Sanctuary

by Jennifer McKissack

  “Three, and two brothers,” he said, a smile in his voice.

  “I can’t even imagine,” I said softly, liking the smile in his voice.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked. “Out in the front yard?”

  I didn’t think of Sanctuary’s lawn as a yard. It sounded so quaint, and I wondered what kind of house he’d grown up in. “I wasn’t looking for anything.”

  “You seemed … in a hurry when you came through the door.”

  We were quiet for a moment.

  “I’m sorry about your aunt’s death,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said, turning to go again, finding myself a little disappointed he didn’t call me back a third time.

  “Good night, Cecilia,” he called out.

  I WOKE TO A DARK ROOM. I’D DREAMED OF BLACK THINGS, OF MURDER, although I didn’t know whose, lost in a sea of nightmares. I blinked my eyes, trying to orient myself, remember where I was.

  My knees stung, reminding me of my fall. I flicked on the lamp, hoping the light would chase away my demons or the ghost, whichever it was. Despite the cold, I threw off the covers, suffocating from their weight.

  My knees didn’t look too awful, and my hands were hardly scratched.

  My suitcase was open on the floor, clothes spilling out where I had left them when searching for my night things. I pulled out a frayed bathing suit, another gift from Elizabeth. Money hadn’t been flowing from Sanctuary to school—just enough to pay the necessary bills. Over my suit, I put on slacks and a blouse, grabbing a musty jersey sweater and an old towel from the wardrobe.

  Digging in my purse, I pulled out a fragile gold wristwatch—my mother’s originally, once Tess’s, now mine. Five o’clock, I noted as I wound it. I usually liked to try to guess the time by the light in the room, but it was impossible in this dark cell. I wondered if Mr. Bauer was enjoying my beautiful bedroom with its view of the moon hovering over the sea and the sun rising in the morning.

  I hadn’t been able to see his face very well, but he did have a nice voice. I liked the way he spoke—not just the tone of his voice, but something in his manner that was endearing, an amused kindness or curiosity or …

  To my surprise, Jasper was lying outside my door. I put my hands on my hips. “So now you return?”

  He was on his feet, his tail wagging furiously. Not able to be anything but charmed by him, I knelt down and bade him good morning.

  With him at my heels, I went out the kitchen door into the fading dark of the morning, not wanting Uncle spying on me. His room faced the front lawn. I crossed the east lawn. The sea lawn, I thought, Tess’s words coming to me.

  I glanced back at the house, not able to help myself, my eyes searching for my old bedroom window, half expecting to see someone looking out at me—not Tess, but Mr. Bauer perhaps. He was probably still asleep—in my old bed. An image of him tangled in the covers of my four-poster bed—his head on my white pillowcase—flashed through my mind.

  I spotted my room on the second floor with its unnaturally high and wide windows. From those windows, I’d had a view of the upper and lower terraces, a murky fountain, the sea lawn, the vine-covered gazebo, the unused stables, the overgrown garden, a corner of the burned-out cottage where tragedy had struck, and, of course, the sea. I remembered how they looked in the mornings like this, the scent of the sea wafting through my open windows, the call of the sea driving me out of doors, into the water.

  How I had loved standing at my childhood window with Tess on party nights, watching our guests on the lawn, listening to the jazzy music float up from the upper terrace, wanting to be one of the girls in dresses shimmering in the moonlight, dancing with boys who scooped up joy right out of the night and threw it back out for others to catch.

  I remembered the feel of the glass against my nose and Tess’s hand covering my own, the soft light of the Japanese lanterns, and the aloof gaiety just out of my childish reach.

  Ten years ago, the crash of ’29 had changed our lives drastically, stealing our money and our father. It was a few years after our father’s death that Mother had been dragged out of Sanctuary screaming, leaving her own mother and two daughters behind.

  And then the awful fire had taken my grandmother and sister. The horrible rush and crackle of the flames that night never left me. They came to me in my sleep, more often than my mother’s screams.

  I jerked my head from the house, away from its shadows, toward the wood. The sea was out there, just past the thick stand of trees, waiting for me. How I’d missed the frenzied joy of its waves, the salty taste of it, its power.

