Sanctuary

by Jennifer McKissack

  “Okay,” I said, my hand on the knob.

  He looked disappointed, but he stepped toward me. “I’ll teach you if you’d like.”

  “Teach me?”

  “The trumpet,” he said.

  “I’d like that,” I said, remembering the first time he mentioned the trumpet to me. Then, I smiled at him before slipping out the door. I checked the hallway below before going down the steps. I could hear Uncle in the kitchen, so I went into the library, still thinking about Eli. I heard him come down the stairs and his steps go toward the kitchen to talk to Uncle.

  Uncle. My twisted uncle. If he found the broken photograph, he’d be livid. He’d looked almost harmless, lying in the hammock next to my aunt, love on his face. It was hard to put the two images of him together—what he looked to be then, what he was now.

  But what bothered me most of all was not the love I’d seen in the photograph; it was the sudden longing I felt to have it for myself.

  A dark thought flooded through me that only bad things would happen if I fell in love. When I tried to reason it out, I couldn’t figure out why that would be so. Why shouldn’t I fall in love with Eli? How could any great tragedy come from two people wanting to be together?

  But some voice inside my head was telling me to stay away from him.

  I DIDN’T REALIZE I WAS WAITING FOR ELI, BUT I WAS. I COULDN’T KEEP MY mind on my search for the journal or Tess’s secrets because Eli was ever present in my thoughts. I read—sort of—and walked around the room, picking up things off the mantel, books from the shelves, holding them, not really seeing them, putting them back. Still, Eli didn’t join me in the library.

  Then I saw them out the window, back on the path again: Mary and Eli. Tapping the glass thoughtfully, I found I didn’t like it one bit. Eli wasn’t mine. But hadn’t there been something growing between us, or had I been imagining it?

  Imagining is what crazy people do, Tess would have said. It will get you into the insane asylum, locked up, for sure. You and Mother can have adjoining padded cells.

  I was so engrossed in my thoughts I didn’t hear the library door open. I jumped when Patricia spoke: “She is rather annoying, isn’t she?”

  I pressed my hand to my chest and my thumping heart.

  “I scared you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” I said, turning away from her inquisitive eyes.

  “You look so much like your mother,” she said lightly.

  “Do I?” I asked, looking back at her. “Do you remember her?”

  “Oh, yes, I remember. I thought she was beautifully strange.”

  “What do you mean, strange?”

  Concern flickered in her eyes. “Not strange, just secretive, and fascinating—like she’d lived an amazing life that I never would and had experiences that I would never have. There was a mystery about her.”

  “She was distant.”

  Patricia nodded slowly. “Yes. She was.”

  “She’d been a flapper when she was young, before there were flappers.”

  “I’d heard that.”

  “Dancing and living crazily in New York before she met my father.” I paused. “And after.”

  “She seemed very happy with him.”

  “You remember him too?”

  “He wasn’t here as much.”

  “Because of his art.”

  “Yes, his art took him away,” she agreed.

  My father had been a wealthy man with family money, but also a professional artist with a respectable career. He was rarely with us at Sanctuary because he traveled the country frequently, as a paid guest of patrons. His work—focusing mainly on landscapes, particularly of wild, coastal Maine—had even been exhibited at a gallery in New York City in 1919.

  “Your father was sweetly absentminded,” Patricia said, “as if he was always thinking of the things he wanted to paint. Sometimes I’d see him looking out to sea, just staring at some spot on the horizon, and then the next day he would be out there painting whatever he saw.” She smiled distantly, as if she were in a memory. “I’d watch him paint sometimes.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “I … didn’t. I didn’t know I could watch him paint.”

  Amused curiosity lit up her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Glancing away, a bit embarrassed, I said, “I don’t know really. Just I never watched him paint. I don’t know why, why I wouldn’t have sought him out to see what he was doing.”

  “Well, you’re much younger than I am,” Patricia said kindly. “And it was many years ago.” She laughed. “I had a schoolgirl crush on him.”

