Girls of Brackenhill

by Moretti, Kate

  “Rink found a shed. Do you remember a shed?” Huck asked her.

  “Maybe? There were a lot of outbuildings in the woods. It’s over a thousand acres. It was used as a camp of some kind in the fifties, I think.” Uncle Stuart had told her that one day. She’d forgotten all about it.

  But now that he mentioned it, she did remember a shed: a wide-plank door with peeling paint, a single bolted window, a steel slanted roof. She had a quick flash of memory, a sour taste in the back of her throat, and it was gone. She wanted to ask Huck if he’d gone inside, what had been in there, where it was. She wanted to go find it again. It was on the tip of her tongue to reach out, bridge the gap. She could almost imagine herself moving into the crook of his arm. Maybe it was what they needed.

  Huck interrupted her thoughts. “Did you hear back from that place? Serenity something?”

  A quick stab of irritation. Huck always defaulted back to logistics: who was moving when and where. Nitty-gritty, Hannah called it. In this case the nitty-gritty was a cover for When can we leave? He didn’t exactly care what she was doing with her days. He didn’t see how the remains in the woods could be tied in any way to Julia. He liked facts and figures, tangible evidence he could grip. He’d spent his days at Brackenhill reading—thick nonfiction from Uncle Stuart’s library. Biographies of Johnny Cash, Philip Roth, Muhammad. She’d let him take a handful home with him.

  “Serenity Acres?” Hannah made a split-second decision. “No.”

  She’d never lied to Huck before. She was doing it so he wouldn’t worry, she thought. So he wouldn’t wonder what she was doing up here, wouldn’t wonder if she was slowly losing her mind. She didn’t tell Huck about Warren or Lila or Ellie. She felt her life fracture into yet another piece. She had her normal life, her life in Brackenhill, and now a secret. A mystery to unravel, connections to make. She felt so close to it. It was possible, even likely, that telling Huck would have helped her. It was also just as possible that Huck would be dismissive.

  Still, she stayed silent.

  They lay like that, Huck gently cupping her fingertips, until she had almost fallen asleep. When he moved over her, his lips on her hair, then her mouth, his hand sliding up to her breast, her body arched to his on instinct. Her mind stayed blank, and she focused on the feel of his body, his skin beneath her fingertips, so familiar, so warm. They knew each other so well that even when everything else felt murky and lost, their bodies knew the way.

  He slid inside her and she felt the pressure build, then explode, his sudden cry into her ear, his hand gripping her hip, and then it was over, that fast.

  Later, she’d wonder if she dreamed that too.

  “Give me a week, okay? Then if you can’t come home, I’ll come back. I just need to get everything back on track.” Huck stood by their car, his duffel bag hanging in his right hand.

  “I’ll be home in a week. I will eventually lose my job. I’m using all my vacation time and sick time as it is.” Hannah had communicated to her boss in text only, keeping her answers vague. She could sense the irritation in her boss’s shortened replies. Oh well. She was only pretending to care for Huck’s sake.

  She’d started having elaborate fantasies of living at Brackenhill. Gardening like Aunt Fae, canning in the summer and the fall, tending to the grounds like Uncle Stuart, lazing in the pool under the hot August sun, spinning on the pink tube like Julia. Bringing the pool back to glory, sparkling in the sun. The feel of the cool water against freshly shaved legs.

  “I’m not comfortable with this; I’m really not.” Huck looked up the driveway to the castle, only the turrets visible over the small stony driveway knoll.

  “That’s silly. Rink is here. Alice is in and out. As soon as Stuart is placed, I’ll come back. Just go hold down the fort at home, okay?” Hannah stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. It was a chaste, almost platonic goodbye, and she couldn’t help but remember the Huck and Hannah of a mere two weeks ago. This, if nothing else, underscored the growing distance between them, something their sleepy interlude last night had done nothing to alleviate. She knew their relationship well enough to know that late-night intimacies didn’t always transfer to the light of day.

  “You’re going to go look for that shed the second I’m gone, aren’t you?” Huck gave her a small, affectionate smile.

