The Last Will of Moira Leahy

by Therese Walsh

  “Let it go, Ermanno!”

  He tried to buck me off, grabbed my arms, hollered, swore, called me crazy.

  “I’m crazy? I don’t frighten old ladies with spells and voodoo dolls!” I tightened the grip of my legs around his waist, my arms across his neck.

  “I will hurt you,” he said. “Do not think that I won’t!”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I told him, and meant it.

  We were beside the edge of the bridge when I realized his intent. The steep fall, the pitch-dark waters. I hung on—“No!”—but felt the burn and twist of my flesh as he tried to pry me loose. He yanked again, brutally hard, and one of my arms came free of him. I fluttered there for a second before dropping inelegantly to my feet, and then I leaned my hips against the bridge’s safety wall, panting, and waited for his next move.

  Sri Putra stepped up and stood beside me. “This is very wrong, Ermanno.”

  Ermanno laughed. Ermanno bowed. His hands drew up as they had the day we’d first met, until the keris was over his head.

  It happened in an instant: Ermanno screamed, gripping his hand. The blade was gone. I heard, faintly, the splash of water, and turned to look over the side, my nails scratching at the brick. The keris had fallen into the Tiber River.

  How far would it be swept overnight? How deep was the water? In all likelihood, even in tomorrow’s light, I would never find it. I would never see it again.

  I was vaguely aware of the arguing brothers, Ermanno’s angry red hand, when I decided, called out in my mind:

  Bloo! Moira! Where are you?

  I let go each and every one of the barriers I’d erected to safeguard myself, and almost fell to my knees as the tumble of emotions rolled over me. Grief and dread, desperation and need and love. And then, the voice.

  Come quick. I’m here.

  I BARELY RECALL finding stairs, the endless trek down them. I remember the water, though; the chill of it stabbed my bones like a hundred daggers.

  Come now. Hurry.

  I followed the voice like a compass, let loose my breath, and felt my body sink. My hands found stone.

  Here.

  Where are you?

  Here. Here. You’re close.

  I moved hand over hand along the bottom of the Tiber.

  Now, grab.

  I did. My hand burned. The keris, its sheath gone, sliced deep into my flesh. I tried to pull back, couldn’t.

  It’s time.

  The water became a rushing, feral force. I kicked, suddenly desperate for air, but I couldn’t lift to find the surface.

  Open the door. Do it now.

  The door from my dreams stood, unbelievably, before me. Closed. Submerged. Spitting even more water.

  Use your will and mine. It’s now or never. Open it.

  Now or never. The words flayed my reservations.

  I reached out, felt the handle, grasped, turned. The door was too heavy.

  Pull. Pull hard.

  I felt it give, just a little at first. And then roiling waves crashed out at me as it flew open. I would die.

  Don’t struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.

  I knew then I wasn’t crazy. Who but Moira would quote Jane Eyre at such a moment?

  Breathe. Breathe deep and listen.

  My lungs, desperate and without options, sucked in the seething water. The force whirled inside of me, but soon I found I could exhale, inhale, as if I were a fish with gills.

  It’s not your fault, Maeve. It’s not your fault.

  The keris disappeared from my hand just as I felt it inside my chest—hot, slicing. I thrashed, tried to pull away.

  Stop. This won’t hurt you, and I’m not here to hurt you. I don’t have much time, so listen. Listen.

  I felt myself nod.

  I don’t blame you for what happened, Maeve. Believe that. You’d just learned I was meeting with Ian. You were worried about me and what I’d been doing, so you went to see him. That was good and right.

  No, it wasn’t good. It wasn’t right. I wanted to hurt you.

  No, you wanted to know the truth, and you deserved to know the truth.

  Another tug, another slash of heat, and I felt the heavy ache of extension, like a frozen joint pried open.

  I’d stolen your identity, your light. I deceived you. Another rip. I deceived Mom and Dad. I deceived Ian. I deceived myself.

  I shouldn’t have blocked you.

  I blocked you first. We both suffered.

  I shouldn’t have opened to you the way I did later. I shouldn’t have tried to hurt you like that or make you feel—

  I heard her weep.

