The Feel of Echoes

by Mari Labbee

  “It is strange that you and I have not become better…um…acquainted since my arrival. I suppose we should have talked a long time ago.”

  What was she getting at?

  “I have been meaning to thank you for your…discretion,” she said coyly while looking down to admire her hands. He remembered that about her; she was obsessed with her hands.

  “It would have been so embarrassing to have to explain myself to my sister. But because you are the gentleman you are, I did not have to.” She paused and smiled brightly.

  “And I think that deserves a thank-you.”

  He looked at her, not trusting, knowing that her motives served only one purpose.

  “I have to apologize to you for my behavior from…before.”

  She lowered her eyes. “It is so different here, and I am quite reformed. I was not myself over there…you must understand that, and, well, it is in the past—for both of us.” She looked at him, eyes soft, pleading. “I promise you that. Being here has reminded me of all that I was removed from and how things should have been. I belong here.”

  He watched her carefully.

  “You love my sister very much, don’t you?”

  He hesitated and then nodded nervously.

  “Imagine if we had known we were related back…well, you know, we would have had so much to talk about.”

  He suspected that she had known then, that she had known all along. The portrait of Rosabel that he had been carrying and Rosabel’s handkerchief had disappeared after he visited the plantation the first night. He had been sure then and was sure now that it was she who had taken them; she had always known who he was.

  She went on. “Now that Rosabel is expecting, you will soon have a family to take care of, and I will take my leave.”

  His heart quickened, but he kept calm, trying to keep his emotions in check. But his eyes remained fixed on her.

  “I have given it some thought, and my sister is so very kind. She would never ask me to leave, but I feel that I have overstayed my welcome, so I will go.”

  He looked for the deception in her eyes and in her voice. If she was lying, then she was masking it well. He wanted to believe what she said more than anything. Was it possible she felt remorse?

  “I will leave within the week. I do not want to say good-bye to Rosabel. She may try to talk me out of it. You will tell her for me. Will you do that for me, dearest brother-in-law?”

  He looked at her, and she matched his stare. She was leaving. He should have leaped up out of his chair and danced through the house. She was making him believe this.

  “Yes. I will tell her.”

  Isabel smiled. “Good, then; it will be easier for all that way.” For the first time, her smile didn’t frighten him, and he thought there might be a chance she actually would be leaving their lives. His only thought now was of Rosabel.

  He would tell her immediately that whatever disappointment she might feel at losing a sister, he would make up for by being her husband once again.

  Isabel walked out of the parlor and out of the house into the brilliant morning sun. The sea grass along the cliff’s edge shimmered as it yielded to the wind. She breathed in deeply, loving the painful sting of salt air as it passed into her lungs. She smiled, satisfied.

  Soon it would be over, and she would claim the life stolen from her. She would right the wrongs and take back what was rightfully hers. It made her blood boil to think of how simple Rosabel’s life had been. She turned her face to the sun and felt it burn. It reminded her, and though she had promised herself she would never think about it, she thought about Fig Field.

  The air was a muddle of fresh and rotting things, the never-ending cycle of the island. During the last of those days, the rotting overpowered. The island was dying. She had felt it then, and she knew it was her time to go.

  The fire that consumed the plantation had been so immense that she could see it clearly from the deck of the ship that she sailed away on that last night. The flicking tongues of fire leaping over the treetops of Fig Field were the most fascinating sight she’d ever seen. She wondered then and since if anything or anyone had survived it. She would find her way home now. Yes, the home that should have always been hers. And she would remain there forever. She would never leave it again.

  She looked up squinting against the glare coming off the glass beacon. Up there, where it would not be disturbed, lay the thing that would seal Rosabel’s fate. Hidden away for all time. She stared up at the dizzying height—166 steps high—and laughed. If anyone had been watching at that moment, he or she would have seen the strange sight of Isabel, lifting the ends of her skirt up high, with pinkies aloft in the air, skipping and singing to herself like a child delirious with delight.

  Far away, over the sea, black clouds gathered.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  “Yes, my love. It is true,” he said, his eyes glistening.

  Elias held both of Rosabel’s hands in his, and every other moment or so, one hand would reach up and caress her cheek. Rosabel was sitting up in bed stunned and a little suspicious.

  It was as if he had come back from the dead. Even his voice sounded different. It had lost its hesitant tone and sounded strong again. Her first instinct was to throw herself against his chest and hug him tightly, but she held back. There had been too many strange things going on of late. From one day to the next, Elias had become a different man. From one day to the next, Madeline had walked out of their lives without a word. From one day to the next, those two who had come with Isabel went from strange to stranger. She was understandably wary.

  Now here he was, sitting with her, holding her hands in his, and looking at her in a way she never thought she would see again. Had her prayers been answered?

  “But why would she leave? I do not understand.”

  “She wants to go, my darling, and you must let her. We have our family to think about. She sent me to tell you because she did not want you to argue with her, and you mustn’t. Please, my love, let her go if she wants to.” He placed his hand on her belly. “She must go.”