  “No!” Hannah laughed, willing to go along with the ruse: he wasn’t frustrated with her for staying, and she wasn’t annoyed at him for not understanding her ties to Brackenhill. Why would he? She’d never explained it. Still, she had expected more. “Okay, maybe. I spent years exploring here. Sometimes alone. I survived. It’s daylight. It’ll be fine. I’ll take Rink and my phone. I’ll call if I fall down the embankment into the river.”

  “That’s not even funny.” Huck folded her into a hug. “Just stay safe, okay? Come home as soon as you can. We’ll talk every day.”

  She watched his car back down the narrow pebble driveway and onto Valley Road. When he got to the bottom and turned right, she waved both arms above her head. He honked the horn and was gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Now

  Hannah snapped on Rink’s leash and checked her watch. It was seven o’clock in the morning. She had the whole day ahead of her. Alice would come at nine, and she could talk to her about Serenity Acres, about the process for getting Stuart admitted. She had said she worked closely with the hospice centers in the area and she’d be able to help when the time came.

  Hannah needed the walk to clear her head. Make mental lists of all the things she didn’t understand or didn’t know. All the questions that had poured out of her at Uncle Stuart’s bedside the day before came back to her. But the one that nagged at her the most: Was Aunt Fae Ellie’s mother if Warren Turnbull was her father? She tried to remember the curves of Ellie’s face but couldn’t clearly recall anything aside from red lipstick. Red hair. Aunt Fae had been brunette. Wispy. Mild mannered. Ellie was redheaded and sturdy. Brash. Hannah couldn’t imagine it or perhaps didn’t want to. That would make her and Ellie . . . cousins. No.

  Rink stopped walking and spun in a circle, barked at the air. Hannah tugged on his leash, pulled him forward, back onto the path she’d walked a hundred times as a kid. Away from the courtyard in the opposite direction of the river. If she kept walking, she’d eventually meet up with Valley Road, not too far from where Aunt Fae’s car had crashed. Still, that was at least three miles. She had no intention of walking that far.

  But Rink would not move. She snapped his leash. “Come on, Rink,” she said firmly. He acquiesced but whined while following her, his head bent low, his ears folded.

  The shed came into view, the door slightly ajar. Hannah felt a stab of annoyance at Huck. Why wouldn’t he leave it how he’d found it? Uncle Stuart would have locked it back up; he never left anything unlocked. Too many kids broke into the grounds of Brackenhill, just to explore or drink or party.

  Next to her Rink whined.

  Hannah pushed the door open all the way. The inside of the shed was illuminated by a swath of tree-dappled sunlight. Dust swirled up, clouding the air and settling. The shed looked unremarkable. A row of gardening tools hung on the left, shovels and trowels and rakes all lined up according to size. The space was large for a shed, fifteen by fifteen, but everything had a place. Uncle Stuart was—had been—a fastidious gardener. So odd to think of him in the past tense, especially as he lay breathing only a few hundred yards away. Hannah still couldn’t reconcile the man she’d seen earlier with the one she’d once known.

  A tractor sat in the middle of the shed, small by tractor standards but dwarfing the room. Hannah edged around it, eyeing the shelves along the back, lined with stacked pots in bright cobalt, fiery red, and muted clay colors. Another shelf contained bags of potting soil, fertilizers, gloves, and hats. Hannah found herself picking each item up, examining it, and replacing it.

  Why had she come here? No idea. She had things to do, calls to make, a day to commence. And y
et.

  She picked up an old straw hat, frayed on the edges, and turned it over in her hands. Held it to her face and inhaled, looking for some remnant of life: a tang of sweat, the sweet fragrance of fresh-cut grass, a hint of Uncle Stuart’s Irish Spring. Instead she smelled only must and age, generic. It could have belonged to anyone.

  The metal roof sloped asymmetrically, the back of the shed a foot shorter than the front. In the corner, along the back wall, sat a stack of blankets, topped with a white pillow. How odd that it contained very little dust, as though it had been placed there recently.

  Hannah searched for a spark of memory, closed her eyes and tried to intuit a sensation, something that would make her think this building was significant. That it held any piece of the puzzle. She came up empty.

  They’d played here as kids; that was all she remembered. Hide-and-seek in the woods, knocking a shovel off its hook, sending it clattering to the wooden floor. Julia flinging open the door with an aha!

