The Breathless

by Tara Goedjen

  “I’ll bring you up some supper later,” she said. “And I…” She stopped, though she wanted to say I won’t mention the book again. Ever.

  He settled back against the pillows. His white eyebrows shaded his lids, and his face was slack, exhausted. She’d risked making him sick again, triggering another stroke.

  Mae glanced toward the shelf. The green book was too far up to see. Good. She pretended to tidy her granddad’s room until she saw the slow rise and fall of his ribs, his face relaxed now, his eyes shut. Then she walked quietly to the shelf. On her tiptoes, she pulled out the book and shoved it into her bag, ignoring the stab of guilt that cut through her. She made sure he was still sleeping and then shut the attic door and ran down the narrow steps, sneaking in behind Elle in the kitchen. She sat at the dinner table and double-checked that the canvas bag was latched.

  “Trying to set us on fire?”

  Mae looked up to see her twin towering over her. Heat from the old stove drifted out as Elle batted away tendrils of smoke. After everything that had happened, she’d forgotten to take the lasagna out.

  “You look terrible,” Elle said. It was the same thing she always said whenever Mae wore the red sweatshirt. “You okay?”

  She wasn’t, actually, but she couldn’t explain why without mentioning the book. “Just thinking.”

  Elle did a little twirl, her black dress and auburn hair fanning out in unison. “Well, think about coming out with me later,” she said, nudging Mae’s shoulder.

  People didn’t really talk through words—it was all in the gestures, in the eyes. And Elle’s eyes were forceful, like the brightness of her hair. Everything about her was a force, especially the way she stomped around Blue Gate, pulling back curtains, cleaning away the dust, pretending things weren’t falling apart.

  “You know who invited us to a party tonight? Lance Childers. He’s back from his exchange,” Elle went on. She was grinning as if nothing had happened, like she wasn’t bothered by the fact that Lance had been the one to find Ro’s body last year.

  “Let me guess,” Elle said. “You’d rather stay home in your sweatshirt and paint.”

  “Something like that.” Mae set her bag on the chair beside her. She’d start reading again later, find out what the book had meant to Ro and why it had upset her granddad so much.

  Elle yanked on her sleeve and whispered, “Seniors will be there,” before she turned and shouted, “Food’s getting cold, Dad!”

  Mae glanced past the kitchen table to the archway. Sonny was hunched over his desk in the next room, his back curved like a slab of stone. If she ever tried to paint him, he’d look the same in every portrait: hardened and barren, almost like the backdrop of a desert. “Give me a minute,” he said.

  “I’m hungry and it’s never a minute,” Elle snapped, heading toward him.

  Mae could sense her sister was after a rise, which meant she had some time. Her fingers itched to hold the book again, and she slid it out of her bag, hiding it under the table. Her heart skipped a beat as she fumbled to untie the ribbon, stealing another look at her dad’s back and Elle’s flashing hair as they yelled at each other in the alcove.

  The ribbon fell away and Mae opened the book, squinting at the writing. After the odd epigraph the ink grew thick, spanning the paper edge to edge. She skimmed a couple of pages and kept going. The book was written in various handwritings, as if all of its owners had made entries in it over the years. Her fingers started tingling as she turned the pages, faster and faster. Maybe Ro had written in it too. Maybe she’d left some clue about what had led to her death.

  Mae clutched the cover tighter. This was it—what she’d been waiting for. Something to go on besides Lance’s dad telling them that the police were doing everything they could. Finding the book in her sister’s room had been a good thing, even though looking at it felt wrong, like she was spying on Ro, invading the space she somehow still filled.

  Mae glanced over at Elle and her dad in the alcove and then flipped to the end. On the last page was a dark thumbprint in the bottom corner. This was what Ro had tried to show her before. This was what she’d turned away from, the smell of red velvet cake thick in the air.

  Mae’s mouth tasted sickly sweet as she stumbled over the strange heading—A Ritual for a Raising—and the even stranger words that followed. They were written in sloppy cursive, almost like the writer had been in a hurry.

