Girls of Brackenhill

by Moretti, Kate

  “I have, a few times. I don’t want to keep bugging them.” Hannah paused. “Please, Huck.” She tried to keep the edge out of her voice.

  “Okay. If he calls, I’ll call you, okay?” Huck was stretched out on the couch, his long legs folded at the ankle. Aunt Fae and Uncle Stuart had never had a television, which had always suited Hannah just fine, but a week in relative isolation from the rest of the world had to be making Huck restless. He was social, used to crowds and people.

  Hannah paused in the doorway, turned back to Huck. “When I get back, can we talk?”

  “Sure. Am I in trouble?” He dipped his book, smiled tentatively. A thaw.

  “You? No. Never.” She laughed then, and meant it. “There’s just a lot you don’t know. About my childhood here, my life before you. I feel like I can—and I should—tell you all of it now. Before, I think I was just trying to . . . I don’t know, forget it, maybe? Pretend it never happened?” She was figuring out the truth as she spoke. “It was more than that, maybe. I wasn’t ready to think about it.” She still wasn’t, not 100 percent.

  Hannah tried to remember her life in Virginia. Her planned days, with their predictable rhythms.

  “Sure,” Huck said, a slow smile spreading. “I’d like to get to know my future wife.” He pushed up on his elbows, a hank of hair falling over his forehead. Hannah wanted to reach out and brush it away but stayed rooted to one spot. His earlier mood seemed to shake off. “I’d like to talk too. Get a bottle of wine—we’ll make it a date.”

  The drive down was slow, Hannah averting her eyes at the splintered wooden guardrail. She hadn’t heard from Wyatt about the investigation into Fae’s accident at all. Maybe it was like Huck had said, just a standard investigation. But Wyatt had said a few things didn’t add up. She picked up her phone, almost texted him to ask, but then thought better of it. Chase down one thread at a time, she admonished herself. Was that what she was doing right now? Chasing down threads? Maybe. She just knew that Jinny knew everything about everyone. There was only one place to start.

  Hannah parked next to the bank, fed the meter, and walked the block and a half. When she pushed open the heavy wooden door, she was met with a curtain of beads, which she moved aside.

  “Jinny!” Hannah called, but the store was silent. Jinny owned a spiritual store: tarot cards and crystals, herbs for burning, plants and succulents that all had medicinal purposes, candles and beads and incense. “Jinny!” Hannah called again.

  “I’m coming!” she yelled from the back, and when she emerged, she was fidgeting with a black velvet turban on her head, tied in a front knot, her hair poking out like straw. She looked electrified. Her lipstick was bright red, smeared across her top front teeth.

  “HANNAH!” she shouted, her excitement contagious as Hannah laughed and hugged her. She smelled like lavender and something earthy, musky. She jingled when she moved, all her rings, the bells on the fringe of her shawl, her silver and pewter bangle bracelets. “I’m so happy you’re back. Will you live here now? Fae didn’t bring you around much, but when she did, you girls were always a bright spot in my day. Then you got moody and teenagery, but we all do, I suppose. Hell, I used to sneak smokes from Billy Crawler’s pack, and he was at least ten years older than me. I was a bad kid, though—you guys were never bad kids. Come in; sit down. SIT DOWN!”

  She pulled a chair out from the round table in the center of the store and got busy, wrapping a bundle of herbs: lavender, sage, and sweetgrass. She lit it on fire and danced gracefully around the room, her arm bowing in a swooping arc. She turned down half the lights and hummed as she worked. “Your aura is like death, child. What is so heavy? Is someone dying? Well, that’s an insensitive question, I suppose, given the circumstances. We’re all dying, at any rate.” She stopped and peered right at Hannah, and again Hannah felt overwhelmed at the volume of chatter. “No, that’s not it. You’re not upset about Stuart. He’s been dying for years. Waiting to die! Ridiculous. We treat animals better than humans. Who waits to die? Now he’s alone. A burden. That would kill him, you know. No, it’s not Stuart.” She leaned closer still, scrutinizing Hannah’s face. “It’s not Fae either.”

  “I came with a question.” Hannah picked at her fingernail, uncertain how it would be received. “Who was Warren Turnbull?”

