by Everly Frost
Dad said, “This is my daughter, Caroline.”
“Caroline.” Alice bent to kiss my cheek. “I’m very pleased to meet you, dear.”
“Yes, Aunt Alice. I, uh, I’m happy to meet you, too.”
I blinked back at her, wary of the way she clasped my hands in hers, until Rebecca hurried forward to lead her inside and upstairs to the guest room. Timothy and Sam set to work lugging the suitcases inside. Meggy spoke briefly with Dad, handed him our mail, and left.
Rebecca threw me a look as she disappeared inside the house. She and Edith had decided that Alice was their problem on her first day here. They’d give her a tour of the house and feed her muffins for afternoon tea. That was fine with me. I grabbed the opening to disappear, sneaking upstairs to change into my riding trousers and coat. The early spring warmth would leach out of the landscape once the sun started sinking. I didn’t plan on coming back early. I didn’t want any more encounters with my aunt until dinnertime. After the look she gave me when she arrived, that would be soon enough.
I headed down to the stables. This place, at least, was not destined to change—not if I could help it.
I greeted the stable master with a smile. “Hello, Jack.”
“Afternoon, Caroline. Off for a ride?”
“Yup.”
“Want me to saddle Cloud?”
I scoffed at him.
Jack had taught me how to ride. Dad didn’t have time and I figured he couldn’t be bothered, but Jack caught me watching the horses when I was a little girl and he convinced Dad to buy a pony. After that, Jack wrangled Cloud for me and by then my father seemed to decide that as long as he didn’t have to bother with me, it was all right with him.
I threw Jack a smile as I strode into the airy stables, my boots kicking up the scattered hay. I passed the black horse Rebecca usually rode. She snuffled at me and I wished I’d brought two apples instead of one. Then Cloud whinnied to me from his stall and I hurried to him.
“Hello, boy.” I kissed his soft, white nose and fed him the apple.
When he’d had his fill, I bridled him and led him out of the stall. Jack brought me the saddle and I gave him a scowl—I could carry my own saddle, thank you very much—but he was already headed away, unconcerned. Alone with Cloud, I rested my head on his neck and breathed in the earthy scents of horse and hay.
“You’ll always be the same, won’t you, boy?”
Cloud nickered and jostled me. For a moment, I could pretend that I was normal—just a girl with a horse, nothing more and nothing less. After saddling him, I led him toward the large stable doors. One of them hung off its hinges a little, so I had to give it a shove to get out. As I pushed it open, I came upon the man who’d arrived at the same time as my aunt.
He was bare-chested and carried an axe at his side. A wheelbarrow full of new firewood was planted next to him as though he’d put it down fast, the fresh, heavy scent of it kicking up to fill my lungs, along with something else. The scent of warm skin.
I’d almost swung the door into him.
“Oh. Um. Sorry.” I bit my lip and then frowned, since he was in my way. He seemed to realize it, glancing from me to Cloud. He quickly dropped the axe into the wheelbarrow, hefting it upward like it wasn’t full of heavy logs at all, allowing me to pass. I walked on, not daring to look back, feeling his eyes on me.
“C’mon, Cloud, let’s get out of here.” My whisper close to his ear was met with a soft nicker.
Without a second thought, I slipped my foot into the stirrup and glided onto Cloud’s back, urging him into a canter and away from the newcomer and the scent of his skin.
I returned just in time to struggle through a solemn dinner with my aunt. She seemed to expect a certain level of table etiquette that none of us managed to meet. Afterward, Dad pointed us all to the living room, where we found a collection of presents waiting for us.
They were clever presents. Alice had bought Timothy the long-handled knife he’d always craved but Dad never allowed. There was an exquisite pink satin handbag for Rebecca, a wooden fishing rod for Samuel, and a fine woolen shawl in a pale lavender color for Edith.