  Please follow carefully:

  Harbor love in your heart,

  while in your hand

  hold the loved one’s belongings.

  Then begin the offerings.

  For death feeds life

  as blood feeds the ritual,

  and little creatures show the way.

  A cat for nine

  The page ended there. It seemed unfinished, like there should be more, but there wasn’t anything else, and the back cover was missing completely. She reread the heading again—A Ritual for a Raising—and still had no idea what it meant. Why had Ro wanted to show her this so long ago? Why had she never mentioned it again, keeping it to herself instead? It was like a riddle Mae couldn’t quite grasp, and the dark thumbprint made her feel dizzy—there was something odd about it. The entire book was odd, but it had been Ro’s, and she’d been devoted to it. She went back a page, trying to make sense of things. Before the raising ritual was a list, labeled Signs of the Raised—the writing underneath it nonsensical—and on the page before that was the heading Putting to Rest the Raised, which was followed by some sort of prayer.

  “What’s that?”

  Mae flipped the cover shut so fast she felt the sting of a paper cut. A bright bead of blood oozed out of her finger as she slipped the book into her bag.

  “Textbook. Summer reading,” she said.

  Elle made a gagging face and headed to the counter, then took a bite of the burned lasagna straight from the pan. Her eyes went to the alcove. “Dad,” she called. “Soooonny. It’s officially cold now. Congratulations.”

  Sonny slid back the chair at his desk, and the newspaper clippings around him fluttered as he stood. “Lord-we-thank-you-for-this-food-Amen,” he said, looming over the kitchen table before sitting down. “Where’s your grandpa?”

  Mae felt queasy. She thought she’d shoved his panic behind the white door in her head, but now it was all she could think of. “Resting,” she said. “I’ll bring him up a plate later.”

  Sonny nodded and then looked back and forth between them. “If you girls are going out again tonight, you tell me—”

  “Where, who with, and when we’ll be home,” Elle finished, taking a big sip of orange juice. She’d put on too much red lipstick and it left a ring on the glass. “We know already.”

  “So you know not to be going out alone.” It was his new rule, ever since last year. He glared at her, his long hair messy under his cap, his ponytail in a knot.

  “I’m not,” Elle said. “Mae’s coming. Aren’t you, Mae?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Mae gulped down her glass of water and clenched her bag strap, nervous about her lying face. Her dad narrowed his brown eyes at her but didn’t say anything.

  “Well, that’s settled.” Elle began serving up her plate first. “You know what? I was thinking about my bed-and-breakfast idea—”

  “Not this again,” he said, and Mae pulled a pencil from her bag and started drawing on her napkin with her left hand while she ate with her right. She was halfway done with her food by the time Sonny picked up his fork.

  “We distinguish ourselves with the menu,” Elle said. “Make it traditional Southern fare, have stories about Blue Gate on the place mats. Doesn’t that sound good?”

  “Don’t matter what it sounds like,” Sonny said. “We’re selling.”

  Mae gripped her pencil tighter. He’d been talking about moving all year, and she was dreading it. “It’s really not a bad idea,” she said, and Elle threw her a grateful look. “Might get some money flowing in if it’s done right.”

 
Sonny slammed the table near Mae’s plate. “I told you it doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “But Blue Gate’s perfect for it.” Elle waved her fork in the air, pointing at the bay windows that opened over the field and the surrounding woods. “It’s huge, and it’s practically a historic landmark. People like that sort of thing.”

  “Mae, quit drawing,” Sonny snapped. “We’re having supper together.”

  Mae dropped her pencil onto the table, glad Elle was still talking. The sketch of an eye stared back at her from her napkin.

  “I’ll clean up the house in the next few weeks before school starts and you’ll see what I mean,” Elle said, nodding to herself, convinced she was right. “It’s about time we cleared some of this old stuff out anyway.”

  Their dad’s shoulders tensed and Mae held her breath, but he only looked away. He would either stay quiet like this or he’d lose it. In the past year she’d seen dishes shatter against the wall; she’d seen him spend all day firing his rifle in the yard, or empty a fifth of whiskey in a single afternoon. Gone was the dad who used to take them out on the sailboat as kids, letting them reel in every fish he caught.

