The Heartreader's Secret

by Kate McinTyre

  “Speaking of horses….”

  Olivia twisted to look at him archly. “This is where you bring up Miss Albany’s concerns about Roger Greene?”

  Chris winced and flushed, once again recalling that Olivia had been listening to that entire damned conversation. “Something like,” he admitted ruefully.

  Olivia turned back to the trail and shook her head. “I will admit, it’s… unfortunate.” She sighed. “But then, what choice do we have? Do we tell Miss Greene—and your sister—that our pretence of being here is not only false but doctored? If either of them repeats that to anyone else, we could land Maris squarely in prison, if we don’t wind up there ourselves. No offence meant to either of them, but I truly don’t want my fate entrusted to two teenaged girls.”

  It was hard to argue with that line of logic. Chris lowered his head. “It just seems…” He growled quietly. “We’re giving her false hope.”

  Olivia’s voice came back to him hard with conviction. “Be that as it may, Miss Greene and Miss Buckley were already asking questions, Christopher. Our presence didn’t raise them. When this is over, we can give her the truth. A truth that’s been thoroughly investigated. A truth she never has to wonder about. That has value, too. Don’t you think?”

  Chris paused. He had never really thought of… and yet, there was something to be said for the utter finality of knowing Fernand had taken his own life. He no longer laid awake at night, wondering if Olivia had missed something if only she could have looked a little bit closer.

  There was peace in knowledge. Even in the darkest kind of it.

  “Perhaps,” he admitted.

  In the back of his head, he’d concluded that they were most likely going to the mill or the cidery. So he was surprised once again when Olivia turned Alouette down a path that headed under the trees, into the forest. Hobby followed obligingly.

  “Where are we headed?” he asked. “Something else to investigate?”

  Olivia shook her head. She looked straight ahead and her lips pursed. “I’m not sure how long we’ll be here, Christopher. With any luck, Maris will find something in those notes, we’ll make sense of where Em’s gone, everything will be a silly overreaction, we can tell Mabelle that her father most certainly did hang himself, and we’ll be on a train home before lunchtime.

  “But if Mother Deorwynn should choose to frown and throw feces at us instead… well, it could be a while, that’s all I’m saying. And my behaviour last night was absolutely bloody deplorable, and who knows if I’ll be able to keep my damned head, and it all… don’t you think it all needs some context?”

  She paused, but he didn’t know how to respond. Because yes. It certainly had been. But he wouldn’t say it, and he didn’t know what she meant by ‘context.’

  The path narrowed. Olivia easily ducked under a low-hanging branch covered with long pine needles. Chris had to push it to one side to avoid getting slapped in the face. The needles were sticky with sap, and he self-consciously wiped his fingers on Hobby’s glossy brown coat. His mount wuffed.

  “I’m sure we won’t be here all that long,” Chris finally said, because she was clearly waiting for him to say something.

  Olivia heaved a great, dramatic sigh. “You never make it easy for me, do you, Christopher? Listen. If you have to sit through my mother and I acting the way we do, then you deserve…” She waved a hand and growled something under her breath. “I’m offering you the keys to the bloody kingdom, here. Do you understand?”

  No. Or rather, maybe, but….

  “Olivia,” he said, gently. “You… don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to. You know that, right?”

  “Do I? Mnn. Maybe you’re right. But maybe you’re wrong, too. Isn’t it possible that you are? After all, I told you we were friends, didn’t I? I don’t say such a thing lightly, so logically it has to mean something. Doesn’t friendship predicate some manner of honesty? Disclosure? Context?”

  That word again. Chris wanted to ride up beside her, see her face, but the path was too narrow. Hobby picked up his feet high to avoid roots and other obstacles. Her back to him was a cipher he couldn’t read a thing from. He wished he could somehow turn his heartwriting sideways, file one end down, and use it backwards to read her the way that his mother could have, or Rachel. It would all be so much easier if he could ever understand what she was feeling.

  He sifted through possible responses like he was doing hard research in the Lowry library, feeling increasingly frazzled by every moment of silence, until Olivia pulled Alouette to a halt and slipped down out of the saddle. She tied her mount’s reins around a thick-looking branch.

