Sisters of Misery (29 page)

BIRTH

M
addie entered the house on Mariner’s Way for the last time. She walked over to her mother, who was sitting at Tess’s place at the kitchen table, staring out the bay window into the backyard. Maddie covered her mother’s hand with her own and squeezed. Abigail refused to look at her—perhaps she was angry at Maddie for leaving her, abandoning her to contend with this town alone. Allowing her to live with her memories, her ghosts.

Now that Tess was gone and Rebecca was back at Fairview, it was time for Maddie to leave Hawthorne and to finally move on. She had been accepted at Stanton Prep, a boarding school in Maine that was far away from all of the craziness of Hawthorne and the Sisters of Misery. She was planning on moving there for the summer to work and make some extra money for books and living expenses, though most of her tuition had already been set aside for her in Tess’s will.

The house was too quiet without the endless, usually nonsensical chatter that came from Tess. Without her there as a distraction, it was just Maddie and her mother, face to face with all the unanswered questions, all the words that needed to be said, but were not. Maybe they could start over from a fresh place—they had all the time in the world to work things out.

“I found this in the basement,” Abigail said quietly. She pulled a smooth stone out of her pocket and handed it over to Maddie.
Another rune stone
.
Where do they keep coming from?

The stone was marked with a large
B
.

Maddie took it from her mother’s hand and started turning the cool stone over and over and then slipped it into her pocket. “I wonder what it means,” Abigail said without meeting her daughter’s eyes. “I know how you and Cordelia and Rebecca used to play with those things even Tess used to see meaning in those silly rocks. Then again, Tess saw meaning in everything.”

They both laughed.

“Mom,” she said. “I feel guilty that we weren’t here when Tess passed away. I mean, if we were here, maybe there was a chance we could have done something. It just breaks my heart that she was all by herself. No one should have to die alone.”

“Oh, honey,” she said softly, draping her arm around her daughter. “She wasn’t alone. We were here when she passed. The coroner said the time of death was 10:30
PM
. We were just across the hall from her. She wasn’t alone.”

Maddie felt a strange tingling sensation come over her body, and it must have registered on her face. Could she have imagined seeing Tess sitting up in bed that night, talking to her on the night that Rebecca escaped to Ravenswood? When Tess told Maddie that Rebecca had returned to her “garden”? Could Maddie have imagined it all?

“What’s wrong, Maddie? What is it?” Abigail looked concerned.

Maddie shook her head. “Nothing.” Maybe when more time had passed, Maddie would tell her mother about her last conversation with Tess. She held up the stone. “I think that if this is a sign from Rebecca, Cordelia, or Tess, I’ll bet it means forgiveness.”

Abigail’s eyes met Maddie’s, and she grasped her hands.

“I never meant to hurt her—or you, for that matter. Honestly, Maddie, you have to believe me.”

“I know, Mom, I know.” And Maddie did believe her.

“If I could take that night back, I would in a minute,” she said. But she was asking forgiveness of the wrong person. Forgiveness was something that only one person could give her. And right now, that seemed impossible. “And you! To learn that Cordelia was really your half-sister…” her voice trailed off.

“It explains a lot, Mom,” Maddie said, smiling weakly. “At least I understand why it was so hard for you to have them back here with us. I just wish you could have told me.”

“There are a lot of things I wish I had done differently, Maddie,” she said, tears now appearing. “You have no idea.” And with that, Abigail pushed herself away from the table, stopped to embrace Maddie quickly, giving her a quick kiss on top of her head, and then turned toward the staircase.

“Mom,” Maddie said. Abigail stopped and looked back at her. They held each other’s gaze for a moment, then Maddie nodded her head. Abigail nodded hers slowly in return and continued up to her bedroom, quietly closing the door behind her.

That was their good-bye.

Pacing from room to room, unsure of what she was looking for, Maddie decided to go down to the basement, to see the last place anyone had seen Cordelia alive.

Maddie walked down the steep, narrow staircase. The air grew colder. Dust and dirt filled her nostrils. A single-stranded light bulb suspended from the low ceiling strained wearily against the darkness of the cellar.

