The Lost Sister (3 page)

“Yeah, I just need some fresh air,” she managed. Standing up, she tucked the newspaper under her arm and rushed past him and out into the crisp autumn air. She walked across the street to a bench and sat for a few minutes staring at the paper folded on her lap.

What’s happening? Everything was falling into place and then that little boy came out of nowhere, and then this newspaper shows up with the article about Tess and my mother’s attempt to kill herself. What have I done?
she thought miserably. She knew what Tess and her mother would say, that she should pay attention to these signs, that they were pointing her in a new direction. Maybe killing her father wasn’t the answer. Maybe she had unfinished business to deal with in Hawthorne instead. True, she had been betrayed and lied to and hurt and deceived, but her family needed her. Finn and Reed needed her. Rebecca needed her. And Maddie…she didn’t know what she felt about Maddie.

My sister, my cousin?
she thought. It didn’t matter what relationship they had—Maddie had had the chance to save her when she needed her most, and she didn’t. She was too weak and scared. But Cordelia really couldn’t blame her. Hawthorne and those girls were all she ever knew. She aimlessly thumbed through the pages until she noticed something fall out of the paper onto her lap.

She looked at the glossy tarot card that had fallen out of the paper. It looked brand-new, right out of the pack. Suddenly she felt like someone had known all along where she was and what she was planning. Someone was trying to scare her by letting her know that there was unfinished business. Someone was out to get her.

A man on a horse marched triumphantly over fallen bodies. He was holding a large black flag. But instead of a face, there was only a skull. And the eyes of the horse were bloodred.

It was the Death tarot card.

Reed Campbell lifted the brown glass bottle to his lips, letting the liquid fill and burn the back of his throat. The cool salty air rubbed his throat raw, forcing him to indulge in his preferred medication. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass window of his boat—the only place he felt at home these days.

He was the bastard son, all right.

While his baby brother, Trevor, had somehow become the golden child of Hawthorne, Massachusetts—the fair-haired prodigal son who could do no wrong—Reed occupied the role of town drunk, screwup, alleged murderer, and pedophile. On his sober days, he realized how the drinking was becoming a problem, which was why he’d made sure that those days were few and far between. It had already cost him his job, his dignity, and countless friends.

But thanks to Great-grandfather Campbell and the little oil company he started decades ago, Reed no longer felt the need to be gainfully employed. His bank account remained healthy thanks to the thousands of people who needed to stay warm on shivering New England nights. Reed often reminded himself of that fact on nights when he careened down to the waterfront after last call at one of the local taverns. Even though he was personally a failure and unable to support himself, the oil company that bore his family name kept everyone in town warm, and by default, lined his own deep, albeit threadbare, pockets.

He drowned out his sorrows in bottles and bars. He knew that his feelings for Cordelia and Maddie could be seen as inappropriate—that his actions could be called into question. Cordelia just blew him away with her love of literature and her free spirit. He knew that her time in Hawthorne would be short-lived, but he just couldn’t understand why people would think he had anything to do with her disappearance. If anything, he was more enthralled and enchanted by her than anyone else in town. Perhaps that was his downfall.

And Maddie. Ever since she left for boarding school, he realized how deep his feelings ran for her. There were hundreds of reasons why he should stay away from her and keep her out of his mind. But he couldn’t get over the way that she looked at him—like he was a knight in shining armor. She saw past all the flaws that his family and the town of Hawthorne held over him. She made him feel like a man. And even though he was in a relationship with someone new—someone his own age, someone more appropriate—he couldn’t get Maddie out of his head. Which was why he kept the liquor flowing and the nights endless so he was never faced with the harsh light of the dawn.

Finnegan O’Malley didn’t believe in ghosts, but he swore on his great-grandmother’s grave that he saw one. And not just any ghost. Not the random specters known to wander through the historical properties he took care of, the ones who seemed to have no awareness of their ghostly state, but just continued their daily activities in the same manner that they had done centuries before. Not Deacon Knott, who was believed to still take up residence on the top floor of the Knott Cove Inn, his heavy boots famously echoing throughout the Victorian bed-and-breakfast. Curls of smoke from his pipe hovered in the air of the grand parlor, his shadow loomed over the pretty women who dared to stay overnight as guests. Some even claimed to have been pinched rather viciously in their sleep, the purplish bruising on their backsides or upper thighs the only physical proof.

