Sanctuary

by Jennifer McKissack

  She’d laughed. “Oh, Cecilia. You are amusing. That’s not true. Leave those stories to your sister.” Her remark had stung. And so I had done as she asked.

  “What are you thinking about?” Eli asked.

  I smiled and shook my head.

  We cleared the table of dishes, peanut butter, and biscuits and opened the books we’d brought with us. I found it difficult to concentrate. Eli was so close. If I reached out, I could touch his arm. I stared at the same page the whole time, not reading. I just listened to him, even though he was quiet. Excitement rippled through me. I felt something might happen. I wanted something to happen.

  After a while, he looked over at me. “You haven’t turned one page.”

  I smiled and gave a little shrug.

  “What is it?” he prompted.

  “Nothing, really.” I could feel my face grow hot.

  He studied me for a moment in silence. I knew because I kept looking up at him and then shyly had to look away. His eyes were so lovely.

  “I didn’t expect you,” he said finally.

  “What do you mean?” I asked him quizzically.

  “I didn’t expect … to meet someone like you.”

  “When you came to steal my books?” I asked softly.

  “When I came …” But his voice drifted off. His eyes broke off from me and he leaned back in his chair. He glanced at me with a smile, then stood. My heart sped. Coming around to me, he reached for my hand. Without even knowing what he wanted to do, I put my hand in his.

  “Shall we go back to the library,” he asked, “and read our books?”

  I nodded, disappointment washing over me. I wasn’t even sure what I’d been expecting. Did I think he would kiss me? I’d never been kissed. I didn’t know how it even happened, although I’d tried to figure it out. How did one go from talking to kissing? I didn’t know what it felt like to have someone’s lips on my own. I was blushing fiercely at the thought and not able to meet his eyes.

  I picked up my book, and he picked up his. He let go of my hand as we left the kitchen. I sensed a sudden reserve in him, which confused me. I thought back over the conversation, wondering what was said that might’ve affected him. By the time we got back to the library, there was a distance between us that I didn’t understand. I was a little embarrassed, thinking I’d revealed too much in my looks to him, and he thought of me as a silly girl. I pulled back into my own shell.

  I sat down at my desk. Absentmindedly, still thinking of Eli, I reached for my journal. My head shot up. It was gone.

  “What is it?” Eli asked as I looked frantically through the things on my desk and on the shelves. Uncle had taken it, I was absolutely sure.

  “Nothing, nothing,” I said, not wanting to involve him. Silently, I cursed Uncle, feeling he would do anything to keep me from learning the secrets of Amoret and the captain, and ultimately, my mother and my sister.

  I WANTED MY JOURNAL BACK.

  That desire drove my dreams to be filled with frenzied images again, none of which I could identify in the morning. But I woke feeling as if all my nerve endings were sliced and exposed. The graveyard was calling me. Amoret’s real, I thought. But she can’t be. She can’t be. She is real.

  Forcing myself to get up and shake off the frightening feelings, I dressed and waited in my room until I knew Uncle was out of the house and Anna was in the kitchen.

  I crept up the service stairs, intending on telling anyone who asked I was on the way to my old room to look for something. Jasper was nowhere to be seen, which was good because he’d only give me away. But as I climbed the stairs, I felt a tightening in my chest as if someone were pushing against it. I plodded on.

  I slipped into the dark gallery of the second floor, but stopped, startled by the noise. Someone was singing in the guest bathroom at the end of the hall. It was Eli. His nice tenor voice calmed me a little.

  Uncle and Anna’s room was at the other end of the gallery, on the right, across the hall from my old bedroom. The upstairs felt strange to me, heavy and dark. It had been so long since I’d been up here. In the days I’d been back, I’d felt no compulsion to visit the second floor. I’d wanted to stay away.

  But now I was overwhelmed by the memory of family. My father calling to us that Santa was dropping presents from a plane. Tess and I laughing so hard our stomachs hurt. I couldn’t remember what we were laughing about, just that we’d been happy. But this used to be my home, where Tess and I ran the halls until we were told to take our wild behavior outside. I wasn’t running now. I felt I was walking through a swamp of mud that sucked at my feet.

