Chapter Two
TWO
WILLOW ESTATE IS UNDEAD. RISEN from the grave, cracked bones and cobwebs and maggots for eyes.
My hands are stained red. Concentrated on the tips of my fingers and caked beneath my nails, the oil clings like dried blood.
Holding the pastel at arm’s length, I line it up against the vertical panes of the house, squinting my left eye and tilting my head, assessing.
Once a veritable fortress amid sprawling green grounds, the chipped burgundy paint of the old Victorian bleeds against the tempestuous sky.
Weeds creep between the slats of the rotted steps, and the wraparound porch sags at the edges.
Intricate, pink-painted woven wood trim loops beneath the gables and under the windows and across the overhung eaves, its cracks sprouting scraggly mildew like five-o’clock shadow.
And on the far edge of the house is a south-facing window seat, perfectly positioned for spying on the sullen boy sat kitty-corner in a tower of his own.
I capture the intricacies of Willow Estate in vermilion and charcoal and indigo on the edges of the page. My fingers drift from the textured grain of my sketch pad to my knees, the ghost of the purple-green bruises still darkening my skin in shades of gray.
It is a dying home for a dead woman.
“She’s gone.”
My mother’s words are trapped inside the confines of my skull, bouncing against the bone in a relentless echo.
Sighing, I pull a smooth black stone from my pocket, dirt still caked in its dents and grooves from where I dug it out of the creek bed.
I turn it over in my hands, barely resisting the urge to toss it into the stream that burbles beside me.
The air buzzes with unspent electricity.
The humidity still thick enough to swim through, begging for the snap of lightning and a torrent of rain to relieve it.
It presses against me, squeezes until my lungs get tight.
I imagine that the weight on my chest isn’t just grief or pain but also the force of Gigi’s hug tethering me to the earth.
When my mother told me, something inside me broke, and I’m not sure I’ll ever fix it.
She said she knew how much I loved Gigi.
I still can’t believe that. How quickly she switched to past tense.
I love her. Not loved. Love doesn’t fade the minute someone stops breathing.
I want to be mad at my mother because anger is so much easier to feel than grief, but I can’t.
Because she’s hurting too. Even if it’s not in the same way.
Besides, I have bigger things to worry about.
I slide the rock into my pocket, my legs weak as I hop to my feet.
When the sky finally breaks and thunder reverberates through the garden, I welcome the commotion, so well timed with the storm brewing inside me.
Tucking my sketch pad and kit under my shirt, I tilt my head down, avoiding the tears falling from the sky, wetting my face in the absence of the ones I have yet to shed myself.
In the distance lightning flashes, and like call-and-response, the feeling from the convenience store flares within me. An itchy, electric thrumming that I crush and ignore, squeezing my hands until my nails poke crescent moons into my palms.
Named after my grandmother’s lineage, Willow Estate is a cluttered menagerie of knickknacks and lavender candles and memories. It is a landmark curated and cared for and abandoned. Just like me. Like my mom.
Gigi isn’t my mom’s mom, she’s my dad’s.
But he hasn’t been in any of our lives since he walked out the front door twelve years ago.
All he bothered to leave behind was a cryptic note my mother won’t talk about and a man-sized chasm between us.
My dad’s dad died before I was born, and my mom’s parents are Pentecostal snake handlers that speak in tongues and live about an hour west of Dollywood on the bank of the Tennessee River.
We only talk to them around Christmastime.
Ever since my dad left, it’s just been us three.
Three different shades from pale to deep brown, three generations, three dispositions, three women torn up from the inside with different ways of showing it.
But it was good, even when it wasn’t. Even when I was stuck in the middle, their struggle to maintain control practically tearing me in two.
Not that it matters anymore, I guess.
I stomp across the stone pathway leading from the gardens and into the kitchen, the creaky metal storm door slamming shut behind me.
The house doesn’t quite smell the same with her gone.
A month and change without her puttering around the kitchen, apron pulled tight across her belly and flour-coated fingers powdering the crinkled edges of a cookbook, tsking at me when I get lost in a daydream while I’m supposed to be chopping the veggies.