  Jinny stopped moving, stared at Hannah, her mouth gaping in shock. “Where the HELL did you hear that name?” She threw the bundle of herbs on the ground and stomped the embers out with her Doc Martens (oh God, Hannah had just noticed she was wearing Doc Martens). She flung open the cabinet doors and started pulling out dried bales of green, stacking them on the checkout counter. She wrapped a new gathering and rambled as she worked: “Cedar, sage, I think. We need a smudge.”

  “Jinny, who was he?”

  Jinny lit the end and blew gently across the embers. She began her dancing anew, slower, her eyes closed, her lips moving without sound. Hannah watched with amusement and awe, but the smoke was starting to give her a headache. Jinny carried the bundle over to a milk glass bowl and set it down, and a curl of smoke lifted, swayed toward the ceiling.

  Jinny pulled the chair out opposite Hannah and sat down abruptly. “Warren Turnbull is a terrible human being.” She slammed her hands flat against the table. “He’s abusive and a drunk, and he’s evil, pure evil. He’s the worst person I’ve ever known, and believe me, I’ve known an awful lot of completely devoid human beings. People with no soul. The man has no soul. He’s still alive, goddamn it, because even the Lord don’t want him. He lives over in the brown house next to the old railroad station. It looks like it’s made of kindling, and I do sometimes wish it would burn to the ground with him in it. I wouldn’t say I pray for that, but I say my ‘incantations,’ we’ll say.” Jinny bunny eared her fingers around the word incantations. “You leave him alone. I don’t want to hear of you going anywhere near him, y’hear?”

  Hannah had trouble imagining her aunt married to a man who was “devoid of soul,” and curiosity pricked her. “I understand, Jinny. I won’t. But why is he so bad? What did he do?”

  “He has no moral conscience. He’ll do whatever it takes to get what he wants. He’s a lowlife; he’ll steal from you. I know he’s killed people. Bar fights, he claimed, and whatnot, but you don’t bring a knife to a bar unless you’re itching to fight and fightin’ to kill, right? Moral people don’t do that. He doesn’t care who he hurts. He’s a bad egg. A bad apple.”

  “But who is he? To Fae?”

  “She found out about him the hard way. I always knew, but she never wanted to listen to me, see? He used to be good lookin’; that’s the problem. Your aunt always had a weak spot for those dashing men, personalities of boards, half of ’em. Well, not her Stuart—she finally found herself a good one.” Jinny wagged her finger in Hannah’s direction. “But if you’re asking, you already know. Warren is Fae’s husband.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Now

  Hannah left Jinny’s with a promise to visit tomorrow, for a “proper reading,” she called it.

  “I’m just too upset now to read you. You understand, right? Any mention of Warren sends my blood pressure skyrocketing. You can’t read under stress; that’s not how it works. You have to be calm, ready to receive. But you have to promise to come back. I loved your sister so much. You didn’t come around, but she did. You know she came in the shop, right?” Every sentence flowed into a new one, a new thought. “Well, she did. She and that little friend of hers. Sometimes nearly every day! I was teaching them how to scry and smudge. They wanted to do tarot, but I never had the patience for that. Anyway, you promise me you’ll come back, you hear?”

  Hannah felt drained, her legs heavy as Jinny pushed her out the door. Everything she’d thought she knew about her aunt and uncle was a lie. Was Stuart even technically her uncle? No, now that she thought about it. He was just some random man who lived with her aunt. The thought was depressing. They’d had a child, for goodness’ sake!

&nb
sp; “Jinny, why didn’t Fae and Warren divorce?” Hannah stopped in the doorway, turned back to a fretting Jinny, who was muttering and flitting around the shop.

  “Divorce? Oh, he wouldn’t hear of it. Would never authorize anything. Fae tried to get him to sign divorce paperwork. Woulda cost her a fortune in court. He wouldn’t hear of it. Wouldn’t pay alimony, nothing.”

  “Was Uncle Stuart Ruby’s father?”

  “I always assumed so, but I guess no one but Fae knew for sure.” Jinny tugged a lock of black hair, twirling it around her finger. She didn’t seem to care who Ruby’s father was. “You’ll come back?”

  “I promise.” Hannah meant it. As she pushed open the door, she felt the vibration of a phone in her pocket. When she retrieved it and read the display, she was dismayed to realize her hands had started to shake. Wyatt.

