“God, it was so stupidly easy. I just showed up. Warren told me Stuart was sick. It was his idea. He said you can pretend to be a nurse. Years ago, I was an orderly in a hospital. I knew enough to get by. You can research anything on the internet. I didn’t need to actually help him; I just had to be believable. I had Fae order his medicine through his doctor. I said I was from the hospice agency. She never bothered to check. I didn’t collect a paycheck, so it’s near impossible to get caught. If I had tried to collect money, it would be a different story. He did have other home help: therapists mainly. But the hospice system is such a mess it was easy to lose me. Every time I came close to getting found out, I’d invent a paperwork glitch.”
“Why? Why now? Eighteen years later? What were you trying to do?” Hannah asked, her voice quiet, hands still.
Alice sighed, the knife making a zigzag in the air. “I spent a long time after Ellie disappeared on drugs. Anything I could get my hands on. Pills and coke. Whatever was cheapest. Booze and weed. When I sobered up, I wanted the truth. Warren heard that Fae was looking for in-home help, and he called me. Nobody in Rockwell knew who I was. If Warren tried to even set one foot on Brackenhill, McCarran would be called up here so fast. But me? I never lived a day in my life in this dump of a town. Nobody knew who I was.”
“What was your plan?” Hannah was appalled but fascinated. Alice had dropped all the pretense of an educated woman. Her mountain accent was getting thicker by the second. While Alice talked, Hannah tried to corral her thoughts. Why was Alice telling her all this? It must be a relief, to finally be free. She’d been carrying the burden of hate around for eighteen years.
“I thought if I got close to Fae, I could get her to confess. I stupidly thought she’d confess to me. She never did, no matter how I prodded her.” Alice kept sagging, her voice quieting, and then straightening up, squaring her shoulders, staring at Hannah defiantly. She stabbed the air when she said “never did,” and Hannah backed away quickly. “I started coming back at night. It’s easy to hide in a castle. Fae ignored every little noise anyway. I didn’t even have to be that careful.”
How many of the noises in the night had been Alice? At least since Hannah had been back? Hannah pressed her palm to her forehead.
This was crazy. Alice was crazy. The lantern flickered, the batteries waning. Hannah was starting to not feel so sane herself. Truth be told, she hadn’t felt sane in weeks.
“You confronted Fae, and she fled down Valley Road, and you chased her off into the ravine?”
Alice stopped, studied Hannah’s face. “What would you do, if it were your daughter?”
A tough question to answer. Hannah couldn’t imagine having a daughter. Truthfully, she’d never been able to imagine it.
“I don’t know,” Hannah whispered.
“That’s right. No one knows.” Alice seemed to notice the knife in her hand for the first time. She stepped closer, and Hannah swallowed back a knot of fear in her throat. “I was waiting to make sure the remains were Ellie. Then I was going to leave town. Start over somewhere new. I did what I had to do to get peace for my baby girl.” Her voice lowered, patient and slow. She smiled. “But the thing is . . . you found me out here. Maybe . . . you went a little crazy; you know how you get. Everyone’s worried about you, you know. Detective McCarran—I’m sorry, Wyatt. You’re running all over town, confronting Warren, talking to his neighbors and family. Harassing Jinny, making her cry. See, Warren and I are partners in this thing now, so I know everything.” She grinned wildly. “You found me out here, went a little wild. Tried to hit me . . .” Alice stopped, looked around, grabbed a shovel off the wall. “Maybe with this. I mean, fitting, don’t you think?”
Hannah didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t think a step ahead of Alice, her mind moving underwater. She had to think, but every breath felt shaky. Every racing thought edged out the one before it, and she couldn’t focus on any of it. Alice was going to kill her. Think, think, Hannah!
Alice continued, “I was just defending myself. I plead self-defense, I get to walk away. That’s how it works. If you try to kill me and I accidentally kill you, I’m free to go. Start my life over, like I wanted to all those years ago. Without the drugs, knowing my baby girl will rest in peace.”
Hannah took a step back toward the door, adrenaline surging under her skin. “You should do that. Go and start over.”
