The Vanishing at Castle Moreau(2)
Author: Jaime Jo Wright

 

For Cleo, it was a thumbprint. Her grandfather’s thumbprint. Inked after death, digitized into a .png file, uploaded to a jewelry maker, and etched into sterling silver. It hung around her neck, settling between her breasts, just left of her heart. No one would know it was there, and if they did, they wouldn’t ask. A person didn’t ask about what was held closest to another’s heart. That was information that must be offered, and Cleo had no intention of doing so. To anyone. Her grandfather was her memory alone—the good and the bad. What he’d left behind in the form of Cleo’s broken insides were Cleo’s to disguise. Faith held her hand, or rather, she clenched hands with faith, but in the darkness, when no one was watching, Cleo fit her thumb to her grandfather’s print and attempted to feel the actual warmth of his hand, to infuse all the cracks and offer momentary refuge from the ache.

 

Funny how this was what she thought of. Now. With what was left of her world crashing down around her like shrapnel pieces, blazing lava-orange and deadly.

 

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” Cleo muttered into her phone, pressing it harder against her ear than she needed to. She huddled in the driver’s seat of her small car, all of her worldly possessions packed into the trunk and the back seat. She could hear the ringing on the other end. She owed it to Riley. One call. One last goodbye.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Riley!” Cleo stiffened in anticipation.

 

“. . . you’ve reached Riley . . .” the voice message continued, and Cleo laid her head back against the seat. The recording finished, and Cleo squeezed her eyes shut against the world outside of her car, against the darkness, the fear, the grief. This was goodbye. It had to be.

 

The voicemail beep was Cleo’s cue. She swallowed, then spoke, her words shivering with compressed emotion. What did a person say in a last farewell?

 

“Riley, it’s me. Cleo. I—” she bit her lip, tasting blood—“I-I won’t be calling again. This is it. You know. It’s what I hoped would never happen. I am so, so sorry this happened to you! Just know I tried to protect you. But now—” her breath caught as tears clogged her throat—“this is the only way I can. Whatever happens now, just know I love you. I will always love you.” Desperation warred with practicality.

 

Shut off the phone.

 

There was no explaining this.

 

There never would be.

 

“Goodbye, Ladybug.” Cleo thumbed the end button, then threw the phone against the car’s dashboard. A guttural scream curled up her throat and split her ears as the inside of the vehicle absorbed the sound.

 

Then it was silent.

 

That dreadful, agonizing silence that came with the burgeoning, unknown abyss of a new start. Cleo stared at her phone lying on the passenger-side floor. She lunged for it, fumbling with a tiny tool until she popped open the slot on its side. Pulling out the SIM card, Cleo bent it back and forth until it snapped. Determined, she pushed open the car door and stepped out.

 

The road was heavily wooded on both sides. Nature was her only observer.

 

She flung the broken SIM card into the ditch, marched to the front of the car, and wedged the phone under the front tire. She’d roll over it when she left, crush it, and leave nothing to be traced.

 

Cleo took a moment to look around her. Oak forest, heavy undergrowth of brush, wild rosebushes whose thorns would take your skin off, and a heap of dead trees and branches from the tornado that had ravaged these woods decades prior. The rotting wood was all that remained to tell the tale now, but it was so like her life. Rotting pieces that never went away. Ever.

 

She climbed back into the car and twisted the key, revving the engine to life. Cleo felt her grandfather’s thumbprint until it turned her skin hot with the memories. Memories of what had set into motion a series of frightful events. Events that were her responsibility to protect her sister from.

 

Goodbye, Ladybug.

 

There was no explaining in a voicemail to a twelve-year-old girl that her older sister was abandoning her in order to save her. Cleo knew from this moment on, Riley would play that message, and slowly resentment would seep in as she grew older. Resentment that Cleo had left and would never come back.

 

But she couldn’t go back. Not if she loved Riley. Sometimes love required the ultimate sacrifice. Sometimes love required death. Death to all they knew, all they had known. If Cleo disappeared, then Riley would be left alone. Riley would be safe. She could grow up as innocent as possible.

 

So long as Cleo Clemmons no longer existed.

 

 

 

 

 

two

 

Cleo

 

 

PRESENT DAY

 

Is that it?”

 

The pointed question came from a young woman, her nasal septum pierced with a ring, her nose studded, and her left eyebrow sporting a row of rings that, if Cleo was honest, looked painful.

 

“Umm . . .” Cleo swept her gaze over the gas station’s counter. She had gum, a candy bar, a bag of chips.

 

Don’t do it. Don’t. Do. It.

 

“Do you have whiskey?”

 

The attendant raised her ringed eyebrow with a hint of bored curiosity. “Take your pick.” She pointed to the shelves on the wall behind her and the rows of alcoholic beverages lining them. “And welcome to Wisconsin.”

 

Cleo offered a nervous laugh. Wisconsin. She hadn’t ever been here. Once, her grandfather had taken her to Missouri. Until now, that was as close to Wisconsin as she’d been. “I’ll take that one.” She pointed to a bottle of whiskey in a locked glass-case display.

 

The girl raised her eyebrow again. “You sure?”

 

“Yes.” Was she supposed to opt for the shot-sized bottles not being kept under lock and key? Cleo tapped her foot impatiently. Biting back the words that made her grab at her necklace for comfort. The ridges of her grandfather’s thumbprint rubbed against her own. She caught strength from it—strength and guilt. Awful, consuming guilt.

 

And quick, before I change my mind. Cleo was breaking her New Year’s resolution.

 

“That’ll be one hundred and forty-two bucks and eighty-one cents.” The attendant sniffed, and Cleo briefly wondered how a person blew their nose with a ring stuck through the middle part of its cartilage.

 

“My truck is a gas guzzler.” Cleo swiped her card, making small talk.

 

“Yeah, and whiskey isn’t cheap,” the attendant muttered.

 

Cleo reached for the paper-bagged whiskey and her snacks that had been tossed into a plastic bag. “Thanks.” She threw a lopsided smile toward the beringed woman, who stared after her without saying a word.