  Chris glanced about. The rising sun filtering through the trees was bright enough to see by, which made it quite clear that there was nothing to see. “Ah,” he said and cleared his throat. “I, ah. Where are we, exactly?”

  Olivia turned and gave him a tight little smile. Her icy eyes glimmered, but he couldn’t read them. “You’d have made a damned sorry playmate, Christopher Buckley.” She brushed aside the fanned, autumn-coloured leaves of a young oak sapling, revealing an overgrown path that glowed with clear sunlight. “Come on, now. Jump down and leave Hobby be. He hasn’t got enough will to wander off on his own, not while Alouette is tethered.” With that, she disappeared down the path, and the branches snapped back again, effectively hiding her from view.

  Cursing under his breath, Chris managed to untangle his feet from the stirrups and hit the ground with some measure of grace. He pushed through the branches, following Olivia.

  Motes floated through the air and birdsong filled the trees. Golden rays of early morning sun hit the path like spotlights. Pollen and dust and bugs were illuminated sharply in the angled beams. The world was painted with all the shades of gold and honey. There was no sign of Olivia, but there was really only one way she could have gone.

  He left fallen leaves crushed in his wake. The air was redolent with scents he’d never experienced before—fresh, dry nature smells that even his city upbringing could immediately identify as autumn. The path was heavy with roots and saplings; it hadn’t been used for some time. He picked his way through carefully, but he couldn’t keep his eyes on his feet. This place was… beautiful.

  He emerged from the path into a clearing. The buttery yellow sun shone down, throwing up a glare that momentarily blinded him. When he blinked away the sunspots in his eyes, he saw the light was reflected off the water of a large pool. Babbling, crystal water-sounds that reminded him of Rosemary playing with undines told him that it was spring-fed. Moss and shrubs grew through the cracks in the rocks cupping the basin. Dragonflies darted along its surface. Olivia—

  “Ah!” Chris gasped, cheeks flaming, and turned away in one quick motion. The image of her turned away from him, blouse falling to the ground, her bare back aglow with morning sun, stayed fixed in his mind even as he closed his eyes tightly. “O—Olivia!” he gasped, strangled. “I—you—we—what are you doing?”

  The spell shattered when she snorted and ugly-laughed. “Not that,” she retorted, and he was as relieved as he was embarrassed by the clear rejection in her voice. “Not if you bloody well paid me, Christopher, really! I prefer my men somewhat more rakish and considerably less adorable.”

  “What was I supposed to think?” Chris demanded.

  “That I’m about to go swimming?” she responded mildly, and he flushed even deeper.

  “Well, I…” He shook his head. Shoved everything that had just happened into a cupboard, slammed and locked a door, and let out a deep breath. “That water is almost definitely freezing,” he said. It came out like an accusation, and she laughed delightedly.

  He heard fabric moving. Gods. Was she stripping off her trousers? Leaving it all in a pile? Was she nude behind him? He couldn’t help but long to look, despite everything. Not if you bloody well paid me, indeed. They were certainly in accord there. And yet, he’d just seen more female flesh than he’d glimpsed in his entire lifetime, and there
was a siren call for more. It felt less like desire and more like a compulsion, some animal part of his brain grabbing the reins.

  “You shouldn’t,” he said. He steadfastly looked straight ahead at an ancient, massive oak growing straight up out of the rock basin, which was littered with acorns and leaves. The tree must have taken its nourishment from the spring and the pool, its roots threading deep beneath, or even through, the rock. “You’ll catch your death, Olivia. Do you want to be out here in the country, a thousand miles from a decent lifeknitter, when you get pneumonia?”

  “I once swam here on bloody Solstice Eve, Christopher. Please. Try not to play nursemaid? It’s a very unpleasant look for you.”

  There was something carved into the tree, he realized. He focused in on it. The bark had grown back up around the cuts, so it was hard to make out.

  He winced when he heard the splash of Olivia’s body breaking the water. A second splash followed by Olivia howling had him turning around instinctively. He was struck by her bare shoulders, her neck, her face, all beaded with water. She was laughing hysterically and whooping and screaming all at once, her hair dripping water and hanging, soaked already, around her shoulders.

