“You spend so much time out here,” he said. “In the graveyard.”
A hollow laugh escaped me. “This is where my family sleeps.”
“Look at me,” Eli said insistently. “Please.”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, keeping my voice cold, my back to him still.
“Please turn around.” I could sense a panic in him and wondered if he was afraid to see my face.
“Why are you here?” I asked again. “Are you friends with my uncle?”
“Absolutely not.”
Then I did look at him. He stared at me hesitantly, as if there was something to say but he didn’t know how to say it.
“What were you and my uncle arguing about?” I asked, clutching the journal to my chest.
“What?”
“I saw you out the window. He was yelling.”
He nodded. “We were arguing about you.”
“You did know him, then, before you came to Sanctuary,” I said.
“I never met him before I came here,” he said, tapping his fingers against his leg. “But I did talk to him on the phone.”
“About the library?” I asked.
He paused. “Not only about the library.”
“What else, then?”
He didn’t look away. “I have to first explain—”
“Why are you here?” I asked, the fear growing within me.
He didn’t approach, but he kept looking at me, as if he was pleading with his eyes. “I didn’t expect to fall for you,” he said very slowly.
My eyes stung and watered, so I looked away. “Are you going to tell me why you’re here or not?”
When he stepped toward me, I thrust out my hand to stop him. “Just tell me,” I said softly, almost unable to get the words out.
“Promise you’ll listen to all I have to say before you react.”
“Go on.”
“A few weeks ago,” he said, talking rapidly now, “when I was in my office in Bangor, I got a phone call asking if I would come to Sanctuary to … talk with someone here.”
“To talk to Uncle?”
“You.”
“Me?” I asked, confused. “Talk to me?”
“Yes.”
“Uncle called you?”
“No,” he said. “Dr. Brighton.”
“Dr. Brighton?” I began to tremble.
“Cecilia,” Eli said gently but insistently. “Listen to me, please.”
“Go away,” I said as I left him and walked deeper into the cemetery, crunching over the fallen dead leaves. I stopped under a maple, grasping the bark of its old wavy trunk, wanting its scratching against my skin.
“I didn’t know you,” he said, behind me. “I was doing my job.”
I looked up at the branch above me. One bright red leaf in a sea of green dangled there. “Who are you, Eli? What do you do really?”
“I’m in private practice.”
“A doctor?” I asked, turning toward him.
He gave a quick nod.
“A psychiatrist?” I asked, wrapping my arms around my stomach, pulling the journal farther into myself. Was it all I had?
“I didn’t know you,” he said again. “Not then.”
“So you figure out if people are crazy?”
“I try to help people.”
“Crazy people. Like me.”
“You’re not crazy. No one is going to hurt you. No one.”
“I thought … I thought you cared for me,” I whispered.
“I do,” he said with a kind of ache in his voice. “So much, Cecilia. So much.” His hands were shaking. “My professional hope is to help people with their own personal demons, not to hurt them.” His words tumbled out. “My mother struggles with a sadness that seeps out of the core of her, and then she bursts out of it with this wild exuberance. She overwhelms my father, but he loves her. Others are not so fortunate. I want to help people who have no one else to help them.”
“Like Dr. Brighton does, shocking them and injecting them with drugs?” I accused.
“No one is going to do that to you,” he said.
“They do it to my mother!” I yelled.
“I know,” he said urgently but calmly, putting a hand toward me but not touching me. “I know.”
He looked off in the distance and then back at me. “I’m glad I came here. Otherwise, I’d never have met you. But I’m sorry I went along with your uncle’s charade. I didn’t know him then and what he’s capable of. He’s a fractured man, Cecilia. A man with demons that I can’t begin to understand. And I believe he’s trying to set you up.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“That he is doing things to make you believe you’re losing your mind. He’s already persuaded Dr. Brighton, telling him that you have the same mental instabilities as your mother.”
Splitting of the mind.
I turned from him so he wouldn’t see the truth on my face, especially at this moment when I was feeling vulnerable and exposed, and doubting of him, a person I’d grown to trust and care deeply for.
“So Dr. Brighton wants to have me committed?” I asked as steadily as I could.
I sensed Eli right beside me, within touching distance, but he still didn’t reach for me.
“That’s not going to happen,” he said firmly.
Thoughts and longing for my lost family filled me up. I couldn’t focus on his words any longer.
“Cecilia?” I heard Eli asking, but he seemed so far away. “Cecilia?”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “That it’s not going to happen?”
His hand reached toward mine, but then it dropped back to his side. “I’m convinced your uncle is creating mysteries and ghosts just to prey on your mind.”
“Did Patricia tell you about what happened here last evening?”
He paled. “She said you saw something that she didn’t see.”
I looked at him quite directly. “I see ghosts. And it’s not Uncle’s doing. I know Amoret is here, in this graveyard. I don’t know why Patricia couldn’t see her. She was right in front of her.”
Condition within families.
“Is Amoret here now?” he asked.
“Yes, probably.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t believe me, I can tell. You want me to believe you, but you don’t believe me.”