And for me… From a large box, I pulled a dark blue riding suit. It was beautiful. It would match my eyes. It must have cost a fortune, but every frill and bow on it shouted demure, fragile, weak…
I shoved my frustration away as I pretended to examine the material. When I had my expression under control, I said, “Thanks, Aunt Alice,” and she beamed at me.
I couldn’t wait to say goodnight, but I didn’t go to bed. Instead, I headed to the family library for a few blissful hours spent reading, forgetting about the riding suit. After building up the fireplace, I retrieved my tattered copy of The Woman in Black and sat with my feet toasting. An eerie glow built inside me as I read long into the night.
When I left, it was very late, and I was surprised to see light shining down the hall from beneath the door of Dad’s study. Creeping toward it, my footsteps were softened by the mottled hallway rug, soft enough to reach the door without making a sound.
Aunt Alice’s voice was gentle, but held strong undertones of frustration. “What’s happened to you, Harry?”
“I’m the same person I’ve always been. I haven’t changed one bit.”
“I mean this. The state of this house, the state of your children, and no staff, no gardener…”
“We don’t have a garden.”
“Then you should make one! You’re living the life of a pauper. And your daughters—the daughters of a rich man—living like this. There’s nothing even remotely right about how you’re raising them. What happened to you after Meredith died?”
There was silence behind the door.
Alice continued, but her tone altered: firmer, more steadfast. “You must make changes in your children’s lives. If you won’t do this for yourself, at least do it for your daughters. They’re beautiful, Harry. And smart. They should be in the city going to parties, meeting new people. They should be making friends, studying, going to college. You could afford any college you want. Yet, here they are, hidden away. And Caroline, exactly like Meredith—”
Something slammed down and it was like my father cracked. “You think I don’t know who she looks like? Every single day I see my daughter looking at me from my wife’s face with my wife’s eyes. You think I haven’t noticed? You think it doesn’t bother me?”
A new voice spoke and the chill spilled out through the bottom of the door and curled around my feet. “Your dead wife, Dad.”
Edith’s words sank around me.
At the same time, something clawed up from within me.
My mother was dead. I knew this. Even though there was no stone marking the place where her body lay. No grave to visit on her birthday.
I didn’t know where she was buried; nobody ever told me and I never asked, but I knew she was dead. So why did I feel in that moment, that it shouldn’t be so? That she should slip down the stairs right then, floating in gossamer blue, kiss my aunt on the cheek and tell my father not to worry. It would all be fine. They’d see.
Alice’s voice became strained. “You’re one of the wealthiest men in this State, Harry. And yet you seclude yourself and your children and drown yourself in poverty. Your daughters deserve better. Your sons deserve better. Timothy is an amazing young man and Samuel is… how old? Fifteen? He should be in a school in the city.”
“Distance education was good enough for the others. It’s good enough for him.”
Alice continued without pause. “You must make changes. If it’s the work or the socializing that bother you, then leave it to me. I’ve run my own estate since my parents died. I can certainly make the necessary changes to this household—without any fuss to you.”
Edith spoke again. “I agree with Alice. We aren’t poor and we shouldn’t be acting like we are.”
There was another pause before my father’s voice growled. “I’m not leaving. And neither are my children. This is where
we stay.”
Alice said, “But—
“Silence, woman!” Dad’s roar made me jump “If you must change our lives, then you can do it here. We aren’t leaving. My children stay here.”
There was a shocked pause and I imagined Alice trying to compose herself. Perhaps her hand flew to her heart or clutched her dainty throat…
“I can understand you wanting to keep your sons here to work on the ranch, to keep the family business going, but what do you expect your daughters to do for the rest of their lives? Live in this house? With you? Never meeting anyone, never dating, never marrying…”
“Fine, then.” Even through thick wood, I could tell there was a dangerous grin in my father’s voice. “You find rich men who want them and I’ll let them leave. But not before.”
There was another silence, before Alice seemed to draw herself up. “I will. And you will let them go.”