  He whipped his back to her again. “Sorry,” he gasped.

  “No, it’s fine. You can’t see anything in this light. I hardly want to talk to your back this whole time.”

  He swallowed hard but turned back. She was right. The glare of sunlight on the water blocked the view of everything below her shoulders. He’d certainly seen those before, what with her preference for daring cuts. Still, the knowledge that she wore nothing else was….

  Not sexual, actually.

  Just….

  Intimate.

  She was comfortable with him. That’s what this was. That’s what she was trying to say. Olivia Faraday donned her many fashions like armour, but now it was just the two of them.

  She met his eyes and giggled delightedly. “You should come in,” she called.

  He flinched just considering it. “Oh Gods, no,” he said firmly. “Absolutely not. You’re mad. Your lips are already blue! If you die, I’m not taking care of the cats, Olivia. I swear, I’d be terrible at it. I wouldn’t bloody well know what to do with Tremaine. He’s always climbing people!”

  She splashed at him, and he yelped and jumped back. The water came nowhere near him, but he still swore he could feel its cold. Olivia’s bare arm was long and glowed like honey in the sun. “You can’t have my cats, you ninny.” She wheeled her arms backward, swimming comfortably. “I like it. It’s bracing.”

  “It’s mad.”

  “Did you see the carving in the oak?”

  It caught him off-guard. He blinked and ran a hand through his hair. She looked up at him expectantly. He shook his head.

  “I saw there was something there,” he said. “I couldn’t make it out.”

  She nodded. “Get closer,” she offered.

  He turned back towards the tree. The carving was, he recognized, a heart. Inside, there were two names. On top, etched with a confident hand: Livvie. The name Elouise called her daughter by. Rayner Kolston had called her by it, once, in his bevy of pet names for her. But Olivia had gone flat with him. Never call me that, she’d said. Chris thought he understood why, now.

  Below it, a second name.

  Ollie.

  “He was such a brat.” Olivia’s voice floated to him on the golden air. It was soft, wistful, and, despite all of that, still very resonantly annoyed. “He was always trying to get me to do that sort of nonsense. I’d never be pulled into it, but the little bastard jolly well tricked me with that one. Livvie, he kept saying. Livvie, think about it. An oak tree holds a carving in its core forever! Don’t you want to make a mark that lasts forever? And of course, I did. He knew me, the little turd. The moment I had my name down, he added his and then that damned heart, and you can bet that he was so pleased with himself.”

  She sighed. Sighed from somewhere deep, from her very core.

  “I told him,” she said. “People would see a heart, and they would assume we were sweethearts. Kissing and fucking out in the woods. I thought I could scandalize him and shame him and get him to deface the whole thing because Gods know I couldn’t. That would be admitting it bothered me! But Oliver was deceptively hard to manipulate, for all his sweet smiles and gentle ways. He didn’t care what someone else would think. He knew he’d finally gotten me to do some shared soul nonsense, our connection marked in the heart of our favourite place, just like he was always going on about.”

  Ah.

  Oh.

  Chris tried to say something. Even just oh. But it stuck in his throat, and he stared at the two names. He felt pieces shifting and rearranging. Felt his understanding of Olivia displace. Felt her family expand, felt an empty space grow beside her. Livvie and Ollie.

  “Olivia and Oliver,” he breathed. “Your twin brother.”

  Water splashed. He should turn back around. She told him this would be easier if she could see his face. But he wasn’t sure he could, not while the continental plates of his understanding of her were grinding into new positions, redefining her landscape. Olivia had been a twin. Olivia had had a brother.

  And now she didn’t.

  “My father had wanted a son, a strong, sharp-witted, willful boy he could teach logic and math. And Mother had longed for a daughter. Soft and sweet, someone who would love her and she could love. As it turned out, Deorwynn and Cwenraed had heard their prayers, and decided to play a little trick.” She laughed quietly. “It didn’t take them long to realize that their order had gotten mixed up, but they were happy enough to split the difference. Da took me, Mother took Ollie, and they both counted themselves blessed for it.”