No, this ghost was a familiar one to Finn, or at least, she had been in life. This was a girl who continued to haunt Finn equally in his dreaming and wakeful states. A girl whose voice still rang out as clear and lyrical as it had when she first swept into town. She was a misfit and an outsider, not unlike himself. Someone whom he’d admired and even loved (though he’d never admit it to anyone—hardly even to himself), and ultimately had lost. But Cordelia LeClaire hadn’t slipped away easily. He couldn’t let her go—his heart wouldn’t allow for it.

He’d loved her from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. He loved her even more when he observed her midnight swims and watched as she danced through gardens in the early morning hours. He didn’t know why he felt the need to watch over her. It just came instinctually. It was like watching over a beautiful rainbow fish in a sea of sharks. He still remembered their first kiss. It was just as important—if not more—than the night that they first made love. He’d secretly watched her midnight swims with Maddie, and he knew that she would return on certain nights alone. He knew she would need protection, even if she didn’t believe it herself. And knowing the rough treatment she’d received upon her arrival in town, that there would be some people who would take advantage of her solitary swims if they ever found out. Which was why he was determined to never let her out of his sight on those hot, humid nights when the ocean beckoned to her like a siren’s song to a sailor.

One stifling night at the end of August, he watched from behind a rock as she dipped in and out of the ocean like a mermaid. He was afraid to take his eyes off her for fear that she’d slip beneath the water and swim away forever—taking his heart with her.

He watched as she cocked her head to the side and spun around in the water. She looked right over to where he was crouched and he slunk backward, afraid that he’d been caught as a sort of Peeping Tom.

She came right out of the water—letting the heat of the night burn the water droplets off her skin, her long red hair clinging to her wet skin—and instinctively moved over to his hiding spot.

Before he could come up with a plausible excuse, she smiled widely and put her hand on his cheek.

“My own personal bodyguard,” she said brightly. “My valiant knight, I know that you’ve been keeping watch over me. I can feel your eyes on me.”

He stuttered, trying to come up with an explanation. Wanting her to believe that he wasn’t some kind of a stalker. Before he could say anything more, she quieted him with a kiss. At first it was tentative and sweet. And then he reciprocated with a longer kiss, embracing her and not minding that her wet body was soaking his clothes. It was a kiss that he’d remember until his dying day.

He knew her intimately and he knew her secrets. He’d once heard his grandfather say that if two people shared a secret—one that nobody else knew about—it bound them together until the secret was finally revealed. He swore on his life that he’d never reveal it, not when she went missing, and not even when he’d been suspected of being involved in her vanishing. He gave his word—and his heart—to Cordelia.

And now, with no warning, in the bright light of day, he saw her. She’d come back to him. It was only for a moment and could be blamed on the dehydrated and overtired state he was in after doing the landscaping in the Old Town Hall’s courtyard. He knew it was Cordelia because he caught her familiar scent of apples and lavender. He knew it was her from the look in her eyes. It was the same look he saw in her pale, watery blue eyes that she had the last time he saw her. Those eyes were forever etched in his memory. They were wide-set, haunted, shimmering, and most memorably, they were filled with fear.

Kate Endicott didn’t believe in coincidences.

She was not superstitious, and wasn’t really concerned with improving her luck, which was why Kate still wasn’t sure what had compelled to her ask her mother, Kiki, to bring in a feng shui expert to enhance the flow of their house, and ultimately, their lives.

Maybe it was due to the Ravenswood debacle. The fact that Finn had royally screwed over Kiki Endicott’s plans to turn Ravenswood Asylum into the luxury hotel, the Endicott. Well, it wasn’t just him; it was that entire historical society.

Whatever.

They had screwed everything up big time and now millions of dollars were at stake. Investors were getting angry. And Kate saw the look of pity in her friends’ eyes. Nobody pitied Kate Endicott. No one!

Kate and her mother were always on top of new trends. Always the first in line for the new yoga club or Pilates classes that had sprung up around Hawthorne. And when the topic of feng shui cluttered the pages of Kate’s favorite magazines and lifestyle journals, she knew that she would have to improve her family’s chi by renovating their house.

Perhaps she was just restless.