“Well, I can’t now, see? You know everything.” Swipe, slice went the knife.
Hannah’s hand fumbled behind her back for the latch. In seconds she was outside, running down the path, away from the shed.
Behind her, she heard the thump, thump, thump of Alice’s nursing clogs.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Now
Hannah had one advantage over Alice. Alice may have been staying at Brackenhill for a year and a half, but Hannah knew the forest. She knew the trails and the paths, the rocks and trees. She took off down the path that led from the shed back to the driveway, crossed over the driveway, and veered left on the trail that paralleled Valley Road. This path was steep and in some places dark where the towering pines and ash trees formed a jungle canopy overhead, blocking out the bright full moon.
Hannah ducked under boughs and kept her eyes on the ground, trying as best she could to make out the roots and rocks. Breaking a leg or even rolling an ankle might cost her her life.
But still.
When the embankment came into view, she didn’t think it or plan it. She just zipped to the left and tucked herself into the hillside between Valley Road and the path in a small gully swollen with rotting leaves and stagnant rainwater. Something scurried over her left foot, either a large spider or a small vole, and Hannah bit the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming.
She could make herself small. She’d spent her whole life practicing.
Alice thundered by—grace wasn’t her strong suit. Her thick rubber soles slapped the ground, the wet leaves sliding.
Hannah knew that fifty feet or so past the embankment, the trail tapered into a narrow edge, thin as a blade and slicked with a mushroom bed. Especially treacherous in the summer, when the temperature dipped and a heavy rain pounded down, spreading spores.
To the left of the narrow trail was a steep incline up to Valley Road, not completely impassable but not easily traversed without hiking boots and equipment. To the right was a gully, deep and wide, the bottom of which contained a tributary.
An accidental slide into the gully could easily break a leg.
When she and Julia had ridden their bikes into town, they’d avoided that stretch of ground and instead cut to the left before the embankment entirely, walking their bikes on the shoulder of Valley Road until the path evened out, widened, and became safer than the road.
Hannah doubled back and felt her way along the embankment, making sure to keep herself flush with the foliage. If Alice looked back, she wouldn’t be able to make out the shape of Hannah against the shadows of the trees.
Hannah’s hand hit something hard. A metal knob. Her fingertips reached out, spread along the expanse of greenery, and found only splintered wood.
The storm shelter. Underneath her palm, the old wood seemed to buzz with life. If she’d had a light, she knew she would have seen the door was painted green, peeling and flaking.
Find the green door.
The key in Hannah’s sweatshirt pocket hummed. She’d forgotten about it. She’d taken to wearing the same hooded sweatshirt every day now, not wanting to venture to the basement to do laundry.
Her fingertips found the doorknob again and then the lock. She slid the fleur-de-lis key into the lock, and underneath her palm she felt the click of tumblers sliding into place, a sick swelling in her chest, her breath coming in gulps. Something about the storm shelter felt dangerous, hidden. The knob turned in her hand, and she was able to slide into the narrow stairwell and ease the door closed in front of her. She could only hope the vines fell back in front of the door, the way she’d foun
d them. Or that Alice wouldn’t double back and look closely with her lantern. Or that she’d fall into the gully.
If Alice found Hannah here, she’d kill her.
Hannah ran her hands along the walls on either side. The stairwell was narrow, with dirt walls and only (she counted) four steps into what felt like a larger room. She could hear her breathing hollow in her ears, her pulse loud as a full drum line at a football game. She didn’t have Alice’s battery lantern or even a flashlight.
Too bad she wasn’t in the greenhouse. Uncle Stuart always kept small portable propane lanterns in the greenhouse. Mostly because he said the batteries didn’t make it through the weather changes, and he wanted to make sure he had them for emergencies if he had to get back.
The matches! From Pinker’s! She’d swiped them so she’d have easy access to the phone number, address, manager’s name. She lit the first match.
The room was tiny, maybe ten by ten. There were shelves on the walls. Flour sacks on the floor.
A pulse of familiarity. She’d never been here before; they’d never been able to find a key.
