Chapter 28. Ophelia
OPHELIA
Sorrowsong took the phrase April showers seriously, but May is turning out to be even worse.
The month is drawing to a close, and there’s hardly been a day it hasn’t rained. The tarn is full to bursting, the river choppy and rough.
It’s been a month since my friends picked me up at the airport. A month of long distance with Alex. A month of Cain locked behind bars. A month of my grades and my swim performance being my main concern.
A month of leaving wildflowers on the riverbank where I scattered Laura’s ashes.
I leave the exam hall with a good feeling—a renewed desire to have a career, a life, a future.
My boots sink into the mud of the path to the mansion, everything softened by the rain. Thick slate clouds hang low over the castle, the highest turret lost in the mist. Summer is most definitely not in the air.
But for once, I see why Colette loves it here. The castle, the dark hallways, the low light in the library, the constant rumble of thunder that she says helps her sleep. She thinks Sorrowsong is something straight out of a fairy tale.
Can’t say I agree on that one, but I’m glad for her.
I almost slip three times on my way down the muddy bank, but it’s worth it.
The tarn is never busy. It feels like my own private space here, more so than my room.
The memories that haunted me here—a hand holding me underwater, water in my lungs—are fading, replaced by lazy afternoon swims, floating on my back and watching the birds flit between the trees.
At the water’s edge, I tug off my skirt, tights, and jumper to reveal my swimsuit beneath. I slip my phone into my boot, but not before I click on a notification from one of the stupid financial news sites I subscribed to.
Green Aviation has rallied after the dip it took last week following the arrest of COO Mike Wilson and the surprise decision of CEO Alex Corbeau-Green to step down after just five months in charge, something he states was always part of the plan.
Shareholders find confidence in new CEO Luis Bennett’s five-year strategy to reshape and rebuild the company.
Corbeau-Green retains control of Synx, the cybersecurity firm he acquired in January, and remains on the board of Green Aviation.
I send it to Alex. His decision to keep Synx was a surprise even to me, but I think he secretly enjoys running a company. Just not that company.
Ophelia
It’s doing just fine without you.
Alex
Who’d have thought appointing a CEO who isn’t twenty-three and completely passionless would help?
I smile at the screen as I type, blanketed in my tranquil surroundings.
Ophelia
Going for a swim.
Alex
Be safe, baby.
I wade into the freezing water, letting it snatch my breath away, letting it sting my toes, letting it turn my skin white.
No pool could ever compare.
I swim until my arms burn, and then I float onto my back and stare at the rumbling sky. The wind licks across the surface of the water, chilling my face.
“Hey, Mom and Dad,” I whisper, for the first time in a while. “I … uhh … I did it.”
They probably don’t even know what I mean. I don’t even know what I mean. My list of accomplishments is getting longer than I ever imagined.
I took down Cain Green. When you type his name into Google, none of the results are good.
I killed Bancroft. Erased his miserable existence from this earth.
I went to university, like they always wanted me to.
I fell in love.
My tears are lost to the inky mass of water as I tell them about it all, wishing so badly that I was doing this at our kitchen table with their smiling faces looking back at me.
“I made a seventy-six-year-old friend called Mabel. We play Scrabble online once a week. We met for dinner in York last week.”
I think I talk to them for longer than I ever have. So long that I feel my final shred of resentment against them, my frustration that they got in that helicopter to save a short amount of time on the journey home, sink to the bottom of the lake.
I don’t have the energy to hate my mother for what she did.
I don’t have the energy to hate myself for telling them to rush home that day, either.
I think that one day, maybe, I could accept that it is Cain Green who is ultimately responsible for Laura’s death.
By the time my legs carry me up the bank of the tarn, it feels like the cold has sunk all the way into my bones.
My phone is ringing when I reach it.
“Hey.”
Alex’s voice is like warm honey against the chill. “Hey. I have news.”
I hold my breath, don’t ask, can’t ask.
“My offer on a house has been accepted. It’s all going to happen pretty quick.”
London. I daren’t hope, but my traitorous heart quickens anyway, fluttering like a bird taking flight in my chest. “The house that you looked at upstate?”
I hear his smile, hear the weightlessness of it. “Nah.”
“Don’t tell me you’re coming to London,” I say, so quiet I’m surprised he even hears it. I’m standing at the edge of the water, shivering, clutching my phone in both hands. “Don’t get my hopes up like this.”
