by Becky Citra
I don’t really believe that. I believe that Livia is dead. So there is only one other thing that makes sense. Marion must be Iris.
I’m trembling with confusion and something that feels like anger or even betrayal. What is Marion (the name is a lie, but I can’t think of her as Iris—not yet) doing here? What does she want?
I’m staring out the window, watching the rain lash the gray lake, my thoughts spinning around in circles, when I hear her put the phone down.
“That was my friend in England,” she says, coming out of the office. “It’s my sister. She hasn’t been well, but she’s much worse now. I’ll have to go back to England right away.”
I turn around. “You mean Esta,” I say. “Your sister Esta.”
Something flickers through Marion’s eyes, almost as if she is afraid.
She knows I know.
My heart starts to race. “You’re Iris Willard,” I blurt out.
Marion is silent but her face has drained of color. I know I am right.
The back of my neck feels icy. “I don’t understand. Why did you lie? Why did you say your name was Marion Wilson?”
When Marion finally speaks, her voice is calm. “I didn’t know if there was anyone here who would remember the Willard case. It was so long ago I figured it was unlikely, but I thought it was better to remain anonymous. So I used a different name. And I told my friend Louise—that’s the woman who called—that she was to ask for Marion Wilson if she needed to contact me.”
“You said you had friends who stayed here ten years ago,” I say. “Did you make that up too?”
“I had to give Tully some reason why I wanted to come to the ranch. He was so adamant that he wasn’t open for business yet. So, yes, I invented the story of my friends loving it here. I told him that I probably wouldn’t be back in Canada again and that this was my only chance to stay here.”
Marion presses her fingers against her forehead. She looks gray. “I can’t talk about this anymore right now, Thea. My head is splitting. This is going to have to wait until tomorrow.”
“Just tell me one thing,” I say. “Why are you here?”
“I’m looking for Livia,” she says simply.
Van and I talk on the phone late into the night. Van is excited because he thinks we are closer to clearing his grandfather’s name. We go over and over the possible scenarios. It always comes back to one thing: the wasps.
We know that Marion has been looking up anaphylactic shock and wasp stings on the Internet. We know that there was a wasp nest at the old cabin and that something or someone had knocked it down. We know that Esta and Iris used to play there. The fact that they were forbidden to go there that summer means nothing, Van and I agree. Kids always do what they’re not supposed to do.
Just suppose Esta had taken Iris and Livia to the cabin that day. Just suppose Livia had been stung…
If Livia died of anaphylactic shock, someone must have known. Someone must have hidden her body. There is only one possible person: Esta. But why did she do it?
And Iris—how much did Iris know?
Twenty-One
Marion (I don’t think I will ever be able to call her Iris) looks much older the next day. Her face is gray and her eyes are shadowed with black circles. She finds me with Renegade. I have just fed him, and for a few minutes we lean against the fence and watch him eat.
“I’m leaving this afternoon,” she says. “I’m driving back to Vancouver and flying to England tomorrow morning.”
“Is it serious? Esta, I mean?” I ask.
“Very. She has cancer. She only has a few weeks left to live. I want to be there with her.” Marion turns and looks at the barn. “This isn’t the barn that was here when I was a child,” she says. “It was much bigger and it had an enormous hay loft. I don’t remember much about our holidays here but I do remember the barn. I used to practically live in it. I wonder if they tore it down, or perhaps it burned down.”
Marion does something unexpected then. She reaches out and grips my hand. Her fingers are icy. “This isn’t easy for me.”
“It isn’t easy for Heb and May either,” I blurt out.
Marion drops my hand. “Heb and May?” She sounds uncertain.
“My friend Van’s grandparents. They were working at the ranch when Livia disappeared.”
“I remember,” says Marion slowly. “May was the cook. We loved her. And her husband Heb. He was wonderful with us kids.”
“Esta said that she saw Livia riding in Heb’s truck the afternoon she disappeared.”