  In the dark of the woods, I took a different path than the one to the boats, instead going to the other side of the island, the pines sharp and fresh in my nose. Jasper mostly led the way, but I liked to think I would’ve been able to find it on my own.

  A wisp of light flew in front of my face. I stopped to watch it, turning round and round, as it circled me. I reached for it, in wonder, and it came to rest on my finger before flying off again. Others appeared, lightly brushing my cheeks. They were beautiful and mesmerizing.

  Jasper barked, and more lights popped out of the early morning air, circling us both.

  They were about my head, flying into my eyes, against my cheeks, now hurtful and sharp. I felt something desperate about them.

  Frantically, I waved them out of my eyes.

  “Run, Jasper!” I yelled, and we did, the lights trailing us.

  I pulled them out of my hair, then stopped to get them off me as my heart beat wildly. Jasper jumped up, barking. But they only continued circling us. Running again, trying to avoid roots and rocks, we finally made it to the shoreline.

  I continued to swat and swat until I realized they were gone, all of them. My heart pounded while Jasper barked. I stood at the edge of the woods, looking into the shadows, not seeing even one light left. What were those things? I felt tears on my cheeks. Surprised, I wiped them away. Jasper was jumping on my legs, still frantic.

  I leaned down to pet Jasper, speaking soothing words to him, trying to calm us both down. “Come on, Jasper,” I said, kissing his trembling head. “We’re all right.” He crawled closer, trying to climb into my lap, so I sat on the pebbly sand. “What were those things?” I asked him as he snuggled to me. Looking at me, he barked.

  “I know, I know,” I whispered to him. “Strange things.”

  I bit my lip, thinking, rubbing Jasper’s chin. Some vision pushed and shoved along the edges of my memory, but it slipped and spun and I couldn’t catch it. I buried my head in his fur, seeking comfort myself.

  I hadn’t been back a full day and all I’d been doing was running away. At school, they thought of me as the brave explorer, the strange wild girl from the island, but this wasn’t the Sanctuary I knew. When I was a child, before all of the tragedy, it had been a place of natural wonder.

  I continued to pet Jasper and breathe in the sea air. I looked around us at my favorite cove, mostly rocks and pebbles, but some sand. “Aw, Jasper, there is nothing else like this, not anything so beautiful.” He barked again, but it seemed a happier bark. “I’m still scared too,” I told him. “A swim will help.” I gave one last glance back toward the woods, trying to laugh at myself for turning insects into things of terror. I kissed Jasper’s sweet head again.

  I shed my sweater, my slacks, my blouse, and, shivering in the early morning air, I quickly made my way to the small cliff. Jasper settled down very loyally on the beach to watch over me, thinking to guard me from the seals or the faded stars or any of the strange things living here at Sanctuary.

  I was excited now that I was close. Birds were all about me, enjoying a dawn flight, as I climbed up on the jutting rock that enclosed the south end of the cove, ignoring the stabs of the jagged rocky edges bearing into my soft feet as I went higher.

  At the top, I looked down on the crashing waves, the white crests catching the day’s first light. For just an instant, doubt shot through me as I p
eered down at the water so far below. What if in my absence a boulder on the sea’s floor had rolled just there, beneath me?

  But then all I felt was a desire for the sea and a need to be courageous—and I raised my hands above my head and dove, taking the plunge down into a dark slate of a sea.

  The cold was shocking. I swam, pushing one arm out, fingers stretched to the tips, then the next arm, my feet kicking, my body moving with the current, showing me the way. I tasted salt on my lips and felt its sting on my knees.

  A deep, sweet peace began flowing without and within me, through me, into my heart, becoming part of my soul, until I was alone with the sea. There was no feeling like this, anywhere but here. It was exhilarating. How I’d missed this.

  My body hummed with a serene calm, but the water was too cold. I pulled myself away from the sea and splashed up to the beach, shivering terribly. Jasper stood waiting patiently for me to do something exciting as I dried off and threw on my clothes. I sat down in my old spot, on a gray boulder with a flat top, gathering my legs under me. Jasper crawled into my lap, and we snuggled together, listening to the unceasing rush and hiss of the sea as it rolled in and out. The sun was slicing the sky with soft color.

