Beaconfield

by Bri R. Leclerc

  Even though it was morning, it was still dark. The wharf wasn’t the lively and jovial place that it normally was. The frothy water wasn’t blue or green, it was black. The waves were choppier than usual, rolling inland and dissolving under the docks against the stone wall. The briny sea air reached my nose, smelling of seaweed and salt.

  The boats that were tied up to the docks banged against the wood with the waves, making me jump each time.

  “Where would he usually be?” I asked Ridge quietly. I could still feel the annoyance rolling off him.

  “The boathouse,” he said, gesturing down the dock before heading that way.

  “Ridge, please don’t be mad at me,” I whined after him.

  He groaned. “I’m not mad at you, Mari. You just don’t seem to understand how important it is for me to keep West safe. He’s my responsibility and he’s in danger.” Ridge was walking quickly now, his head moving back and forth, making sure we weren’t being followed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said quietly.

  “You just don’t get it. You’re an only child and family doesn’t seem to mean as much to you as it does to me,” he hissed.

  That hurt. I gripped at my grandmother’s necklace. He was partially right. I didn’t have siblings, so I didn’t know what it was like to be responsible for anyone else but myself. But of course I cared about my family . . . didn’t I? I thought about my parents and the fights that we’d been having since I graduated high school. I hadn’t been treating them like I cared about them.

  I was silent while thinking this over, and Ridge must have taken that as anger.

  “I’m sorry, that was mean. I didn’t mean it like that.” He slowed down and walked alongside me. “I’m just worried about West and I really want to figure this out. I hope he’s here and I hope he’s okay.”

  “I hope so, too.” I reached out and grabbed his hand.

  The boathouse came into view. It was a small shack on one end of the docks. The wood had been bleached by the sun and worn from storms. The sign above the door was hand-painted and read, “A&T Sanders Fishing.”

  “Sanders? Wasn’t that your grandmother’s maiden name?” Ridge asked, pointing out the sign.

  I nodded. “Yeah, my grandmother’s family owned an offshore fishing company back in the 1800s. I never noticed that this was their boathouse.”

  Ridge peeked into the window of the small house, cupping his hands around his face. He tried the knob but it didn’t turn. He gave it a bit more power and pushed with his shoulder. The door flew open and crashed into a bucket behind the door.

  I winced at the loud sound that echoed around us.

  The small room was filled with fishing equipment and pieces of Beaconfield’s history. It was obvious that no one had been here in a while. There was a chair in front of the window facing the water.

  “He’d normally sit there,” Ridge said, putting his hands on the back of the chair. He looked out at the water and shook his head.

  “It’s okay. We’ll find him and we’ll figure this out. I know we will.” I stroked his arm.

  I wanted to hug him in that moment. Wrap him up and take away all of his pain and stress. Maybe he somehow knew what I was thinking, because he turned to me and wrapped his arms around me. His warmth surrounded me like a blanket. He nuzzled his head in the crook of my shoulder and sighed. His breath made my body tingle and a smile spread across my face.

  The moment didn’t last long enough.

  “You’re so confident we’ll solve this. Do you have any ideas?”

  “I do, actually. But we’d need to go back to my grandparents’.”

  “Grandma?” I yelled as we entered the house.

  I heard shuffling in the living room as she ran from the library, her gray hair flying around her. She looked panicked. “Marigold, dear, are you okay?” she asked. She met us in the foyer and grabbed me by the arms, looking me up and down.

  “Yes, we’re okay.”

  “Did you find him?” she asked, looking to Ridge.

  “No,” Ridge grumbled and looked at his muddy sneakers.

  My grandmother grabbed him and pulled him into a tight hug. He resisted at first, but then gave in to her. He was much taller than she was, but he leaned down and rested his head on her shoulder and wrapped his long arms around her.

  They stood there for a moment and then pulled away.

  “We’ll figure this out and we’ll help your family, I promise,” my grandmother whispered to him.

  He nodded and wiped a stray tear from his cheek.

