In the Shadows

by Kiersten White

  heavily on the bed.

  “Oh, Cora.” Minnie fought back tears of her own. It was her

  fault, for dragging Cora into the water. It was always her fault.

  “We can go back, look for it, and —”

  Cora laughed, but it sounded harsh beneath her tears. “Yes,

  let’s look for a beach rock on the beach. Never mind. It’s silly. I

  shall simply worry less.”

  “It’s not silly,” Minnie whispered.

  Cora shook her head, shutting Minnie out again. “That man.

  Do you think he’ll tell Mother?”

  “No. I don’t.” He had nothing to gain by it, and it struck Min-

  nie that Alden was a man who always wanted something to gain.

  And it didn’t fail to register for her that he had no reason to be

  in this hallway — in the back of the house, where the family had

  their rooms and no guests ever stayed.

  Minnie wanted to stay and comfort Cora, but it was clear

  Cora wanted no such thing. Very well, then. Minnie tore out of

  her clothes, throwing on a change of dress and pulling her hair

  back, not caring that it soaked her collar. “I’m going to go get

  something to eat,” she said, ducking out of the room before Cora

  could protest being left with all the wet clothes. Minnie took the

  back stairs, slipping along the wall and into the pantry. She found

  the kitchen empty, and slid a small, sharp knife out of the drawer.

  She could not shake the way that man had leered at her sister.

  Like Cora was already his.

  Cora was hers. She would never lose her, and she would never

  let anyone hurt her again. A spare ribbon secured the knife under

  her dress against her thigh, and the cold secret of it felt like power.

  World War II

  eleven

  C

  ORA WALKED NEXT TO THOMAS -- BUT NOT SO CLOSE

  THAT THEY WERE TOUCHING -- DOWN THE LONG LANE

  TOWARD TOWN. They had left Minnie and Charles

  engaged in a game of checkers, where Minnie was cheating outra-

  geously and Charles was letting her.

  The bright summer day filled in the silence with a thousand

  small sounds of life, but Cora wanted to talk with Thomas. She

  was still humiliated from her hysterics that night on Barley Hill.

  So what if she’d seen a figure looking down at her from the second

  story? Arthur had explained that he’d gone upstairs to look for

  Mary and glanced down to check on her.

  And she’d fainted. And Thomas had carried her home. She

  blushed deeply just thinking about it and, struck with the irra-

  tional fear that Thomas was thinking about the exact thing,

  rushed to fill the silence. “Do you have the list for the chemist?

  He tends to forget things unless he has it in writing.”

  “Yes.” He pulled a slip out of his pocket. His handwriting was

  neat, slanted letters. There was an ink stain on his middle finger

  that she realized was always there.

  “Do you write? Music, I mean. You play so well.”

  The corners of his lips turned down, but his eyes crinkled up

  and she was sure he was trying not to betray his delight. “I try,

  here and there. It’s rubbish.”

  “I’d like to hear it sometime.”

  “Really?” He turned toward her, hazel eyes filled with such

  honest hope she realized how deliberately careful nearly all of

  his expressions were. Not guarded and secretive, like Arthur,

  but . . . shielded. As though he was afraid of ever feeling what he

  actually felt, of putting on anything other than a brave, practi-

  cal face.

  He was terrified all the time.

  Her heart fluttered with the recognition of someone else who

  understood what it was to forever try to be strong and constantly

  come up short.

  “Really,” she said, her voice as gentle as her smile. She hesi-

  tated, then, before she could think better of it, put her hand in the

  crook of his elbow. “I’ll make certain Mr. Clemens follows

  the order to the letter. He hates vacationers, but he’s always liked

  Mother very much. We’ll get exactly what Charles needs.”

  “Thank you,” Thomas said, reaching up to adjust his hat, then

  his tie, then his collar. Cora felt a flush of something that felt sus-

  piciously like pride. She had the power to fluster him with such a

  simple action as her hand on his arm!

  They walked like that to the town. The cool, dim interior of

  the chemist’s shop was welcome after the heat of the afternoon.

  She gave Mr. Clemens the instructions, and they watched as

  he pulled out powders and liquids, muttering to himself as he

  mixed several packets and a couple of glass vials. In a few minutes

  he had everything together and helped Cora pack it all carefully

  into her basket.

  “How sick is he?” he asked, looking up through his bushy gray

  eyebrows at Thomas.

  Thomas cleared his throat, avoiding Cora’s concerned gaze.

  “Getting better every day.”

  “Hmm.” Mr. Clemens scowled doubtfully, then calculated the

  cost and counted out Thomas’s change.

  Cora fretted over the shift in Thomas’s demeanor. She knew

  Charles was sick — very sick — and Mr. Clemens’s tone made her

  think that it was not a sickness to be recovered from. They would

  do all they could for him, but right now Cora worried more about

  the older brother. It was not easy to be sick, surely, but it was also

  not easy to be powerless to help those you loved.