  “On my father?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I know,” she said, “it is ridiculous. But he was very talented. I’ve always been drawn to talented people, probably because I have no talent of my own.”

  “He used to read to me sometimes,” I said. “In here. On this very love seat.”

  We looked out the window again, to see Mary giggle with her hand over her mouth and her eyes flashing flirtatiously at Eli. (Yes, Tess, I’m too far away to see her eyes, but I imagine they did that.)

  “Come with me,” Patricia said suddenly, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the door.

  “What?” I asked, resisting.

  “Come, come,” she said, and before I knew it, we were out the front door, walking toward Eli and Mary.

  Seeing us, Eli broke into a smile, as if he hadn’t seen me—seen us—for days. Mary turned to us, her back briefly to Eli. She scrunched her eyes and gave her sister an annoyed pout. Patricia ignored her and, still holding my hand, pulled us into their circle.

  “Hello,” Eli said.

  “We thought we’d join you,” Patricia said. “Are you going for a walk?”

  Eli gestured toward the trees. “I was curious about the graveyard. Mary said she’d show me.”

  “Do you like cemeteries?” Patricia asked. I was mute, not able to think of a thing to say. I could feel Mary’s eyes on me. She gave me a hard stare; then it disappeared and I wondered if I’d really seen it.

  “I do, I do,” Eli said. “Come with us.”

  Mary smiled at him then, and this time I was close enough to see her eyes, and they were flashing flirtatiously. Somehow, before I’d even seen how she’d done it, Mary had guided the two of them ahead of us on the path. Patricia gave me a wry look, and we followed them through the squeaky gate. The sun was out and bright, but once we entered the trees, it felt close and dark.

  Nervously, I looked around for Sanctuary’s ghost. But if I saw her now, then everyone else would see her too, and no one could accuse me of imagining her.

  The path was narrow through the stones of the dead, so Patricia and I were stuck behind the other two. Eli listened to Mary, very intently it seemed to me.

  I watched Mary, wondering if this was how to flirt. You put your hand ever so lightly on the man’s arm. Somehow, you make your eyes twinkle, while your lips turn up into a slight, mysterious smile. Even your voice is different. It points its toes and twirls as you speak. It struck me as very contrived, but Mary didn’t seem bothered by the artificiality of it.

  “When I was growing up in Lady Cliffs,” she was saying to Eli, “I never dreamed my aunt would now be the mistress of Sanctuary.” That dancing, light-on-its-toes laughter spilled from her mouth. “I was in awe of the big house, as we used to say. Everyone in Lady Cliffs was, still is.”

  “Are they?” I asked. “I’ve always thought the town didn’t like us very much. At least Aunt Laura thought so.”

  “Oh, they think you’re all as mad as your mother. But they’re captivated by the house and everything that’s happened here.”

  I was silent, thinking how the tragedy of my family was only gossip to the town.

  Patricia seemed to sense my thoughts. “Our cousin Mark,” she explained, “told us the place was haunted by the old sea captain who built it. He’d tell us terrible stories, usually about a pirate with a hook.” She smiled, in
viting me to appreciate the ridiculousness of the tale. “When we were little, we’d be scared to death to visit Aunt Anna.”

  Mary wouldn’t be deterred. “That’s not what the town talks about. Your family, Cecilia, has given them much more interesting stories. After the cottage fire, your aunt told the police the arsonist was someone from town. That didn’t go over well.”

  Eli glanced back at me, concerned. He seemed about to say something, but Mary exclaimed, “And now to think my family owns Sanctuary!”

  Patricia looped her arm through mine and rolled her eyes at me.

  And still Mary chattered on, with all of us quiet and listening, as we wandered through the land of the dead. “Of course, Patricia and I are helping Aunt Anna right now. But soon we’ll get real servants and move out of the attic rooms into rooms on the second floor. I might move into Cecilia’s room.”

  I stiffened. “There are other rooms you can have, Mary,” I called up to her.

  “The one I’m in is very nice,” Eli said.

  Mary stopped walking; we all stopped, in our little circle. “But Cecilia’s room is the second-best room,” she explained in a patient voice, “after my aunt’s. Uncle Frank told me I could move in there.”