  Doors to the unused rooms were shut, plunging the dimly lit gallery into shadows, with a gasp of light at its center flooding up from the open foyer. Here one could see the worn rugs and the paneling, scratched and chipped. It was a bleak place. I felt unwanted, as if the house itself wished to hurl me back down the stairs.

  I was drawn to the door of my parents’ old bedroom. Opening it, I found the room bare and sad. I remembered my mother sitting at her vanity facing the French doors, turning her head to look at me over her shoulder, her lipstick in the air. “What is it, my darling?”

  “Are you getting ready for a party?” I had asked, feeling shy with her in her finery. She was as stunning as a woman in a painting.

  “Why, yes, I am. How do I look?” She fluttered her eyelashes theatrically.

  “You are pretty, Momma.”

  “Come to me,” she said, waving the lipstick. Her dress was gold and swishy. “Now pucker for me, darling.” Her elegant hand steadied my chin. I watched her eyes, so like mine and unlike Tess’s, as she painted my lips.

  Mamie was there, behind me. Had she been in the room this whole time? Or had she just walked in?

  “This is where you were born,” Mamie said, turning me around to face her, “right in this room. Childbirth is a very powerful thing, like a door to another world. And you, my dear, are connected to everyone born in this room.”

  “Mother!”

  Mamie had looked up. “I want to teach my granddaughter what you should be teaching her.” She grabbed a cloth off my mother’s vanity and wiped off my lipstick.

  “Go play, Cecilia,” my mother said, her voice tense. “I want to talk to your grandmother.”

  Mamie had said something as I left the room, haunting words, words that Mother shushed angrily … but I couldn’t find the words now.

  Mother and Mamie dissolved before my eyes, leaving only a desperate emptiness threatening to yank me down some deep well of the past. There were so many memories here, so many moments of our lives trapped in the walls.

  Each step toward Uncle’s room was heavier than before. I passed the dreary, dark portraits of several men, thought to be previous owners of Sanctuary. Their stern faces had watched over the house since before my birth. One of the portraits had always been missing, obvious by the faded square on the wall where it had hung. Probably it was a woman, and Uncle had thrown her out.

  I stopped in front of the last one in the row, the fierce Captain Winship, the witch-hunter. I wasn’t sure how I knew it was him. I was struck by the intensity of his gaze. Slowly I moved toward the portrait, closer to his eyes, feeling drawn in. Such dark intense eyes. Are you still in this house, Captain? I reached my hand toward the portrait, hovering over it. I heard a whisper, “Cecilia,” and jumped back. My eyes darted to the captain’s mouth. It wasn’t moving.

  I backed away from the portrait. It must have been another’s voice I’d heard, or some other noise I’d convinced myself was a voice. This was only a painting. But Winship looked so alive, as if he might jump out of the frame. I hurried down the hall.

  I didn’t stop at Tess’s room, closed off now, or my own childhood room.

  The moment I opened Uncle’s door I felt cornered.

  Whipping my head back and forth, I tried to figure out what felt so threatening. But no one was here. Just a bed, dresser, mirror, desk … nothing to cause the rising panic I
was feeling, my every breath drawn short. There was violence in this room, in its walls. I collapsed into a chair beside the door, trying to catch my breath, feeling as if my lungs were being squeezed. A foul bitterness filled my mouth.

  “Calm down, Cecilia,” I whispered. “Breathe.”

  Standing, I shut the door defiantly, against my own imaginings or some sinister presence, I didn’t know. But I was going to find Dr. Clemson’s journal. Uncle wasn’t going to keep me from it.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” I whispered to Uncle with my hands still shaking.

  I opened the front of a pull-down desk. Papers, even loose bills, were everywhere. I sat in the chair, thinking how proud my uncle must be to live in the old captain’s room and look out these fine elegant windows.

  On top of the messiness were a ledger book and a mahogany letter box. I pushed those aside, as well as loose receipts for tools, boat parts, groceries, none of it filed or organized. I opened drawers. Paper clips filled one of them, nails in another. One drawer held an iron skeleton key, which I took out and looked at before shutting the drawer back up. Also in the drawer were bills of green, their eyes on me.