  “A bed and breakfast would give you something to do,” Elle went on. “It’s called work.”

  “I’ve got things to do,” Sonny grunted. “I’m heading over to the wharf.”

  A flicker of hope hit Mae’s chest. “You’re going fishing?”

  “Nope. I’ve got a lead.”

  Mae stared down at her plate until it blurred. She knew exactly who used to work at the wharf, and her dad didn’t need to be going there with a gun. “Did someone see him?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Plenty of pieces of shit around these days. Hard to tell them apart.”

  She wanted to know what had happened to Ro as much as he did, but Sonny would skip judge and jury. “Are you looking into anyone else?”

  “Can we just stop talking about it?” Elle asked, her voice rising. “I’m sorry I brought it up. All I meant was that the house needs cleaning.”

  A knock came from the front door. Mae grabbed her bag and got to her feet, glad for an excuse to leave the table. Her dad called out behind her to check who was there, but she already knew. The old chandelier clinked overhead as she opened the heavy door.

  “Took you long enough,” Fern said, her chubby arms folded across her T-shirt.

  “Could say the same about you.” Mae stepped aside and swung the door open wider for the eight-year-old. Fern’s mom worked the night shift as a nurse and slept during the day, so she was free to roam. “The rain keep you away? Your stomach usually brings you over earlier.”

  “It’s my legs that bring me over, Mae,” Fern said, ducking past her. “And it stinks in here,” she added, skipping down the hall until she was swallowed up by shadows.

  Mae closed the door behind her and locked it. Then—finally alone—she couldn’t help herself. She felt in her bag for the book, its spongy leather cover.

  Prickles flashed down her spine as Ro’s stories of their family came flooding back. How they’d done cruel, cruel things. Mae felt a rush of vertigo—maybe because the foyer was so high, shooting above her like the very sky itself, or maybe because of the portraits that she could never escape in the house. Rows and rows of old paintings hung along the staircase and through the hall. The Coles were staring down at her, all those pale blue eyes that seemed to say We know what you have, what you’re hiding.

  The best portraits could talk to you without words. They could tell you exactly what they thought of you, send a hex through their gazes.

  “Mae?” her sister called, startling her.

  She shoved the book away and followed the sound of Elle’s voice to the kitchen. Fern was at the table, her legs swinging from her seat, and Sonny had escaped to the alcove, the open archway between them.

  “If I eat my greens, will I be as tall as you when I’m sixteen?” Fern asked Elle. “I’m already just about taller than Mae.” She blew air through her lips. “How come you’re twins but you don’t look the same? She’s got dirty-blond hair and you’re a ginger.”

  “I like my hair,” Elle said.

  “We’re fraternal twins,” Mae added absently, trying not to think of the book until she was alone.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “What did I tell you before when you asked?”

  Fern shrugged, a smirk on her face. She knew Mae would explain anyway, and Mae knew she was right. Facts were easy to talk about. It was personal stuff that was harder. Like What do you think happened to Ro? And How do you feel about her being gone? She shoved those questions behind the black door in her mind and double-bolted it.

  “It’s when two separate eggs are fertilized by different sperm, so we’re not identical.”

  “Why, thanks for that, Mae,” Elle said, stacking the last of the dishes in the sink. “I’m glad I’m not still eating.”

  “Anyway,” Fern went on, “Lance told me neither of you are as pretty as your sister.”

  Elle turned the faucet off. “Did he say we were pretty?”

  “Tell your cousin not to talk about her,” Mae said, defensiveness rising.

  “Lance don’t listen to me,” Fern said. “He don’t listen to nobody. And he’s always talking about Ro, now that he’s back.” Fern was chewing on one of her curls, which had somehow ended up in her mouth with the lasagna. “You know what else he said?”

  “What?” Elle asked.

  “I can’t tell you.” Fern ran her finger and thumb along her lips, zipping them. “It’s a secret.”