  Suddenly feeling unsettled, I turned to find my cousin watching me.

  “You scared me,” I told him, sharper than I’d intended. “I didn’t see you.”

  He came toward me, stopping a few feet away. “I knew you would come here.”

  “How did you?”

  “It was your favorite place.” He gestured to the cliff. “Tess said you’d break your neck jumping off that one day.”

  “I can still dive off,” I said, quite proud of myself.

  He came to stand by me then, putting his hand upon my wet head for a moment. I could feel the wideness of his palm and the strength of him in his heavy grip. Then he reached into his pocket, bringing out a cap.

  I took it from him. “I missed you, Cousin.” I put the hat on my head.

  “You’re back now,” he said. “Did you miss the island, and the swimming? I know Jasper missed you.”

  I kept looking at him. “I did. I missed Jasper very much.”

  “Jasper missed you,” he repeated, saying it so low I almost didn’t understand him. He looked so lost in that moment, I wanted to reach out for him, but I thought he might pull away.

  “Thank you for the cap,” I said tenderly, putting my love for him in the words, hoping he would sense it.

  “You shouldn’t come out so early in the morning. Wait until it’s completely light.”

  “Whyever not?” I smiled. “Don’t you remember how we used to slip out?”

  “Things are different now,” he said. “Momma said not to.” He looked off at the sea, his eyes sad.

  Now he was left to just his father. “Why?” I asked gently.

  He shrugged. “Maybe because she’s out after dark,” he said directly, without drama or whispers. But I felt the sea’s salty whisper in my ear as it slashed the shore.

  “She?” I asked slowly. I shivered in the cool morning air and wrapped my arms about me.

  “The ghost.”

  A sick feeling soured my stomach as I remembered standing over Amoret’s grave last night, thinking the wind could speak.

  “Amoret Winship’s been dead for almost two centuries, Cousin,” I said, trying to be calm, to not let him know how much this talk was disturbing me.

  He looked at me. “I didn’t say it was her.”

  I pressed my lips together, afraid for us both. “Who do you think it is?”

  “I haven’t seen her, so I don’t know.”

  My heart pounded. “Aunt Laura saw a ghost?”

  “I don’t know. She just said that she was there.”

  “Are you trying to frighten me away?” I asked, trying to make light of it, but feeling my hands shaking. “I just got here.”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  “There is no ghost.”

  He didn’t look convinced.

  “Tess and I spent enough time out in that graveyard. Amoret or any other soul wouldn’t have been happy with being bothered by children roaming about all the time. Remember how Tess would lie on Amoret’s grave?” I asked, trying to joke, but even as I said it, I shuddered.

  “I remember a lot,” he said. In that moment, I saw things as he must see them: How all of us had been taken from him—his uncle, his aunt, his grandmother, his two cousins—and now his mother was gone too. Unlike Ben, I didn’t remember a lot. My memories were hazy and fractured, sliced up by tragedy, then exile. It’s worse for him, I thought, the loneliness of being the only one left in a place that triggered sharp memories, reminding you again and again of your loss.

  I put my hand on his arm. “I won’t go out at night.” I wanted to say, I’ll take care of you again.

  “Do you promise?” he asked, as a child would.

  “I do. I promise,” I said.

  “And you have to stay away from Papa.” Ben’s tongue went to the corner of his mouth, a nervous habit he’d always had. “Don’t rile him up. He’ll hurt you.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Ben,” I said, trying to reassure him. “I’m not afraid of your father.” I wasn’t being honest.

  I felt his sudden tight grip on my arm. “You should be.”

  I put my hand over his. “Let go, Ben,” I said quietly.

  He released me, but said urgently, “You have to understand, Cecilia.”

  “Don’t worry, Cousin.”

  “He’s done it before.”

  “Done what?” I asked quickly.

  But he shook his head.

  “What did he do?” I asked him again.

  But he wouldn’t answer me.

