by Katrina Leno
“You’ve totally lost me,” Alana said.
“Your brother,” Jane said, turning to Susie. “Your brother asked me, Do you not know?”
“What don’t you know?” Alana asked.
“Something that everybody else knows,” Jane said. “Something you all know but you don’t talk about in front of me.” She watched as they caught up, as their expressions changed from confused to understanding. Alana’s mouth actually fell open slightly. She looked horrified. “What don’t I know?” Jane asked.
“You don’t know about…” Susie trailed off. Alana took a tiny step back. Her hands were clasped over her chest so tightly they were turning white.
“Susie, tell me what I don’t know,” Jane said, and maybe it was because her voice was so calm and unshaking, but Susie finally nodded and took a deep breath.
“You don’t know about what happened in that house, do you? About what happened in North Manor?”
“Is this about Jemima Rose?” Jane asked.
“You have to know about Jemima,” Alana blurted out. “Everybody knows about Jemima.”
“What happened to her?” Jane asked.
“She died,” Alana whispered.
“How?”
“It was a freak accident,” Susie said quietly. “She was playing in the garden with a friend. Hide-and-go-seek. They had been doing gardening back there. Planting rosebushes. Putting up arbors for the roses to vine up. She wasn’t supposed to go back there. There were open holes, all this loose dirt. And nobody really knows exactly how it happened. But…”
Susie’s voice became so low that nobody could hear her anymore, and finally she just stopped talking altogether.
Alana bit her lower lip, hard, then continued, “There was a big hole. She fell into it. And when she tried to climb out, all the dirt that was piled up fell on top of her. She suffocated.”
“She was buried alive?” Jane asked, her fingertips suddenly cold, her mouth suddenly dry.
“It was really sad,” Susie continued. “She was only eight. Her friend ran to get help, but when they found her, it was too late.”
“It happened on Halloween,” Jane said.
“Yeah,” Susie said. “Your mom took it really badly. That’s why she moved to California.”
“But—years later,” Jane said. “I mean, she didn’t leave Bells Hollow until she was in her twenties. It must have been, like, twenty years later.”
“Twenty years? No, it was just a week after Jemima died,” Alana corrected. “She was there for the funeral, and she was gone the next day.”
“A week?” Jane repeated. “That doesn’t make any sense. Jemima died when they were kids.”
“Jane…,” Susie said, her voice faltering. She cleared her throat and started again. “Jane, who do you think Jemima was?”
“My aunt,” Jane replied immediately. “Jemima was my mom’s sister.”
“Oh no,” Alana whispered.
“What?” Jane asked. There were warning bells going off in her brain. She felt light-headed and woozy. She took a step back, then another, until she felt the wall behind her. She leaned into it. “What?” she repeated.
“Jemima wasn’t your aunt,” Susie whispered.
“Jemima was your sister,” Alana said.
Jane heard all this, but she heard it as if it were happening at the end of a very long tunnel. She heard her friends’ voices as if they were warped and wiggling. She saw stars in front of her eyes. A gentle lightening of her vision. She slid down the wall until she was seated on the bathroom floor with her knees pulled up to her chest.
“Jane?” Susie asked.
Jane put her forehead down on her knees. She took big, gulping breaths.
Sister.
She was going to pass out.
No, she was fine. She was sitting down. She was breathing.
“Jane?”
She tried to hold up a finger, one minute, but her hands weren’t working the way they were supposed to work. She couldn’t even feel them anymore. There were tears stinging at her eyes, and her chest was moving up and down, up and down, but she wasn’t getting any air. Everything was going black.
“Jane?” A voice very close to her. A hand on her shoulder. Susie, kneeling down in front of her. “Jane, just breathe. I’m right here.”
Gradually, the whooshing noise in her ears faded and the feeling returned to her fingers and when she lifted her head from her knees, there was Susie, a calm but concerned look on her face. Behind her, Alana had tears on her cheeks.
“I’m okay,” Jane said.
“Do you want to stand up?” Susie asked.