  Hannah turned to leave, frustrated but unable to articulate why. What had she expected? Her foot kicked at something—a stone perhaps—and sent it skittering across the floor. The stone glinted in the sunlight, winking from the corner.

  Hannah crossed the room, bent to pick it up. It was a ring. A flat black stone and a dirty gold wire tied with a jeweler’s knot on either side. It looked homemade. The stone was large—the size of a dime—and even with a layer of dust, Hannah could almost see her own reflection. She brushed the stone off, polished it with the edge of her T-shirt until it shone in the dim light.

  It slid onto her right ring finger effortlessly and looked an odd counterpart to the simple, silver-set one-carat diamond on the other hand.

  Had it been Fae’s? Fae had never worn jewelry in her life that Hannah could remember. She was plain, preferred dirt and sweat to perfume and makeup. Could it have been Julia’s? Ellie’s? Hannah had never seen it before, had she?

  Then a sudden memory, quick as lighting: Julia gathering flowers with Aunt Fae in the garden, Hannah sulking behind her. That last summer, when everything had been off kilter. Aunt Fae talking about the incoming storm, the wind whipping around the garden, making everything look green, the sulfuric smell of electricity. Julia handing her a large glass vase, barely glancing at her, her eyes skimming off Hannah’s shoulder, the top of her head, anything but her face. Hannah took the vase from her sister and saw the ring, gleaming like a new penny on her index finger. She’d opened her mouth to ask, but Julia spoke first. “I’m riding my bike into town later.” No invitation to tag along. No question if Hannah wanted to go. In the past she would have phrased it differently: Do you want to or What if I or What if we. Julia had been gone all morning, and Hannah hadn’t known where she went. And then she was leaving again.

  Now with the memory sitting in her chest like a boulder, Hannah had a ridiculously childish thought: Had Wyatt given her the ring? Julia hadn’t had it before; Hannah knew that for a fact. Before that last summer, Hannah had known everything there was to know about Julia and vice versa. She’d known every item of clothing in her closet, every pair of shoes, every hair barrette. So many of those items had been shared, the doors between their rooms open and belongings exchanged like currency. At any given time, each room contained half Julia’s and half Hannah’s things: clothes and books and shoes and tchotchkes strewed evenly between them.

  Until that last summer, when Julia began to shut the door between the bedrooms. So Hannah had shut hers too. Hannah had envisioned Julia’s secrets piling up, filling in the narrow space between their doors, until one day Hannah just stopped opening her own. She stopped hoping.

  How had the ring gotten into the shed? Hannah felt the first prick of a headache, tired of trying to make sense of so many questions. Tired of not having any answers. Of not being able to get the right information out of everyone she talked to because she didn’t know what to ask. She threw the latch on the shed door and started off back down the path, Rink in tow.

  Hannah twirled the ring around her finger as she walked back toward the castle. Lost in thought about Stuart, Alice, a list of questions, the ring, Julia, Aunt Fae. She came into the garden, the wind picking up, and for a moment, she was disoriented. It felt like that summer afternoon, the one with the vase and the ring, all over again. The storm coming in, the clouds rolling, the sky a greenish gray, the smell of lightning just before it cracked.

  And Wyatt standing in the arch to the driveway, his car parked behind him, a hand to his eyes. He raised his other hand in greeting, halting and unsure.

  In the distance, thunder rumbled like a portent.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Now

  Wyatt ducked his head as Hannah approached, suddenly shy. His hair, looking more brown than red in the gray morning light, his fists in his pockets, clenching and unclenching.

  “Do you and Huck have a minute?” he asked, all business.

  “Huck left. It’s just me now. But yes, come in.”

  Hannah avoided looking at his face, not wanting to see anything resembling relief or hope. Not sure how to proceed now that Huck wasn’t there to buffer them. The diner had been different. Public.

  Hannah led Wyatt in through the kitchen door and motioned for him to sit at the island. She busied herself with the coffeepot, realized only after a moment that her hands trembled. She flexed her fingers to get the tremor out and turned brightly, smile pasted on.

  “So what’s today’s breaking news?” She placed a cup in front of him, steam curling. Set a bowl of fruit she had cut earlier on the table.

  “Why did Huck leave?” Wyatt had the infuriating habit of answering a question with a question.

  “Work called. He owns a landscaping company. Most of his clients are businesses in town. It’s fall planting season.” She shrugged.