Moving forward into the subterranean room, the sounds of the house and street were muffled. Maddie picked her way around old furniture and trunks. The room was cluttered with leftover inventory from Rebecca’s shop. Crates over-flowed with gardening paraphernalia and tools. She spotted an open bag of rune stones and crystals. Tess must have come down here and grabbed them, hiding them around the house like they were Easter eggs. The thought of Tess down here made her cringe. An old woman like Tess shouldn’t have been wandering around a cold, dank basement amidst the assortment of tools and sharp objects.

Maddie made her way over to the darkest corner of the basement where the stones of the wall were mottled and darkly stained. She brushed her fingertips along the jagged crevices, trying to imagine that night. It was still hard for her to understand it all. Abigail’s years of hatred and resentment toward Cordelia and Rebecca; finding out that Cordelia was really her half-sister, the product of an affair her father had with Abigail’s own sister. All of these things had built up within her mother’s mind and mixed with her intense desire to fit into Hawthorne’s elite society—all of it had caused her to snap.

Shoving Cordelia against the wall was unforgivable. But Maddie knew that the minute Abigail realized what she had done, saw the blood on her cousin’s face, and gotten her senses back, she regretted ever hurting Cordelia, both physically and mentally.

If Cordelia really did run away—angry at Rebecca for lying to her all these years, angry at Maddie for Misery Island, angry at Abigail for lashing out at her, angry at Reed or Finn (or whoever the “beautiful boy” was) for the baby that may or may not have been growing inside of her—perhaps, one day, she would forgive and come back to them, give them the answers that they all so desperately needed.

Maddie turned to go back upstairs to finish packing for her transfer to Stanton Prep. Placing her foot on the first stair of the basement steps, something caught her eye. Maddie turned, half expecting to see Cordelia sitting there cross-legged, smiling. But it was only another stone, this one marked with the letter
M
. Surprised that she hadn’t tripped over the oddly placed stone, Maddie picked it up and ran her finger along the etched letter before shoving it into her pocket along with the other one that Abigail had given her earlier and continuing up to the foyer.

Then, there came a soft tapping at the door. Maddie turned to see a familiar shadow in the pane of glass that ran alongside the door.

Reed.

She opened the door angrily. What could he possibly have to say to her now?

Before she could open her mouth, Reed said quickly, “I never slept with her, with Cordelia. But yes, I did give her money.”

“Why?” Maddie was in shock. Had Cordelia been lying to both Reed and Finn as an excuse to get money to leave town? Was she ever really pregnant?

“You could say I was cleaning up after my asshole little brother’s mistake. He—they—well, she said that the baby was his. Trevor needed help making the situation go away. And I wanted to help Cordelia get a fresh start.”

“She told you about all this? When?” Maddie was so confused.
Why would Cordelia ever sleep with Trevor? Why didn’t she tell Maddie?

“Right before Halloween during one of our tutoring prep sessions. I made the mistake of not reporting the incident because I was trying to protect my brother.”

“Incident? What do you mean, incident? Protect Trevor from what?”

Reed sighed heavily, running his hand through his hair. “Rape charges. He forced himself on Cordelia. It’s happened before, and he’s gone to juvenile detention, but if it ever got out that he’d done it again, they’d press full charges. He could go to jail.”

She turned, trying to piece all of it together, and walked into the living room, collapsing on the sofa, willing herself not to cry.

Reed followed her and sat down next to her on the loveseat, covering her hands with his own. “I really cared about Cordelia, and I wanted to help her in any way that I could. But even though Trevor is a spoiled asshole, he’s still my brother. But I care about you in a different way, Maddie. And I can’t act on those feelings. If I was a few years younger or you were a few years older, things would be different.”

Maddie tried to control all the emotions that swirled through her body. Everything was falling into place and finally making sense, and instead of relief, she felt completely overwhelmed, as if she were floundering in the ocean, being hit by wave after wave after wave. Trying to tread water and not get pulled down by the undertow.