  A large flat drawer held a silver-framed picture. I recognized my aunt immediately. There was something different about her, and I realized with a start that it was happiness radiating from her, breaking out of the old photograph.

  She was in a hammock, not lying down the length of it but sitting with a familiar-looking man, both of them pushed together toward the middle. They were leaning back a little, but mostly leaning into each other, him more into her, but her arm was draped over his neck and the sides of their heads were touching. My aunt wore a contented smile, self-assured; the man’s grin was open and pleased, and his bow tie was whimsically crooked. They were so relaxed and happy, and it hurt to look at their happiness.

  I gasped. The man was Uncle. But it didn’t look like him: His smile was … tender.

  I heard a noise and jumped up, and the picture fell, whacking against the edge of the desk and hitting the wooden floor. I stared down at it, afraid to pick it up, frozen by the voices in the hallway. I cursed when I saw a crack in the glass. Scooping up the photograph, I started to shove it back into the drawer, but stopped.

  Lying beneath the frame was a piece of paper with my mother’s name, Cora Cross, written on it. Beneath her name, the words Slattery Asylum and an address in Bangor. I stuffed the paper into my pocket.

  Footsteps were outside the door. It was too late.

  I OPENED THE DOOR TO THE BALCONY, SLIPPING OUT. NO ONE WAS ON THE lawn. I was frightened, finding it difficult to think.

  Stone balconies ran along the front of the house, two on each side. I heard Uncle’s voice just as I shut the door. I climbed on the edge of the stone wall. There was a narrow gap, less than two feet, between the balconies, but I had no choice. I heard Uncle’s voice in the room through the balcony door and jumped onto the next balcony.

  The French doors in the guest room took up most of the balcony, but I hid against a narrow wall of stone, where I couldn’t be seen, for I heard noises coming through the glass door and then I heard singing again.

  Eli.

  I was confused. What was he doing in this bedroom?

  I saw Ben coming up the walk and knew he would innocently yell out to me if he saw me. I opened the French door. Eli was shining his shoes while he sat on the bed. He jumped up, shock on his face.

  Quickly, I raised my finger to my lips and shook my head at him. Then I pointed to the room next door.

  He stood there, wide-eyed, staring at me. He had no shirt on.

  I found I was staring at his bare chest. I flushed. “Why are you changing your shirt?” I blurted out. “You just came from the bath.”

  Red spotted his cheeks too. “I didn’t like the one I had on.” He quickly pulled his arms into a white long-sleeved shirt, yanking the sides together. “But I wonder what you’re doing on my balcony.”

  “I thought you were sleeping in my bedroom,” I said, flushing when I realized what I’d said.

  “Yes, and I moved when I found out it was yours,” he said a little too loudly. “I won’t take your room from you.”

  “Shhh,” I said, my finger to my lips again. “Do you want my uncle to hear and find me here with you?” My nerves were frayed, making me short with him.

  His hands flew to the task of buttoning up the shirt.

  I ran to the door, listening out in the hallway. Nothing. I put my ear to the connecting wall between my uncle’s room and this one. I could hear rustling papers. My hands began to shake as I tried to remember the state of the desk when I had closed it up. If he didn’t open the drawer …

  “What are you doing?” Eli asked.

  I held out one hand to silence him, my ear still pressed to the wall.

  Only silence came to me from the other side. Finally, I heard someone (Uncle?) standing and shutting the desk back up. Uncle’s bedroom door opened, then closed. I didn’t hear footsteps for a moment, as if Uncle was waiting there, listening to me listen to him.

  I jumped and almost gasped at the knock at the door. My eyes met Eli’s. He gave me a reassuring nod. “What is it?” he called out.

  Uncle’s rough voice came through the door. “I want to talk to you about—”

  “I’m dressing,” Eli said. “Just had my bath. Can I meet you in the library in a moment?”

  I stared at Eli suspiciously. What was all this business with my uncle? Of all people, Uncle.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen,” Uncle said gruffly. Then I heard his heavy footsteps shuffling against the steps as he walked back down.

