Arcadia Falls

by Carol Goodman

  “But don’t you want to keep it?” I ask.

  “What for?” she asks. “It’s answered my prayers already. Maybe now it will answer yours.”

  I run back to my car, heedless of the slippery inch of new fallen snow, the pieces of the story coming together in my head as fast and urgent as the steadily falling flakes. Lily wrote in her journal that Fleur had come by the cottage on the day after Christmas. Fleur, who was always nosing around, according to Ivy. Clearly Fleur idealized Lily—not just because of Lily’s beauty and talent, but because she’d found a birth certificate (Careless Gertrude Sheldon—she must have left it somewhere that Fleur could find it!) that identified her as Lily’s child. When she came by the cottage she must have seen where Lily hid her journal. Who could blame the girl for wanting to know more about her real mother? She must have gone into the cottage after Lily left, taken out the journal, and read it. What a disappointment it must have been to find that Lily thought that Ivy was her daughter. She must have wanted to find Lily right away to tell her she was wrong. She’d run to where Lily had said she was going—to Dora and Ada’s house—through the snow.

  I can well imagine Fleur’s frantic flight through the snow because it’s snowing hard now as I pull out onto the highway. Heavy white flakes, each the size of a baby’s fist, spin toward my windshield out of the gathering gloom. I turn my wipers on high and put the high beams on, surprised at how dark it is. I went into town around 1:30. Surely it can’t be later than 3:00…. I look at the clock on the dashboard before remembering that it hasn’t worked in years. I twist Jude’s watch around to see its face—and nearly run into an approaching snowplow. I pull over to the side of the road to wait for my heart to stop hammering in my chest … and to check the time. It’s 3:30. No wonder it’s getting dark. There’s only another hour or so of daylight left.

  I pull back onto the road, desperate now to get back to the cottage before dark, as if I could outrace the trajectory of my thoughts.

  Fleur must have been heartbroken when Lily disappeared, even more so when Lily’s body was found. I replay the letter Shelley showed me again: Fleur watching Ivy and Vera standing over the dead body of the woman she believed was her mother. I imagine her looking for answers to her identity and being told by Gertrude that she was crazy to imagine herself Lily’s daughter—and crazy to think that Lily had been killed by Vera and Ivy. What a horrible life she must have led after that, and what a horrible life for her daughter.

  As I think of Fleur’s daughter the Jag swerves on the road, the tires fishtailing in the slick snow, on the bald tires I should have replaced at the beginning of the winter. I grip the steering wheel and lean forward, willing the car to straighten out. I try to make myself go slower, but I can’t. Not while Shelley Drake is on the same campus as Sally and Chloe.

  I try to calm down by telling myself that I have no proof that Shelley was behind Isabel’s death, but the pieces keep falling into place with a relentless logic. Fleur Sheldon was the last one to have Lily’s journal. Shelley must have found it with her mother’s things, along with the letter that described the discovery of Lily’s body. Shelley realized that Ivy St. Clare was responsible for Lily’s death—for her grandmother’s death. She would have blamed Ivy for her mother’s crumbling mental health. Why, though, didn’t she accuse Ivy herself? Maybe she was afraid that it would look like she had been trying to get Ivy fired from Arcadia so that she could take over her position, which is what she ended up doing. So she’d found someone else to make the connections and accuse Ivy: Isabel Cheney, a bright, ambitious history student who’d be sure to learn from the journal and letter that Ivy St. Clare was Lily’s daughter and figure out that Ivy had killed Lily. But Isabel had also been smart enough to figure out what Shelley was trying to do and to confront her. Only someone truly unhinged would respond by following Isabel into the woods and pushing her from the ridge, but I am beginning to suspect that Shelley is just that. Shelley must have been the woman in white I glimpsed near the cottage and whom Chloe had seen in the woods.

  As I told Shelley yesterday.

  Shelley now knew that Chloe had seen her. Would she wait for Chloe to figure out that it had been Shelley or would she arrange another accident on the ridge?

