She barked a laugh. “No, Frank made a special visit to tell me.” She shook her head, her hair loose and wild. “He was different, worse. As much as I despised the man, I didn’t think he was a murderer. But that day he came to the asylum, I knew he would do anything. He would have stabbed me straight through the heart if he’d had a knife.” She looked at me, warning me with her eyes. “He hates everyone descended from Amoret. Because he … I think the fire … what Tess and your grandmother did … it released …”
“Released what?” I asked urgently.
She looked at me. “It seems like so long ago. Wasn’t it a long time ago?”
“It’s still going on, Mother.”
She gave a weary sigh, as if preparing herself. “Mamie,” she said finally, “had a plan, which—of course—had to include me. She pulled me from the bright city and brought me to that horrible island.
“All my life I’d heard about it over and over, how we have Mi’kmaq ancestry and it would be the thing that saved Amoret. But that it needed to be done on the island. The original ritual was peaceful, one of respect, but she changed it. She felt she could take the essence of it, capturing the power of the Mi’kmaq people that was in our blood, and combine it with her own personal touch.” She paused. “It didn’t work.”
“I’m surprised Mamie thought that kind of thing would work on Amoret.”
She looked at me, her eyes suspicious. “What do you mean? How would you know what would work on Amoret?”
“I’m just guessing,” I said quickly. “What happened that night?”
“Some of Mamie’s hocus-pocus,” she said, waving her hand in the air. “I think they released Amoret’s spirit from the house, but it only made things worse.”
“But Amoret is still there. I’ve seen her. She’s …” Inside me.
She looked at me, putting a hand out as if she would touch me. But then it dropped to her lap. “Laura saw her too.”
I looked over at Eli, who was leaning against the wall, listening quietly.
“But, Mother,” I said, “Patricia couldn’t see her.”
“Patricia?”
“Anna’s niece. She and her sister are on the island too.”
“Not anymore,” Eli said. “Anna made them leave. She didn’t give a reason, but we all saw that Frank is a danger. He’s getting worse, Cecilia.”
I nodded, turning back to my mother. “So why couldn’t Patricia see her? And Ben, he hasn’t seen her, I don’t think.”
“I think … I came to believe that Sanctuary is filled with spirits, showing themselves in different ways to different people, depending on who”—she gave me a quick, worried look—“they feel a connection to.”
I knew she meant me in particular. “Sanctuary seems alive to me, like it holds souls within its walls, even sometimes just a brief feeling from its past.”
“Cecilia,” she said after a quick glance in Eli’s direction, “we shouldn’t speak of these things.” She looked frightened.
I only nodded. I was trying to figure out how to tell her about Tess and Mamie. I wasn’t sure she knew. I wasn’t sure anyone had known but Laura.
“Mother,” I said gently, “I went to see Blanche.”
She looked at me cautiously, her eyes narrowed.
“Aunt Laura mentioned her in a letter to me,” I said. “When I was still at Sanctuary, I found Dr. Clemson’s journal, you see. Tess had made entries in French in the back.”
She nodded slowly. “Mamie taught her French.”
“Blanche read Tess’s section to me. And Tess had written about the ghost candles.”
“So you know about Tess and Mamie?”
“Do you know?” I asked, surprised.
“I’ve guessed.” She leaned back against the headboard. “I was trying to protect you, you know.”
“You mean from Uncle?”
“I could handle Frank.” She let out a gasp, which turned into an empty laugh. “At least, so I thought.” She pressed her temple as if it hurt. “No, I meant from my mother. If I gave my mother Tess, I thought she’d leave you alone. And she did for the most part. You were safe. I’d kept you safe.”
I tried to digest this, so different from the way I thought of things. “You didn’t want to protect Tess?”
“Tess and I were close. Very close. I was good to Tess,” she said. “It turned out she was the one to take on Winship. And I did have to protect you from him as well. To protect you from my mother was really to protect you from Amoret and Winship and their hold on us. Quite selfish hold. I wouldn’t let her pull you into that like she did me.”