She could feel the change in the tide that was upsetting the smooth sailing of her life. Something had floated into the harbor of her perfect life and was threatening to capsize her carefully guarded vessel. Kate Endicott wouldn’t let that happen; she refused to go down with the sinking ship. That was something that Kiki had taught her long ago, and she wasn’t about to let it happen to them now. Not now, not ever.

Abigail Crane pinned her hair up carefully as she looked at her reflection in the low light of her bedroom. She tried wrap-

ping her mind around what the doctors had told her—chemo was the only course of action to stop the spread of cancer in her body. Toxins placed in her body to seek out and destroy other deadly toxins. It was like sending in a black widow spider to take care of a venomous snake. The goal was for them to destroy each other—her body would end up as the ravaged battlefield.

She had just placed the call to Maddie at Stanton, asking her to come back to Hawthorne for winter break. It wasn’t too much for a mother to ask of her own daughter, but there were plenty of reasons that Maddie would want to refuse. True, most children would want to take care of their sick mothers, but most children hadn’t been betrayed in the same way that Abigail had betrayed Maddie. She realized that not telling Maddie the truth about Cordelia—that they weren’t cousins, but really half sisters—was the wrong thing to do, but she couldn’t take it back now. What else could she do to make it up to her? When Maddie left Hawthorne, she left with her own baggage—guilt about her treatment of Cordelia and over Rebecca’s mental state that had nothing to do with Abigail. She had her own demons to fight.

Abigail had been visiting Rebecca for months—trying to make up for own failings—for causing Cordelia to run away, for not telling Rebecca about their confrontation. If she’d told the truth sooner, perhaps that night at Ravenswood and Rebecca’s attempted suicide could have been avoided. She had her own ghosts to put to rest. But she needed her daughter now; perhaps tough times would help to mend their broken family. She didn’t think her request of Maddie was too much to ask.

But the horrified reaction from Maddie made her think otherwise. Madeline had made it clear that she didn’t want to return to Hawthorne until she had successfully tracked down Cordelia—a means of assuaging her own guilt. But it was too late for that. Abigail’s cancer wouldn’t wait for a flighty teenager who could be anywhere in the country to be tracked down. She had made her amends with Rebecca—or was at least trying to. Now it was Maddie’s turn to come home and put things to rest. No matter how painful or uncomfortable it would be—for all of them.

I
t’s funny how one phone call can completely change your life,
Maddie thought angrily as she packed her bags for winter break.

She’d made her peace that she was finally done with Hawthorne—the past, the betrayal, the pain—and then one day Maddie got a call that changed everything. Maddie’s mother, Abigail Crane, the strongest woman she’d ever known, was diagnosed with cancer. While helping her mother—a woman whom she couldn’t even recall the last time she hugged—was one of the last things Maddie wanted to do, her school therapist suggested that going back to Hawthorne, helping her mother through her chemo treatments, checking in on her aunt Rebecca in the new facility, and finally coming to terms with what had happened to Cordelia, would help with the nightmares. Maddie might finally begin to move on and let go of the weight of it all.

Maddie thought it strange when people whom you expect to be around forever suddenly are at risk of being taken from you. Like Cordelia, her grandmother, Tess, and now, inevitably, Abigail. Even though Maddie made the decision to leave Hawthorne and its secrets and curses behind without thinking twice, now that Maddie knew she only had a limited amount of time with her mother, it all suddenly seemed unfair.

“Come with me, Maddie,” said Luke Bradford as he grabbed a handful of her neatly folded clothes and promptly removed them from her worn duffel bag. “I’ll give you a raise.”

“I don’t work for you.” Maddie laughed.

“But you could,” he said.

“You know I can’t.”

“Come on, Maddie! It’ll be a blast!” Luke insisted. Maddie looked at Luke, wondering how she was ever going to survive without her constant companion. Ever since they were lucky enough to room across the hall from each other in Eaton Hall, sixth floor, since she transferred, Luke Bradford and Maddie had been inseparable. And since he was one of the most sought after guys on campus, Maddie became the instant “best friend” to girls who wanted the inside track to the sandy-haired athlete who could easily pass as a close relative to Brad Pitt.

Maddie swatted him and started putting her clothes back into the suitcase, allowing her long, straight brown hair to fall over her shoulder, shielding her sad smile.