  She did not trust this completely and wondered why Isabel would want to go or why she would send Elias to tell her instead of telling her directly. In spite of the recent events, Rosabel was still grateful she’d had a sister these last months. She wasn’t completely sure that she wanted Isabel to go.

  “You…you did not say something to her that made her want to go, did you?” she asked Elias.

  He sat up straight and responded with great seriousness. “No, now you must believe me. It is her decision, and she came to it herself. This is very good news, my love, very good news.”

  Rosabel knew him; his eyes could not lie, and he was not lying to her today. Isabel would be leaving, and though she wished she could have more time to know her sister, she would not miss the two servants. Neither spoke to her, and they had taken to hiding from her whenever she came near. Oh, she pretended not to see them when they hid, but she saw them all the same. She could only hope that Isabel would not come to harm from those two and decided to say something to her about it the next time they spoke.

  The talk with Elias made her feel stronger than she had felt in a long time, but it puzzled her that she was so sickly and so often bedridden. Meg Suttie hadn’t suffered this way when she was with child, and she wondered how common it was for others. She willed herself to get up and managed quite well from the bed to the closet. She pulled out a plain dress, one suitable for home, but then she spotted the blue one, the one she had made while Elias was away—the one meant for him—the one Madeline helped her sew. She pulled it out and wondered if it would still fit.

  Rosabel found she was alone. Isabel had taken Minkah and Malik somewhere and would not be back until later. Elias had taken the horse to the blacksmith and then would go to town for supplies. Rosabel would be alone for most of the day.

  The house was stifling hot, and Rosabel went about opening every window they had. In the great room, she
stopped to look at the mural, something she never did, avoiding it at all cost. So odd, she couldn’t remember painting it, but today it did not seem so very frightening. Distant thunder rumbled as it came closer, and with it, the wind picked up, and the house filled with the smell of rain. She looked out the windows and saw the black clouds roiling over the water. She suddenly felt very alone.

  It was dusk when Isabel arrived back at Jackal’s Head Point. She gestured to Minkah and Malik, and obediently they scurried off. It was deathly quiet.

  “Rosabel,” she called out in her sweetest voice.

  No answer. She walked into the great room and looked around. She laughed as she passed the mural. She had seen this beach and that dock long before ever setting foot in this house. She knew about the madness that had created it, and it gave her a perverse feeling of accomplishment whenever she saw it. Darkness was fast approaching, and in the dusky light, she caught sight of Rosabel by the lighthouse. She became worried. What could she be doing out there?

  Isabel came up quietly behind her sister, quietly enough to be able to hear her crying.

  “Dear, whatever is the matter?”

  Rosabel turned around. Her eyes were swollen and red, and tears streaked her face. She held out the small portrait and the handkerchief she had given Elias on the night of their wedding. The ones he had taken with him when he sailed, the ones he hadn’t brought back, the ones he told her he had lost.

  Isabel stared at them—Rosabel had been in her room.

  “Wh…what were these doing in your room?” Rosabel asked, holding them out. “How did you come to have these?”

  The first of the rain began.

  “Elias told me he lost them during the time he disappeared.”

  Isabel stared at her-surprised. She hadn’t expected this. Rosabel caught sight of movement coming from behind the lighthouse just in time to see Minkah rounding it with Malik following close behind. Isabel hadn’t moved, and a slow smile began; at that moment, Rosabel understood. All the odd things she had shrugged off—they all made perfect sense now. Madeline must have known; that was why she went away.

  Madeline! The medallion!

  Minkah had almost reached her when Rosabel bolted and began running toward the house. Her strength surprised her, and she had no idea from whence it came. The element of surprise had given her distance.

  Rosabel reached the door outside the great room and bolted it behind her; this would give her a few precious minutes. There was no time to close the windows. She ran up the stairs to her room and straight to the bureau. She pulled open the top drawer and began searching for the medallion Madeline had given her. She understood now why Madeline had given her that medallion—it was for protection, and she never should have taken it off.

  Desperate, she felt around for it, but it wasn’t there. She pulled everything out of the drawer, throwing everything on the floor, not caring. She pulled the empty drawer out of the bureau and shook it—nothing—it was not there. Slowly it dawned on her, and her stomach turned. That night that she had woken to find Isabel at the bureau, it had been real, not a dream as Isabel told her it was. Isabel had stolen the medallion.

  “That’s right. It isn’t there anymore.”

  Rosabel jumped and turned around to see Isabel at the door. Behind her, Minkah and Malik stood guard. Malik hung back, deferring to the two women. One of the strange things of late, but Rosabel knew it wasn’t strange at all really, considering that Malik wasn’t himself at all. Isabel watched as Rosabel’s gaze went from Minkah to Malik and then back again.

  “You’ve figured it out, have you? Well, then, all I can say is that it would be easier—for you, I mean—if you simply gave in,” Isabel said.

  “Father knew about you, what you did; he said there was something wrong with you. I heard him talking with Aunt Vivian once. I thought I had imagined that, but I didn’t. I never wanted to believe that you could…could have…have had anything to do with Mother’s…but you did, didn’t you? What did you do to Mother? You had something to do with it…” Rosabel stopped, catching her breath. “That’s why they sent you away…and…all those other things, all the accidents that I thought were just…those weren’t accidents at all, were they?”