But wait. That wasn’t right. She’d been inside, hadn’t she?
On the first shelf to her left sat three of Uncle Stuart’s propane lanterns. She hadn’t even known he’d ever used this room. He must have stored them and not remembered? He was always prepared. Behind the lanterns were stacked cans of vegetables—corn and carrots—and a carton of preserved eggs coated in an oily sheen. Two decades old, rotting, inedible.
She lit another match to see what she was doing and turned the knob on the bottom of the lantern. A gentle hiss told her the tank was full. She touched the flame to the filament, and the room lit up with a muted glow.
It was the room from her vision at Jinny’s.
Hannah felt the breath leave her lungs, her heart constrict.
A woman stood in the center, her face in shadow, her hair long and loose around her shoulders, shining even in the dim light. She moved, and the swish of a yellow sundress swirled around her legs.
“Julia,” Hannah said, her voice a croak, her throat closing, her vision starting to pinhole. Her hand went to her mouth in a silent scream.
“Hello, Hannah,” said her sister. She stepped closer, the lantern light bouncing off the walls, creating shadows and pockets of light and dark. She smiled then, at once familiar and foreign and beautiful, after all this time.
And then, “You came back.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Now
Hannah cried out, her voice strangled. Julia! Here!
What was real? It didn’t seem real. She reached out, touched her sister’s soft skin, her hand as warm as her own. Hannah hugged her fiercely, her vision blurred with tears.
“How are you here?” Hannah asked, her thoughts tumbling. “I knew you’d come back.”
“I’ve been here the whole time,” Julia said slowly. She held Hannah out at arm’s length and studied her face. “I’m still here.”
“That’s . . . not possible. How?” Hannah looked around. There was no food, no water. Just the small enclosure of the storm shelter, lined with shelves containing old canned vegetables; even the oiled eggs would be rotten. A dirt floor. In the corner a burlap blanket. On the far back wall, a second door, seemingly secured.
Nothing about any of this seemed real or possible. But then again, with Brackenhill, nothing ever had.
“Hannah, look at me,” Julia said softly, her voice almost soothing, and Hannah felt herself lulled into the spell: the small dark room, her sister—alive!—who had come back for her, as she’d known she would.
“I knew you’d come back,” Hannah said again, repeating herself and knowing it and not caring.
“Look at me,” Julia repeated, her voice softer still, and finally Hannah did. Her sister’s face didn’t look a day over seventeen: pink, plump cheeks, her lips full despite the years, her eyes still shining, sparkling.
“You haven’t aged a bit,” Hannah said, pressing her palms together. “You look incredible. I’m just so happy.” And she was so happy her chest felt tight with joy. She forgot about Wyatt and Huck and Stuart and Brackenhill and Fae. Her whole world felt bright again, like Julia could open up parts of her heart that had been sewn shut forever.
“Remember how excited we were when we found this place?” The memory came rushing back, the two of them finding the little door in the side of the hill. And trying every which way to open it and failing, the lock rusted shut. Wait, that wasn’t right. It hadn’t been rusted shut. What was it? Hannah couldn’t remember.
“Why haven’t I aged, Hannah?”
Why did Julia keep saying her name like that? Like the night in the park, the way everyone had treated her like she was crazy. She hadn’t been crazy. She’d been angry; there was a difference.
“You’ve always been the beautiful one,” Hannah said finally, her voice faltering.
Click, click. The turning of a key. Thump, thump.
Why couldn’t she get that out of her head? She’d always done that—hyperfocused on things. Dwelling, her mother had said. She was a dweller. Click, click. Thump, thump.
“Hannah, listen to me. I didn’t run away. You know that, right?”
“Of course you did. Everyone said Aunt Fae killed you, but I knew that wasn’t possible. That wasn’t possible, right?”
Julia tilted her head, shaking it, and studied Hannah. She took a breath. “Hannah, I need you to think for a moment, okay?”
Hannah nodded. How easily she fell back into it, her sister the leader, the teacher, the mother. She the faithful student, the child.