  I’ve just passed the old barn and am climbing the hill to the school when I remember two things simultaneously: Chloe wants to perform a rite honoring the solstice, which is today, and Sally said that Shelley had come by and asked a question about candles. Not, as I had assumed, to use in case of a blackout, but candles to use for a solstice rite.

  At the thought of Shelley taking Sally and Chloe into the woods I press my foot down on the gas … and the car veers sharply left. I wrench the wheel to the right, but that only makes the spin worse. As if in slow motion, the Jag drifts onto the other side of the road and then begins to spin. I feel like I’m inside a snow globe only the snow is on the outside of the glass. I have time to curse Jude—Could you have at least left me with a car with decent tires?—and to wonder if that will be my last thought.

  When the car comes to a stop I’m looking at the snow-covered cornfield and the old barn. I’m miraculously unharmed, but when I try to back up, the tires spin in the deep snow without traction. I get out of the car, sinking into a foot of snow, and look up and down the road for a passing car, but the storm has cleared the traffic. I’m grabbing for the cell phone in my bag before I remember there’s no signal here.

  The sensible thing to do is walk up the road to the school’s entrance and then walk up the Sycamore Drive to the cottage. If I’m lucky, someone will drive by and give me a lift, but if I’m not, it could take me an hour to get back home.

  I look down at my watch. It’s ten minutes to four. What time does the sun set on the shortest day of the year? 4:20? 4:30? I turn west and squint into the blowing snow, but the storm has turned the horizon into a gray blur. Would Chloe be foolish enough to go out to the ridge when you can’t even see the sunset? But then I remember the haunted look on Chloe’s face and know that all she would need is a little prompting to get her out to the ridge—and only a little push to get her over it. It would be easy afterward for Shelley to say that Chloe slipped in the snow, along with any witnesses who had come along. Like Sally.

  I look toward the clove. At first I can barely make out anything in the snow, and then, miraculously, the wind stops and the snow lightens. I can make out the waterfall, encrusted with ice but still flowing, and the snow-covered path next to it. It would be crazy to try climbing up in these conditions—as crazy as Lily going back that way after she had said goodbye to Nash in the barn, but she had. And she’d made it. If she hadn’t fought with Vera—if Ivy hadn’t kept the note from her and Fleur hadn’t stolen the journal—she would have been fine. She risked the climb to be with her beloved; I can risk it to make sure Sally and Chloe are safe.

  Where the wind has blown the snow thin, I start walking across the field. The stubble of dried grass crunches beneath my feet. It feels like years, not weeks, since I last walked through the waist-high grass. The terrain is utterly changed. The willow trees surrounding the first pool at the foot of the falls are bare, their long, ice-covered branches clicking in the breeze like the bamboo curtains in the Seasons shop in town. I recall what Fawn said about the legend of the clove—about the wittewieven who haunted it. She told Isabel that anyone with a pure heart would be safe.

  As I climb the steep path beside the frozen waterfall I wonder for the first time what that really means. How could you tell if your heart was pure? Did Lily wonder as she made this climb if her heart was pure? She’d said her last goodbye to Virgil Nash. She’d left a confession of her transgressions for Vera to read—or at least she thought she had. I imagine her scaling this icy slope, feeling cleansed of her sins, unafraid of any specter of retribution. When she reached the top and saw Vera, Lily must have thought that her beloved was coming to welcome her. What a cruel shock it must have been to find her angry and betrayed. And then, aft
er Lily had fallen, to look up into the eyes of the woman she thought was her daughter and see her raise her arm to strike her! She must have thought in those last seconds of life that the avenging white woman of the clove had come to destroy her for the sin of abandoning her child.

  I’m so caught up in imagining the last moments of Lily’s life that I’m not watching my footing carefully enough. I step on a snow-slick rock that tilts under my foot and lose my balance. My arms flail as I fall, reaching for something to keep me from sliding down the steep slope, but all I find is air. My knees hit jagged rock and then my stomach slaps hard against the snow-packed trail. A plume of snow surrounds me as I slide. As long as I stay on my stomach I’ll be all right, I think, but then I hear the rush of water close by my ear and realize I’m sliding into the water. If I go over the edge of the falls I won’t have a chance of surviving. I try to dig my nails into the ground, but the snow’s too deep. The roar of the fall comes closer, filling me with a blind panic.