Eli wore a perplexed, intense look, as if he was trying to sort it all out.
I had to press on, though. “So you think Winship is still on the island?”
“Of course he is,” she retorted. “I’m sure Frank has seen to that, by putting me away and having you sent away.”
“Aunt Laura sent me away.”
“Even so, he was most glad to see you go,” she said. “You were a threat.”
“A threat?”
“To Winship. The old captain doesn’t want to let Amoret go, even in death.”
I thought she was wrong about that, but I couldn’t tell her Amoret stirred inside of me, in my dreams, my heart. That the strength I felt welling up inside of me at times seemed to come from her.
“Evidently he’s in the house,” my mother was saying. “She’s on the grounds, in the graveyard. At least, that’s what Frank told me. Gleefully he told me that Tess and Mamie were dead, killed in the fire meant to set Amoret free. So they failed. And now they’re trapped too.”
“Then we need to release them,” I said.
Eli looked at me steadily, and I returned his gaze.
“Mother, let me show you something.” I unwrapped the pipe and the thimble from Mamie’s handkerchief. I held the treasures out to her, but she wouldn’t take them.
“Where did you get the thimble?” she asked me, her voice shaking.
I sighed. “I found it at the cottage.” With Eli looking on, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her about the fireflies showing me the way to it. “Why was it at the cottage, Mother?”
She closed her eyes, clearly disturbed by it. “It was Aimée’s. Amoret’s sister’s, passed down through the generations. Your grandmother said that it would be the difference, that it would make the ritual …” Her voice drifted off. “I don’t want to talk anymore.” Her hands started to shake, but she said with steel in her voice, “We’ve lost too much. We should just run, Cecilia.”
Looking at Eli’s face, I could see he agreed with her.
“I’ll never have peace if we don’t finish this,” I said.
“There’s no one left. If we fail, you’ll know what it really means not to have peace.” She leaned forward then, her eyes frantic. “And there’ll be no one left who could save us.”
I drew back from her, catching her fear. She was right. We would be trapped on the island forever, surrounded by Winship’s vileness. A dark fate.
She became very agitated and we had to work with her to get her settled down. Finally, she was soundly sleeping.
Eli put on his coat and left.
I followed him. He was leaning against a car, perfectly still, just staring into nothingness.
I leaned on the car next to him. “You don’t believe her?”
He shook his head a little. “Cecilia.”
“I thought you were open to figuring this out.”
“I’m trying.”
“So if you don’t believe her, that there’s an Amoret Winship still at Sanctuary … but you saw the fireflies—”
“Cecilia,” he said, looking at me now. “I’m here. I’ve given up everything for you. Does it really matter if I can accept”—he struggled for the words—“a ghost wandering the grounds of Sanctuary?”
“For me?” I asked, hope fluttering. “You said it was because it was the right thing to do.”
His look had so much love
my heart stumbled. He looked away then, into the night. “It’s what I told myself. And it was a part of it. If it wasn’t for you, would I have done it? I wish I knew that answer, but I don’t.”
Inside I was soaring. “I don’t care.”
His eyes quickly swiveled to mine. “About what?” he asked carefully.
“About the why of it,” I said, returning the look he’d given me.
He didn’t reach for me. We just stayed in the moment, staring at each other.
“Thank you,” I said, not thinking about the words.
“You’re welcome,” he said, probably not thinking about them either.
I looked down at his hand and took it in mine. Our hands were freezing. He squeezed mine then, and I looked up at him.
Our eyes locked. Finally, finally. He put his hand behind my neck and gently pulled me to him. Finally, finally. He kissed me gently, or was it urgently? The air so cold, our faces cold, our lips so warm. I missed you, I said. I love you, he said. We kissed again. I love you too, I said. He pulled my forehead to his, his eyes looking deep into mine. Don’t leave again, he said. Never, I said. We sealed the whispered promises with another kiss, long, tender, passionate. I lost myself.
