Girls of Brackenhill

by Moretti, Kate

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Then

  August 2, 2002, 12:30 a.m.

  It sounded like rain on her window. Faint, pebbly, but lacking the rhythm of a summer storm. Hannah’s eyes opened, blurry, then focused on the ceiling, the intricate medallion that encircled the chandelier, visible only by the moonlight streaming through her bedroom windows.

  Pat-pat-pat-pat-pat, sounding like a spray from a hose. Or pebbles.

  Pebbles.

  Hannah rushed to the window, pushed the heavy wood casement out, and stuck her head outside into the humid night air.

  Wyatt.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped. His hair curled on his forehead, and he wore a rumpled T-shirt and mesh shorts.

  “I’m sorry. I’m a jerk. Can we just talk?” he stage-whispered.

  “Go away, Wyatt. You’ve done enough.” Hannah felt the ache in her chest. The vision of Julia’s red nails curled around Wyatt’s hair flashed in her mind, and she felt sick, her throat constricted. She pulled the window in and had started to latch it shut when she saw Julia, her blonde head appearing below.

  “Hannah, wait!” Julia called, and Hannah paused. “Just come down and talk to him. I didn’t know, okay?”

  “Whatever. You guys can have each other.”

  “Please just come down? I want to talk to you too.”

  “Why, so you can both act like I’m a child? A crazy kid with a puppy-dog crush? No thanks, both of you.” Hannah pulled the window shut, latched it tight, and crawled back into bed, pulling the coverlet to her chin. Below, she heard the faint murmuring of voices and felt sick. Would they just pick up where they’d left off?

  She imagined them below, kissing, Wyatt caressing Julia’s face and her back the way he used to touch Hannah. She pulled her legs up to her chin and moaned. Why did they call it heartbreak? She felt like her whole body was breaking.

  A creak on the staircase, and suddenly Julia stood there, between their rooms. Looking uncertain. Beautiful. Hannah hated her. She wanted to claw at her sister’s face. Imagined leaving a scratch with her nails, deep and red, that would later turn to a purple scar. She wouldn’t be the beautiful one; she’d be the ruined one.

  “Hannah.” Her voice floated through the darkness, and Hannah’s stomach coiled. “I have to go to the police, okay?”

  Hannah sat up, narrowed her eyes. “What? Why?”

  “There’s so much you don’t know, but I need you to trust me.”

  Hannah let out a laugh. “What?”

  “I know. I can’t ask for it. I can barely bring myself to say it. But on this, I have to. Things are . . . unraveling. Something’s happened, and I’m afraid for us.” Pause. “It’s Fae.”

  This time Hannah laughed for real. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Julia stepped into the room, her face visible in the full moonlight. Stricken. Pale. Terrified.

  Hannah almost felt something for her. Almost.

  “I know it seems that way to you. Aunt Fae killed someone. I can’t explain it all right now, but I know it’s true. I confronted her, and she flipped out and screamed at me. We aren’t safe here. I have to tell someone. I have to tell the police.” She took a deep breath and continued, her voice small. “Will you come with me?”

  “What? No.”

  Her sister was a liar. There was no way Hannah was getting involved in going to the police over something her sister had invented. Besides, Julia had spent the whole summer ignoring Hannah. Why should Hannah do anything for her?

  “I’m going with or without you. I’m telling the police everything I know.”

  Hannah felt a stab of fear. “Then what will happen?” she whispered.

  “They’ll come arrest Aunt Fae and maybe Uncle Stuart. They aren’t good people, Hannah. You have to know that.”

  “Then what happens to us?” Hannah pressed, her voice pitching higher.

  “We’ll go home, I’m sure.”

  “Home. Like to Plymouth.”

  In the moonlight, Julia nodded. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I know you love it here, but you don’t know everything.”

  “That’s because you haven’t spoken to me all fucking summer!” Hannah let it loose. Her blood rushed in her veins, and her temples throbbed. Her sister was going to ruin everything.

  “I’m sorry, Han. I love you.” Her voice was desperate, pleading, her cheeks pinked and shiny.

  Her sister had ruined Wyatt.

  Her sister was going to ruin Brackenhill.

