27 Liney To Open #3
“One of many little curses.”
James’s presence flickers as Bridget disappears through the trapdoor. I grab the ladder, her outstretched arm holding the lantern above me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, embarrassed I’d not said it before. “You deserved much better than Elle’s butchering. I’d never have wanted her to—”
“I know.” His smile breaks my heart. “You bring out the best in your sister, Liney. Not the other way around. I’m her burden to bear, and she mine. Don’t let this place become yours.”
He’s gone. The room is only rough walls, dank air, and uncovered bones. I climb back upstairs, the skull tucked carefully to my chest.
Bridget moves the chesterfield back over the trapdoor, lining it up with the floor’s scuff marks. Hopefully Elle won’t check downstairs, and I can play my part. No ghost, no days and nights of tenderness. Nothing can linger.
Do I have enough time to make it to the light and back? Elle will be suspicious if she finds me on the stairs from the lightroom. Instead, I hide the skull inside the bedside table’s small cabinet. James’s eyeless sockets stare up at me as I close him in yet another hiding place.
“I’ll take you up later,” I whisper to his skull.
Bridget waits beside the door. She holds a sack with her traveling dress inside. How long will it be until I can see her again?
“I figure I’ll give you some time with her. Then we’ll head to the boat.”
I run into her and fling my arms around her shoulders. She holds me so tight my ribs might crack. The faint scent of lavender still coats her hair. I press myself close as though the pressure will gobble her up into safety.
“You’re so strong,” Bridget whispers. “No matter what she says.”
“I love you.”
It comes out without thinking. But isn’t that what I’ve been thinking, the words laced into every action in this pocket of time we’ve had alone?
Speaking secret dreams of adventure, I love you.
Washing sea salt out of her hair, I love you.
Holding her hand as we face the ghost my sister has kept from me, I love you.
She’s no longer someone I find fascinating or a victim I want to save.
She’s mine in any way she wishes, and I’m all too ready to be hers.
Bridget leans back to look into my eyes. Hers brim wet, icy blue. “I love you too.”
When she kisses me, it’s as though the rest of this wretched place melts away. In her there’s no fear. Only possibility. For once there’s a future that could be more than grudgingly tolerable. It might make me happy.
Love without control. Love as the freedom we make for each other.
“Thank God for bringing you to me,” I whisper. Our foreheads touch. She needs to leave. I need to finish putting the house in order. But we’re held together.
“We’ll weather this.”
Those are her last words to me. The door’s closed. The world is again too small.
I clean, ready for Elle to appear at any moment.
James’s warnings mix with my sister’s promises to Bridget.
I was such a fool to believe the best of her.
That she wanted to help. Elle never sacrifices without reward.
She wouldn’t make it easier for me to leave.
She didn’t attack Bridget through any presumption of evil. At least not evil on Bridget’s part.
I stop halfway through airing out the bed sheets. Am I falling into my old traps? Seeing Bridget as perfect? I saw no warning signs in Chamomile. Every blaring red light of danger illuminated the roses and hid the blood.
Yet I don’t find Bridget perfect. She doesn’t listen when she’s excitable.
She sees the world too simply for her safety with a hope I can’t hold onto.
But even in these flaws, I love her. The excitement to share comes from wanting to share her ideas and then learn what I think.
The hope she holds, while na?ve, is essential to keep despair from sinking us.
She’s a balance to my choleric, standstill, self-absorbed inclinations.
I put the wine bottles away, replace the tea boxes, and stuff the small clothes into the laundry basket.
I sit on the chesterfield and mend a hole in one of Elle’s trousers.
I play the same old game of being as still, as doll-like, as possible.
Because she promised the only thing I still need: answers.
I was right. I didn’t have enough time to tidy and take James to his final resting place.
Elle enters the lighthouse with a slam of the door.
The essence of the building changes. How did I never notice that the lights dim around her?
That the air thickens? With Bridget, this room grew so bright in the morning that the floorboards warmed under the sunrays.
Now, despite clear blue sky above, the light’s barely brighter than the shadow.
She shoulders five canvas bags stuffed with supplies.
I scurry over to help, but I can barely move the lightest one.
The quicker she gets unpacked, the sooner she’ll want to rest. Once she’s asleep, I can take James’s skull upstairs.
I’ve been the one dragged around, stolen away, left in the dark. What Elle ruined, I can make right.
After that? There’s no future for me here. It’s only a question of how much I can learn from Elle and how long I can stomach her with what I know now.
“How was the trip?” I ask, dragging the bag to the bottom of the stairs.
“Where’s the girl?” She asks back. Her forehead is slick with sweat, and her breath comes in long heaves, even after putting down the bags. Her gaze searches mine for betrayal.
I consider lying. Telling her Bridget went to get firewood or ran away or truly was a figment of my imagination. I say the simplest version of the truth instead.
“She thought we’d appreciate a little time alone.”
We unload her parcels. I play the part of excited little sister.
I exclaim in delight at the jams and jellies, sniff the pungent spices, ooh and aah at the salted meats and sausage links.
Every item pulled from the sack is a gift for me.
With each false show of excitement, a frozen vise closes around my heart. Elle doesn’t notice.
There’s one bag she forbids me to touch. She snaps out of her travel stupor when I reach for it. She grabs it with one hand and hauls it upstairs. After a while she comes back down, her features softened.
“It was hard rowing coming back. But I shouldn’t need to go again until spring,” she explains. I, not we. “I got you the newspaper, over there in that bag.”
It’s thicker than the last run’s paper. I hold it close to my chest as I normally would when I was excited to learn about the world secondhand. That’s no longer enough for me. But she can’t know that.
When everything has been put away, Elle looks to the bed. Her eyes are framed with dark circles, deeper than usual. She mustn’t have slept well.
“Why don’t you rest?” I offer. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go outside for a moment. I haven’t had fresh air since you left.”
She bristles, eyes red-rimmed and alert once again. “No. You stay here.”
“I did as you asked, didn’t I?” I beseech. I never used to push like this, but now I understand that Elle evades as much as I have. “I didn’t step outside once.”
Elle peers over to the closed door, suspicious yet too weary to act on it.