Dad laughed. “Let them come. Let them all in again. You can bring the whole world here, woman, but it won’t change a thing.”
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t run. I wanted to race up the stairs, but my thudding footsteps would bring my father charging out of his study.
Exactly like Meredith.
We are not poor.
Find rich men and I’ll let them leave…
Nobody would decide my future, except for me. Not my father, trying to keep me here. Not my aunt, seeking to marry me off. Nobody but me. No matter how much they said I looked like my mother, I would not be her. If I chose to stay here, then I would. If I chose to leave, then I would do that, too. But it was my choice, not theirs.
The clammy breath of the other me filled my lungs, forcing air in and out of me, constricting my chest, making my heart pound. I stumbled backward, breathing her out like an icy gale, knocking into the hall table and a teetering vase of flowers.
I grabbed at it, snatching at air that was so cold that my fingers numbed. Water splashed and china smashed and in the next instant I was on my bottom in the wash, one thorny stem saved in my hand, pricking my fingertips.
The study door crashed open and Dad loomed in the dim doorway.
“Caroline.” His face filled with an expression I didn’t often see. Guilt. Turning to anger. “How much did you hear?”
Alice pushed past him, rushing to my side, extracting the broken flower from my fist and checking me over. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”
I ignored her as I stared at my father.
He bellowed. “How much did you hear?”
Alice turned on him. “Why should it matter what she heard? Surely you haven’t kept it all secret…” She looked from me to him and then to Edith in the background.
Alice’s eyes widened as she saw their faces. Her voice reeked of disappointment. “Oh, Harry. How could you keep it from her?”
I wrenched away from Alice, struggling to my feet, the icy hatred of the other me burning up through my throat, taking control of my voice. “I am like my mother, am I not?”
Dad was pale, wary. “Just like.”
I swallowed, trying to free myself from the thing that squeezed around my heart and made it hard to breathe, hard to stay standing. I couldn’t remain still any longer. My legs were running before I knew it, sliding and skidding at first and then rushing faster down the hallway toward the back door.
Above me, there was movement. The commotion had woken my other siblings. I had to run free before they raced down the stairs to see what was wrong. The door released a rush of cold air, but nothing was so cold as the thing inside me.
I expected Alice to speed after me—or father—but it was Edith’s voice that cried out into the darkness. “No, Caroline. Don’t go out there tonight.”
As I ran to the stables, I tried to empty my head of the echoes of their voices, but there were only words going through my mind, over and over.
My mother’s name. My mother’s face.
The daughters of a rich man.
I threw open the stable doors, thankful that Jack would be asleep in the workmen’s lodge by now and wouldn’t be there to stop me.
But I didn’t count on the man standing at the washtub. His head shot up, soap and water dripping onto his shirt. I froze against the shuddering door, still rattling from the force of my shove. I glanced at Cloud’s stall as the man watched me, and I wondered about the look in his eyes as though he could see the terror squeezing my heart, as though he understood it.
“Wait,” he said. “You’ll freeze to death out there.”
He held out his hand, but even the concern on his face couldn’t stop me.
Dashing to Cloud, I didn’t bother with a saddle, snatching the bridle off the wall and slipping it over his head, throwing myself onto his back. He responded to my urgent, insistent nudges and we raced from the stable as the man’s eyes followed me with that same look on his face, like he understood the need to run.
Outside, we took off at a canter. I didn’t care where we went as long as it was away. I didn’t care about the freezing cold and plummeting temperature. I couldn’t tell if the numbness came from the wind or from inside me.
We raced past the dam and the black water. Over the rise and down to the flat land, and for a moment I thought about driving myself into the woods and finishing what I’d tried to do many years ago. But, as though he knew what I was thinking, Cloud turned away from it, galloping across the flat land toward the distant dirt road, pounding through the grass, through the gate at the front of the property, and away.