He looked tortured, exasperated, and very unsure of himself. He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
I turned away.
“Wait,” he said, his voice stopping me. He shook his head while I waited. “You want me to say I believe there is a ghost haunting Sanctuary? Is that what you want?”
“I don’t want you to think I’m crazy.”
“I don’t think that.”
“And I don’t need you to take care of me, as your father does for your mother.”
“It’s not like that. That’s not what I meant.”
“What is it like, then?”
“I want us to be together. To take care of each other. That’s what I want. Can’t we be that for each other? The best kind of friend?” He turned beseeching eyes on me. “Don’t you see? I need you.”
“Even if I’m insane.”
“You’re not insane.”
The fear inside of me snaked and twirled. “Was any of it real, Eli?” I asked in a frightened whisper. “Between us?” I doubted everything.
“All of it,” he said with great passion. “All of it between us is real.”
I saw them before Eli did. The fireflies drifted from the deep of the woods and began to circle us, these tiny lights. His brow furrowed in confusion as he watched them. I’d never seen them in the day before, but I had a feeling that Amoret had sent them.
“Ghost candles,” I told him. “Do you see these?”
He nodded, speechless, as they settled into my hair and on my arms and shoulders, small lights of fire outlining my body. I remembered Tess’s words—“
our cousins”—and felt a kinship with these lights. He sees them. He sees how they protect me.
“I am not insane,” I told him. “Please don’t follow me.” I walked off, the lights trailing me before most of them disappeared into the woods. But two stayed with me, alighting on my hand or my cheek and off again but never straying far away. I remembered how frightened I’d been of the fireflies and how comforting I found their presence now.
Quite deliberately, I went to my grandmother’s cottage. Unlike the last time I visited, I strode right to the center of the ruins and sat down on the crumbling stairs.
I wished I could banish Uncle’s babblings about Tess and my grandmother out of my head. He was just a modern version of his witch-hunting ancestor Captain Winship and was blinded by his own hatred. There was no truth in what he said. Tess wouldn’t have burned down this cottage.
I also didn’t want to think about Eli. Lovely moments from the last few days flooded unbidden into my head. I didn’t know if any of the words he had said were real. Our whole time together seemed a lie. Mary, Anna, even Ben hiding the letter—everyone had been lying to me, Eli being the one that hurt the most, even though I’d known him such a short time.
Gusts of wind came off the bay. My grandmother had an excellent view. She’d wanted her cottage built farther from Sanctuary, on the north point, but Papa had said it wasn’t practical. Did she want to look across the sea and imagine being back in Acadie? Then why come to Sanctuary to begin with?
Each step I took toward my family took me farther from them. Maybe I had been too young to really know them.
I took my aunt’s letter out of my pocket, hearing her voice in my head as I read silently. The only truths I had were riddles of the past, dragging me to even more riddles, as if my family’s past was indeed roots, a physical part of me, with the desire to pull and twist and strangle. I understood how I could feel bonded to my mother and Mamie, but the pull on my heart went even beyond my grandmother.
How could I be connected to a place I’d never been? Did our family curse begin in Acadie, or would it stretch back even further?
How far a reach does the past have on us? How long would I struggle with this—if I pulled too hard, followed too closely, would I meet the fate of my sister, my father, my mother, my grandmother?
The fireflies were still with me, both resting on my hand. They lifted up, so beautiful. They drifted toward the crumbling fireplace. I got up, compelled to follow them deeper into the ruins. They rested on the broken stone, slipping delicately inside an empty, dark space. They flew out and then back in. Again and again they did this. My heart beating wildly, I felt between the stones, my fingers finding a small object in the dirt.
A brass thimble. I looked at it closely, feeling Tess’s touch upon it. Aimée’s, someone whispered softly with love—not into my ear, but as if coming from my own heart.
I felt a painful yank inside of me. The sound of the sea was in my ears, as if it crashed all around me. My head throbbed from the noise. The sea spoke my name, calling. I was confused. Was it my name or another’s name? I was drawn to the edge of the high cliff, but was afraid to look. There was something there that I needed to see. Finally, my eyes fell to the waves. There, a body floated, faceup.
I fell to my knees. But I wasn’t myself. I was Amoret, and it was William’s body. She didn’t cry. The pain cut deep inside of us, slicing here and here and here. We didn’t cry.
I WOKE, MY HEART BEATING. OR WAS I STILL DREAMING?
My hand held a knife. Amoret’s rage burned inside of me.
I felt a presence. It was either Uncle or Winship or both. Weren’t they the same? I swung open the door to emptiness. I turned on lights as I went, brightening up Sanctuary, not caring who came downstairs.
In the dining room, my hand went to the light, but I froze. On the table, hazy images showed candles already burning. Captain Winship was wearing the same coat he’d been wearing when I’d seen him in this room before. Amoret was in the same dress. She was waiting, just like before, almost like she’d been waiting for me.
The captain began to cough. I thought he might be choking. His hands went to his neck and his eyes widened like his throat was burning. But he couldn’t yell or speak. He tried to reach for Amoret, but she stood and watched him, her face dead.