  My calm from my swim was gone.

  IT WAS AN EERIE THING HOW WE GREW OLDER, BUT THE DEAD DIDN’T. I was the younger sister, but only I had aged. Tess stayed the same, year after year, forever thirteen. And still, though I was seventeen and she was dead, I could feel her life force—very strongly now that I’d come home—and that life force was chastising me and pushing at me.

  It was a strange, terrible comfort, being so familiar, a feeling like finding the place one was meant to be. But I fought the feeling, not wanting to feel second to Tess again, but at the same time, craving it.

  I took out the one new dress I’d bought in Bangor and pulled it over my head, talking to Tess now. “You’re not here anymore. Leave me alone.”

  My whispered words seemed to lie upon the air, shifting things around me.

  And then as if something nudged the memory into my head, I recalled the wisps of light from my past. Or rather, Tess’s past. When she and I had run the island at dusk or dawn, the lights had frolicked about her, round and round her head, almost as if they were a halo. Anna had said they were fireflies, but Tess had laughed at that, her nose twitching in that particular way she had, calling them ghost candles, saying they lit the way for her. She started calling them “our cousins.”

  In the kitchen, while I sipped hot coffee, Anna showed me how to roll out the dough for the biscuits, gently chiding me when I kneaded it too long, telling me the biscuits would be hard and tough if I didn’t leave the dough alone. I couldn’t help it. I liked the feel of it in my hands, liked sifting the flour on it, and stretching the dough out. We weren’t supposed to be in the kitchen at my boarding school, but I’d befriended the head cook, Sheila. She’d taught me to bake.

  Anna was stout and solid, but had never been remotely motherly to me while I was growing up. She was not only Sanctuary’s cook; she managed the entire household, long before it shrank down to its current small size.

  “How long has Mr. Bauer been here?” I asked, sliding a glance at her. Jasper, who was settled by the cold hearth, gave me an expectant look when I spoke, his little ears perked up.

  “Came in yesterday afternoon, just before you.”

  The quiet of the kitchen cast a somber mood. At the school, Sheila always had the radio
blaring out swing music while she danced around the table with a frying spoon. Our island had no telephones or radios. Electric lights and indoor plumbing had arrived only with my mother’s marriage and my father’s money (for Uncle was stingy with his), cushioning my life in relative comfort.

  “Did he spend much time in the library?” I asked Anna.

  “He was there for an hour or so.”

  We were quiet for a moment as we worked. My thoughts returned to my encounter—or imaginings?—in the graveyard last night.

  “Anna,” I began cautiously. “Do you know anything about the Winships?”

  She tensed up and abruptly turned away from me, going to the icebox.

  “Ben and I were talking about Amoret Winship this morning,” I said, glancing at her while I worked the dough. “And I realized I don’t know very much at all about—”

  “It’s about time, Patricia!” snapped Anna, looking around at a young woman coming in. “Where’s Mary?”

  “She’s on her way, Aunt Anna.”

  Aunt Laura had written to me that Anna’s nieces had begun working at Sanctuary when the last of the maids quit. I turned to look at Patricia, my hands still in the dough. Her brown eyes regarded me. “Hello,” she said, a smile quirked on her lips.

  I nodded at her. “Hello.”

  “You’re Cecilia,” she said. “Do you remember me?”

  “Of course,” I said. “You stayed with us occasionally.” I was too shy to say, but I remembered a lot about Patricia. She was odd-looking, with blond fuzz for hair and dark brown eyes. Pools of mud hiding the reason for the lopsided smile she seemed to always have.

  “What do you remember?” she asked in a teasing voice. Patricia had always seemed perpetually amused.

  I blushed because I’d been thinking of how wild she’d been, sneaking out to see boys, who motored over on boats from Lady Cliffs. Tess and I spied on her once, creeping out into the dark after her. The memory of what we’d seen was still vivid. It’d been more educational than our governess’s lessons. Tess was angry and testy afterward, which I’d never understood.

  Patricia was watching me and laughed her great boom of a laugh I’d always liked. “Maybe I don’t want to know what you’re remembering,” she said.