If her mother could stay for Hannah and Julia, Hannah could keep quiet for her mother.
Hannah wanted desperately to ask her sister: Does he come into your room too? But she never did. She was always afraid Julia would go through the roof. Her sister was unpredictable—wild mouthed and untamed. She’d never be able to take the words back, and if she told and they ended up homeless, then what? It was like shaking a bottle of soda and popping the cap off. Who knew what would get caught in the fray? Besides, Hannah was happiest when Julia was happiest.
The next summer her mother drove them to Brackenhill for the first time. At the time she simply said, “I work too much. You’re alone all day here. That’s not a summer vacation.” Only later she wondered if her mother had known the whole time.
After that first summer at Brackenhill, her fate was sealed. She knew she’d never breathe a word. She’d had three months of magic and exploring and woods and her sister. The smell of the river. The feel of the water. Fresh-baked banana bread and peas straight from the garden. Music and laughter and games and jokes. Faerie houses and hidden trails. Flowers and sunshine and swimming pools. An uncle who taught her about trees and animals and plants and nature. An aunt who taught her how to bake, cook, even clean. The enchantment of a castle. Her room in the turret. And Julia, her best friend, even seemed lighter, happy and free, and they’d never had so much fun in their whole lives. If Hannah told, what if her mother took it all away? What if her sister, thirteen then, had to get a summer job? Brackenhill would be over. No. She’d hold her breath through a hundred nights of drunken fumbling, cold hands, hot beer breath, if it meant she could come back.
Floating in the pool now, Hannah thought of her friends at home, Tracy and Beth, how she should be mad that she was missing a real summer. Her first teenage summer of boys and freedom and biking around town. The community pool. She wondered if Pete Reston would be there, a lock of blond hair falling into his eyes, his mouth turned up into a smirk, like he was always teasing her, and his smell like watermelon candy. And Tracy and Beth had been fighting almost constantly, Hannah stuck in the middle.
Hannah thought of Julia’s best friend, Miranda Pike. The gaggle of popular girls Julia and Miranda had slipped into: lip gloss and long hair in a cloud of perfume and pink. Her sister’s new boyfriend, Josh Fink, cute and nice. Dimples on both cheeks when he lightly punched Hannah on the arm. And the way he said her name, Hah-nnah, so that it sounded older and like she was one of them, not the pestering younger sister. When Mom worked nights and Julia walked Josh right past Wes in the living room and into Julia’s bedroom, locking the door, Josh still grinned at her, even as he followed her sister around like a dog.
“Do you miss the Fink?” Hannah asked.
“No.” Julia sighed, her fingers skimming the water, picking up a leaf and twirling it.
“Why? Did you break up?”
“Who would break up with Josh Fink?” Julia laughed, but it sounded forced. She adjusted her hat and kicked against the side of the pool, and the tube propelled away.
“Then what?” Hannah pressed. Julia had always felt like her equal, her very best friend, but this year had somehow spun away from them. Lost, somehow, in ways Hannah couldn’t figure out. Her sister, previously so fresh faced, open. And now? It was like Hannah couldn’t get a good look at her. Every time she tried, Julia turned around, closed her eyes, bent her head. She was pulling away, even before Brackenhill, and Hannah felt desperate to keep hold of her.
Julia sighed again. So much sighing, which was also new. “Hannah, drop it. I’m fine. I’m just . . . bored here, I guess.” But her eyes were closed, her fingertips tapping the hollow of her throat.
“Don’t you miss him?” Hannah couldn’t imagine choosing to leave Josh Fink. What if he found someone else over the summer? Julia seemed unconcerned.
“No.” She pulled the hat over her face, propped her head against the raft’s handle. Her voice was muffled from the straw when she said, “Do you think we could ride our bikes into town?”
“Town? Why?” They’d never really done that. Aunt Fae wouldn’t allow it. The shoulder was too narrow, the road too winding, the cars too fast.
“I told you. I’m bored. We know everything about this place. It never changes.”
Bored of me? Hannah wondered but didn’t ask. “That’s not true. Remember the place in the corner? By the embankment? It was in the ground, like a storm shelter. We found it last year but never got the lock off before we had to go home. That was our project this summer. Remember?”
Julia muttered a hmm-mmm, meant to indicate that she was tired. Tired of questions, exploring.
It had been an odd little door, built into the side of a small incline and covered with debris and leaves. They’d asked Uncle Stuart about it, and he’d only squinted his eyes, twisted his mouth, before shaking his head. No, there wasn’t a key. “Probably a root cellar,” he’d said. Hannah had thought about that little door all winter, and now Julia just wanted to forget it!
Hannah slid through the opening of her raft, her legs slick with lotion, her toes barely grazing the bottom. She held her breath and sank down, opened her eyes, the water dappled with sunlight, her long dark hair billowing around her. She sat, the sandpaper concrete against her thighs, her lungs aching, her eyes beginning to prick with starbursts. She watched her sister’s silhouette against the sun, floating aimlessly and undisturbed.
When she finally propelled herself upward and broke the water’s surface with a gasp, Julia didn’t even flinch. Hannah pulled herself up on the side of the pool, toweled off, and went inside. She showered and changed into shorts and a tank top and wandered into the arboretum, a room filled with windows like an enclosed porch with a vaulted glass roof. Her favorite room in the castle, warm, even hot—everyone always complained it was hot, but Hannah thought the sun-filled room felt like a haven. She was dozing lazily, sleepily, on the chaise with a book when she heard a prolonged scream. At first, she thought it was an animal, something getting hunted in the surrounding forest, and only after a moment did she make out Uncle Stuart’s name and realize it was Julia.
Julia!
Hannah raced through the halls, out the back door, and onto the pool deck, reaching it the same time as Uncle Stuart, who’d come running from the garden, gripping a spade in his fist like a weapon.
Julia had pulled her legs onto her raft, the hat floating ten feet away. She gestured wildly, helplessly, toward Uncle Stuart, who gaped at the pool, stunned.
The pool, glittery and blue only an hour ago, had turned rust red. In the bright-white midday sun, if Hannah didn’t know it was impossible, she would have thought it was filled with blood.
CHAPTER NINE
Now
Hannah found the hospice nurse standing in the back hall, blinking. She’d come in the side door, near the driveway, scaring all of them.
“Is Fae here?” the woman asked, and it occurred to Hannah that telling people their loved ones had died was exhausting. Was the nurse a loved one? Maybe. She was at Brackenhill every day. The same woman for over a year, she’d heard.
“I’m Hannah.” She extended her hand, and the nurse shook it. “Please come in.” Which felt stilted and unnecessary. The woman was likely more at home here than Hannah.