  “Hey,” she said casually, with a slight wobble in her voice that she hoped was only detectable to her. Whether it was because there might be news about Julia or simply because it was Wyatt was impossible to tease apart.

  “Hey.” Wyatt’s tone was brisk, businesslike. “Are you at Brackenhill? Can I swing by?”

  “Why? Is it Julia?” She hadn’t meant to sound so desperate, but it just tumbled out.

  He was silent for a beat. “I’ll come to you, okay?”

  “I’m actually in Rockwell. I was visiting Jinny.”

  He laughed. “Did you get your fortune read?”

  “Not this time—we had to burn sage and cedar for a smudge because I mentioned Warren Turnbull’s name.” She threw it out there to gauge a reaction.

  Silence.

  “Where are you, Han?”

  “Standing in front of the diner. Want to meet me?” Her voice was shaky.

  “Yes, stay put.” He ended the call.

  While she waited, she thought about Wyatt’s silence at her question about Warren. Something about the name Turnbull pulled at her subconscious, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  Wyatt came around the corner, intent on something on his phone, and his face broke into a smile when he saw her. She felt warmed by it and then hated herself. He leaned in, kissed her cheek. It was meant to be a casual greeting—something she’d seen others do a thousand times, hell, something she herself had done a thousand times—but his skin against hers sent a ripple down her spine.

  He motioned toward the diner door and opened it for her. “After you.”

  They took a seat in a back booth, next to the one where she and Huck had sat with Jinny only two days before. The memorial service seemed like ages ago. So much had happened since then.

  They ordered coffee, and Wyatt ordered a grilled cheese, but Hannah’s stomach felt in knots.

  “So tell me everything.” She knew why Wyatt had called her. He wouldn’t have called if he didn’t have news about the remains.

  “Tell me first, why did you ask about Warren Turnbull?” He fiddled with a sugar packet and tilted his head.

  Hannah found herself relaying the whole story: Uncle Stuart talking about Ruby, then Jinny mentioning the child, then the snooping through Ruby’s room and the study and finding the car title with Warren Turnbull’s name on it. Jinny’s assertion that they were still married.

  “Did you know about Fae and Warren?” Hannah pressed.

  “Me? No. At least not until recently. I mean, we’ve been running background on your aunt and uncle as part of the new investigation, and it came up.” Wyatt ran a hand through his hair. “They’re still married.”

  “That’s what Jinny said too. Are the bones Julia’s?” Hannah’s skin felt stretched, her legs cramping. Every muscle in her body was taut with the strain.

  “No.” Wyatt watched her carefully as he said it. “They’re not.”

  She felt a swooping, dizzying relief. She’d always held the idea that Julia had run, had stayed away for seventeen years because of an unknown trauma, but would come home when she was ready. It was maybe a childish, outlandish fantasy, but she allowed it. The purse found on the riverbank was only a decoy—a way to throw them all off her scent. Julia was smart—if she wanted to stay lost, she would. Hannah had long, elaborate fantasies of their reunion. She had dreams so real they stayed with her for days. A body would end all that. Everyone talked about closure, but Hannah always felt like closure was a farce. Something people clung to not in their darkest moments but while witnessing other people’s darkest moments. People who’d experienced real grief would never wish for such a thing.

  “Do you know whose they are?” Hannah asked quietly, not sure if she wanted the answer.

  “Not yet; that’ll take some time. They’ve run the DNA through a federal database of missing persons with no luck there so far. Next, we’ll pull local missing persons and compare dental records or DNA if we have it. We don’t always have older DNA. It wasn’t standard procedure, say, twenty years ago. It’s the damnedest thing, though. They estimate they’ve been buried between fifteen and twenty years.” Wyatt took a deep breath before continuing. “And it’s a teenage female.”

  “So around the same time that Julia went missing, another teenage female was maybe killed and buried at Brackenhill, without anyone knowing? That seems outlandish.” Hannah’s thoughts spun. Who would have buried a body at Brackenhill in the first place? And how? It didn’t seem possible. “Did you search the whole grounds? Maybe there was a murderer, some crazed madman, and they got Julia and someone else. She had friends, remember? Whatever happened to all of them?”