  I reached for the doorknob, my heart still pounding.

  “No, no,” Eli said, stepping forward, not touching me, but still I drew back, now suspicious of him. “What was all that about?”

  “It’s none of your concern,” I said, more testily than I meant to. I was still rattled.

  He studied me for a moment.

  “Are you angry with me?” he asked directly.

  I hesitated, wanting to accuse him—accuse someone of something—but didn’t know what to accuse him of. “You’re here to steal my books,” I said finally, the loss of the journal grating on me. Uncle’s theft was a victory for him. I could imagine the gleam in his eye as he threw it in the furnace or something. I felt a pang at that thought.

  “Not steal,” Eli said quietly.

  “They are my books, not Uncle’s. He doesn’t care about them. Your helping him with his theft is quite … monstrous, really. Taking the books from their home. They belong here. It’s horrible, horrible,” I said, working myself into a temper.

  I went toward the door, but he was still in the way. He didn’t move. I withdrew.

  “Yes?” I asked. “Something more?”

  “I’m sorry I upset you,” he said.

  His apology seemed heartfelt, but I couldn’t let go of my frustration at him for not understanding what kind of man Uncle was.

  “Cecilia, you don’t seem well.”

  “I really must go,” I said. “Could you please move?”

  “Certainly,” he said, agreeing and stepping back. “But may I say … ?”

  I paused. My hand was on the doorknob.

  “I won’t take any of your books if you don’t want me to.”

  I looked up at him then, seeing the kindness in his eyes. “But what about your university?”

  He shrugged and looked guilty. “I won’t take the books. But can I stay and look at them with you?” he asked. “We wouldn’t be able to tell your uncle that, of course.”

  “I suppose that would be all right,” I said, looking down at my feet.

  “Really?” he asked, looking up at me by leaning down, cocking his head.

  “Not if you keep going on about it, though.”

  “Then I’ll be quiet on the subject from now on.”

  “All right, then.”

  His hands were in his pockets as he looked at me
. “Monstrous?”

  I won’t be charmed, I won’t be charmed, I thought, as I raised my eyes to see his teasing smile. “Horrible,” I told him.

  He continued to grin at me, and here we were acting awkward again, just as we had in our first meeting. But this time, there was something more added into it, because we knew each other a little now, had walked the island together, shared the lighthouse and some of our stories, even a private nighttime snack.

  I glanced around his room, taking in its neatness: the lack of clutter on the oak dresser, the crisply made bed, the desk with books and papers neatly stacked upon it. He smiled at me as I moved to the dresser. I played with the row of pencils, running my fingers over them and thinking of him lining them up so correctly, ready for use.

  “Like your sticks,” he said, beside me now.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  I opened the black case on top of the desk. A silver trumpet with its beautiful twists and turns, and small buttons on top, rested on torn black velvet.

  “May I?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said, gesturing with his hand.

  I lifted it out of the case, loving the sleek feel of the trumpet in my hands, trying to imagine him playing it, his fingers moving over the valves. He must be very attached to it to have brought it with him.

  “Will you play it for me?” I asked, wanting very much to hear him.

  “I would like that.” He hesitated.

  “If you’d rather not,” I said, putting it back in its case.

  “I wouldn’t want your uncle to come looking for me and find you here. Not for my sake, but for yours.”

  “Yes,” I said, moving toward the door.

  He caught me gently by my hand. “But later,” he said, “I will.” He slipped his hand from mine, and my fingers felt cold and bare.

  “Is that a promise, Mr. Bauer?” I asked very formally, smiling at him.

  “A promise,” he agreed as our eyes locked. And then I could do nothing but stand and watch him, taken in by him completely. Something was changing, deepening between us. I liked this man. I wanted to be close to him, to be near him. But the instant I realized that, the instant I wanted to abandon myself to it, I felt something else. A sense of disquiet, that these feelings emerging were very wrong. The thought was so strong I had to step away from him, back toward the door. And I saw in his eyes his confusion and his belief I was rejecting him.