  I throw out my arms … and hit something hard, a branch or tree trunk. The pain reverberates all the way up into my shoulder, but I ignore it and grab for the limb. Rough bark scrapes my hands and the limb bends with my weight, but I stop sliding down. It takes a moment for the swirl of snow I’ve stirred up to settle enough for me to see. When it does, I’m sorry that I can. The sapling I’ve gotten hold of is growing out of a ledge above the second cascade, just where Isabel’s body was found—and Lily’s. Below me is a sheer drop to the bottom.

  I try to pull myself up, but I slip another few inches. I feel the roots of the tree I’m holding on to give way. A few pebbles, dislodged by my movement, drop over the edge of the falls and plummet dizzyingly down into the mist. I close my eyes, willing my body to be still and weightless. Behind my eyelids I see Sally’s face wearing that look of betrayal it’s had so often since Jude died. If I die here, will she blame me? I know she blames Jude for dying because I feel the same way. I blame him for dying and leaving me to raise Sally on my own and—I hate to admit it to myself even now—I blame him for leaving us in debt and need. It seems so petty right now, but I know it’s true. Just half an hour ago when I’d skidded on the road, I’d cursed him for leaving me with bald tires.

  I wonder if Jude, in the moments before he died, was afraid of how he was leaving us. The thought floods me with sorrow for him. How horrible if his last thoughts on earth were fear for Sally and me over something as petty as money. If I could, I’d tell him now that I don’t care. I’d tell him that I understand he’d been trying his best to provide for us and that we’ve done just fine without the big house in Great Neck and all the trappings of wealth.

  Something loosens inside of me—a clenched muscle that I’ve been holding tight since Jude’s death. It feels so good that I almost laugh out loud. And then, opening my eyes, I do laugh. I’m hanging on for dear life to a two-inch thick sapling above a raging waterfall having a moment of closure. The sound echoes against the rock walls of the clove, loud in the snow-shrouded silence. I stare up into the swirling snow that spins down to mix with the mist rising off the falls. Where they meet the air thickens and sways, a column of undulating vapor. Perhaps this is what makes people say they’ve seen the white woman of Witte Clove. I can almost make out the shape: a tall, slim woman in a white dress, her back to me, in the moment of turning and looking over her shoulder….

  Snow and mist and shadow shift in the half-light, forming the shape of a face. Eyes made up of emptiness look straight into mine. I feel as if she sees all the emptiness and fear inside of me—sees but doesn’t judge. Sees and forgives.

  Tears stream down my face. When I blink them away the face has vanished, but another shape has taken its place. I think it’s another illusion—she was an illusion, wasn’t she?—but then strong hands grip my shoulders and pull me onto solid ground.

  “I’ve got you,” Callum Reade says. “Now why don’t you tell me what in the hell you’re doing here in the middle of a blizzard.”

  “I’m trying to get back home,” I say, rubbing my hands up and down my arms to get some feeling back into them. “What are you doing here?”

  He takes his coat off and drapes it over my shoulders. I can feel the warmth from his body still clinging to it. “I saw your car crashed in the field—I nearly had a heart attack!—and then I followed your footsteps. I could hardly believe you’d headed into the clove. Why didn’t you go around by the road?”

  “I was afraid it would take too long. I have to get to the ridge. I’m afraid that Shelley Drake is going to bring them to the ridge at sunset to celebrate the solstice.”

  “I can’t believe that even Shelley Drake would be crazy enough to drag those kids out in this storm.”

  “That’s just it—she is crazy.” I explain as quickly as I can what I learned from Beatrice Rhodes, showing him the St. Lucy’s medal and the birth certificate, and recount the story I’ve constructed on the drive back. I have to admit it all sounds a little far-fetched. I almost hope he’ll dismiss it, but he doesn’t. He nods once, gravely.

  “I’ve always thought that Shelley Drake was a bit unhinged,” he says. “We’ve got to get up there. You go first. That way if you slip, I’ll be able to catch you.”