  “Speaking of ‘figuring this out.’ We need to learn more about Elizabeth. I think Grandpa’s books can help.”

  “Great idea, Marigold!” My grandmother clapped her hands and skipped to the stairs.

  Grandma led Ridge and I up to the Widow’s Watch. My grandfather had installed floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the room to store all his history books.

  When I was younger, I’d kept my books on ghosts up there too, in a place where my mom wouldn’t see them if she’d come to visit.

  I took the library book out of my bag and put it on one of the benches that wrapped around the room. I flipped it open to the story about Elizabeth. “My grandfather was a big history buff. You remember that, right?” I asked Ridge.

  He nodded, and Grandma continued for me.

  “My Cecil’s favorite subjects were the Civil War, Maritime History, and, of course, Beaconfield. He had so much pride for this town because of his family’s rich history here. He collected every history book that even mentioned Beaconfield and he put them up here.” She waved her hands, gesturing to the vastness of his collection.

  I went to the bookshelf and pulled down a few history books about Beaconfield. I laid them out on the bench next to the library book. “This is what we know about Elizabeth Harp,” I said, tapping the page of the library book. “And that she’s related to you, Grandma. But there has to be more information in one of these.” I motioned to the hundreds of books on the walls.

  “Let’s get looking, then,” Ridge said as he sat on a bench and opened a book.

  I smiled and joined him.

  An hour or so later, Ridge got up from the floor where he’d been sprawled out to grab another stack of books from the shelf. When he slid them down, he let out a curious sound.

  “What?” I asked. I got up from the floor and joined him at the bookcase.

  “Look at this,” he said, pointing to the back of the shelf. There were two lines running vertically against the shelf. He reached out and ran his fingers along it. “It looks like a false back.” He pressed into the wall and it suddenly popped open.

  I jumped back and let out a startled yelp.

  “Whoa,” Ridge said.

  Ridge pulled open the door and inside we found a collection of brown, leather-bound notebooks. I pulled one out of the cavern and looked it over. There were three letters stamped into the leather: CMG

  “These are Grandpa’s,” I said in amazement.

  “How do you know?” Ridge asked, looking over my shoulder. I pointed to the initials.

  “Cecil Michael Gentry,” I said. I flipped through the pages and saw his scrawling handwriting. Tears sprang to my eyes and that feeling of dread jumped to the top of my stomach. Ridge put his hand into mine and squeezed it.

  “Oh, that sneaky man,” Grandma said with a smile. She grabbed a notebook from its hiding place and rubbed her fingertips across its leather.

  “Why would he hide them?” Ridge asked, turning to my grandmother.

  Her eyes lit up. “He didn’t like me reading them. He said that they were his thoughts. I don’t know if we should read these . . .”

  “Grandpa knew more about Beaconfield than anyone, and if he knew something about Elizabeth, I have a feeling it’s in these notebooks.”

  Grandma thought for a moment, flipping the notebook back and forth in her hands.

  “Mrs. Gentry, I think we need to go through them,” Ridge said softly.

&
nbsp; “Oh, please, it’s Ellis. And okay, let’s get to work.”

  We started to pull the other notebooks from their hiding place. Ridge stacked them on the bench, and when he pulled out the last one he turned to us and said, “This piece of paper was in the back.”

  He handed it to me. It was a large, folded piece of parchment. It was old and fragile. I sat on the floor and unfolded it carefully, smoothing it out across the hardwood. On the paper was a detailed image of a large tree. On a closer look, I noticed the names scrawled across the leaves. It was a family tree.

  My face lit up when I read the names. At the very bottom I saw my own name: Marigold Ellis Wilder. Above me was Dad, Parker Gregory Wilder, and beside him, Mom, Violet Marie Gentry. Then came the rest of the Gentry and Sanders families. The two families filled out both sides of the larger tree to make up the gorgeous illustration.

  “Look,” Ridge said, pointing to the center of the tree on my grandmother’s side. I followed his finger and read the name.

  Elizabeth Harp.