Oh, there was so much she had to tell her. Wyatt and Huck and Aunt Fae. Aunt Fae! Oh, poor Julia. “Aunt Fae is dead, Julia. She died in a car accident—”
“Hannah, STOP.” Julia’s voice was loud and firm in the tiny room, and Hannah’s thoughts stilled. Her sister always did this, though. If Hannah got too excitable, Julia tempered it. Hannah had been too much for Julia. Too much for Trina. Too much for everyone.
“I didn’t run away. I need you to think. I need you to remember. You need to remember.” Julia’s voice edged higher. She took Hannah’s hands in her own, and now they felt cold. “Think, Hannah. I can’t make you remember. Only you can do that.”
“It was starting to rain. You packed a bag. The path was slippery. I hurt my ankle.” Hannah spoke slowly, the images coming in bursts.
“Did you really hurt your ankle?”
Yes. No. “We would be sent back to Plymouth. I just wanted to stop you from going to the police.”
“But then what?”
“I just wanted to stop you. I just wanted to stay here,” Hannah whispered.
“Then what, Hannah?” Julia pleaded with her, her face wet with tears.
Hannah shook her head, closed her eyes. Her sister’s face in her memory, white in the blue light of the moon. Fae killed Ellie. I have proof. We aren’t safe here.
You ruin everything. You ruined Wyatt. You ruined Brackenhill. We were so happy, before. I can’t go back to Plymouth.
“You ruin everything. You’re still doing it,” Hannah moaned, the dirt hard beneath her knees when she sank down, resting her forehead against her forearms. Julia held tight to Hannah’s hands, swaying slightly. “Stop. Just stop ruining everything.”
Click, click. The snap of an old lock. Not rusted.
The key in her fingertips. A fleur-de-lis.
Oh my God.
Hannah wanted to crawl inside the dirt, bury herself. Make it stop, the pain, the emptiness, the missing.
She’d been so angry. Furious. She remembered everything suddenly, like a flash. The fury, the hurt. She’d been so tired.
What had she done?
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Then
August 2, 2002
“Julia, wait!” Hannah’s voice cut across the courtyard. The moon was bright, but Hannah had grabbed one of Stuart’s battery-powered lanterns from the kitchen. Julia turne
d, her duffel bag slung over her shoulder, and studied her sister.
Hannah was so tired. Her body was screaming for sleep, her legs heavy and back aching. And yet her heart raced and stuttered. Couldn’t find a rhythm.
“Where are you going?” she called after her. Julia turned away then, hefted her bag higher, and took off down the path toward town, legs pumping.
Hannah raced after her.
Julia, who had everything: Wyatt. Josh Fink. Secrets. Friends. Trina. She was going to ruin everything. For what? Because she wanted to? Everything Julia did was because she wanted to. Because she didn’t care who she hurt. How could she have not seen it before? Julia didn’t love Hannah. Julia loved Julia. She didn’t care who she stepped on as long as she got what she wanted. She wanted to leave Brackenhill? She’d make sure it happened. By going to the police? About what? What lies would she make up now?
Hannah was destined to live in her big sister’s shadow, forever falling short. The uglier one. The dumber one. The one that was ignored by her mother and preyed upon by her stepfather. She couldn’t go home to Plymouth. She would not be made to leave Brackenhill again.
Julia picked up speed.
Hannah had never been to this part of the forest at night. The path to town was steep and narrow, pebbled with rocks, and Hannah’s ankle rolled, her hip hitting a painful root. She leaned forward to massage it, her fingertips finding the tender spot below the bone. Her sister’s blonde hair in the distance was growing fainter; she could barely make her out. In a few seconds she’d be gone.
Hannah looked around and saw with astonishment that she’d tumbled right outside the embankment. From the path the embankment looked nondescript, the side crawling with dead blackberry vines, spindly and broken. Hannah knew what lay underneath the vines.
A door.
Slowly, as if in a trance, she touched the fleur-de-lis key in her pocket. And then she knew. She’d tried every door in Brackenhill but this one.
She stood, tentatively putting weight on her ankle. It seemed fine. She faked a limp.
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