  The look in his eyes spurs me on. I start up the trail, going as fast as I can over the slippery rocks. I hear Callum’s footsteps and breathing close behind me. Knowing he’s there to catch me gives me the confidence to go faster. A few yards from the top of the ridge, where the trail splits in two, he grabs my arm and holds me back.

  “Wait. If they’re on top of the ridge we don’t want to startle them.” He points to the path that veers off to the left. “This path goes around to a stand of trees a little below the head of the falls. We can get a better look at what’s going on and size up the situation.” The idea of taking a detour—of taking any longer to get to the top—makes my skin itch. What if Shelley’s already there with Sally right now? I try to listen for their voices, but I hear nothing but the rush of water.

  “Okay,” I say, “but let’s hurry.”

  He goes first now to show me the way, which is a good thing because the woods are utterly transformed. The pines, muffled in snow, stand like white-mantled sentinels guarding the secrets of the forest, the only sounds they make the occasional shoosh of snow sliding off their boughs.

  Be quiet, don’t tell, they seem to be saying. I think of Fleur Sheldon wandering through the snow after reading Lily’s journal, realizing that Lily had no idea she was her real mother. I think of Lily finding Vera waiting for her at the top of the clove, believing Vera had read her journal and learned her secrets, then seeing the look of betrayal on her face that sent her over the edge into the clove. I think of her looking up to see the girl she thought was her daughter raising her arm to strike her dead. I think of Ivy’s face when Chloe told her that the woman she killed was her own mother. All these women undone by their own love.

  I wonder when Shelley Drake first heard she was Lily’s granddaughter. Was it from her mother? Did she think it was the claim of a crazy woman who hated the mother who had raised her? Or did she, too, prefer to identify herself with Lily Eberhardt, the beautiful artist, rather than the rich and talentless Gertrude Sheldon?

  If I confront her now, will it make Shelley even crazier?

  Shoosh, the trees say as we make our way through the dark woods. Be quiet, don’t tell.

  As we approach the head of the clove Callum stops and puts his hand out to keep me back. Then he holds up one finger. He’s listening to something, but I hear nothing except the snow sliding off the boughs. Then, faintly, I hear what Callum does. It’s a girl’s voice, thin as the icicles hanging from the pine branches, singing. A wisp of a line floats through the still air: Let it out and let it in … It sounds like the pines breathing.

  “That’s a Beatles song,” Callum says. “‘Hey Jude.’”

  “It’s Jude’s favorite song. He used to sing it to Sally every night at bedtime—” I pause, li
stening to the quavery voice. “—and that’s Sally singing it.”

  I rush forward. Callum tries to hold me back but I dodge under his arm and he slips on the snow trying to grab me. I don’t care about “sizing up the situation,” I just want Sally.

  I head straight for the sound of her voice, off the path, crashing through thick underbrush that turns out to be thorny holly, and come flailing out into the clearing about five feet from the edge of the ridge. Chloe and Haruko are standing below the ridge, each holding a lit Yahrzeit candle. Sally stands farther up, near the edge of the cliff, holding a candle in a mittened hand, singing the last refrain of “Hey Jude.” Shelley stands beside her.

  I call Sally’s name and she turns.

  “Mom, you’re back! I was singing Daddy’s song. Dean Drake said it was a good way to say goodbye to him.”

  “Yes,” Shelley says, stepping closer to Sally and putting her arm around her shoulder. “This is a good place to say goodbye to all the things we’ve lost.”

  I open my mouth to ask her if that’s what she was doing when she met Isabel here, but I stop myself. I don’t want to make Shelley mad or defensive while she’s standing on the edge of a precipice with my daughter. “Yes, it is,” I say instead. “I think I understand how you feel.”

  “Do you?” She tilts her head and looks at me quizzically. Then something flares in her eyes. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you? I wondered how long it would take you.”

  I could pretend not to know what she’s talking about, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t work. There’s a hungry look in Shelley’s eyes that I guess—hope—is the desire to talk to someone who knows her secret. If I can show her I understand, perhaps she’ll let Sally go.

  “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love,” I say, taking a tentative step forward.