  My throat closed as I read the name over and over. I looked up to my grandmother, and she looked just as shocked as I felt.

  I looked at it again, this time following the tree’s branches. Her husband, the one she had died waiting for, was there, Leonard Harp. Date of death, 1833. Below the two of them was their child. The baby didn’t have a name, it was simply Baby Harp, and it didn’t have a date of birth, only a date of death, also 1833.

  “Her husband and her child died,” I said, pointing to the middle of the tree.

  “That’s rough,” Ridge said.

  “And on top of it all, her family never really accepted her depression after the death of her family. My grandmother always said ‘Don’t be crazy like Aunt Lizzie.’ It was as phrase that my family used.” Grandma touched Elizabeth’s name on the tree lightly.

  Ridge sighed and sat back on his feet and drew his face into concentration. He tapped his chin with the pad of his finger and stared down at the family tree.

  “There’s something we’re missing here. What is her connection, other than being related to your family?”

  “I never knew much about her, just that she took her own life,” Grandma paused, “Well, and the necklace.”

  “The necklace?” Ridge and I asked in unison and looked up at my grandmother.

  “Well, yes.” She traced the tree from Elizabeth to her name. “Marigold, that necklace you’re wearing, it was Elizabeth’s.”

  I paused. My necklace felt as if it was burning my skin. I pulled it out and inspected it. I looked back to Ridge. His mouth hung open and he simply stared at me. I stared back, not sure what to say. “Do you think she knows?” I asked him.

  He continued to study the tree, shaking his head. “I don’t think so. She died, what . . .” Ridge did the math in his head. “180 years ago. I don’t think ghosts care too much about the present.”

  “So, it’s just a coincidence?”

  “Maybe there’s no such thing as a coincidence . . .” Ridge stared intently at the journal in his lap.

  I turned the tree over and glanced at the back and then over to the journals on the bench. “I have a feeling that the notebooks have more information about Elizabeth Harp.”

  I got up and grabbed a stack of journals. I went to a bench on the other side of the room and began reading through them. Following my lead, Ridge and my grandmother also took stacks and sat down to investigate. Ridge sat directly across from me on one of the benches. I looked at him over the top of the book and smirked slightly. I saw the smile in his eyes.

  We read through journals, looking for any sign of the Harp name. I got lost in the journal entries, lost in my grandfather’s hypnotizing handwriting. I saw Mom’s name and my grandmother’s. There were mentions of others from the town and places that I recognized. The journals were dated from the 1950s all the way to a few months prior.

  My heart leapt when I saw my name.

  June 20, 2002

  My little beetle is on her way up to Beaconfield this morning. She will be staying here with us for the whole summer. It took a lot of convincing between both Ellis and I to get Violet to let her daughter join us. We wish that they lived closer so that we could watch Marigold grow up.

  I flipped through the pages quickly, skimming for my and Elizabeth’s name. I found another entry.

  August 3, 2004

  We took Marigold for a hike this morning. There is a small mountain just southwest of Beaconfield with a relatively beginner trail. On our way to the top I made sure to point out the fauna and foliage and any animals that we could find.

  I want Marigold to be curious about the things that she sees. I want her to question everything, and never take anything at face value. There was a small portion of the trail that gave her a bit of trouble. She had gotten frustrated, but she made it up the rocks regardless. She was proud of herself afterward, but I was even more proud of her.

  I thought back to those days. It was strange reading them from my grandfather’s point of view, as I had the memories stored in my brain in such a different way. It was upsetting to think that I’d never be able to have moments like this with my grandad again. He was gone and my grandma had been under Elizabeth’s control again.

  I was tracing my fingers along the letters of his words when Ridge called out across from me.

  “I think I found something.”

  I scrambled to my feet and went to join him. I leaned into him and looked over his shoulder while he read aloud.