Cordelia and Finn were together. Finn thought that he was the father of the baby. She couldn’t tell Finn the truth because she was afraid of what he’d think of her or what he’d do to Trevor after he learned about the rape. Reed was trying to help her through the whole situation while protecting his brother.

And he’d kept her secret—as well as the evil truth about his younger brother—even though it led to his own downfall.

Was this the “secret information” Kate had in the envelope that night out on Misery? Maddie knew that Kate would never tell. Even though she said it was empty, perhaps only she and Cordelia knew the contents of that envelope. It was just one of those things that she had on people—her way of making everyone do what she wanted.

“Why are you telling me this now?” Maddie asked.

“Because I know that you’re leaving Hawthorne, and I couldn’t stand having you think those horrible things about me. I knew it was a risk—that you might go to the police and that you might never speak to me again. But I had to take it. I couldn’t let you leave without knowing the truth.”

“Why didn’t Cordelia go to the police?”

“That,” Reed sighed, “is a good question for Cordelia when you find her.”

“You think she’s out there somewhere?” Maddie asked hopefully.

“I’d bet my life on it,” he said, smiling. “And I have a feeling that she’ll find us when she’s ready to come home.”

Reed reached over and gathered Maddie into a long hug. She held back the urge to cry into his shoulder, to let him hold her. Her emotions were all over the place. She had so many things to resolve internally. But for now, she had to get ready to leave.

They stood and walked to the door.

“I hope you’ll keep in touch,” Reed said softly. “You know, I hear that Stanton Prep’s English program is pretty intense.”

Maddie smiled up at him. “Of course I will. Someone needs to help me with my writing assignments.” He ruffled her hair and then turned to leave.

“Reed, wait,” Maddie said quickly. As he turned, she reached up and kissed him gently. She pulled back for a moment and looked into his eyes, and when he didn’t move away, she kissed him again passionately.

He gently pushed her back, trying to restrain his surging emotions. “I
will
wait for you. I can promise you that.” He smiled down at her. “Be good.”

Reed turned and walked out the door. He stopped at the end of the pathway and turned back to smile and wave at Maddie. She smiled and closed the door, breathless and lost in the incredible feeling of kissing Reed Campbell one last time.

Just as she was taking one last run through the house to make sure she had everything, Maddie heard something scurry up above her head. She crept up the staircase, hesitating on the first landing, and then continued up to the third level of the house, taking care not to interrupt her mother’s nap. Tess’s door was shut tightly. Maddie didn’t remember closing the door earlier when she’d made a final sweep of all the rooms. As she turned the handle of the door, Tess’s faint voice echoed in her ears.

She likes the window open. The girl in the basement is gonna be so sad when we leave her. Why does she cry all night long?

Maddie pressed forward into the room and was met with a rush of cold air. The window overlooking the ocean was open, lace curtains snapping and flaring in the breeze. She strode across the room and tugged the window shut.

The taxi wasn’t scheduled to pick her up for another few hours. Maddie collapsed onto Tess’s bed and stared out at the ocean as her grandmother had day after day, night after night. Maddie felt so close to her, the scent of her Tea Rose perfume still lingering, as if her grandmother were standing above her, her frail hand lowering to smooth her hair back. Maddie tried to recall one of the last coherent conversations she’d had with her grandmother before she fell victim to dementia. They were sitting downstairs, and Tess had been telling her again that she’d been dreaming of stones.

Stones
, Maddie thought, her eyes drifting closed. Soon, Maddie had that sinking, almost falling sensation as she drifted into sleep, only to be pulled quickly upward as if yanked by an unseen force. She looked around to see what had interrupted her midday nap and then sank back into fitful sleep.

The rock hit her squarely on the forehead. Maddie stumbled backwards in shock and felt herself fall into the soft sand. When she finally opened her eyes, she saw a figure standing above her, holding a large jagged rock. It was Kate Endicott.

“I hope you weren’t planning on leaving us,” Kate snapped. “The fun is just starting. Come on!” She yanked Maddie to a standing position. They made their way back to the bonfire, Kate dragging Maddie with one hand and a large bucket of water in the other. Maddie saw Cordelia’s lanky shape through the flames, which appeared to lap at her arms and legs.