  I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry you were damaged that night, in so many ways. I’m sorry my lies cost you so much life.

  Me? Who cares about me? It cost you everything. At least I’m here. I’m okay. You’re in some empty, in-between place. You need to go, Moira, move on. Find peace.

  I care, Maeve, and you’re not okay, you’re not. Yes, you’re good at what you do—great even—but you’ve let go too much. Take yourself back. Stop thinking of your soul’s desires as guilty pleasures. They’re who you are! So keep your language, but take your music. Take Castine. Take avventura. Take Noel. I like him, by the way, and you’re right—he could’ve been like someone out of Jane Eyre, but he’s much more stable than poor Mr. Rochester.

  I laughed through my tears.

  I need you to forgive me, Maeve.

  I forgive you. God, Moira, of course.

  No, I need you to forgive me by letting go. And forgiving yourself. And forgiving Ian. And by helping him to forgive me, too. Please.

  Moira.

  Please.

  Each word stripped something away, brought a new expansion and a deeper, cleaner breath.

  I love you, Maeve, and I want you to live.

  I tried not to buckle under the awesome sense of decompression as something inside me, invisible bindings, fell away and melted into a cocooning ocean along with my tears.

  Why did this feel like grief?

  Because you’re letting go.

  Something ethereal brushed my hand and the swirling slowed, the water cleared. Moira drifted there, like a water angel with a billowing ruby halo, her hand over mine and eyes locked with mine in the warm womb of the strange sea. I stared at first, then touched her face. Real. Solid. My sister.

  Oh, Moira, I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much.

  I’ve missed you. Never block me, not ever again.

  I’m so sorry about the music—

  Never be sorry about your music.

  Your music, Moira. Yours. I’m sorry you were so unhappy. I wish I’d understood. I could’ve helped. I should’ve realized.

  Stop, Maeve. Let’s not waste any more time with regrets.

  We swam close and held tight to one another, the sense of wonder just as keen and intense as it’d ever been. Since before we were born. You’re so beautiful, I thought, feeling her light within all parts of me.

  A strained look crossed my sister’s face when we stopped our dance—a look both sad and triumphant.

  Remember, Maeve, if you owe me anything, it’s a full life. Music and love and avventura. Don’t neglect those things ever again. Don’t punish yourself anymore. Just move on. I’m here. I’ll always be.

  She kissed my mouth.

  I can fly now. I can fly.

  I felt her threadbare spirit lighten further as my lungs reawakened to a burn. Wait, I thought. Her face grew haunted as she shook her head. And then she kissed me again.

  You’re free.

  Her fingers slipped away. My body lifted through the water.

  No! I love you! Don’t go!

  Hands wedged in my armpits, dragged at me. My head breached the surface of the Tiber. I took a startled gasp. “Not yet, not yet. Wait!”

  The keris was in my hand.

  I tried to go back. There was so much to say. How could she go now when there
was still so much to say? But whoever pulled at me was stronger than I was, and as soon as I heard the voice I recognized Sri Putra.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I continued to struggle as he towed my body to the edge, up onto the land.

  “You cannot go back,” he said as I leaned against the muddy earth and coughed river droplets.

  “It was Moira,” I managed to say. “She’s the hantu.”

  “Do you need a doctor? You were down for a long time, and you are cut,” he said. Blood seeped from my hand, dripped onto the soil. Blood flowed from him as well, from a cut near his eye, a gash in his check.

  “What did he do to you?”

  “It is no matter,” the empu said. “It is over now. Ermanno will not bother you again. He followed you into the waters and has seen truth.”

  “He’s seen what? My sister? Then he knows that the keris holds power. He won’t quit now, he never will.” I held more tightly to the blade.

  “It is over,” he repeated. “Ermanno was attracted to the promise of power in your keris. He was attracted because of the hantu. He saw the hantu as true magic.”

  “But nothing has—” It is over. It is over. Was. Was. Saw. Past tense. Something had happened, snapped inside me, gone … empty. I focused on the sense for a moment, tried to understand it.