  Wyatt covered her hand with his. She yanked it away. She didn’t need him gumming up her thought processes.

  “I’m serious, Wyatt. What if someone in Rockwell was a serial killer?”

  “Hannah, if that were the case, the first suspects would be your aunt and uncle. It’s their property.”

  Hannah stopped. He was right. He was right, and that was ridiculous.

  He continued, “And of course we searched the property. We brought in dogs that day—you didn’t see them? And they have a machine, kind of like a metal detector that looks for soil disturbances, although it’s more useful for intact bodies with some heft to them. It can miss skeletal remains—”

  “Stop.” Hannah held up her hand. “Could it have been a mistake? Is there any way that it’s Julia and someone just got something wrong?”

  Wyatt shook his head. “No. We did a dental comparison and ran DNA. Neither was a match for Julia.”

  “Okay, but you have DNA; can’t you just . . . figure out who it is?” She was a bit shocked to realize she didn’t really know how that worked.

  “No, it’s not like TV. There isn’t a master DNA database of everyone in the country. There’s a big one, but of known missing persons, criminals, and a little from ancestry websites, but that gets complicated legally. If someone isn’t in the system, we can’t just . . . conjure them.” He gave a laugh. “We aren’t Jinny.”

  Hannah smiled. “So the body at Brackenhill wasn’t a known missing person or a criminal.”

  “No.”

  The waitress brought the coffee and poured it into mugs, and their conversation halted while they waited. She left, and Wyatt stirred cream and sugar into his cup, while Hannah took a sip of hers, black.

  “Hannah, there’s more.” He kept his eyes down, on his mug, his spoon slowing. “I need you to think back, okay? The years you were in Rockwell and hung out in town.”

  She felt a flush creep up her cheeks, immediately thinking of the stolen nights in Wyatt’s bedroom, wedged into his single bed, the windows flung open, their bodies damp in the nighttime dew. She remembered the way they’d sneaked around, how secretive and intimate it had felt. How their furtiveness had felt new, sexy, grown up in a way she’d never known before. Even Julia hadn’t known. Until she did.

  “Not us, Hannah.” He read her face, her thoughts. He leaned back against the booth, his left arm draped over the seat. She couldn’t look directly at him. “I need you to think of the other girls—Julia’s friends, who
she hung out with. Did you hear any rumors at that time? Did you hear anything about anyone being knocked up?”

  “What!” she couldn’t help exclaiming. Her gaze snapped up, met Wyatt’s. He motioned gently with his hand, Keep it down. She would have heard something about that, she thought. Then again, that summer had been such a whirlwind, passing in a breathless fever dream, ending in tragedy. Would Julia have told her?

  “Whoever was buried at Brackenhill was pregnant.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Now

  Huck had music playing in the kitchen when Hannah returned. Something with a jazzy beat, slow and easy. He’d fished a boom box out of the trunk of his car and hooked up his phone on the Bluetooth. He was puttering around the kitchen, torn basil and tomatoes from Fae’s garden on the chopping block. When Huck was restless, he cooked. He whistled, and when he saw Hannah, he twirled her around until they both laughed, and he kissed her. Gently, she nudged him back. His mood from earlier seemed to have dissipated, and Hannah chalked it up to frustration and isolation. She felt a pang of tenderness now, watching him. Out of his element and still making the best of things. For her. For them.

  He resumed his chopping, his fingers long and practiced. It was Hannah’s favorite thing: just to be in Huck’s presence. So easy. He was almost always positive, optimistic. He always prodded her to look for silver linings, appreciate whatever she had, but not settle for anything less than she deserved. So different from Trina, whose whole life had been about settling. Keeping the status quo.

  Hannah produced the wine out of a long paper bag, a cabernet from a Finger Lakes vineyard she’d never heard of. She showed Huck the label, and he nodded once, appraisingly. She turned the knob on the boom box; the sound lowered.

  “It’s not her,” Hannah said, pouring two generous servings of wine into stemless Riedels that she found in the kitchen cabinet. The kitchen had been modernized sometime since she was a child, the cabinets white and the walls stone, but it was still more functional than beautiful. The floor was river stone, gray and smooth, while the walls were rocky, rough to the touch and stippled with white. Limestone? Hannah found herself wondering.