“Yes.”
So Susie helped her up. They went slowly. Jane had a flashback to Will helping her in the doorway of her bedroom.
Will. He knew, too. Everybody knew.
“Everybody knows,” she whispered. She was standing now. Susie let go of her hands and Jane realized she was holding her phone. She must have pulled it out of her bag. Her hands were shaking. She held on to it tightly, gripping it hard enough that it hurt, concentrating on the pain to wash the cobwebs out of her head.
“Jane, we’re so sorry. We didn’t think you would want us to talk about it. We all just assumed you knew,” Alana said.
“Everybody knows,” Jane repeated. “Right? Sorry. I’m just trying to wrap my head around it.”
“It’s sort of… town legend,” Susie said, her voice soft and gentle. “Everybody knows, yeah.”
Jane nodded, grateful for the honesty. All she wanted now was honesty.
A flash—
Greer, telling her the reason Ruth didn’t like Halloween was because something bad had happened on that day, years ago.
He knew.
Why hadn’t he told her?
Why hadn’t any of them told her?
It wasn’t Greer’s daughter, said a small voice in the back of Jane’s head. It had been years before Ruth met Greer. So who was Jemima’s dad? Just some kid Ruth had met at Sam’s Diner after a night out with her friends?
“Would you drive me home?” Jane asked Susie, her voice quiet. “I think I just want to go to sleep.”
“Jane, I’m so sorry,” Susie said. “I feel terrible. I feel like I should have said something. But it never seemed like the right time to bring it up. And it never would have occurred to me to ask if you knew.…”
“Hi, welcome to Bells Hollow, do you know you had a sister who died here?” Jane said, nodding. “I understand. I’m not mad at any of you. Can you please just…?”
“Of course. I’ll drive you home. Let’s go.”
“You should stay,” Jane said to Alana.
“We could all come over,” Alana offered. “This dance is kind of boring anyway.”
Jane smiled. “No, it’s not. It’s really fun. And you should stay, and Susie will come back after she drops me off. It’s only nine thirty. Please stay. I’m just going to get in bed.”
“Are you sure?” Alana asked.
“A hundred percent,” Jane insisted.
“Okay. But text me. If you need anything.”
“I will.”
They walked back down the hallway together and Alana went into the gym. Susie spoke to Rosemary quickly, explaining that she’d be driving Jane home but coming back to the dance, and Rosemary agreed. She glanced at Jane, a look Jane thought was filled with sadness and pity.
She knows, Jane thought.
Everybody knew.
The ride back to North Manor was quiet, but not uncomfortable. Jane stared out the window at the darkness of the night rushing past her. One word kept repeating in her brain, over and over, a sloppy rhythm that had no real beat.
Sister. Sister. Sister.
Jane had always wanted a sister.
And now she both had one and didn’t have one.
Now she had both found one and lost one, all in the span of a minute or two.
When they reached Jane’s driveway, Susie put the car in park and sighed heavil
y.
“I can’t imagine what you must be feeling,” she said quietly.
“Just a little numb,” Jane responded.
“I am so sorry you had to find out like that.”
“She should have told me.”
“Yeah. She should have.”
“But I’m glad I know now.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you for driving me home,” Jane said, turning to face Susie. “You’re a good friend.”
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come in?”
“It’s fine. I’m tired. I’m just going to go to bed. I’ll text you in the morning.”
“Okay. I’ll wait until you get inside.”
“Have fun,” Jane said. She leaned over and they hugged quickly, then Jane pulled away and got out of the car and walked up to the front door of North Manor.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open, then turned around and waved at Susie, who waved back and began reversing out of the driveway.
Jane stepped inside the house and shut the door behind her.
And she knew she wasn’t alone the second it latched shut.
How did she know?
It was a few things.
The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood up straight. She felt goose bumps crawl up her arms, from the back of her hands to her shoulders. And there was a buzzing in her ears. A deep tinnitus that momentarily blocked out any other sound.
She couldn’t move.