The captain fell to the floor, his eyes still open, but very still. Not breathing.
I watched, horrified, as Amoret stood there. She whispered, I’m sorry, Papa, speaking to a father not there.
Calmly, Amoret picked up the captain’s silver fork and took a bite.
I LEFT BEFORE THE SUN CAME UP, THE JOURNAL IN MY SUITCASE, THE suitcase in my hand. It was colder than I’d thought. When I got to the boat, I’d put on something warmer over my sweater, but not this minute.
I wanted to be away from the house, quickly. I was despondent about leaving and feeling guilty about abandoning Ben. I was breaking my promise. I had to leave before my spirit slipped away as Amoret’s had almost two centuries ago.
But then Eli was on the pathway, in hat and coat. He put his bag on the ground. We stared at each other, under the yellowing trees in the low light of the morning.
“I’m so sorry I have hurt you,” he said.
“You need to go back to Bangor,” I said, my heart breaking.
“I won’t,” he said quietly. “I can’t. I can’t leave you.”
“Then I’ll leave you,” I said, passing him by.
“If you leave me, I’m coming too,” he said, picking up his bag and walking briskly alongside me.
“Don’t,” I said. And when he wouldn’t stop, I repeated, but more vehemently, “Don’t!”
Without looking at him, I kept walking. He wasn’t following me now.
“Cecilia,” he called out.
“What?” I asked, exasperated, wanting this to be over.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “At least tell me that.”
I stepped toward him to see him better and realized he was crying. “Eli.”
“I’ll never … see you again”—his voice was breaking—“if you leave. I can’t lose you.”
Without thinking, I ran to him. He stepped back as he caught me, letting out a sound of surprise, and then, recovering, pulled me in closer, his gray hat falling to the leaf-covered path. I buried my face into his neck.
“Oh, Cecilia.” I could feel the speeding up of his heart. We held each other for a long time, not saying anything else. He thought I wasn’t going to leave. I didn’t know how to tell him the truth. So I stayed pressed against him, wanting the moment to go on and on and never end.
He seemed to relax a little, taking a breath. “Aren’t you cold in just your sweater?” he asked in my ear, trying to push me away to look at my face. But I just pressed in closer.
“Let me put my coat around you,” he whispered, but I just shook my head silently, feeling comforted by the nearness of him, the smell of his skin.
He stopped speaking and said nothing else. We stayed like that, pressed against each other. His arms and chest were strong and warm, and I felt safe huddled against his heart.
A rustling in the bushes stirred me from my moment of bliss. I lifted my head. Eli smiled at me, his hands caressing my back.
But then he saw my face and understood.
I pulled out of his arms. “You’re not the man I thought you were.” His face fell. It pained me to see it.
He didn’t follow me this time.
LETTING GO OF THE THIMBLE ON A CHAIN AROUND MY NECK, I PULLED MY collar up against the wind as the ferry drew closer to the shore of marshy land rolling into hills. Bucolic idleness drifted over the water to us. A man in a blue cap and a tall boy on a long pier watched our boat coming in, the boy with folded arms and curious but cautious eyes. They moved slowly, coming toward our approaching ferry. No one was in any great rush.
My mother didn’t fit in this sleepy place. But Amoret was easier to imagine in the fields of Acadie, now Nova Scotia.
A woman on the ferry had been bringing the past to life. She wasn’t of French descent, but instead British, her ancestors the English planters brought in by the British after the Acadians were thrown out.
“You need to visit the church and the marker,” she said, pointing. “But just stand on the land. You’ll feel it.”
“Feel what?” I asked.
“The sorrow of all those poor people taken from their homes and from one another. You don’t have to be Acadian to feel it. That kind of tragedy—it lingers. It’s in the air at Gettysburg, where all those soldiers, boys mostly, died.”
“I am Acadian,” I told her.
As we left the ferry, I tried to imagine what it must be like to be ripped from this place, everyone herded to the shore, a few belongings, what they could grab, what they could carry, forced to leave a life they loved—their homes, their animals, their fields, their church, their communities. Everything they’d been born to. The large ships in the harbor looming, the panic as neighbors or even daughters and sons were loaded onto different ships, many never to see each other again.
This wasn’t Winship Island, my wild rocky island of cliffs and trees and few open spaces. Amoret hated my island. Sanctuary wasn’t a home she’d been born to, raised on, anchored to. Instead, it was this land that held that special place in her heart. Strange how what was home to one was hell to another. Although Sanctuary had changed for me.
Something stirred deep inside of me, something primal and potent. I felt like I was coming home and that I was farther away than I’d ever been.
THE CHILDREN WERE ON A WOODEN GATE, ALL LINED UP, SMALLEST TO largest. Beyond them was a two-story farmhouse with a garden and a flock of sheep.
The youngest, a boy with freckles and missing front teeth, pointed at me. “You’re the lady in the red hat,” he said with a slight lisp.
My hand instinctively went to my head. “It’s gray.”
His little finger moved to my suitcase. “What’s in there?”
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