27 Liney To Open #4
“And I was thinking,” I continue, “you should show me how the light works. If the oil had gone out or the wick needed replacing, I wouldn’t have known how to fix it on my own. People could’ve been hurt.”
“Liney.” She sighs, with all the weight of the lighthouse on her shoulders. “I’m tired. Go outside. Enjoy the sunshine.” She walks around me to the bed.
I put on the coat she hung by the door.
“And sing for me,” Elle adds as she flops onto the bed. “If I can’t hear your singing, I’ll come find you. Don’t make me.”
My relief deflates in my lungs. I shouldn’t have hoped for freedom without a price.
“You know,” I say as I open the door. “Sometimes asking your permission is like bartering with the Devil himself.”
I leave before she can answer, closing the door so forcefully I picture the whole lighthouse crumbling behind me.
I walk around the building and choose a song.
It’s an old church hymn. A song full of the glory of God and the banners of heaven.
Something I can sing without thinking, sung many times in pews.
I take out the newspaper and unfurl it. There are tear lines around some articles. Burnt edges were stuck back into place. How were the pages so carefully put back together? By whom?
On the front page, staring up at me, is my own face. Young, a child, surrounded by my family, and by the words WANTED and MURDERED and REWARD.
I keep up the song, but my throat constricts around each note. An article accompanies the photograph. Huge letters scream out a truth I never allowed. No matter what my sister’s violence toward strangers was, this was the line I never thought possible to cross.
HORRIFIC FORSYTH MURDERS HAUNT HALIFAX
Gas poisoning victims and shipbuilding magnate Charles Forsyth and wife remembered.
Youngest daughter Caroline missing, presumed kidnapped or dead.
Note left behind: ‘I love you no matter what’ to fiancé.
Mary Eleanor Forsyth, sister and heir to Forsyth fortune until hysteria took hold, primary suspect and still at large.
Reward grows as desperate fiancé searches for answers.
My breath comes faster with every word. I reread it, and each time a new pain strikes my chest. A pain that’s been there all along, never named. The ice of mourning what you don’t have the full shape of. The shadow of grief with none of the catharsis.
My parents were murdered. Not killed by an accident like Elle said. By her, the suspect? Hysteria. Elle mentioned once about a plan to institutionalize her. To see a reference on the page twists my stomach.
I repeat the words, but they can’t find a sticking point.
I picture my mother, her soft words that hid dagger intentions.
My father, his barking voice and unyielding will.
Their end marked in these pages puts the pieces into place.
I assumed Elle’s tendencies for violence to be the passions of a moment.
An animal fear she can’t control. Thomas was the scheming one.
But this was planned. The same plan that roused me from bed with a suitcase and slippers to soften our steps out of the house also involved knowing which pipe to sabotage, when to do it, and how to suffocate our parents in their bed.
My stomach roils. A force stronger than Elle gave me this. Despite Elle’s tear marks around the article, this remained.
I lean back against the shingles of the lighthouse. My sister is only feet away within. And she killed our parents. Murdered. No wonder she knew they’d died. It’s too much. I lean over the edge of the rock between our home and the ocean and retch, hot and forceful as my cheeks streak with tears.
When I straighten back up, I throw the newspaper into the water. I could confront her with the evidence, but what would that do? The person who calls herself my sister is capable of hurting me. No amount of deception will change what I know now.
My voice breaks as I sing again before Elle can complain. Another hymn comes to mind. It’s a song I heard at a funeral that stuck with me. One I might have asked to be sung if I’d attended my parents’ own ceremony.
“Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.” My voice falters, choking on something caught in my throat. “Change and decay in all around I see—O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”
My sister filled my head with monsters. Our parents in the force of their will over our lives. Thomas Seymour in his machinations against us. She even tried to make Bridget into a demon.
My sister was once my buoy, keeping my head above water. I never thought she’d become my drowning.
I joined Elle to wait out the villain of our lives and lie low until she found it safe to find a new home. But that’s not why we came. We’re here so Elle can escape herself and every sin she’s committed in my name.
I wanted to be Elle’s trusted equal. That will never happen. Not because I’m too weak or foolish. Not because of her sacrifice or heroics. Because she’s chosen Devil work and butchery over me.
It’s high time I choose myself.