I rested my forehead on his chest. My eyes burned with happy tears that I didn’t want him to see. He kissed my head. We stayed that way for a long time.
“We should go in,” I said finally. “My mother.”
“Yes,” he said. “But I want you to myself one day.”
“I want you to myself. All to myself.”
“And you shall have me. When this is over.”
“When this is over.”
Our arms were wrapped around each other’s waists as we walked, not wanting to be parted. Each step was taking us back to Sanctuary’s troubles. I hoped we could withstand what was to happen next.
“Do you remember what we learned about the woman who drowned?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“I found out some things when I was in Nova Scotia.”
“Tell me.”
MISS OWENS WAS AT THE DOOR WITH BAKED CHICKEN SHE’D MADE. WHEN I let her into the room, I was surprised to see my mother’s eyes filled with pain. She turned from Miss Owens and looked at the wall. “Cecilia said you were here, Stella. I can’t believe you did this for me.”
“Cora,” Miss Owens said, sitting beside her on the bed and wrapping my mother in her arms. Mother patted Miss Owen’s hair awkwardly.
She visited with my mother, getting her to laugh. Mother seemed to finally let go of the fear that made her stiff and reserved. As I watched them, I thought of her with Tess, how she relaxed with her in a way she didn’t or couldn’t with me. Was she telling me the truth, really? I thought she might say whatever she wanted me to believe. I still loved her, though, despite all of it.
“You’re a good daughter,” Miss Owens said as I walked her out to her car, wrapped in my coat.
“I’m trying to be, Miss Owens.”
She grabbed my cold hands with her gloved ones, looking right into my eyes. “Call me Stella. You’re all grown up now, Cecilia.” She leaned in and whispered, “I’m no longer your governess.” And then she laughed and opened the door to her car.
“As I said before,” she told me, “your mother has always been good to me. Very good. Better than you know.” She looked at me as if she wanted to say something, but was holding back.
“What?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“What did my mother do for you?” I asked her, a slow dread coming over me.
“I told you. She took me in when I needed someone. My husband had abandoned me. I was poor and a mess.” She laughed, trying to make light of it. Kissing me on the cheek, she said, “It’s not her fault the way things turned out. I don’t hold it against her.”
With that, she got in the car and left.
Slowly, I walked back into the motel room. My mother was eating the chicken, talking to Eli. I could do nothing but stare at her.
“What is it, my darling?” she asked me. She tilted her head, her long hair spilling to the side, looking at me so earnestly and innocently, in a flash the mother I remembered.
She pulled a thin cigarette out of a silver case, which was engraved with the initial C. She saw me looking at it. “Stella brought it. She has one just like it, with an S, of course.”
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke.”
“Oh, but I like it.”
I sat down in the chair at the desk, watching her. She picked up an ashtray on the bedside table and flicked some ashes into it, then put it in her lap. “Don’t look at me like that, Cecilia. Surely I deserve a smoke after being locked up for five years?”
“What did you do for Miss Owens?”
She gave a little shrug and shook her head, about to say nothing, I could tell from the expression on her face. Then her eyes grew sad and she closed them.
“Tell me,” I said, the truth dancing madly around the edges of my brain. “Tell me about Tess.”
“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t keep going on about things.” When she opened her eyes, they were filled with tears. “I did care for her.”
“You sacrificed her.”
“I didn’t know it would be like that,” she said testily. “I just wanted to protect you.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I couldn’t let Mamie have you.”
“Is Tess my sister?”
“I never saw two sisters closer than the two of you. Laura and I were never like that.”
My heart thudded slowly in my chest. I remembered Tess’s face, so different from my own: the roundness, her light blue eyes, the way her nose twitched when she thought deeply.