  “Oh, no.” Found my feet. “No, no. I’ve got to go.”

  I wanted to run through the streets, but I could barely stand. Within minutes, the empu found me a cab.

  “Be well,” he said. “Be strong.”

  My eyes stayed on him even after he shut the door, but my words were for the cabdriver. “Avanti! Scappi! Scappi! Ancora, ancora, ancora di piú!” I said. “Fly!”

  “PICK UP. SOMEONE, come on, pick up!” I held the receiver hard against my ear—three rings, four, six, eight. “Oh, God!” I hung up the phone and went through the sequence again, entered codes, waited. “Please, hurry.”

  “Just one moment,” said the crisp voice of a male operator.

  Several minutes later, the line connected. One ring, two.

  “Moira Leahy’s room,” I said to the receptionist when she picked up. “Hurry, please.”

  The phone rang at the station near my sister’s room.

  “Judy speaking,” said a voice.

  “Moira Leahy,” I said. “I need to know if she’s all right.”

  “Are you family, ma’am?”

  “I’m her sister, her twin.”

  “Just a moment,” she said, and put me on hold.

  “Come on!” I shouted.

  Torturous minutes later, she returned to the line. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you anything at this time.”

  “What does that mean? Are my parents there? Is my mother? Please, can I speak to one of them if they’re there?”

  “Can you call back in a little while?”

  “Please, isn’t there a nurse I can speak with?”

  “Not at this time. I’m sorry. Please call back.”

  “Can you just look—” I said as the line went dead. I sat, frozen, on my bed as my hand bled onto the sheets. The call came an hour later, almost to the minute. “I’m sorry, Mayfly,” my father said. “So sorry, sweetheart.” But I already knew. The keris had grown cold. Yet the bloodline remained.

  “YOU SHOULD SEE a doctor.”

  “I have to get home, Giovanni,” I said as he tucked the end of a long white strip of gauze around my injured hand. We stood in a room off the hotel’s kitchen, full of buckets, a neat desk, and a large first-aid kit.

  “It will scar. The cuts, they are—”

  “Yes, deep. I don’t care.” I stood. “My flight’s in five hours. I can’t take time right now for anything but getting to the airport. I won’t miss my plane.”

  “You will not miss it,” he said, his lips pressed in a line. “I will take you there myself.”

  “Believe me, Hercules won’t fit on your bike.” His eyebrows did their funny dance, and it hit me how much I’d miss him. “You’ll tell Noel when he calls that I had to go home to Maine, not New York?”

  “Sì, I will do that if you promise to come back. I will throw a coin in the Trevi Fountain for you.” He pulled a yellow box from one of the wire shelves behind him and handed it to me.

  “Another panettone?”

  “They riprodursi,” he said, “like bunnies.”

  I left my Bugs Bunny sweatshirt on the bed in my room with his name on it. Somehow I thought he’d appreciate it. I knew where I’d find another one.

  A Will Reborn

  MEAVE

  YOU CAN TRY TO ESCAPE IT, BUT THE TIDE ALWAYS CATCHES YOU, IN THE END.

  —ALVILDA

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  GHOSTS OF CASTINE

  It had been years since I’d seen the house I grew up in, or a tall elm’s bark dusted in snow. Evidence of the most recent nor’easter swept across the walk. I would go outside later that afternoon and clear it—to be helpful, to give myself something to do, to allow the shutdown of my mind. Mrs. Bronya peered out at me from a window as I emerged from my rental car. She raised a hand, and I read her meaning even from a distance: I’m sorry for your loss.

  Inside, I set down my bags, pulled off my boots and left them on the rug, hung my coat in the closet. I stood in the entry for a minute with my eyes closed and listened to the quiet, breathed in the scent of home—indescribable and familiar and missed more than I’d realized.

  I found my father in the living room asleep on the couch with Sparky, who gave a single bark when she saw me, then put her head back by my father’s side.

  “Maeve.” He rubbed at his eyes. “It is you.”

  “Of course it’s me, Daddy.” I knelt beside him on the rug and grasped his hand. “Are you all right?”