Ten minutes down the road, the night sky turned deep gray. I glanced back once, but the lights of the house were far behind me, the whir of the generator long gone. The moon was shining at its fullest, but instead of giving me comfort, the light numbed me.
Ahead, I made out the shape of the bridge over the creek. I headed in that direction, slowing Cloud to a quick walk as he clip-clopped over it. Crickets started to buzz in the grass, a sound that vibrated through my head, punctuated by Cloud’s hooves on the wooden bridge.
The cold wind picked up even more and speared through my light clothing. I jolted as I realized that I’d lost one of the reins. My fingers were so numb that I hadn’t noticed it slip out of my hand.
The air was freezing and the man was right.
I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, but didn’t feel that either. Rational thought slipped through the mess in my head. I was going to freeze if I didn’t turn back or find shelter soon. For the first time since overhearing the conversation between my aunt and my father, my heart rate slowed enough to let me think.
At least now I had an explanation for so many contradictions in my life. I remembered the time I tried to steal Rebecca’s woolen blanket because the moths got at mine. We’d never had new bedding, yet new books always turned up in the library room. There were dead cockroaches in the cupboards and the paint was peeling on the doors, but our horses were the finest racehorses, I knew that much from the comments people dropped when I rode into town.
I tried to understand how Dad could keep us in poverty, in such a strange balance of wealth and destitution, and why he would refuse to let us leave. I blinked at the vapor forming from my breath in the air. I didn’t know any other place than this. A train ran through town, but I’d never been on it. Where would I even go?
There was a whisper in the air, a buzzing at the back of my head like the echo of someone shouting, trying to get my attention.
I shivered, because no matter how fast I rode, how many risks I took, she stayed with me, fluttering like a black moth, a trapped, insistent creature beating at the cage of my body.
I would never escape her.
I turned Cloud around, back toward the bridge, back toward home, my teeth chattering. I could spend the night in the stables—the man would have gone to bed by now—and I could curl up in the hay and hide away from Dad and Alice until I was ready to face them again.
The temperature dropped even further. I tried to grip the reins as hard as I could, closing my f
ingers around the strips of leather until I felt them cut in, sensed them draw blood. That was better. Even the other me seemed to think so.
A shadow moved at the side of the road, hiding from the moonlight, and I shrank against Cloud’s back. My eyes flickered to the murky trees and groping branches. I took a deep breath, trying to focus on my lungs and not on the feeling in the pit of my stomach, not on the other one’s far away cry, hissing through my nerve endings.
She wanted me to run—run home, now, before the shadow finds us—but Cloud stumbled, his hoof hit something in the dirt, and I jolted forward, grappling with the reins and hoping they were still in my hands.
I couldn’t feel anything now—not even his back between my thighs.
There was something white up ahead. It was the gate at the beginning of our ranch, still a mile from our house, swinging like a gentle ghost in the dark. It was a little way ahead of me, the chipped white wood catching the light of the thin, crescent moon.
I was almost home. I already imagined the warmth of the stable, the scratchy softness of Cloud’s stall, but as I focused on the gate that swung and creaked in the wind, I sensed something else.
The shape moved beside me, so silent, so adept at hiding itself within the blades of grass and the shadows of the trees that I didn’t know how long it had been following me, waiting for me to freeze on my horse.
A loping figure in the darkness, the dog was long and skinny and the moonlight reflected the whiteness of its teeth.
It crept, tummy to the ground, as it hunted me.
I screamed. She screamed.
In an instant, she surfaced, pummeling through me so fast I was kicked and shoved backward into darkness, flailing inside myself, no longer in control of my body or my senses. Cloud leaped to the left and threw himself into a gallop, his hooves pounding the earth. From a distance, I heard grass ripping and shredding like I wasn’t really there, like I was the shade within myself.
Cloud flashed through the dark, faster than he’d ever gone before. I clung with my legs and arms, leaning over his neck in desperation, trying to leach some warmth out of him into my body, so I could feel again. But my hands were slippery cold.