  “Does he need any of this right now?” she asked. “Because if it

  can wait, I have been meaning to visit Miss Smith’s candy shop.

  I can never go with Minnie because she spends all our pocket

  change, but the candy dishes at the boardinghouse are getting low.

  And,” she added, whispering conspiratorially, “my personal stock-

  pile of sweets is nearly out.”

  “Well, we can’t have that, now, can we?” He offered his elbow

  and she gladly took it. “We could even bring some back for Charles

  and Minnie.”

  “If you insist on being noble and generous, I suppose we

  can share. But most of it will be our secret.” Cora noted that

  Thomas’s face grew even brighter at her choice of pronoun.

  Perhaps Minnie ought to be cautioning me about the wisdom of

  falling for summer boarders.

  “Tell me about New York,” Cora said as they turned the cor-

  ner onto the main street.

  “It’s —” Thomas froze, then, without warning, pulled Cora

  back around the building. “That woman — she’s just outside the

  grocer’s — do you know her?”

  Frowning, Cora peered around the corner. There was a tall

  woman, hair dark and dress elegant and obviously expensive.

  Cora knew every yearlong resident, and recognized most of the

  regular summer visitors, but had never seen this woman before.

  “No, I don’t,” she whispered, still observing. “Why?”

  “I ran into her the other day. And I think . . .” Thomas paused,

  then rushed out the next sentence as though embarrassed by it. “I

  think she followed us here. I heard her, the night before we left,

  speaking with m
y father. And she knew I had a brother when I saw

  her, though we’ve never met.”

  Cora frowned, unable to determine why Thomas seemed so

  spooked to run into an acquaintance of his father’s. Then the

  woman turned and, in an exasperated twist of her shoulders,

  motioned for someone to come closer.

  That was when Cora noticed another woman clinging to the

  shadows of a door stoop, her dress oddly childlike and several years

  out of fashion. Her hair draped across her collar and down to her

  knees in an impossibly long braid.

  The witch.

  “Thomas!” Cora gasped. He was immediately by her side, and

  recognition dawned on his face with the same mixture of surprise

  and horror.

  The elegant woman spoke to Mary, reaching up to tuck a

  strand of hair back in the braid. Then she took Mary’s hand, pat-

  ted it, and pulled Mary alongside her.

  “She’s rather upright for a dead woman,” Thomas said, his

  voice dry. Cora didn’t know whether to be relieved at this proof

  of life, or cross at the witch for pulling such a horrible trick on all

  of them.

  “They know each other,” Cora said. “No one knows the

  witch — Mary, I mean. She never comes out of her house. Why

  would she now?”

  “Let’s follow them.”

  Cora hesitated, but found the pull of answers too strong to

  resist. She felt as though Mary owed her. She’d spent too long

  being terrified of everything she associated with that house and

  that woman, and now to see her walking down the street as

  though everything were normal? Cora wouldn’t have it. This was

  her town.

  They hurried after the women, keeping a discreet distance but

  careful not to lose them. Mary drifted as she walked, constantly

  pulled back to the sidewalk and redirected by the other woman.

  They disappeared around a corner. Turning it, Cora and

  Thomas pulled up short, horrified to be nearly on top of their

  prey. They ducked behind a shrub, peering through the branches.

  Mary and her friend were outside a small, expensive teahouse Cora

  had never visited.

  “There you are,” said a man — Alden! — joining them.

  “Constance, you are as lovely as a dream. And, Mary, pet, how

  wonderful to see you again after all these years.” He leaned for-

  ward and Cora could have sworn Mary hissed at him.

  When all three had disappeared into the teahouse, Cora and

  Thomas briefly whispered about whether to follow them in, but

  decided it couldn’t be done unobserved. They walked quickly back

  in the direction of home.

  “Isn’t that the man staying at the boardinghouse?” Thomas

  asked.

  “It is.” Cora frowned, fighting back a shudder. “I don’t like

  him. I think he was waiting for me the other day, in our hall where

  he had no business to be.”

  “I don’t like any of them. And it can’t be a coincidence that

  they know each other. That woman — Constance — showing up

  here after I heard her threatening my father? Alden staying at the

  boardinghouse with us? And then that crazy witch.”

  “She couldn’t have known we’d be at her house, though,” Cora

  said, trying to puzzle it out.

  “She could have, if Alden watched us leave and then ran ahead

  and told her.”

  “But why would they be watching us?”

  Thomas scowled and kicked at a stone as they left the sidewalk

  for the dirt lane to the house. “My father is wealthy. Very wealthy.

  The way he was talking that night — he was scared. He’s not a

  man who gets scared. Maybe he sent us away so we’d be safe from

  that woman, but now she’s followed us here!”

  Cora’s head spun. “Do you think they want to kidnap you?”