I trail my fingers along the teal bookcase trimmed in scalloped edging, stuffed full of recipes from all over the world. Like my grandmother, I prefer to cook instead of bake. Cooking is art. There’s freedom in loose measurements and abundant seasonings. Baking is science, strict and unforgiving.
My mother prefers to bake.
Moving through the kitchen, I weave around the bustle of caterers and the harried-looking event coordinator and grab the trifold brochure from the island. The mourners are set to arrive within the hour.
Between the kitchen and the living room is a long, golden credenza where an ancient record player gathers dust. A small smile pulls at my lips as I close my eyes, visions of Gigi and me turning infinite circles, doubling over with laughter as Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone blasted from the crackling speakers, or of me hunched over my sketchbooks while Gigi stood at her easel by the window, the Carpenters singing about “Rainy Days and Mondays” as my mother sat in the living room, as she is now.
I’m silent as I cross the threshold, careful not to disturb her quiet sobs. It’s just something I’m used to—living along the boundaries of her emotions.
In the corner sits a stained-glass table with a small ceramic tray shaped like a hummingbird.
Next to it is a hand-tiled frame holding a photo of Gigi and my dad.
It’s old, probably from the late nineties.
He’s tall like I remember, with a low fade and a heavy silver chain that lies over a black and blue football jersey.
His pants are like three sizes too big. It’s a bit on the nose as far as Y2K fashion is concerned. I curl my top lip in disgust.
I stopped wondering where he went a long time ago. Because the who, what, when, where, and why of it doesn’t matter. He’s gone. He’s not coming back. We’re fine without him.
Or at least that’s what I’ve gotten used to telling myself.
Clearing my throat, I startle my mother, who whips her head toward me.
“Hey, honey,” she says, her voice wobbling.
I avoid looking at her swollen, red face.
Crossing the room, I lean down and plant a kiss on the top of her head.
She smells like shea and coconut and that one perfume she bought at the mall a few years ago.
I breathe her in as her fingers swipe the corners of her eyes.
I wonder how many of these tears are for Gigi and how many are for herself.
Flopping on the couch across from her, I smooth the pages of the brochure against my lap and inspect the three unusually happy teens that grace the cover, their robotic smiles in stark contrast with the wrought iron backdrop.
Black Mountain Academy
Woven in swirls and loops, the iron flows in ripples like waves along the school’s gate, each finial tip ending in a severe point. And on either side, an eerie depiction of the mascot, the Black Mountain Wolves.
It’s the wolves’ eyes that truly capture my attention. So small I could convince myself it wasn’t there. But I’ve seen those very wolves staring down at me every year for as long as I can remember.
Crudely carved like a pupil in each eye is the same symbol that now hangs around my neck—Gigi’s final gift to me.
I raise my chin and meet my mother’s wary gaze. “We need to talk about this.”
Her eyes flash as she purses her lips, her right leg crossing over the left. She sweeps her dark hair off her shoulder. “We’ve already talked about this. Endlessly.”
“Yes, but you still don’t agree with me.”
I’ve known about this since the end of May, when a letter addressed to me was left on my desk as I was packing for Earnest. In it was an invitation to attend the academy on a full-ride scholarship, based on the recommendation of a trusted alumni.
When I asked Gigi about it, she swore she had no idea who it could have been. And then she forbade me from going.
“Harper, your grandmother and I didn’t agree on much—”
That’s the understatement of the century.
“But we both believe that going to Black Mountain isn’t the right decision for you.”
“Why would y’all get to make that decision for me?”
“Because we’re adults with enough life experience to know when something isn’t right.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re grieving, you just turned sixteen, you don’t need to be moving away from home—”
“Earnest is my home,” I say defiantly. Guilt burns in my chest as hurt infiltrates my mother’s eyes.
“Be that as it may, I can’t just sit back and let you do whatever you want without having a say.”
“But you won’t even talk about it!” I shout, jumping to my feet in time with a clap of thunder loud enough to shake the floorboards.
This has been brewing since I called my mother from the emergency room, my silence enough for her to jump in the car and start heading our way.
It’s a combination of pain and grief and anger and resentment.
It is the knowledge that though my mother is right in front of me, the woman who raised me has now been cremated by the Johnson family, owners of the Montreat Funeral Home, est. 1924.