“Scotland.”
“I—”
What?
“You still there, Twist?”
“I … you … all of you … you’re moving?”
“Just for two years.”
My mind is a montage of family Christmases and busy dinners. Weekends visiting him, a group of people watching my swim meets.
It’s like the loneliness that burrowed itself into the marrow of my bones almost five years ago is starting to trickle into the soil at my feet.
“Alex, I …” My next breath is a shudder, a failed attempt at not crying. “I don’t believe you.”
“This isn’t sudden, baby. It’s been in the works a while, I just didn’t want to get your hopes up.”
“But your mom, she …”
“There’s a great team in Edinburgh who’ll look after her. And Jack’s parents visit Sorrowsong every two months to see him. They’re going to see my mom each time.”
I’m not sure if I’m laughing or crying. “And the girls, they … Fleur. Fleur cannot be happy about this.”
“Shitbag Boyfriend is moving to London for better modeling opportunities, so Fleur is keen. Ingrid and Russell are coming, too. Mom has been their best friend for twenty years. I think we’re all ready to leave our memories here behind.”
I tip my head back against the light spatter of rain and laugh at the ridiculousness of it all.
I hear a short inhale, his tone hesitant. “I can finish the last two years of the architecture degree I started.”
“At Edinburgh? You spoke to them?”
His voice is rough with emotion. “Well … yeah, but …”
He trails off, but I leap in to fill the silence. “Alex! You didn’t tell me!”
“I didn’t trust myself to follow through with it. After we’ve graduated, we’ll move, Ophelia. Wherever is best for the girls. It might be London, might be Paris, but it could be back to the States.”
“That’s okay,” I whisper, holding my phone so tight it might shatter. “I’ll be right there with you.”
“Well, I better go. I have a hundred bits of paperwork to do.”
“I can’t believe this is real.”
“Me neither. I love you. I’ll see you soon.”
“I love you,” I squeak, bouncing up and down in the mud like a fool.
I dress slowly, fingers shaking too much to lace my boots.
A ray of sun splits the cloud, spilling a bright blue stain across the white sky and flooding the darkest corners of the path with light.
I trudge up the hill with a little less force that I usually do, and I have half a mind to turn around and sprint back into the water to tell my dad the news, to tell him that I’m starting to forget what complete isolation feels like, to tell him to stop worrying about me.
But sometimes I think he probably knew in those thirteen seconds that he spiraled down toward the earth that I’d be okay. His belief in me never wavered before that day; I don’t know why that would’ve changed then.
Still, when I float in that lake, it feels like I’m talking into a paper cup tied to a string, and I’d kill for him to be holding the other end just one more time.
When I reach the Nightshade mansion gardens, Belladonna is there, hovering between the two cracked gargoyle statues that stand at the end of the path. She frowns when she sees me, looking at me like I’ve grown a second head. “What has you looking so happy?”
“I’m … just in a good mood.”
She leans in just an inch, cerulean gaze bouncing between both of my eyes. “Have you taken something?”
A small laugh slips out of me, which only makes things worse. “No, of course not. Can’t I just be in a good mood?”
“You give me the creeps, Winters,” she mutters, leaning back again. The faintest little glimmer of amusement sparks in her eyes as she turns to leave, and I wonder if she knows exactly what has me in such a good mood.
My phone buzzes in my hand, an endless string of excited texts from Alex’s sisters rolling through.
A small wave of guilt washes over me, like a whole family is being uprooted and moved because of me and my fear of flying. But like she’s living inside my messy brain, Elise sends a rare text.
Elise
This is good for all of us. Not just you, and not just Alex. If you saw the way the girls are throwing their clothes into suitcases you’d believe me. It’s a two-year vacation.
Ophelia
It just feels like it wouldn’t have happened if Alex hadn’t have met me.
Elise
A lot of great things wouldn’t have happened if Alex hadn’t met you. I love you. I’ll see you soon.
I slip my phone into my swim bag, craning my neck to take in all the Elizabethan grandeur of the Nightshade mansion. Save for the bullet holes in one of the doors, it’s kind of … beautiful.
It feels like a lifetime ago I was stood here for the first time, watching Vincenzo and Alex with a heart full of a hate and a life devoid of anything warm.
I was wrong—wrong about them, wrong about so many things. Sorrowsong isn’t my downfall at all. It’s my chance at a new beginning.