“I have a place all set for you on the ship,” Luke insisted. “It’s easy money. Basically, we get paid to have a monthlong booze cruise in a beautiful tropical paradise. Isn’t that much better than going to a freezing wasteland like Hawthorne, Massachusetts?”

“Not a wasteland, a winter wonderland,” she retorted.

Luke Bradford’s father—a permanent fixture in the Fortune 500 list year after year—decided that his only son and future heir to his empire needed a good dose of corporate work ethic. Plus, he knew that it would enhance and effectively pad his résumé, allowing him to move one step closer to getting accepted at one of the Ivies. Unfortunately, Luke’s grades weren’t helping to clinch the deal, so a Bradford library might be in order.

“I would love it, really,” Maddie moaned. “I’d rather do anything than go back to Hawthorne.”

“Thanks.” Luke collapsed into a chair by the window, staring outside at the snow-covered quad. “That makes me feel special. Spending Christmas break with your best friend is just barely more appealing than going back to a place you hate. No, really, that makes me feel great.”

It hit Maddie then, how much she was going to miss Luke. She’d taken for granted all of the things that had carried her through the past few months and kept her mind off Hawthorne: his unannounced drop-overs when he’d show up balancing a bag of Chinese takeout in one arm and stacks of horror movies in the other. At times she’d had to remind herself why they never got together. Boyfriends come and go, friends are forever was what Maddie told anyone who asked why they weren’t a couple yet.

Instead, Maddie sat back, watching him go through girl after girl, always returning back to her to relay all the unpleasant details of each relationship, describing how he felt trapped or bored. And then it was just the two of them again, starting with his knock on the door, pizza, and Red Bull, preparing for a night filled with dirty jokes, mindless movies, and uncontrollable laughter.

It was better than any real relationship either of them had ever had, and they were both terrified of tampering with perfection. Deep down Maddie knew the real reason that they hadn’t gotten together. Luke respected that she was one of the last few virgins left on campus. Or at least that’s what he said.

“You know that I love you,” he said earnestly. Just then he rose from the seat, made his way over to her, and dropped down on one knee. “If I asked you to marry me, Madeline Crane, would you reconsider?”

Maddie raised an eyebrow, waiting for the punch line.

“Is that a no?”

Laughing, Maddie pulled all six feet two of him to his feet and he embraced her in a deep, bear hug. He was one of the few people that made her feel small and protected—at five foot ten, Maddie was used to being the giant in the room.

“You know that if you marry me, you’d have to get rid of all your other girlfriends.”

“Oh, damn, I didn’t think of that.”

Maddie pinched his arm hard.

“Ow,” Luke cried, cowering. “I take it back. I’m not into abusive relationships. I watch
Oprah
—I know how to deal with people like you.”

Again, Maddie took a swipe at him. He laughed, retreating just out of her reach.

It’s strange how life can get better simply by changing your surroundings, Maddie mused. A few months ago, she had been dealing with so much loss and unhappiness. But now all she had to worry about was what classes she should take or what party to attend. She had made a new life, one that she was in control of; not one that was predetermined years ago by families and people she’d never known, but whose blood ran through her veins. People who constantly let her down, like her mother and father. Or those who terrified her, like Kate, her aunt Rebecca, and, now, Cordelia—wherever she was. The other girls were guilty of hurting her that night out on Misery, but Maddie was even more so. She had betrayed her own sister, an act she wasn’t sure was forgivable—under any circumstances.

“Luke, you know that I need to help my mom right now. I’ve already made all the arrangements….” Maddie’s voice trailed off. She honestly didn’t know what Abigail needed anymore. What any of them needed these days. Closure? Support? Forgiveness? Or the ability to forget and move on? All of it seemed a pipe dream.

Maddie had successfully trained herself—her mind, her body—to become numb. After Cordelia disappeared and Rebecca was institutionalized, Maddie’s emotions sort of turned themselves off.

The truth was that Maddie was terrified of going back, afraid of what she’d find, afraid of facing the truth, afraid of the consequences. Maddie left that world far behind when she started at Stanton Prep. How could she possibly return to Mariner’s Way—even if it was only for a short school break—constantly being confronted by old ghosts and shadows of her former life?

Luke nodded his head, becoming uncharacteristically sympathetic. “I know, Maddie, really I do. Just don’t get any ideas about moving back there, transferring to Hawthorne and joining the water polo team or whatever the Christ they do out there,” he needled, his goofy, lopsided grin returning.