  “Just tired.” He looked bone-weary, world-worn.

  “You should sleep then,” I said. “We’ll talk later.”

  I left to find my mother. Not in the kitchen or the laundry room. I walked upstairs. Not in Poppy’s room, which had been turned into a tidy office. My mother sat in her bedroom, in the rocking chair beside the window. She didn’t turn when I called her name, just stared out at the snow. I sat on the edge of her bed for twenty minutes at least, then made my way to my own room, the room I’d shared with my sister.

  It looked just as I remembered it, only neater. I put the bag on my bed and pulled out the keris. And then I walked to my sister’s bed and lay the blade atop her quilt.

  “I don’t ever think I said—” The words felt thick in my throat. “Thank you.”

  I lay myself down beside the keris, felt the cool cotton beneath my cheek, and slept without dreams.

  THE SERVICE FOR Moira was simple, held right at the funeral home, and with most of Castine in attendance. My mother looked as though she would fall down at any minute, her face covered in black like an old-world widow, her frame slight. My father stood by her side and held her elbow.

  A hand found my own.

  “Sweetie,” Kit said, beside me. “I’m so sorry.”

  I nodded, looking at my sister’s flaccid face as the minister spoke words I could not hear. Yesterday I’d lined her casket in music—sheets from her piano bench, favorite tapes, and the box I’d purchased at the auction for the little girl. My mother had watched in silence. She’d yet to speak to me.

  My breath came sharp as the minister closed the casket, and it took a lot of will not to push him aside, lift the lid again, and shake Moira by her shoulders, to yell, “Okay now, enough, it’s time to wake up!”

  I stood there with Kit and waited until my parents pulled away from the flower-covered box. Finally, I stepped up myself, put my hand atop the cold wood and tried to say good-bye.

  Wisest angel, I said in my mind, envisioning Moira’s face as I’d last seen it, her hair billowing out behind her. I’m glad you’re free of your purgatory. I hope that you’re happy. I imagined her smile. But we made an oath. Don’t think I will ever, ever for
get it.

  I put a bloodred rose atop her coffin.

  “I’ll be with you for always.”

  “WHAT CAN I do?” Kit stood beside me as others paid their respects, filtered away from the ceremony.

  “Nothing,” I said. “There aren’t pills or tests for this.”

  She scanned my face. “There are medications,” she said. “Things you can take short term to help you over the hump.”

  “Kit, I don’t need drugs.”

  She sighed. “There’s a doctor in Bangor I think you should see. He’s supposed to be very good.”

  Right. About the sights and sounds, the waking dreams, the voice in my head. All Moira’s doing. Because I wouldn’t listen and wouldn’t remember and wouldn’t let go. Because I’d landed us both in purgatory.

  “I already made the appointment,” she admitted.

  “All right, Kit, but I think everything will be okay now. I really do.”

  “But you’ll see the doctor?”

  “I’ll see the doctor.”

  She studied me. “I talked to Noel yesterday.”

  “Oh.” I clasped my hands together. “Did he seem all right? I know he wanted to be here, but I just couldn’t …”

  “He’s worried about you. Why didn’t you let him come? You need support right now. Don’t block him out.”

  Block. No. I didn’t mean to block him. I’d learned my lesson about that.

  “He’s still in Wareham with his mother,” I said. “And I just can’t handle everything at once. I need time with my parents alone and to fall apart if I’m going to.”

  “You should,” she said, her tone vehement. “Let it all out. Fall a-frickin-part already. Don’t hold things in or you really will need drugs.”

  “Kit? Mom wants to know if you’ll stay for dinner.”

  My spine straightened at the voice, both familiar and foreign to my ears. Ian Bronya stood right behind me.

  “I’ll be there,” she told him, then turned to me. “Unless you need me, Maeve. I’m happy to—”

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. “We certainly have enough to eat.” Lobster pies claimed every square inch of our freezer.

  “Can I have a minute?” Ian asked.

  I took a step away from them, but Kit grasped my arm, leaned in, and whispered, “No, Maeve, he wants to talk to you. He wants to pay his respects.”