The house was the darkest it had ever been, the darkest any place in the world had ever been. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t breathe.
And then the lights came on.
Jane blinked, suddenly blinded. The chandelier blazed above her, and she spun around quickly, but there was no one beside her who could have turned it on.
But there were two places you could turn the chandelier on.
She looked up the stairs, to the top of the enormous, winding staircase, and there was her mother, sixteen and pregnant, a prisoner in this house, just a child carrying a child, with nowhere to go, no options but to stay under Emilia’s roof, in this house she hated, in this town she couldn’t wait to leave.
Jane blinked and her mother was just her mother again, still in her scarecrow costume, her makeup smudged, her hat missing.
“I got your text,” Ruth said.
In the quiet of the house, her words almost echoed.
“My text?” Jane repeated.
Ruth took a few steps forward, a few steps down the staircase. She was holding her phone. She clicked something on it and read, “I hate you, I’ve always hated you! You never wanted me, you just wanted HER. Well, now I know everything. And you can’t have her and you can’t have me, you can’t have either of us.”
“I didn’t… But I didn’t…”
Jane fumbled with her purse, pulling her own phone out of it, and clicked into her messages with her mother.
Sure enough, there it was. Sent twenty minutes ago. From Jane’s phone to Ruth’s.
“I don’t even know what this means,” Jane said, her voice coming out in a whisper, her chest twisted and tight.
“I can’t tell you how many times I told my mother I hated her,” Ruth said. She took another few steps down the staircase, until she was on the landing.
“But I don’t hate you,” Jane said, dropping her purse on the ground. “I don’t even remember sending this!”
“Who told you?” Ruth asked.
“I…”
“Who told you about Jemima? This is about Jemima, isn’t it? Who told you?”
“Mom, I didn’t…”
“It’s not important. It was only a matter of time.”
“You said she was my aunt,” Jane said. “You lied to me.”
“Do you have any idea how many times I tried to tell you, Jane? In that endless fucking car ride across the country, how many times I tried to tell you what had happened in this house? Why I never came back here; why I never brought you back here? I tried.”
“You should have tried harder,” Jane said, her voice rising, so that by the time she finished, she was yelling. “You should have told me! You should have told me years ago! That I had a sister!”
The word sister.
An enormous word.
A word too big for Jane to fully comprehend.
“She wasn’t your sister,” Ruth said sadly. “She was barely my daughter, Jane. I was sixteen, just a kid, just a baby. Jemima was my mother’s child, her perfect child. The child I never was. The child who would wear pinafores and lace and pink ribbons and white, spotless stockings. Don’t you see?”
“No,” Jane said. “No, I don’t see anything. I don’t understand anything.”
Ruth nodded. She took a deep breath. She sat down on the landing. “Okay. I’ll tell you. But it’s not a good story, Jane. It’s not a good story.”
“Okay,” Jane said. “I want to know, though. I need to know.”
Ruth nodded again. She looked up for a moment, like she was searching back through time, putting everything in order. Then she looked back at Jane and started talking. “I was a tough kid. Angry at everyone. Resentful. Growing up in this house, living under Emilia’s rules… Everything had to look a certain way, everything had to present a certain way. Including me. There was no room for compromise, no room for who I was. I don’t actually think she cared much. It wasn’t about having a child, for her; it was about rounding out the family portrait. You didn’t not have kids, back then, especially not someone like Emilia. So she had me, and she wished I was a boy, and she passed me off to nannies, and she took me out when she needed a good prop.” Ruth paused. “I hated her.”
“She wished you were a boy?” Jane said.
“Oh god, yeah. Someone to pass on the family name, to take over the business from my father; all that typical, old bullshit.”
“And you didn’t want it?”