“Yes,” says Marion softly. “Yes, that’s what she said.”
I take a deep breath. “Van and I know about the wasp nest at the old cabin. We think Livia died from wasp stings.”
Marion doesn’t look surprised. Just tired. “All these years that I’ve thought about it, I didn’t remember going to the cabin that day,” she says. “They say you block out memories that are too painful. Maybe that’s what I did. Oh, I had a vague picture of a cabin where we used to play. I don’t think I liked it, but I didn’t like most of the things Esta made me do. I didn’t remember going there on the day Livia disappeared. But on Saturday, when I went back to look at the cabin, after all this time, I did remember.”
So I had seen Marion in the cabin. My heart starts to beat hard. “What did you remember?”
“There was a huge wasp nest over the back door,” says Marion slowly. “We had been forbidden to play there that summer because of it. I wonder now if my stepmother was allergic to wasps and was afraid that Livia might be allergic too. Or if she knew how dangerous a wasp sting could be for an asthmatic.”
Marion is silent for a moment, her face etched with pain.
Then she says quietly, “I remember Esta throwing the rock.”
Marion’s words stun me. An icy chill settles over my back and neck. I stare at her in horror.
“Livia was standing under the nest. I was down by the lake. Perhaps I had stood up for myself for once and refused to go in the cabin. I don’t know. Maybe Esta told Livia there was a surprise for her inside. This is all conjecture. I don’t remember. But for some reason Livia was under the nest—I do remember that—and Esta threw a rock and the nest fell down.”
“Livia was stung,” I say.
“Many many times, I expect,” says Marion. She adds softly, “I’m sure Esta never thought the nest would fall. She might have thought Livia would get stung once. She hated Livia, you see. She was so jealous of her. But I can’t believe that she ever wanted her to die.”
I don’t know what to say. I wish Van were here. A chilly wind is blowing and I hug my arms to my chest. Renegade walks over to the fence, a wisp of hay hanging from his mouth. I stroke his face.
“That’s all I can tell you, Thea,” says Marion. “I don’t know what happened after that. I remember nothing between that and my aunt coming from England. Why didn’t I tell anyone what I saw? I don’t know. I was so young. And afraid of my sister.”
“May says they found you in your cabin, asleep. She says you cried and cried and were hysterical when the police talked to you.”
“I expect I was afraid to tell. Maybe I was confused. When I was little, I was so frightened of Esta.”
I remember May saying It’s a terrible thing, to be afraid of your own sister.
The sky, heavy and gray, bursts open all of a sudden, showering us with rain, and we dash for the barn. We stand in the doorway, watching the rain drench the ground, forming puddles almost instantly. Renegade has disappeared inside his shelter.
“There’s something that doesn’t makes sense,” I say. “Why didn’t Esta go for help? Why did she just let Livia die?”
“I think Livia probably stopped breathing within minutes. Esta must have panicked. In a sense, she had killed Livia, even though she didn’t mean to. Maybe she thought she would be charged with murder.
I don’t know.” Marion sighs. “It all happened such a long, long time ago. In some ways it doesn’t
matter now.”
I think of Heb’s and May’s suffering and I feel angry again. “If you really believe that, then why are you here?” I say.
“I want to find Livia’s body,” says Marion. “I want her to have a proper burial.”
“But why now? It’s been almost sixty years. Why did you come back now? And what if we’re wrong? What if Esta had nothing to do with it?”
At first I don’t think Marion is going to answer me. And then she says, “Let’s go back to my cabin. There’s something I’d like to show you.”
It’s Livia’s gold necklace. She takes it out of the box and puts it in my hand. My cheeks flush. I can’t tell Marion that I’ve already seen it.
“Where did you get it?” I say.
“I found it a few weeks ago,” says Marion. “In Esta’s house.”
I stare at Marion, trying to figure out what that means.