  Quiet fell. Chris could hear Olivia pushing herself around in the water. The sun went behind a cloud, and for a moment it was cold and dark and eerie here in this clearing with her brother’s ghost, but it came back out almost immediately, and the feeling of disquiet evaporated like fog.

  “Chris,” Olivia said. The splashing stopped. “This really would be considerably easier for me if you would turn around.”

  “You don’t have to tell me this,” he said again, not turning around.

  She was silent for a moment, and then, when she spoke, her voice had a waspish sting. “Are you saying that because you’re being a gentleman, or because you’re uncomfortable? Either way, don’t be such a ponce, really. I don’t need a gentleman, and I don’t care if it’s awkward.”

  “It’s not awkward,” Chris insisted, even though it was very much awkward.

  “I know what you’re doing over there. Writing the end to my story already. Where something terrible happens to Ollie, Mother says ‘it should have been you, Livvie,’ irreparably driving a wedge in our relationship, and I never get close to anyone else again because I lost my twin, my other half. Maybe I even become fond of a sweet, sensitive, golden-haired assistant because he reminds me of my lost brother.”

  “I’m not…” Chris shook his head. Because he had been. Of course he had been. It was a logical conclusion to the tale, wasn’t it? How else could it possibly end?

  “Please turn around, Christopher,” Olivia sighed, and he finally obeyed.

  She treaded water in the centre of the pool. Her hair was honey-gold like his, wet and sunlit. She swam effortlessly, not even so much as bobbing in the water. “The truth is, nothing made me this way,” she said softly. He had to strain to hear her voice. “Losing Ollie didn’t close me off. I was just… born closed. So when I came here late to meet him and found him lying dead on the rocks, I didn’t lose myself in grief. I did what I always do. I saw a puzzle that needed to be solved.”

  Chris swallowed hard. It was hard to look at her. His instinct was to slide his eyes off, glance away. It was polite to do such a thing when someone was talking about loss, grief. And it was a simple way to hide the confused feelings going on inside of him.

  But she wanted him to look at her, so h
e did.

  “It’s all nonsense, you know. Or… some of it is. Or maybe none of it is. Maybe it’s just me; maybe whatever makes me who I am just broke it. But I never felt that magical bond. Ollie wasn’t my other half. I never woke up from his nightmares, or felt his pain, or read his thoughts, or any of it. He was just my annoying little brother. And I loved him, I did, Christopher, but I’m not like you. I’m not… I’m not like anyone.”

  “I know,” Chris said softly. And he did.

  She nodded, satisfied. Took a deep breath. Her chest heaved. He thought he could make out the swell of her breasts beneath the water, but somehow, he didn’t particularly notice or care. “It wasn’t that I didn’t feel sad that he was dead. I did. Da understood it, even if Mother never did. But hell, what’s the point of sad? What’s the value in laying about, of staring out windows, of crying into the night? It’s nonsense, it’s meaningless, and I knew something was wrong with Ollie’s death, I bloody well knew it. So while everyone else only saw that he’d slipped on the wet rocks and broken his head, I saw that Ollie was an agile little blighter. I saw that he knew this place like he’d slid out of our mother here. I saw that one of the workers at the mill had been spending an awful lot of time around my brother.”

  Oh, Gods.

  All he could think of was Rosie. How would it feel if this had been Rosie? Was Olivia fundamentally broken? Did she have no heart, no soul?

  “Everyone else mourned. I was busy. I was investigating. I crawled out a window to escape his wake and funeral early. I spent all my time in the orchard, in the mill, in the workers’ housing. I was determined to find evidence… and I did. Ollie’s missing shoe. It didn’t go to the bottom of the pool like we all thought. Ollie’s killer had it in his chest. A memento. This is how I met Officer Geoffries,” Olivia said with a little laugh. “The officer in town who helped Maris and I falsify Roger Greene’s death report. I knew that when there was a crime, you went to the police. No one else believed me, but Geoffries thought it was worth looking into. I told him everything, showed him everything, and he and an investigator from town got the son of a bitch to confess.