“I didn’t want any of it. I think I was a normal enough kid, you know? I wanted to get dirty, play with my friends, run around. But Emilia kept me inside. I was grounded all the time. She stuffed me in party dresses and made me practice the piano and take French lessons—all these things I couldn’t care less about.” Ruth paused. She bit her lower lip, thinking. “Then I turned thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and things changed. I changed. I was getting into a lot of trouble at school. I think Emilia just checked out. She wouldn’t sign my detention slips, my report cards. She didn’t care about trying to make me someone I wasn’t anymore. I don’t think she cared about me anymore. She just… left me alone.”
“What about Chester?”
Ruth softened. “He was living under Emilia’s roof, too. He worked a lot. Stayed in his study most nights. But he tried. I do think he tried. But by then, I was too far gone. I was doing things just to spite her. Just to get her attention. And then, of course, I got pregnant.”
“What did she do?”
“A full one-eighty,” Ruth said, doing a little spin with her index finger. “She yanked me out of school, hired private tutors, let me eat and do whatever I wanted. She was my mom again. She was attentive, kind… I wanted to give her up. The baby. That was the plan, the entire time. But then I went into labor… I delivered her right here, you know. In this house.” Ruth looked upstairs, and Jane followed her gaze, as if they both might see her, sixteen-year-old Ruth and her newborn child. “They took her away. I thought I would never see her again. I was sad, but I knew it was the right thing to do. I went to sleep, and I woke up the next morning and I thought it was all over. My body was sore and my emotions were wrecked, but I thought that was it.”
She paused again, her mouth a straight line, her eyes wet and faraway. “And then a nurse brought her into the room. She was dressed in a pink bodysuit. With two little bows right here and here.” Ruth pointed to either side of her chest. She laughed, but it was less of a laugh this time and more of a choke, a sob, and Jane saw that she’d begun to cry. “The nurse lifted up my shirt. I was too shock
ed to protest, to say anything.… I thought she was gone. I thought it was over. The nurse pressed the baby into me, helped her latch. And she said, ‘Her name is Jemima Rose.’ And she sat down in a chair and waited until I was done, then she took her away again.”
“She named her?” Jane asked, her voice a whisper. “Emilia named your baby?”
“I think it was her way of saying, This is mine. I was hardly ever alone with her. I was kept out of school. We were cloistered here, secluded. After the birth, something in me just… broke. All this anger, all the resentment that had been building up inside me for so long, it was gone. Like I’d pushed it out with Jemima. I didn’t leave the house for two years. I hardly even left my room.”
“For two years?”
“Emilia went back to ignoring me. It was all about Jemima. She was Emilia’s shining, bright new baby. And she was a good baby. She slept well, she hardly ever cried. She was beautiful. She was everything Emilia wished I had been. I don’t even think she minded that it was another girl.” Ruth took a long breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “But I knew something was wrong with her. I knew it from the beginning.”
“Something was wrong with her?”
“I became obsessed with the idea. I would sneak into her room and watch her sleeping in her crib. I’d watch her do everything Emilia asked her to do, play her part like a perfect little doll, then turn around and snarl at me, this look in her eyes like…”
“Like what?”
“Like all the anger and resentment that had left my body had gone right into her.”
Jane shivered. It was suddenly cold in the foyer, like the temperature in the house had dropped a few degrees. Ruth was still crying, silent tears that fell down her cheeks and dripped off the side of her chin.
“Do you think that’s what happened?” Jane asked.
“I was just a kid,” Ruth said. “Just a scared, fucked-up kid with a mother who didn’t know what I needed. It’s all fuzzy now, you know? What I saw. What I didn’t see. The truth versus whatever twisted reality my brain was inventing. Jemima grew up. Sometimes she called me Mama, sometimes she called me Ruthie. It was never hidden from her, that I was her mother. She called Emilia Grandma. Emilia never pretended to be anything other than that. And Jemima was… different. I know she was different. And then she died. And it was like a spell had been broken. I left after her funeral. I’d never set foot outside this town before, but I had enough money to get myself to California. Bus after bus after bus. And when I finally saw the ocean, I cried. I sat down in the sand and cried and missed her and mourned her but… felt finally free. From all of it. It was over. It was like a nightmare I was waking up from.”