well as the refrain of her childhood: It’s all just too much, Hannah. The lesson that lasted, long after Mom died: Don’t ask too much of anyone.

  Wes was all they ever knew of a father. They lived in his house and had for as long as Hannah could remember. Hannah hated Wes, and sometimes she found herself wishing he’d drive himself drunk off a bridge. She tried to tell Julia once, who looked shocked by the confession. She wanted to ask her sister if Wes did to Julia what he did to Hannah. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  The first time it had happened, he was drunk, smelling like beer and piss. Mom was working, and Julia had taken to locking her room at night, but Hannah only wondered why later. Before that night she thought it had been about privacy. Or maybe she’d been sneaking a boy in. After that night she wondered, Did it happen to Julia too?

  She was asleep when she felt the bed move, his hand on her thigh and then higher. She woke up fast, like being doused with cold water, his fingertips icy on her bare skin. She felt frozen, unable to speak, hardly able to breathe.

  He thinks I’m Mom, was her thought that first night. A drunken misstep. The wrong door, a stumbling, dreamlike delusion.

  But then it happened again. And again. Sometimes months between, sometimes only days. She never knew when she’d hear the telltale creak of her old bedroom door, the one loose floorboard that clattered. She always smelled him before she opened her eyes.

  Sometimes she never opened her eyes at all.

  He never spoke to her. Never said her name. Just his hands, cold, on her thighs, her stomach. Later, when she got breasts, he would touch them, pinch her nipple.

 
All she ever heard was the sound of his breathing, the feel of hot air against her neck as she pretended to sleep. He didn’t seem to care if she stayed curled away from him, staring at the wall, willing it to be over. Pretending to be asleep.

  She swore to herself that she’d tell.

  Next time.

  If he did more than touch.

  He never did more than touch.

  She never told.

  She asked her mother, later and more than once, Why do you love Wes? Her adoration of him always felt like a mystery—some secret Hannah would be let in on later, when she was older and could magically understand love. He was repulsive to her, even before that first night in her room. His eyes were mean, his teeth yellowed, his skin sallow and gray. Hannah had found a picture a long time ago: Mom in a simple white dress, Wes actually handsome in a tux. She and Julia, chubby preschoolers, clinging to Mom’s legs, the skirt puddling around them. Everyone had been smiling.

  Her mother closed her eyes, tilted her head toward the ceiling, sighing. He wasn’t always like this. He’s sick, you know? Or sometimes she’d just say, out of nowhere, We need him. He gets a check from the government. We get to live here because of him.

  And sometimes, I stay for you. For both of you. She’d find her mother sometimes in the kitchen alone, clutching a plastic tumbler of wine, crying. Hannah never interrupted her, never let her know she saw.

  If her mother left him, where would they live? Sometimes when they drove, Hannah would study the streets from the back seat. Every house looked lived in. It was possible there wasn’t anywhere for them to go. No houses left. She knew people lived on the street—her mother had called them homeless. That would be their family.

  If her mother could stay for Hannah and Julia, Hannah could keep quiet for her mother.

  Hannah wanted desperately to ask her sister: Does he come into your room too? But she never did. She was always afraid Julia would go through the roof. Her sister was unpredictable—wild mouthed and untamed. She’d never be able to take the words back, and if she told and they ended up homeless, then what? It was like shaking a bottle of soda and popping the cap off. Who knew what would get caught in the fray? Besides, Hannah was happiest when Julia was happiest.

  The next summer her mother drove them to Brackenhill for the first time. At the time she simply said, “I work too much. You’re alone all day here. That’s not a summer vacation.” Only later she wondered if her mother had known the whole time.

  After that first summer at Brackenhill, her fate was sealed. She knew she’d never breathe a word. She’d had three months of magic and exploring and woods and her sister. The smell of the river. The feel of the water. Fresh-baked banana bread and peas straight from the garden. Music and laughter and games and jokes. Faerie houses and hidden trails. Flowers and sunshine and swimming pools. An uncle who taught her about trees and animals and plants and nature. An aunt who taught her how to bake, cook, even clean. The enchantment of a castle. Her room in the turret. And Julia, her best friend, even seemed lighter, happy and free, and they’d never had so much fun in their whole lives. If Hannah told, what if her mother took it all away? What if her sister, thirteen then, had to get a summer job? Brackenhill would be over. No. She’d hold her breath through a hundred nights of drunken fumbling, cold hands, hot beer breath, if it meant she could come back.

  Floating in the pool now, Hannah thought of her friends at home, Tracy and Beth, how she should be mad that she was missing a real summer. Her first teenage summer of boys and freedom and biking around town. The community pool. She wondered if Pete Reston would be there, a lock of blond hair falling into his eyes, his mouth turned up into a smirk, like he was always teasing her, and his smell like watermelon candy. And Tracy and Beth had been fighting almost constantly, Hannah stuck in the middle.

  Hannah thought of Julia’s best friend, Miranda Pike. The gaggle of popular girls Julia and Miranda had slipped into: lip gloss and long hair in a cloud of perfume and pink. Her sister’s new boyfriend, Josh Fink, cute and nice. Dimples on both cheeks when he lightly punched Hannah on the arm. And the way he said her name, Hah-nnah, so that it sounded older and like she was one of them, not the pestering younger sister. When Mom worked nights and Julia walked Josh right past Wes in the living room and into Julia’s bedroom, locking the door, Josh still grinned at her, even as he followed her sister around like a dog.