  Mae wanted her to come clean, but acting interested was what she was after. Fern liked games, just like Ro had. Her sister once drenched herself with fake blood on the porch and scared them into thinking she was dying, and she’d also pretended to choke at a restaurant, bowing to her openmouthed audience when she was done. Every trick was usually morbid, and all of them ended with her laughter.

  “What sort of secret, Fern?” Elle asked, playing right into her hands. Then she turned, her face bunched up as smoke seeped out from the alcove. “Not inside!” she yelled.

  Sonny had lit a cigarette and was sifting through the newspaper clippings on his desk, circling a page with red pen. When he saw them looking at him, he swooped forward and shoved the clippings under his arm. A photograph flitted down behind him as he stood.

  “Gotta go,” he said. “Meeting the boys.”

  “Take this child home on your way,” Elle told him.

  “I’m not a child,” Fern said. “I’m eight.”

  Mae’s curiosity got the better of her, and her mouth opened before she could stop it. “What secret?”

  Fern put her finger to her lips with a “Shh,” and Elle rolled her eyes and marched into the foyer, heading upstairs.

  “If you’re coming, come on.” Sonny left the kitchen with Fern following behind, leaving Mae alone. When the front door slammed shut, she glanced at the empty hallway and then picked up the photo that had fallen to the floor. It was lying facedown, Ro’s handwriting scrawled on the back.

  R.C. & C.S.

  She turned it onto its glossy side, and one look was enough to send her running to the door, barging out to the porch and into the drizzling rain, her Cons slipping on the steps. But the sandy driveway was empty; wet tire tracks disappeared down the road. Her dad’s faded blue truck, with his hunting gear and gun rack, was gone. There was only the old fountain with the twin gargoyles and the two beech trees ringed with rocks. One big tree for her mother, a younger one for Ro.

  Her throat seized, and she looked down at her hands. Her fingertips were dark again with something black, ash or grease maybe. She wiped them on her shorts and thought about calling Sonny, warning him not to do anything he’d regret, but his cell phone wouldn’t have reception, and he wouldn’t listen to her anyway.

  Sliding the picture into her pocket, she felt the new bottle of paint she’d been meaning to put away, and then something soft and bendy. She pul
led it out. It was her granddad’s writing pad—she must have accidentally picked it up earlier. The only words on the page were shakily written.

  Must know

  And then, below that, another word in capital letters.

  DANGEROUS

  Mae took in a sharp breath and balled the top sheet in her fist. She felt trembly, like a chord that had been plucked. Dangerous. She almost choked on it. Dangerous. It was an anxious word, slammed her right in the ribs. If her granddad could still speak, maybe he would have told her more about the book—about why it was so important to Ro—but she couldn’t risk asking him now.

  Mae turned around and looked up—high, high, high along the cracked wall of the house. All the way to the attic window, where she could just make out a face through the glass. Granddad?

  He was peering down at her, watching. She shivered, suddenly feeling cold.

  Strange. For a moment he’d looked like someone else. Someone much, much younger.

  THE PAIN BETWEEN CAGE’S TEMPLES flared, and he shut his eyes against it. When he opened them, his vision was blurry. After a moment it slowly sharpened, so that the house he was facing seemed to rise out of the trees themselves. Its high mansard roof slanted among the leaves, and its painted brick that looked more bluish than white spilled into the woods.

  He faltered, his boots heavy on the gravel all of a sudden. He stared up at Blue Gate, trying to see into her bedroom, and then glimpsed someone at one of the upper windows. It was a huge house, the kind that couldn’t be taken in with just one glance. If a house could be lanky, this one was. On the outside, it was too tall, had too many pillars on the wraparound porch, and its spire was crooked. Inside, the rooms were strangely shaped, full of unexpected corners from the attic to the basement. Ro loved it, but to him Blue Gate had always felt…off. His mother would say he was being superstitious like his dad, but he couldn’t help how he felt. Something was wrong with the place, even if he couldn’t say what it was.