4 Liney To Fight #2
I set down my finds on the small dining table, save the news. She pesters me with questions with no room to breathe. “Did you see anyone? Is the storm close? Have the winds changed?”
I raise my hands and show her the paper. “You need to read this.”
“Where did you get that?” Elle asks, sharper.
“Just read it.” I can’t get anything else out. Now in the safety of the lighthouse, I’m shutting down. Elle grabs the paper. “Other side. Funerals.”
There’s no going back. That’s what I couldn’t face in the darkening forest. I didn’t say goodbye.
The world needs to stop. Let me go back to a world where their hearts still beat.
Smell my mother’s perfume. Feel my father’s scruff as he kisses my forehead.
They made horrid mistakes against Elle, and me, but they loved us.
Everything they did was to give us a better life than they’d started with. Now they’ve got no life at all.
There was a moment, I was so young I doubt anyone knows I remember, when a nun came to our home.
She discussed the possibility of my death to my sister.
I’d been bedbound for a couple of weeks and couldn’t eat, could barely breathe.
They talked within earshot, which in retrospect was rather macabre.
She explained that my time might be coming to return to the embrace of heaven, and if there was anything Elle wanted to tell me, she should do it soon.
Instead, nine-year-old Elle flew into a grief-fueled rage and attempted to punch the nun for trying to take me away.
It took both our parents to restrain her.
Elle kept saying, even as they dragged her up the hall, the same mantra I felt: It’s not fair.
My family practiced mourning me for nearly two decades. I never thought any of them would be first.
Elle says nothing. She walks to the embers of the fire and throws the paper in. It curls inward like a coral that’s been touched, then it’s gone.
“Why did you—” I try to say, but Elle’s already returning to boarding up one of the back windows. I hadn’t realized she was holding a hammer. “Elle. Did you read it? They’re—”
“It was an accident,” she whispers, barely in earshot and still turned away.
I come closer. I want to wrap my arms around her and sob until I can’t feel anything. Elle doesn’t like to be touched without warning, though.
“Did you know?” I ask, praying it’s not true. Could I have misheard her? What else sounds like accident? I wait for Elle to elaborate. I’ll stay here until the storm passes over us if I must.
A flash of light creates a veined afterimage. Seconds later the thunderclap booms out, rattling the windowpane. Elle faces me, a face so mixed in emotions as to become unreadable.
“I’ve known for a few months,” she says, biting her lip. “On a supply run, I made a shortcut through the cemetery near St. Mary’s. The nice one.”
“How?” I ask. “What accident?”
Elle blows a long breath out. The air has a static tinge to it, from either the lightning or the tension. “A gas leak,” she whispers, looking down. “It was painless. In their sleep.”
“Where did you find out?”
Elle’s cheeks hollow as she chews them. This shouldn’t be a hard question.
“Are you lying?” I ask, harsher than I should be.
Elle’s eyes snap up to mine with a flash that I could swear is anger. “What?”
The static grows into a painful pressure. She’s staring at me like I’ve done something wrong. Chamomile appears behind her, peering around her shoulder.
“Is that how they died? Truly?” Tears stream freely down my face, and I can’t believe the words I’m saying. “I’m sure we broke their hearts when we left. I couldn’t live with myself if…” I can’t say it. What if our escape created too vast a loss?
Elle’s shoulders lower, and she rushes forward, embracing me. I smother myself in her arms. While I wish she’d told me, I understand wanting to protect me from such terrible news.
“I promise, Liney. They felt nothing. Just dreams. I found an old newspaper that profiled it after I saw their names on a gravestone.”
I make myself stop questioning the hows and whys. Litigating Elle’s poor choice as betrayal instead of mistake will only open further the wounds grief has cut into my heart.
“They loved you,” she says softly against my hair. “So much. I’m sure they’re relieved they didn’t find you on the other side.”
She holds me through another four lightning strikes. That’s the amount of time my sister deems appropriate to mourn before she sets to the next task.
“I’m going to go through the stores for some cheese. Finish this window for me.”
“Cheese?” Something so mundane in the wake of life-changing news seems wrong.