  “Or Charles. Or maybe she’s blackmailing my father. I

  don’t know.”

  “Do you think you ought to leave? If she knows where

  you are . . .”

  “I’ll send a wire to my father. She knows where we live at

  home, too, so going back there wouldn’t solve the problem. I want

  to keep it from Charles, but it’s probably safer if everyone is on

  guard. We’ll talk with them about it. Besides, if Constance hasn’t

  done anything yet, we’re probably safe for the time being. Right?”

  Cora couldn’t find it in herself to agree. Nothing felt safe in

  her town anymore.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  October, 1948

  twelve

  A

  RTHUR, NEEDED TO GET RID OF THOMAS AND CHARLES.

  It was either that, or run away. Arthur could not bear

  the thought of leaving Cora and Minnie behind, nor

  could he devise a way to convince them to run with him.

  But it was very clear to him now that whatever forces

  were converging on this town, Thomas and Charles were

  already tangled. He would not let Minnie and Cora be caught

  as well.

  He paced in his small attic room, a path well worn by his feet.

  Dust motes hung lazily in the golden patches of dawn’s new light,

  eddying and resettling every time he disturbed them.

  The case called to him from its grave. There were lists in there,

  connections his father had made. His mother kept the lists tacked

  up, read them to herself. Mostly it was places but also names, and

  he had a creeping suspicion that if he were to look he would find

  Wolcott among them. But if he opened the case, if he read what

  was in there, who was to say he wouldn’t catch the same obsession

  that had orphaned him?

  No. It was bad luck for Charles and Thomas, and he was sorry

  for them, but he would not give up what he had here to try and

  save them.

  They would have to save themselves.

  With a weary sigh, he pulled the unopened letters he’d stolen

  from Mary’s house out from beneath his pillow. Tapping on the

  aged, thick paper of the envelopes, his fingers hovered, and then

  he tucked them back away. He’d burn them tonight, rid himself of

  this link, and then convince Mrs. Johnson to send Charles and

  Thomas away.

  Arthur’s jaw tightened. It wasn’t because he was jealous of

  losing so much of the girls’ attentions — it wasn’t. He had seen it

  in Cora, but it did not bother him because she seemed genuinely

  happy. Minnie, however. He had seen her, more and more, with

  something desperate but determined in her face as she looked away

  from him and to Charles.

  He couldn’t lose her.

  Them. He couldn’t lose them. He had to protect them. His life

  before them had been controlled by fear, but the day he decided to

  stay, they became the foundation of his world.

  He walked silently down the narrow wooden stairs to the sec-

  ond floor, passing the girls’ room and pausing, as was his habit, to

  listen for their soft sleeping murmurings and make sure that every-

  thing sounded as it should.

  Satisfied, he went to the kitchen, unlocking it with his key.

  He’d eat before anyone else was awake. He could go sleep for a

  couple of hours after, knowing the gir
ls were safe in their morn-

  ing chores. His body ached from holding its rigid sentinel position

  on the peak of the roof yet again, and he felt the sort of bone-

  weary tired he hadn’t since losing his mother.

  All his vigilance haunted him, though. If one of them was

  under the very roof he was watching from, how could he possibly

  see everything he needed to?

  He cut a chunk of yesterday’s bread, smearing some of Mrs.

  Johnson’s strawberry preserves on it. He wanted something

  weightier but was too tired to prepare anything. Turning to go

  back to bed, he nearly ran into Thomas.

  “What are you doing in here?” Thomas asked.

  Arthur raised an eyebrow. “The kitchen is off-limits to guests.

  I am not a guest.”

  Thomas’s shoulder stooped, then he straightened deliberately.

  “Mrs. Johnson told me I was welcome to get whatever I needed,

  whenever I needed it. I’m making tea.”

  The dark circles under Thomas’s eyes told a story of more than

  one sleepless night. With a sympathetic pang, Arthur wondered if

  perhaps Thomas kept his own nightly vigil over his brother.

  “Tea is in the pantry. Here, I’ll show you.” Turning, Arthur

  opened the door and felt for the jars by memory.

  They both heard footsteps outside the kitchen. Without think-

  ing, Arthur grabbed Thomas and pulled him into the pantry,

  closing the door so only a sliver remained for them to see out of.

  “What?” Thomas whispered.

  “No one should be down here yet.” Arthur was suddenly

  embarrassed at this display. His first reaction was always to hide,

  to watch unseen. He had no way to justify it to Thomas. Cringing,

  he planned how to play it off as a sort of game.

  Then the door opened and Alden came in.

  Both boys held their breath, not daring to so much as breathe.

  Alden walked to the wall next to a bright window, where a small

  board Arthur had made hung. It held keys to every room in the

  house, neatly labeled in Cora’s precise handwriting. It had been a

  Christmas gift for Mrs. Johnson, who was forever fumbling for the