  Memories, long buried, came rushing forth, pouring all at once through the gate she had just opened. Pain, so much pain. They had known what Isabel was and they’d sent her away because of it.

  But how could a child…? Rosabel stopped—that was a mistake; whatever her sister was, she would never underestimate her again.

  The two sisters stared at each other. Then Isabel began to laugh. And quick as a snake, she reached out and grabbed Rosabel’s arm, twisting it so that the tiny half-moon birthmark on the inside of her arm faced up.

  “That was me—before we were born.”

  Rosabel looked down at her birthmark and suddenly noticed it was in the shape of a bite mark. Her eyes wandered to her small but swollen belly and back at Isabel. “What sort of evil-minded person are you? You are still my sister. How could you…”

  As she spoke, a thought occurred to her. She wishes to possess me. What had sucked everything human out of Isabel, what had made her like this? She stared at her mirror image and lifted a hand to her belly defensively.

  “No! I won’t let you do this!”

  “You don’t have a say in this.”

  How Isabel intended to carry out such a thing didn’t matter because Rosabel knew it had already been done. All one had to do was look at the unassuming Malik and the formidable Minkah to know this. Her only thought at that moment was how to get past them to save the child who lived inside her.

  Elias brought the cart to a stop in front of the small barn at the edge of the woods. He unhitched the newly shod horse and set about unloading the supplies from the back of the cart. He worked quickly to get out of the rain.

  He set out some hay for the animal and left the barn. A sudden instinct made him pick up his pace and then broke into a run for the house.

  Rosabel lunged at Isabel. With both arms held stiffly in front of her, she pushed hard and put all her body weight behind it. Rosabel’s show of force surprised Isabel, and she fell backward into Minkah, who hit the wall with a thud. Malik startled, didn’t make a move to stop her, and this gave Rosabel the chance she needed to get away.

  Isabel, momentarily stunned by her sister’s attack, quickly regained her bearings and was up after her sister a few moments later. Rosabel was at the top of the stairs when she saw Elias walk through the door. She thought she saw two other people behind him, but that must have been shadows because as he stepped through the door, he was alone.

  “Elias…”

  He looked up at her, and she saw his eyes widen just before everything went black.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  Matt’s head rested against the headrest. He was walking through the darkness. Slowly the edges became sharper, and he recognized the woods of Jackal’s Head Point. He heard something—singing?

  Someone was singing, and he was walking toward it. The woods were thick, and he felt the thorns scratch his arms as he moved vines out of his way.

  Up ahead there was a light, a campfire. He slowed down and slipped behind a tree, one that would hide him well from the trio around the fire.

  There were two women and one man. The three stood around a small fire. One of the women was white, and she had jet-black hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist. The black man and the black woman stood facing each other, holding hands, fingers entwined. The white woman swayed with hands held high above her and sang—or chanted? In either case, it was in a language Matt had never heard.

  He looked at them curiously, wondering who they were as he watched them. Then the black woman’s eyes flew open, and she stared directly at him. Next, the black man looked over at him followed by the white woman. It was when the white woman turned to look at him that every muscle in his body tensed.

  Her gray-green eyes narrowed, and she dropped he
r hands. She turned completely around, and without missing a beat, she came at him, teeth bared, her face twisted in ferocity.

  Matt turned and ran, carried away by some unseen force. He ran through the woods, and with no time to move them out of the way, thorny vines stabbed his face and arms, drawing blood. The woman was right on his heels. He didn’t have to turn around to check; he just knew it.

  Suddenly something stopped him, and he felt a shooting pain as if he had just run into a wall. When he regained his vision, he saw a woman on the ground in front of him and a lantern next to her. She was what he had run into, and she’d fallen back onto the ground. Her hair was long, coppery gold, and she looked up at him with intense blue eyes. There wasn’t time for anything. He knew what was following him, so he grabbed the woman and pulled her along behind him. The house at Jackal’s Head Point appeared just as they cleared the woods, and he headed for the only familiar thing he recognized. Just as they reached the house, the woman spoke in a very familiar voice.

  “Why were you singing in the woods?”

  Matt turned to look at the woman—it was Bri.

  He woke up with a jolt. Someone behind him was lying on a car horn. The traffic ahead of him had moved. He shifted the truck into gear and aggressively muscled his way through whatever gaps he could find between cars. The shock of the incredibly vivid dream hadn’t worn off by the time he found himself exiting the interstate.

  When Bri handed him the diary to read, she thought she had opened it to the spot she was talking about, but it had opened to the passage where Rosabel had written that she had run into Elias by the woods one night. He had knocked her down. That was all she had written.

  Had his mind fabricated this dream from that little scrap he had read earlier? He knew that wasn’t it. Something told him to turn around, to go back. Deep down he felt an inexplicable urgency. This was no random dream.

  Why had Elias been in the woods that night? Could it be that Matt had just seen the reason why?