Elle’s mouth grows into a smile. The warmth returns to her face like a kerosene lamp flickering to life. “It’s to celebrate our first year here. Your favorite, cheesy chod. Remember?”
The remaining supper preparations are quiet.
Elle tuts and sighs at the stove, and the room fills with the smell of sizzling cod.
When I finish hammering extra boards on the window, I rekindle the fireplace.
With nothing else to do and wary of Elle’s state no matter how normal she seems, I sit in the armchair.
I pretend I’m a doll, as I used to with our parents.
Sit stone-still with the most pleasant, easy smile I can muster. Exist as little as possible.
Elle serves dinner. There was only enough cheese for one serving, so she adds a butter-based sauce that bubbles atop the cod, accompanied by pickled asparagus and week-old bread rolls.
I can’t help longing for the lush spreads back home.
Pheasant arranged delicately among tiny eggs and herbs, melt-in-your-mouth slices of fatty beef with pureed potatoes, and veal cutlets rolled in bacon with light salads of pears and walnuts. Evenings were a feast for every sense.
Chamomile paces in the kitchen, behind Elle. She was silent through the chores, watchful as a guard dog.
The cod flakes beneath my fork tines. Its exposed layers drown as the sauce seeps in. I take my first bite, all too aware of Elle’s eyes on my expression.
“Delicious.” I cover my mouth delicately with one hand. “The butter’s perfect with the fish.”
Elle settles and begins eating. She wears a sliver of a smile between bites. The flame of conflict between us is extinguished, for now. Behind her back, Chamomile rolls her eyes at me.
The asparagus has a sour bite that clashes with the soggy texture, but I swallow it down.
This and worse will be our future over the winter months if we have nothing fresh coming by boat.
Pickled vegetables and preserved fish. I take a bite of the bread roll and nearly chip a tooth.
I dip the edge of the roll in the small butter puddle beside the fish skin.
She’s punishing you. Chamomile leans across the kitchen counter that separates her from our small table. For nothing. You didn’t ask to be here.
I ignore her. The roll is tolerable once soaked through.
She wants you here for the rest of her life, Chamomile continues. I’ve never seen her so agitated. Her red dress shines in the firelight, the folds swimming with the flames’ movement like ribbons. Like snakes. Do you want to waste your life, the nothing sister of a dangerous lighthouse keeper?
Elle closes her eyes to enjoy the fish, drawing circles in the sauce with a forkful. I meet Chamomile’s stare and shake my head.
Elle is selfish. Not you.
“We should reconsider the winter plan,” I blurt out. My words stumble over one another like crabs in a bucket. “I can disguise myself. We’re safer together.”
It’s also harder to keep secrets as big as our parents’ death if I accompany her.
Elle takes her time chewing her last bite of fish.
Her gaze stays steady while her temples bulge in time to each mouthful.
Owl’s eyes, my mother called them. I used to sneak into Elle’s room and try on her long, dark dresses.
Too large for me with our six-year difference.
I’d look in her mirror, a pale ghost of my sister, keeping my eyes open until they watered.
“No,” she says, so final. No room for discussion. “Here is safe. Winter will pause any investigation. Better not to chance it.”
Investigation? Into what? Why inconvenience us so much for one man’s notice? Everything with Elle is strategy, not sense.
“And the wages? They’re still waiting at the society.”
Elle looks up at me. “I’ll take care of it.”
Her eyes are cold, set in a way they never used to be. There’s a piece in Elle that’s been missing since our escape. A part of her she hides from me.
I can’t untangle the missing from the new head-on, but I also can’t ignore it. Her care is a fence meant to protect me, but the pickets are growing higher every day.
You might as well be dead here. Chamomile’s words echo, a chorus of discord. She’s killed your future. Any chance at happiness.
Her goading sparks the grief into something darker.
“Perhaps I’ll go alone.” My voice shakes. “You love your solitude, your life away from the world. Should that not include me anymore?”
A viper’s strike of regret turns my blood cold. I can’t catch the words out of her ears.
Elle stands in a rush, throwing down her fork and bumping the table. “How dare you,” she seethes. “This is for you. Not me.”