I put on my coat and went to the café next door, ordering a hot cup of coffee. I couldn’t drink it, just let the steam rise up into my face. I thought of a friend of mine at school, Daisy, who found out her mother was actually her grandmother and her sister was her mother. “I think I always knew,” she’d told me.
I’d never even guessed. The feelings I had for Tess were complicated, but they were sibling feelings, when you came down to it. Blanche’s kids had shown me that—despite our particular odd circumstances—the essence of Tess’s and my relationship was all part of growing up, and birth order, and a struggle over who does my mommy really love most.
So much time wasted on struggling with that issue. But I recognized it wasn’t really wasted. The struggle had led me to this point. And as precarious as it all still was, it felt like the place I was supposed to be.
But … Tess.
It was so unfair to her. She’d been a child manipulated by the adults around her. And now she was trapped in a living hell.
The coffee had long grown cold by the time I left the café. Both Eli and Mother looked up when I came in. I sat on the edge of the second bed while Mother straightened up, looking at me, waiting to hear what I was going to say. Still cold, I kept my coat on and put my hands in my pockets.
“Did she know?”
“Of course not. Stella and I thought it best for everyone to think she was my daughter. James and I brought her with us to Sanctuary as a baby, saying she was ours.”
“So Mamie thought …”
“Yes, Mamie thought Tess was her granddaughter. Mamie was very selfish, Cecilia. She didn’t care about any of us. I accused her once of having children just to create an army of Daughters for Amoret. She didn’t deny it.”
I thought of the blueberry pies she used to make for us, the card games she used to play with us as we sat before the fireplace in her little cottage. But Mother had made up her mind long ago about Mamie. “And so she brought Tess up as one of Amoret’s Daughters,” I said.
“She took to Tess right away.” Her eyes grew sad. “I enjoyed putting one over on her at the time.” She picked at some invisible thing on her blanket. “She taught Tess everything she’d wanted to teach me. Mamie wasn’t very kind about Laura either, you know. She always said Laura wasn’t very smart.
So it had to be me, you see.”
“That’s a cruel thing to say about Aunt Laura.”
“Laura had always been the obedient one, eager to please, listening to our mother’s stories about Amoret, agreeing to do whatever was expected. Tess wasn’t like that. She didn’t want to please anyone. She was fascinated by all of it. Mamie saw that in her, that Tess wasn’t doing it for anyone else but herself. Tess could be more clinical about it. Less emotionally wrought. She didn’t carry the family curse in her blood.”
“You put her life in danger.”
“I didn’t think of it that way. I honestly didn’t. And I tried to make it up to Tess, the bringing her into all of this. I tried to be good to her. I was very grateful to her, actually.”
“Grateful,” I repeated.
“For keeping you out of it.”
“She was just a child.”
“It wasn’t why I took her. Stella was in a terrible way, and James and I wanted to help. We were in love, newlyweds. It was the perfect solution.”
“Except for Tess.”
“Tess had a good life.”
“Mother.”
“Who expected the crash, the money gone?” she exclaimed. “And your father’s …” Her voice drifted off. She was still not able to talk about his death after all these years. “It changed everything.”
“That had nothing to do with Tess’s fate.”
“If your father had been there, I would have handled Frank better. And if I’d still been at Sanctuary, there wouldn’t have been a cottage fire.”
I looked down at my hands. “I think you should stay here, Mother. Miss Owens could take care of you while I’m gone.”
“You should stay here too.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be back—”
“If you’re going back, then I am too.”
I looked from her to Eli and knew both of them didn’t like my plan. But I couldn’t leave Tess and Mamie, and all the others. And I couldn’t live with this heaviness on my heart where Amoret waited. This had to be done, so we could all go on with our lives. I didn’t know how Mother could even contemplate leaving her own mother and leaving Tess—my sister, no matter what she said—trapped at Sanctuary.
I wanted to be able to excuse Mother, as I remembered what her life must have been like the last few years, being imprisoned and experimented on. But some part of me wanted Tess to be my real sister and someone else to be my real mother.
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