  “When did you start calling him Uncle Frank?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Patricia asked dryly, “when did you?”

  “But he is our uncle now. And really, since Cecilia’s aunt is dead, he’s not hers anymore.”

  It so happened we were standing right by Aunt Laura’s grave, looking new and fresh among the others. Mary had such a look—I don’t know. It seemed to me she knew what she was doing, that she had led us here intentionally.

  I couldn’t stop myself: Although my stomach was sour, my eyes drifted to the headstone, with my aunt’s name, Laura Wallace, carved into it.

  So it was true. My aunt was dead. There was her death date—August 3, 1939—under her name. She had left me—along with Mother, my grandmother, my father, and Tess. I swallowed back grief. What made me think I belonged at Sanctuary without her, without any of them?

  I left the graveyard then, back through the squeaky gate.

  Someone followed me. I was surprised to find it wasn’t Patricia, but Eli. He caught up to me and walked alongside me. I took deep breaths, thinking of calm things, like seabirds gliding over waves, their white wing tips stretched out tip to tip against the stunning blue of the sky.

  Eli didn’t say a word, just stayed beside me, step for step. He fit there, inside an empty space beside me, as if he should have always been there. I hadn’t realized just how lonely I’d been. His presence brought tears to my eyes. Alarmed, I blinked them away. Why was it always kindness that made me cry?

  We kept walking, through the trees, Eli following my lead.

  When we came to the second graveyard—the villagers’ graveyard—he still didn’t speak. I thought he might reach out and try to stop me, as if this one might upset me too. But he didn’t, and that was good. This cemetery was so unlike the other it didn’t seem at all the same kind of place, and of course, it didn’t hold my aunt.

  There was no elaborate foundation at its center, and no benches to rest upon. The headstones were simple gray slabs, tilted, broken. They weren’t arranged with any order or feeling of protection and care. The cemetery was out in the open, trees gone wild around it. The land here was rockier, and the graves harder to dig.

  Eli began to wander through the stones, reading the names. As we went from grave to grave, our bodies drifted together, our hands briefly touching, our shoulders slightly brushing.

  I’d noticed yesterday how he moved, the strength in his arms and legs, the self-assured set of his shoulders, the insouciant grace—a calm masculinity I was unfamiliar with. I hadn’t known many men, many boys, but I would have noticed if they all moved in this way.

  Shyly, surreptitiously, I watched him, embarrassed by the intensity of my emerging feelings. The feelings were familiar, however, and with a start, I realized they were one of the things I sensed wafting in the air in the library.

  Still, we wandered.

  “What is it?” Eli asked me.

  I pointed to the grave in front of us. The headstone was drab, with two words hacked inexpertly into the stone.

  “Dr. Clemson,” read Eli. “That’s a strange way to remember someone, quite cryptic.”

  “I wonder why he’s buried here.”

  “Was he the villagers’ physician?”

  “No, no, he was Captain Winship’s doctor. He was on his ship with him.” I still didn’t tell Eli about the doctor’s journal, holding the information close.

  “He must have fallen out of the captain’s favor.”

  “I wonder what he did.” The missing journal began to grate on me again. It would have answers. Where had Uncle put it? And why had he stolen it? What could be so important now?

  “What’s wrong?” Eli asked.

  Pulled from my thoughts, I looked into his eyes. “Just thinking.”

  He seemed taken aback, something suddenly shy in his gaze. My stomach fluttered very pleasantly.

  After a moment, he grabbed my hand, and I could think no more of the journal as we walked back to the house, together.

  I STOOD UNDER THE PORTICO, HOLDING MY TOWEL CLOSE TO ME. IT WAS not yet dawn, but I’d been desperate for another swim. I stared at the gate to the cemetery, trying to keep myself from entering. I’d heard her calling me, and this time I hadn’t been able to resist. The ghost in the graveyard wanted something from me.