  Her sister was going to ruin Fae and Stuart.

  Hannah would not be made to leave. She would not go back to Plymouth a minute early. What waited for her there? The creak of a bedroom door. A cold hand on her thigh. The smell of cigarettes and beer.

  When Hannah said nothing, Julia sighed. She turned to leave and paused at the door. “I have to go. I hope you understand.”

  And she was gone.

  August 2, 2002, 4:42 a.m.

  Hannah woke up in the courtyard. She was in her nightgown, but she wore sneakers. The hem of her nightgown was soaking wet. She’d been crying.

  In the dream she’d followed Julia down the path, a sick pulse in her head. A rage she hadn’t known existed had seemed to burn her from the inside out. Her hands had clenched in fists.

  The sky was inky blue, a streak of purple dawn along the horizon.

  She missed her sister. The sister of summers past, when they’d been partners. Best friends. Confidantes. Her shoulders racked with sobs, tears and snot on her face, as she stumbled inside and up the stairs and crawled back into her bed.

  She was just so goddamn tired.

  Later she’d remember Julia standing between their bedroom doors, her hair tangled. Dirt and tears streaked tracks down her face, her mouth open like she was a trout from the Beaverkill, eyes wide and glassy.

  “Hannah, please,” she’d said.

  When Hannah blinked, she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Now

  Wyatt left Hannah in the greenhouse with a promise to come back later for the truck. “I need a forensic team. Again.” He sighed when he said it, and Hannah felt the need to apologize.

  Back at the house, Hannah rattled around, restless. She opened and closed the kitchen drawers, looking for what, she didn’t know. Just looking. In the drawer under the sink she found the fleur-de-lis key. Huck must have put it back before he’d left. She tucked it into her sweatshirt pocket. There had to be a door it opened somewhere, right?

  She pulled out a cutting board and began peeling carrots for dinner, tossing pieces to Rink on the floor. He loved carrots. Hannah wanted to make soup. Something to warm her from the inside. She didn’t know what she was doing anymore. She thought of Huck back at their condo in Virginia. The white, clean kitchen. Stainless steel appliances. Hardwood floors. Cream and neutral throw rugs. Everything modern and styled and bright and functional. It seemed like another life, belonging to another person. The shape of her had changed—she no longer fit in that house. She imagined herself there, dirty as a chimney sweep. Here felt better, like home. Damp and musty and dark.

  Alice appeared in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. She had a peculiar look on her face, questioning.

  “Was that Detective McCarran again?” she asked, her voice strangled and reedy.

  “Alice,” Hannah asked warily. “What do you know about Stuart’s truck?”

  “What about it?”

  “Who had access to it? Have you seen anyone drive it?” And then, even though she knew the answer, “Who it belonged to?”

  “Fae told me once it belonged to her ex-husband,” Alice said, her bird nose starting to twitch. “And no, I have no idea who has driven it. I wouldn’t think it’s been moved since he got sick. I never saw Fae drive it. Why are you asking?”

  “Her ex-husband,” Hannah repeated dumbly. “You mean Warren.”

  “Is that his name?”

  “You know it is, Alice. Do you know Warren?�
��

  “I—I don’t.” Alice’s hand encircled her throat, fingers pulsing at the neck.

  “I think that’s the truck that ran Fae off the road,” Hannah said, sliding the blade under the carrot slices and pushing them into a pot on the stove with her fingertip.

  “Someone ran Fae off the road?” Alice asked in a pitchy tone. She moved her hand to the back of her head, pulled her hair off her neck, twisted it before letting it unwind like a serpent. The gesture felt familiar, and Hannah stopped chopping, watched her, interested.

  Finally, Hannah shrugged. “They aren’t sure. I think so. Wyatt isn’t positive.”

  “Wyatt? You mean Detective McCarran.”

  Hannah met Alice’s eyes. Saw something hard flicker there. “Yes. That’s what I mean.”

  In the dream, Hannah smelled the fire. It became part of the sequence—first she was running through the woods, away from the blaze, and then she was running toward it, the heft of a child on her hip. She couldn’t see the child’s face, just a blonde curl, a wisp that kept blowing across Hannah’s cheek. The girl’s shoes were patent leather, white. She squealed in Hannah’s ear.