  “Do you miss the Fink?” Hannah asked.

  “No.” Julia sighed, her fingers skimming the water, picking up a leaf and twirling it.

  “Why? Did you break up?”

  “Who would break up with Josh Fink?” Julia laughed, but it sounded forced. She adjusted her hat and kicked against the side of the pool, and the tube propelled away.

  “Then what?” Hannah pressed. Julia had always felt like her equal, her very best friend, but this year had somehow spun away from them. Lost, somehow, in ways Hannah couldn’t figure out. Her sister, previously so fresh faced, open. And now? It was like Hannah couldn’t get a good look at her. Every time she tried, Julia turned around, closed her eyes, bent her head. She was pulling away, even before Brackenhill, and Hannah felt desperate to keep hold of her.

  Julia sighed again. So much sighing, which was also new. “Hannah, drop it. I’m fine. I’m just . . . bored here, I guess.” But her eyes were closed, her fingertips tapping the hollow of her throat.

  “Don’t you miss him?” Hannah couldn’t imagine choosing to leave Josh Fink. What if he found someone else over the summer? Julia seemed unconcerned.

  “No.” She pulled the hat over her face, propped her head against the raft’s handle. Her voice was muffled from the straw when she said, “Do you think we could ride our bikes into town?”

  “Town? Why?” They’d never really done that. Aunt Fae wouldn’t allow it. The shoulder was too narrow, the road too winding, the cars too fast.

  “I told you. I’m bored. We know everything about this place. It never changes.”

  Bored of me? Hannah wondered but didn’t ask. “That’s not true. Remember the place in the corner? By the embankment? It was in the ground, like a storm shelter. We found it last year but never got the lock off before we had to go home. That was our project this summer. Remember?”

  Julia muttered a hmm-mmm, meant to indicate that she was tired. Tired of questions, exploring.

  It had been an odd little door, built into the side of a small incline and covered with debris and leaves. They’d asked Uncle Stuart about it, and he’d only squinted his eyes, twisted his mouth, before shaking his head. No, there wasn’t a key. “Probably a root cellar,” he’d said. Hannah had thought about that little door all winter, and now Julia just wanted to forget it!

  Hannah slid through the opening of her raft, her legs slick with lotion, her toes barely grazing the bottom. She held her breath and sank down, opened her eyes, the water dappled with sunlight, her long dark hair billowing around her. She sat, the sandpaper concrete against her thighs, her lungs aching, her eyes beginning to prick with starbursts. She watched her sister’s silhouette against the sun, floating aimlessly and undisturbed.

  When she finally propelled herself upward and broke the water’s surface with a gasp, Julia didn’t even flinch. Hannah pulled herself up on the side of the pool, toweled off, and went inside. She showered and changed into shorts and a tank top and wandered into the arboretum, a room filled with windows like an enclosed porch with a vaulted glass roof. Her favorite room in the castle, warm, even hot—everyone always complained it was hot, but Hannah thought the sun-filled room felt like a haven. She was dozing lazily, sleepily, on the chaise with a book when she heard a prolonged scream. At first, she thought it was an animal, something getting hunted in the surrounding forest, and only after a moment did she make out Uncle Stuart’s name and realize it was Julia.

  Julia!

  Hannah raced through the halls, out the back door, and onto the pool deck, reaching it the same time as Uncle Stuart, who’d come running from the
garden, gripping a spade in his fist like a weapon.

  Julia had pulled her legs onto her raft, the hat floating ten feet away. She gestured wildly, helplessly, toward Uncle Stuart, who gaped at the pool, stunned.

  The pool, glittery and blue only an hour ago, had turned rust red. In the bright-white midday sun, if Hannah didn’t know it was impossible, she would have thought it was filled with blood.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Now

  Hannah found the hospice nurse standing in the back hall, blinking. She’d come in the side door, near the driveway, scaring all of them.

  “Is Fae here?” the woman asked, and it occurred to Hannah that telling people their loved ones had died was exhausting. Was the nurse a loved one? Maybe. She was at Brackenhill every day. The same woman for over a year, she’d heard.

  “I’m Hannah.” She extended her hand, and the nurse shook it. “Please come in.” Which felt stilted and unnecessary. The woman was likely more at home here than Hannah.

  “I’m Alice.” She was tall with a wiry build—so thin she appeared gaunt. Her hair was pulled tight against her head, and she wore plain gray scrubs. She gave off an air of no nonsense, something that in regular circumstances Hannah would appreciate, as she always valued efficiency. Nature’s cruel joke, then, that she’d ended up engaged to Huck, whose internal time clock had two speeds: cautious and careful. But Alice, she vibrated nervous energy. Hannah immediately liked her, but without a clear understanding why.

  In the living room Hannah motioned to the chair, and it occurred to her that was Uncle Stuart’s old leather La-Z-Boy. Alice sat and stared at her expectantly. Hannah took a seat across from her on a deep-green velvet sofa with worn patches on the armrests and ornate claw feet. Fae’s taste in decorating ran more bohemian than regal, and this living room reflected both the older furnishings inherited with the house and Fae’s tendencies toward plants and natural fibers. The eclectic combination lent itself to comfort and familiarity, even when Hannah hardly remembered any of it. The room was large, spacious to the point of echoing, and too late Hannah realized she and Alice were awkwardly far apart.