“I didn’t even know Esta was sick,” says Marion. “Esta left my aunt and uncle’s when she turned eighteen. We never stayed in touch. I wasn’t afraid of her anymore but we were never close. I lived with my aunt and uncle even after I grew up. When they died, the training stable became mine. I never married, never wanted a family. I had lots of friends and, of course, my horses. I made a good life for myself. But Esta just disappeared.”
“Did you ever see her?”
“Once, in the distance, on a busy street in London. I thought of calling out to her but I didn’t. I heard bits from time to time from an old friend of Esta’s who still lived in our village. Nothing very good. Esta became an alcoholic and was in and out of rehab clinics for years. And then my friend Louise went to visit a cousin who was in the hospital. Her cousin was sharing a room with a woman who has cancer. A nurse came in and called the woman Esta. Louise knew that I have a sister named Esta and that we’re estranged. Because it’s an unusual name, she looked at the chart at the end of her bed. It said Esta Willard.”
Marion takes the locket from my hand. She studies it for a moment and then lays it back in the box. “I went to see Esta in the hospital. She’s the only family I have left. I asked her if there was anything I could do. She wanted me to go to her house, a flat in a poorer part of London, and pick up a few things. That’s when I found the locket, in the back of a drawer, behind a wooly shawl that Esta had asked me to look for. I knew what it meant right away.”
I feel sick. “So Livia was wearing the necklace when she disappeared.”
Marion nods.
My head reels. “It’s proof,” I whisper. “It means that Esta was there when Livia died. She must have taken the locket from Livia’s body.”
“Deep inside I think I always knew it was Esta,” says Marion. “I just didn’t remember what happened. Until I came back here.”
“That’s why you’ve been going out in the boat every day,” I say. “To look for Livia. But how…?”
I stare at Marion. I can’t imagine how she could possibly think she might find Livia’s body now.
“It’s not as impossible as it sounds,” says Marion. “I have an idea where to look. I told you I don’t remember much about our holidays on the ranch, but there is one thing I do remember. It terrified me. Esta was always out in the boat. She was allowed to go out by herself, and sometimes she made me go with her. She found a cave somewhere on the lake, I don’t remember where. She took me there. It wasn’t very big. Esta made me go in by myself. She made me stay in there until she said I could come out. I remember being petrified. It was so dark. I kept calling out to see if she was still there, but she didn’t answer. I finally crawled out after what seemed like forever. Esta was sitting on a boulder, laughing at me. I’ve never ever forgotten it.”
“Livia—”
“I think Esta took Livia’s body to the cave,” says Marion. “I’ve looked and looked for it. I know we had to go in a boat to get there. There was a boat at the old cabin. Esta could have used that.”
“Do you remember anything else?” I ask.
“There were red rocks everywhere. Big boulders. Maybe the red color was from iron or something. It’s the only clue I have.”
I feel myself go still inside.
Van will know.
Twenty-Two
“I’ve never seen a cave there,” says Van. “But it’s the only place on the lake with red rocks.”
We’re in Van’s boat, heading across the lake to the secret inlet he took me to before. The rain is slanting like fine needles into the flat gray lake, and it’s cold.
Marion sits in the bow, her back very straight, the hood of her raincoat pulled up over her head.
When we get to the bay, Van lifts the propeller out. We trade places and he rows. His hands are red with the cold, and water drips off the brim of his baseball cap. The rain rattles on the lily pads. Van noses the boat through the narrow opening in the cliff wall, into the hidden pool.
Steep banks loom on either side of us and there’s a dank smell of wet rotten leaves. It’s so dark it feels like evening, but it’s only early afternoon. My jacket isn’t waterproof and it’s plastered to my back. Rain drips down my neck.
“Could this be it?” says Van.
“I don’t know,” says Marion. “I just don’t remember.”
We stare up at the slope at the far end. Reddish boulders are strewn across it, some covered with patches of lime green moss.
“The rocks could have moved,” says Van. “Like a slide. Enough to cover up the opening of a cave.”