  She was out in the woods, waiting. I dropped my towel and went to find her. I wound through the gravestones in the moonlight, wondering about the people buried here. Were these all Captain Winship and Amoret’s children? Were they Uncle’s relatives? Was that why Aunt Laura, Tess, my father, and Mamie were in a different part of the cemetery, because they weren’t Winships?

  I found her in the shadows of the trees behind her grave. I wanted to see her face, but the harder I looked, the more shadowy it got.

  “I don’t know if you’re real,” I whispered.

  She held out her hand toward me, clenched in a fist as before. I knew if I reached her in time, she would give me what was in her hand. The closer I got, the more her shape seemed to take form. She was wearing the same clothes, the same white shawl. It was the girl in Dr. Clemson’s drawing. It was Amoret Winship.

  There was a rage in her. I had to stop walking because her anger was so strong. I was stunned by the ferocity of it, unsure if it was directed toward me. I tried to break my gaze, but then heard my name. She wanted me. She needed my help.

  “I’m here,” I said, holding out my hand.

  Walking forward, I reached out my fingertips, expecting the touch of warm flesh. Instead, an ice-cold feeling traveled up my arm. I tried to grasp her hand, but it wasn’t solid. It felt whole, but not whole. It twisted into a continuation of my own body, as if my hand were a part of her hand. Her fist opened, releasing tiny lights that drifted up from our twin palms.

  The fireflies swirled around us, resting in our hair, on our necks, brushing against our arms. We were perfectly still, but Amoret was mad and fierce. She was pulling at me, tugging on me. I felt my body changing. I shook my head at her. My throat began to close up, and I tried to catch breaths. I was losing myself.

  The only way, she said without speaking. The only way.

  With all my strength, I yanked my hand from hers and fell backward and to the ground, scratching my back on her gravestone. I scrambled to my feet as she stepped toward me. I found my feet and ran.

  At the front door, I reached for the handle. It seared my flesh. I screamed and pulled my hand away. I tore through the woods to the one place I felt safe, my body feeling like it was burning. At my cove, I splashed my way into the seawater and dove under the surface. The cold water soothed my hot skin. I swam and swam. I’m not my mother. I’m not my mother.

  Back and forth I went, swimming the length of the cove, trying to shut out t
he memories. I was on Sanctuary’s cliff, my child feet at its edge, crying for my mother to come back as they took her away in the boat. I’d wanted to dive off, to follow her. Tess had been there, watching, a cold expression on her face. Mamie was there too, angry. “We have work to do, Tess,” she’d said. “We have things to do.” But all I cared about was my mother being taken away.

  Now I wanted to swim out to sea and never come back.

  Finally, when I’d figured out what I had to do, I struggled up onto the beach, my muscles spent, shivering in the cold. I made my way back to Sanctuary.

  I went around to the kitchen door instead of the foyer, instinctively feeling that it was safer. Still, I hesitated before I grabbed the knob. No burning this time, but a deep unease settled over me as I walked past the kitchen table to the service hall.

  I threw my suitcase on the bed.

  I have to get out of here. I have to know.

  The rush to leave was filling me up. Anna would be down soon, and I wanted to be gone. But at the back door, with my suitcase in hand, I found Jasper at my feet. I put down the bag and scratched his chin.

  Talking to him, I pinned my hat on my head. “You must be quiet. No one must stop me.”

  I slipped out the door, my heart in my throat. I walked as quickly as I could down the dawn-lit path, not glancing behind me toward the front of Sanctuary, even though I knew she was there, waiting for me, not wanting me to leave.

  At the harbor, I got in one of the boats, not Uncle’s best, but one that looked reliable.

  I started the motor. I’d often taken a boat out when I was young. No one had ever said anything about it or even noticed I was gone. That freedom had felt invigorating. I’d been glad to escape Tess and Mother, at times. And Mamie too. Mamie hadn’t been one of those sweet-eyed grandmothers. “That woman could be a four-star general,” my mother had said. “And she wants me to be one of her soldiers.” Her eyes had flashed mischievously, charmingly. “But I want to play.” “Me too, Momma,” I’d said, giggling. “Me too.”