  “So he left you up here alone?” Wyatt raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m a grown, capable adult, Wyatt.” Hannah felt the spark of annoyance. She didn’t need his misplaced sense of chivalry. “I’m not some fragile thing in need of being cared for.”

  He laughed then, reached across the island and plucked a strawberry out of the fruit bowl and popped off the greens. He cocked his head, gave her a meaningful look. “Well, but aren’t we all?” He sat forward, tapped her hand once across the island, the touch making her skin burn. “I just meant there’s a lot going on. Your uncle dying, your aunt recently passed . . . you haven’t been back here in what, seventeen years? Dealing with Julia—we found a body, for God’s sake. It’s a lot; that’s all I meant. I never meant to imply that you weren’t . . . capable.”

  He was dressed down: jeans and a short-sleeved button-up shirt. He looked like he was on the way to a backyard barbecue. She felt her heart betray her, a syncopated beat against her rib cage. She couldn’t help but notice the flush on the back of his neck, the line of his jaw as he spoke, his perfect straight teeth when he smiled, his hair in need of a haircut, a reddish-brown curl at his collar. A brief image of running her hands through it. She hated his compassion, his ability to tune in. So opposite Huck’s steady pluck.

  “So what is going on, by the way? Do you have any more information on Aunt Fae’s accident? Or the remains in the woods?” Hannah cocked her head to match his.

  He laughed, then turned somber. “I have nothing on the accident. We have evidence in queue at the state labs, but I can’t comment on anything else.” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you about Ellie Turnbull.”

  “Everyone’s favorite topic of conversation lately.” Hannah felt her edges go sharp, the dislike of that girl so close to the surface even now, after all this time. Suspicious of the coincidence. First Lila had brought her up, and now Wyatt.

  “What does that mean?”

  Hannah waved her hand around. “Forget it. What did you want to ask?”

  “Eh, call it a hunch. I can’t prove it, not yet. I haven’t talked to Warren. So this conversation is . . . casual. I’m not on duty right now. It�
��s off the record, okay?” He studied his coffee, and Hannah was reminded of Jinny staring at the dregs of tea in the bottom of her reading cup.

  “I’m not keeping a record, Wyatt.”

  A chuckle. “Can we talk about that last summer?”

  “Maybe. What parts?” Hannah felt brazen but tired. Tired of dancing around half truths and innuendos.

  Wyatt paused, studied her face. His eyes, flecked with gold, so close to hers. They were separated by the island, but Hannah had been leaning on it. She straightened up.

  “I’m sorry for everything. For hurting you, you know.” His voice was soft, but he looked surprised. He hadn’t planned that part, she gathered.

  “For the part where you took my virginity? Or later, when you kissed my sister?” Hannah felt the rage zing through her, a surge under her skin.

  “All of it. I was a stupid kid. A young, horny, stupid teenager. You know that, right? Both of you had me in a state that summer.”

  “I loved you,” Hannah blurted, and she felt the shock of saying that for the first time out loud. She felt bolstered by the invisible presence of Huck. His existence proof that she didn’t still love Wyatt, couldn’t possibly, and she could have pointed to it as tangible evidence: See, I’ve moved on from you. You meant nothing to me. You still mean nothing to me.

  “I know.” Wyatt winced and then looked at her earnestly. “I didn’t use you. You have to know that . . . that I was in love with you. Julia . . .” He took a breath. Then another. “It was complicated, Hannah. She was more my age. Listen, no eighteen-year-old with two beautiful girls vying for their attention would handle it one hundred percent correctly, okay? It’s not just an excuse.”

  “Sure it is,” Hannah insisted and felt her breathing hitch. She suddenly couldn’t take a deep breath. She remembered this Wyatt. The one who spoke plainly, with an earnestness reserved for lovers and confidants. The one who made every encounter feel intimate. The one who made her do the same. Except she was a different Hannah now: she’d learned how to build walls, cordoned herself off. How easily he’d come back into her life, in whatever aspect, and how quickly she’d given up her feelings, resorted to her teenage self, free with her own emotions. I loved you. Who said that? She was engaged. Huck didn’t deserve this: her racing heart, her inability to breathe properly. No good could come from this. She suddenly felt furious with herself.