  Hannah sat up, her heart pounding, and for a moment, she was relieved to wake up in the same place she’d gone to sleep. Not in the forest or in the courtyard or thigh high in the Beaverkill. She thought, for a moment, she was still in bed.

  Then the smoke.

  She didn’t ask herself until later how or why she could smell the smoke before she felt the heat of the blaze, before she saw the flames lick from the bottom of the room to the top.

  She just knew she was in the greenhouse, and now the greenhouse was on fire.

  She pushed against the door, but the door seemed to be stuck or locked, the metal frame red hot to touch. The smoke was starting to fill the small space, crowd out the oxygen in her lungs, make her feel light headed, and sting her eyes. The upper windows, usually slanted open, had been shut.

  Hannah slapped her pockets and blessedly found her cell phone in the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. She dialed 911 before she remembered that Rockwell had no 911, and then she just gave up and called Wyatt. When he answered in a husky, sleepy voice, she coughed into the phone that she was stuck in the blazing greenhouse. She realized then that the east-facing wall of windows was not burning. The wooden frame was blackened and crackling but not engulfed.

  Through the window, backlit by moonlight, was Alice. Her normally slicked-back hair was wild around her face; her eyes seemed to glow from the firelight.

  “Help!” Hannah screamed it through the window, but Alice didn’t flinch. Didn’t move.

  Hannah picked up a large galvanized watering can and swung it hard against the glass, splintering it into pieces. She was barefoot, she realized, but she’d have to take her chances. She used the bottom of the aluminum watering can to clear the jagged edges from the frame as much as possible, then launched herself out the window.

  Hannah landed on the broken glass, but her feet felt no pain. It wasn’t until later that she’d even notice the blood. She ran to the clearing between the greenhouse and the castle and turned around to watch the fire. The structure burned brightly in its entirety like a round, glowing fireball. Like it had been set all at once, burning in uniformity. Even the glass was starting to buckle and crack.

  Parked next to the greenhouse was Stuart’s truck, entirely engulfed in flames.

  Hannah looked around wildly, but Alice was gone. Had she been there at all?

  Hannah knew then that the fire had been set deliberately and was meant as a warning. Perhaps even to kill her. Wyatt would tell her later she couldn’t know that. That maybe she’d followed the smoke in her sleep. “You’ve been sleepwalking. Were you dreaming about starting a fire?”

  In other words, had she set the fire herself?

  Hannah would insist that Alice had been there.

  “She lives in Tempe. Alice is at home,” Wyatt would say gently. Soothingly. The way he’d spoken to her that night at the fish fry, in that pacifying tone. Tempe was ten miles away.

  Later, the fireman would tell her about the backdraft. When she’d broken the window, she’d created a rush of air. “Almost as powerful as a bomb,” he’d say. It was a miracle she’d made it out alive, really.

  She stood alone in the clearing, first watching it burn, then listening to the crack as the rickety roof finally caved in on itself, and the wood beams seemed to give way all at once with barely a groan, just the folding of boards like dominoes down to the soft, wet earth, the glass popping.

  By the time the firemen (all three of them) and Wyatt had shown up, with trucks and sirens, huffing down the path like drunken bears, the whole building had burned, taking with it the green truck, blackened and burned out. They found Hannah sitting on an old, rotted tree stump with her arms around her knees, her feet filthy, and her sweatshirt stuck to her skin with sweat.

  Her head was bent low, and later, Wyatt would tell her he thought she was crying. Something wild and keening that cut Wyatt to the bone because it was wholly unchecked. It wasn’t until he tried to comfort her that he realized she wasn’t crying at all.

  Hannah was laughing.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Now

  “I need your help,” Hannah blurted to Jinny, who sat opposite her, the crystal ball between them. Hannah was distracted by it, the silliness, the Hollywood of it. Jinny huffed impatiently and stood up, placed the ball into a cabinet, and shut the door.

  “Hannah, you need medical attention.” Jinny pointed at Hannah’s bandaged hand, fallout from the greenhouse fire: shards of glass lodged in her palm.