  “August 13th, 2013. Violet came to take Marigold away today. She and Parker came up to visit with us for the week. When Violet and Parker arrived, Marigold was in the lighthouse. She had been spending a lot of time up there recently, so I hadn’t thought anything of it when she was up there for so long. I had told her not to go up to the top of the stairs alone, and she didn’t, but for some reason, this time, she did.

  “It was nearly time for dinner and Marigold hadn’t come home yet. Violet and I walked to Lavender Light to get her. When she wasn’t in the small room attached to the light we called after her. There was no answer. Violet ran ahead of me up the stairs. At the top, I saw my sweet beetle hanging over the edge of the railing. Violet screamed and grabbed Marigold, pulling her to safety. From where I was watching, it looked like someone else was holding on to Marigold and pushing her over the edge.

  “Looking Marigold over, we saw that her eyes were completely white and she was unresponsive. Violet screamed again and carried her down the stairs. On her way past me she said, ‘This is why I didn’t want her here—don’t you know that!’ Her anger seeped from her words.

  “It had happened again, and this time to my beetle. The guilt was eating me from the inside. Once we got Marigold out of the lighthouse, Violet laid her down in the lavender field. We saw Parker and Ellis come running up from the path. Marigold lay in the field, unmoving. Violet shook her awake, and her eyes flashed back to their normal blue. Marigold began crying. Then Violet and Parker loaded her into the car and drove away.

  “Ridge Abbott came over later that night looking for Marigold. He looked heartbroken when I told him that she had gone.”

  I looked to Ridge as he finished reading the passage, and he tried not to make eye contact with me. “Is that true?” I asked him.

  He nodded and finally looked at me. “Like I said, you never said goodbye.”

  “I didn’t get the chance to. You read what my grandfather wrote—my eyes were white, just like Grandma’s and West’s. She must have possessed me, too. And look, he said, ‘It had happened again.’” I looked to my grandmother for corroboration.

  “I remember this day vividly. Your mother was so upset. And your grandfather had told me that something like it had happened before, but he wouldn’t explain.”

  “Okay, so your grandfather knew what was going on. And you came to moments later. Grab that book you got from the library,” Ridge said. I grabbed the book and handed it over. Ridge flipped through it and
pointed to a line in the story about Elizabeth. “Look here, she died in the lighthouse. She jumped from the railing.”

  “Do you think she was trying to kill me?” I asked in shock.

  Ridge shrugged. “Let’s see if there’s anything else in these journals,” he said, flipping ahead in the journal he was holding.

  Grandma picked up another notebook. When she did, a piece of paper slid out and skittered across the floor to me. It was a family portrait.

  “What’s that?” Ridge asked.

  I inspected it as my grandmother looked over my shoulder.

  “It’s the Sanders family,” Grandma said.

  She pointed out each member of the family: Abraham, Thomas, Grace, Florence, Cora, and . . . Elizabeth. She stood a bit farther back than the rest of them with a truly devastating look on her face. I flipped the portrait over and saw the date, 1836.

  “This was the year she died.”

  “Look!” Ridge said, excitedly pointing to the piece of jewelry around her neck. It was the necklace. My hand fluttered to the metal on my neck.

  “She apparently wore the necklace every day,” my grandmother said. “I’m pretty sure she died wearing it. The rest of the Sanders family moved from Beaconfield when she passed away, only a couple towns north. I kept the necklace in a safe deposit box until your mother’s wedding day when I gave it to her.”

  “Let’s keep reading,” Ridge said.

  My grandmother and I agreed, and I grabbed another journal. This one looked a bit older than the rest of them.

  We read until I saw something that piqued my interest. I scooted closer to Ridge and read aloud to him like he had to me, my grandmother listening from across the room.

  “June 3rd, 1993. Something strange happened when I came home today. I had stopped by the bank to get something from Ellis’s deposit box and when I drove through downtown the buildings were all closed but it seemed that everyone in town was on the streets. I thought that maybe I had come home from work later than intended, but when I looked down at the clock, that was not the case. It was as if the town was sleepwalking, they stared ahead of them unblinking and meandering around. When I finally got home, my sweet Ellis was acting the same.