It never occurred to her to question specifically why Julia had run away. That night, knotted tightly in her chest like a closed fist.
Hannah should not have shut Huck out. But that wasn’t quite right; it was never about Huck at all but rather what Hannah felt willing to say aloud. Her family had rarely said important things out loud, aside from Trina’s one “dead” proclamation. Her mother rarely mentioned Aunt Fae after that summer. Her mother’s most frequent emotion was fatigue—too tired to talk about Julia, Fae, Brackenhill. Too exhausted by Hannah’s presence, her relentless need to be fed, clothed, driven. Talking was a bridge too far.
Hannah never learned how to talk about Julia. She knew, instinctively, that she should, at least to Huck. And yet the words would never come. It was too easy to push it all aside, ask instead, What do you want to do for dinner? How was your meeting? Did you stop at the dry cleaner? It was easy to be distracted by daily details of life and easier still to never say a word about a past that seemed irrelevant. Immaterial to the life she was carving out for herself. In those moments she could convince herself she was a strong, independent woman. Overcoming a childhood trauma.
And the one thing she never told anyone—not the police, her mother, Wyatt, Huck. Julia had come back that night. It had been close to dawn. Hannah remembered seeing the brushstroke of pink out the window. When she tried to put a fine point on that memory, anchor it with details (What exactly had Julia said?), she found it too fuzzy. Incomplete. Then she wondered if it had really happened. She doubted her own memories of that summer at every turn.
She couldn’t have said whether it was the fighting with Julia, the hazy excitement with Wyatt, the feeling of something on the horizon—something big and life changing for all of them. But Hannah had been plagued with insomnia that whole last summer. Sleepwalking all over the castle. So much of those last few weeks passed in a fever dream. What had been real?
Her sister had stood poised between their bedrooms, her hand on the doorjamb. “Hannah, please,” she’d whispered. She’d been streaked with dirt, her face pale in the moonlight, like she’d been crying. It was all Hannah remembered, the simple two-word plea, and then her sister was gone. It could have been anything.
Earlier that night Julia had said, “We are in danger here,” her voice a rush, her hair wild. Begged Hannah to come with her, but Hannah flatly refused, all her trust in her sister broken. They’d been to a fish fry picnic in town. Julia had kissed her Wyatt, and Hannah had screamed, pushed her. The fight had gotten ugly—but still, not terminal.
Hannah vaguely remembered her own anger, how she’d known that nothing good ever came from running out of the house in the middle of the night. Especially this house, teetering high on the edge of a cliff, pressed against the wind, the Beaverkill River swollen and rushing below. What had Julia said?
“We can go to the police. I have proof, okay? Come with me. We have to leave.”
Leave! Absolutely not. Hannah would not be made to leave. Brackenhill was hers, and sometimes it felt like she was the only one who knew all the house’s secrets and loved her anyway.
And then the reckless pulse of fury in Hannah’s chest as Julia turned, clicked the door shut. She had no idea what her sister was talking about, and she was tired of caring so much about one person. All her emotions invested so heavily in someone who seemed to care so little in return. The anger flooded back, the images of her sister kissing a boy, his red hair curled in her fingertips, her lips against his cheek.
She almost, almost, opened the door again that night. Her hand was on the knob. She heard her sister on the other side. “I hope you understand.”
Hannah waited until she heard silence at the door between their bedrooms. Then she inched open the door to the hallway. She listened carefully to whispering on the stairs and the patter of quiet footsteps.
Let her go, she told herself. She’s a bitch anyway.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Now
Hannah ascended the curved concrete staircase, Huck following closely at her heels, his breath warm on the back of her neck in the chill of the stale castle air. From somewhere in the distance, in another room, a fan whirred. The clunk of a wooden door being blown shut.
“I thought you said your uncle was bedridden?” Huck asked, startling at the distant slam.
“He is. That’s just Brackenhill.” It had become so normal to Hannah, the muted groans and moans of a fortress standing against the whipping wind high on a hilltop. When she was younger, the night sounds had been soothed away by Aunt Fae’s honeyed voice, and the things that had happened at night had become dreams in her memory. During the day the castle was benign, even charming. Whimsical, with its loose pieces clattering against the outside stone. Through the telescope of age, everything else seemed like the conjuring of an imaginative child.
Stuart and Fae’s room was the last door on the first hallway from the parlor staircase. There were three staircases, four hallways, and ten bedrooms, two in each of the north and south halls, three in each of the east and west hallways. Each room that extended to a corner held a turret. Most were closed up, locked even. Fae and Stuart’s was the largest, with the only attached bathroom, a later addition, Hannah assumed.
The door to Stuart’s room was ajar, and Hannah pushed the door fully open. Huck hovered in the doorway.
The room was unchanged. Hannah, for a moment, felt a vertiginous déjà vu: Fae ambling out of the en suite bathroom and, upon seeing Hannah, pressing her hands together, rings clicking, and giving her a big smile. Her long, colorful caftan flowing around her. The sound of her voice echoing in Hannah’s ears.
A large four-poster bed took up the center of the room, pushed against the far wall. The canopy Hannah remembered from childhood had been removed, leaving only the wooden posts. Flanking the bed were intricately carved armoires with large ball feet, reaching almost to the ceiling. The amber wood glowed in the beam of a night-light. The red brocade curtains were drawn, so although the early-morning light had begun to illuminate other parts of the castle, Stuart’s room remained dark.
Stuart lay in bed, his eyes closed, just as she’d imagined him: thin and frail, the sound of a pump drowning out his labored breathing. An IV pole next to him held a bag of fluid, plastic tubing connecting to his left arm. An oxygen tank sat on the opposite side, emanating a quiet hiss.
She spoke quietly. “Uncle Stuart, it’s me, Hannah.”
He didn’t move or flutter his eyes. His face was gaunt, his hair wispy. He was only sixty-two, but he looked ninety. His mouth hung open inside the oxygen mask, and she could see the scrim of white stubble beneath the green elastic. Hannah reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. She was shocked by the bumps and knobs of bone protruding under the skin. A small blue plastic box on the IV pole displayed numbers: 70, 90, 65. Pulse and blood pressure. Both abnormally low.
Hannah wondered what she would do if the machines started beeping right then. Would she attempt CPR? Did she even remember CPR? It had been years since she’d been trained—the summer after Julia had disappeared, she’d lifeguarded at the community pool. She could vaguely recall the steps: chest compressions, followed by two breaths. Or was it four?
Hannah tried to feel something: remorse, revulsion, fear. She pressed her hand farther into her uncle’s shoulder, willing him to wake up, open one eye, but he did not.