There’s only one place to land. It’s a tiny strip of rocky beach at the bottom of the slope, not much wider than the boat. Van and I get out but Marion stays in the boat. She looks ill, her face like chalk.
Van and I scramble across the boulders, working our way along the bottom of the slope. The boulders are slick in the rain, and I use my hands to try and get a grip.
“I don’t know,” says Van. He gazes up. “It could have been anywhere.”
“I don’t think Esta would have been able to carry Livia very far,” I say.
Van sighs. “It’s hopeless. There’s no way we can move any of these rocks.”
I don’t want to give up, not yet. A gust of wind drives the rain into my eyes. I reach out for the next boulder and my foot slips. I grab onto a mound of moss. It breaks off in my fingers in a sodden clump.
I stare at the expanse of rock underneath, speckled with bits of soil. Something has been scratched into the surface. It looks like the end of a rectangle. My fingernails dig into the moss and I pull back another clump. I brush away the dirt.
Icy needles slide down my back and I start to shiver.
I know what I am looking at now, gouged crudely into the red boulder.
A cross.
Van and I come back in the afternoon, when the rain has stopped. Dad, Tully and Van’s dad, Martin, follow us in one of the ranch boats. They have crowbars, shovels and a flashlight. Van’s mother, Jane, is at the lodge with Marion, drinking strong hot tea and talking. Heb and May are at home, waiting.
Van and I stand around and watch while the men use the crowbars to try and shift the boulders beside the cross. At first nothing will move. They work for fifteen, twenty minutes, straining with the effort. Finally a huge boulder comes loose and rolls down into the water, landing with a great splash.
Tully grunts. “There’s something behind here. A bit of a space.”
My heart is pounding. Martin pries another boulder loose. There’s a lot of rubble now, smaller rocks that the men dig out of the way with the shovels.
And then we all see it. The mouth of a small dark cave.
Dad squats down on his knees and peers into the opening. “It’s too dark,” he says. “I can’t see.”
Tully gets the flashlight from the boat and passes it to Dad. Dad shines it into the cave. Time seems to stand still for a moment. I can hear water dripping somewhere. I hug my arms to my chest.
Dad’s breath goes in sharply. “I see something,” he says.
There is a long pa
use. He stands up. His face is white. “It looks like it could be bones.”
Tully, Van and Martin look inside the cave, one by one, silently, but I don’t want to.
We have found Livia. I knew when I saw the cross, but it is still a shock.
“I think we should pray,” says Martin quietly. We bow our heads.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me…”
While he speaks, I stare at the cross gouged into the rock. It blurs over with my tears. I can’t concentrate on the words. I don’t remember anything Martin says afterward, but his steady voice is comforting. When he is finished, we all say, “Amen.”
I can’t stop shivering. Van takes my freezing hand in his and slips it into his pocket.
Twenty-Three
Tully contacts the police and they come out the next day and retrieve Livia’s bones. Marion is still here. She has changed her plans. She’ll stay until tomorrow and then she’s going to Vancouver, where she is making arrangements to have Livia buried beside her father and mother.
In the afternoon, I take Marion in the boat to Van’s place to meet May and Heb. May is waiting for her, watching from the porch.
Marion has tea with May and Heb in their sitting room, surrounded by the beautiful birds. Van and I stay outside, throwing sticks for Prince. When it’s time for Marion to leave, May walks down to the boat and hugs her. They are so different: May big and strong, and Marion like one of Heb’s birds. But they are both crying.
For once, Dad and I are eating breakfast together. We’re hunched over bowls of cereal. He’s usually up way earlier than me, but today he has slept in. Lines of exhaustion crease his face.
“Marion is leaving today,” I say. It takes all my courage to say the next part. “I’m going to ride Renegade. Before she goes.”
Dad stares at me.
I feel myself falter, but this is the most important thing in the world to me right now. “Will you come and watch?”