  “I had medical attention. I just left the hospital. Checked myself out. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

  Everything would be fine if she could just figure out what had happened to her aunt, her sister, Ellie, maybe Ruby; whether Warren wanted to kill her; and why Alice hated her so much. It was a lot to figure out, but she had to get back to Virginia. To Huck. She had to get away from Wyatt before she ruined her life. Before Brackenhill ruined her life.

  Hannah took a breath. “I need your help.”

  “You don’t. Anyway, I can’t help you. I don’t know who burned the greenhouse down. I don’t know what happened to Julia, or even Ellie, for that matter.” Jinny’s voice was impatient, almost petulant. “You don’t understand how this works. I don’t know everything. I can’t see everything. I can see some things, but even then I can’t control what I see. And I can’t command certain facts. Do you understand?”

  Hannah didn’t, and she didn’t care. “Talk to me about Fae.”

  Jinny paused, her nails clicking on the tabletop. “To be honest, my dear, we drifted apart the past few years. There isn’t much I can tell you that you don’t already know.”

  “Why?”

  “Some of it was her life. Caretaking is so stressful. Hard on everyone. Some of it was me. Before Stuart got sick—again—I’d wanted her to be more social. Come down from the hill, visit with friends. I know they see me as a kook, but I’m harmless. They might even think I’m the village idiot.” Jinny fluffed her black hair with her fingertips; a ringlet caught on a bracelet, and she wiggled it free. “I’m not. I know that. But I know how they all see me. Everyone likes me, though. Your aunt, however . . .” Jinny cocked her head, twisted her bright-coral lips. “Not so much. I knew better; I tried to tell people—especially those bingo biddies down at the Rockwell firehouse—Fae was a good person who had a tough life. Friendship is good for the soul. You can’t make a life out of plants and one man.”

  “What about Alice?”

  “Oh. Well, Alice.” Jinny rolled her eyes. “Yes, well, there was Alice.”

  “You don’t like Alice?”

  “I don’t know her!” Jinny threw her hands up, her rings and bracelets clattering. “I invited them both to the firehouse. They had poker, bingo, spaghetti dinners, what have you. Poker was my thing. Anyway, they always said no. Alice practically lived
there. She loved your aunt; I’ll give her that. They were strange birds of a feather, together. And the three of them up there, secluded on that hill? People in town thought it was straight-up weird. And that’s coming from me!”

  “How did Aunt Fae meet Alice?”

  “No one knows. She showed up one day—‘from the agency,’ she said. Before you knew it, they’re inseparable, and I’m nothing to Fae. She hardly came to see me anymore, never called. She had Alice; that’s it.”

  “Why do you think she became so reclusive?”

  “She never stopped flogging herself for Ruby. And then Julia.” Jinny sighed, her eyes teary. And likely Ellie? thought Hannah. Jinny continued, “Even if people in town could understand—and I do think they could, at least the Ruby part. Accidents happen!—Fae would never let herself be forgiven. But people see it differently. If she didn’t kill anyone, then why hide? Why seclude yourself if you’re not guilty?”

  “So when she needed you the most, you abandoned her?” Hannah asked, and it came out sharper than she intended. It was a barbed question, and Jinny flinched.

  “No. No. You can’t make people need you. Your aunt sequestered herself. That life sentence was her own making. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped, Hannah.”

  This Hannah knew to be true. She thought of Wes, Trina, even Julia toward the end of that summer. Scattered, lashing out, impatient, mean. All the things she’d never been before. Even to Aunt Fae; especially to Aunt Fae. Oh, like you don’t know what I’m talking about.

  Hannah had only heard that part of the fight, Aunt Fae’s voice too quiet, too circumspect, to be heard from the library, where she spent so much of her time. Julia’s had been clear as a bell, loud and angry. What had it been about? She’d forgotten it entirely in the years since. It had seemed fleeting, inconsequential.

  “Did you blame her for Julia?” Hannah asked.

  Jinny’s eyes slid sideways, and she adjusted her earring. A tell. “No. Of course not.”

  A lie.

  “I don’t believe you.” Hannah felt her face flush. Why would Jinny lie to her? Who was there to protect? Everyone was dead.