Going to BMA has been inevitable from the day I realized there was a future for me in Earnest, free of charge, and I decided that I wouldn’t be waiting until I was eighteen to escape the emptiness of our house, my mother drifting from room to room like a ghost.
Now her lips tremble as she looks at me from between the fingers raking down her face.
“Harper, this is a big decision. I don’t—I’m not sure I can even think about this right now.”
My voice is barely a whisper. “But it’s not about you.” I flinch at the same time she does. I know my tone and words are harsh, but I can’t help it anymore. “After everything that’s happened, don’t you believe I deserve to be here? To be closer to her in this way? Follow in her footsteps?”
Because that’s really the heart of the issue—Gigi went to Black Mountain, too.
My mother shakes her head as if to dispel an unpleasant thought. “You need to seriously consider whether you want to uproot your entire life for a school you have no ties to,” she says.
I jut my chin out stubbornly. “Gigi had ties to it. Even if she didn’t like those ties. If she’s tied to it, I’m tied to it too. Besides, everything in Earnest is tied to it anyhow. And I’m tied to Earnest.”
There are a lot of reasons I might want to go to Black Mountain Academy, least of all being that I could finally live in Earnest like I’ve always dreamed.
Because I’ve always felt like a part of the town in some intrinsic way.
Like my heart beats here and here alone, and any time I spent away was like putting my soul on ice.
And maybe there’s a piece of me that wants to fix what I broke.
To force Malachi and Lucas to forgive me for what I did last summer.
Mom stands, shaking her head as she turns away, her hand trembling as she pinches the skin at the base of her throat.
“We’re running out of time to decide,” I mutter, deflated and exhausted. The school year starts next week, and the deadline to accept the invitation is tomorrow.
She looks at me over her shoulder, and her eyes are wells of sympathy. But there’s something else there too. Like resignation.
As far back as I can remember, Earnest has been my home.
For all the ways my mother’s house in Pine Grove has been a tomb—an altar for a man who will never return—Earnest has been the warmth that allowed me to grow.
Gigi and Earnest go hand in hand, and now more than ever, I feel pulled here, called here; to this home, this land, this school with its pointed turrets peeking over the tree line, looming above the town.
But Gigi had been clear my whole life: BMA was not as wonderful as it seemed. She talked about it like it was a blight and not the center of everything.
And of course, there are the rumors surrounding the school, the rings of dying forest near its grounds, the portentous clouds of bats thundering through the night sky, and the dreadful squalls wailing from the deep wood like something ancient is dying there.
But those are all the things I love most about Earnest. A place as haunted as I’ve always felt inside. That feeling has only grown since last summer. And now with Gigi gone, too…
I don’t know if there are answers for me at Black Mountain Academy, but I know I need a change.
I need to escape. I don’t care if I’m running from my problems. From my grief.
I don’t know what I’m looking for, or if it’ll be there.
All I know is that if I stop moving, even for a second, I’m afraid I’ll cease to exist.
Huffing out a shaky breath, I stand, stretching my legs and making my way to the large bay window that overlooks the backyard. The sky rolls, the clouds swirling in lazy patterns. The trees sway back and forth in the wind.
Today will bring intense change, my horoscope app warned ominously this morning. It rings true as I turn and lock eyes with my mother.
I haven’t cried yet. Not when I found Gigi in her bed, not when they took her away, not when she was sent to hospice, not when my mother called, not when the nurse led me into a soulless room, my grandmother’s body supine on the bed, a blanket pulled past her still chest and resting below her chin, her wrinkles smoothed by the hands of death.
But now, for some reason, it comes. It comes in great, heaping waves, a tsunami of emotion that flattens me to the ground.
Sobs wrack my body like pounding fists, and my head throbs with every beat of my heart.
In an instant my mother is by my side, her arms wrapping around me as we lower to the floor, curling into each other like yin and yang.
Dying is inevitable. But the real tragedy isn’t in the loss of your life but in all the people you leave behind, forced to live without your light to guide them.
Like a reprimand from the universe, the mechanical doorbell chimes.
The mourners are here.
The time has come to say goodbye.