Luke was born and raised in New York, and the idea of a small New England town was so foreign to him. But then again, his life—growing up wealthy in New York City—was just as much a mystery to Maddie as her life was to him. Sure, she’d told him stories about growing up in a small-minded, puritanical society. And he knew about Cordelia—the way she was treated and the night she disappeared. He knew bits and pieces of what had happened out on Misery Island. But she could never let him know her own involvement in the horrific events of that night—that she was too afraid to stand up for her own flesh and blood. That she was just as guilty, if not more, for the treatment Cordelia was forced to withstand. She couldn’t imagine what he’d think of her if he knew the truth. “I was actually thinking I might do a little more digging to see what I come up with on Cordelia,” Maddie offered lightly, curious to see his reaction.

“Maddie, come on!” he said, exasperated. “Seriously, you don’t need to bring up that shit again. Whatever happened to your cousin was not your fault. She obviously was happy to leave that town and your family behind. And you should think about doing the same, okay?”

“Luke, come on,” Maddie persisted, remembering how angry Luke used to get at her on the nights they’d stay up late talking and she would tell him about the hazing rituals that took place out on Misery Island.

“
It wasn’t your fault
,” Luke would say over and over.

But he wasn’t there; he didn’t know the whole story. And if he did know, would he still look at her the same way? Or would he look at her with the same amount of disgust that she felt she deserved?

Cordelia continued to haunt her dreams as a shadowy figure, her face shrouded in the thick fog that often rolled onto the island of Misery. In her dreams, Maddie would try to get a clear look at her face, hungry for a clue—any hint as to what had happened to Cordelia after that night.

But nothing ever came.

And in the mornings, Maddie’s dreams of Cordelia and that horrible time in their lives would shuffle backward into the subconscious realm of her cluttered mind, taking a backseat to her daily problems. But still her guilt remained constant, lurking in the corner like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. How could she do that to her own flesh and blood? Her own sister?

Cordelia would never forgive her.

Would she even forgive herself?

Luke’s cell phone suddenly started beeping. He looked down at the flashing lights, his blue eyes squinting at the number that came up on the screen. He shrugged his shoulders, indicating that it wasn’t familiar, and put his finger out, signaling that he would only be a minute.

“Luke Bradford…Hey, doll, I was just thinking about you.”

Luke used names like doll, baby, freckles, honey, sweetness, brown eyes, when he couldn’t remember the girl’s name. For some guys, it could come off sounding cheesy, like they were using a line. But Luke had the sincerity to really pull it off. Even Maddie let herself get sucked in once in a while. Anyway, it must have been a recent conquest because he didn’t immediately blow the girl off.

Maddie felt her heart make what could only be described as a sigh. Despite their better intentions of staying friends and not letting a relationship mess up what they had, Maddie realized that she’d been completely kidding herself.

She’d been desperately in love with Luke since they first met—even before his transformation from a too-skinny, long-legged boy to the Abercrombie & Fitch model look-alike he’d become, and each time a new girl came along, it only made her feel worse. Worse than worse, it made her feel invisible, unloved, and unimportant. Sure, she’d noticed the looks from other guys, the sideways glances, the winks. But the closest thing to a compliment that Maddie had ever gotten from Luke was when he jokingly compared her to a racehorse—long legs, big brown eyes, and a chestnut mane. Not exactly what a girl wanted to hear from the guy she adored.

It was then that Maddie realized that she needed this separation from Luke just as much as she needed to find Cordelia. Maybe putting these nagging questions to rest would allow her to take her mind off Luke and their “just friends” relationship; mend her heart…just a little bit. The trip on his father’s cruise ship sounded like a dream come true, but watching the parade of tanned and beautiful model-wannabes go in and out of his cabin would drive Maddie insane.

She didn’t know which was worse: loving someone who was too old for her and unattainable, or caring for someone who could easily break her heart. Loving Reed Campbell, her former teacher, was safer, because she knew if nothing ever came of it, she could just chalk it up to their age difference. But with Luke, there was nothing keeping them apart—nothing except for his wandering eye.

Maddie listened to him go on and on in his smoky “I’m going to get lucky tonight” voice, and continued packing her suitcase—trying not to let her annoyance with him show as it ate away at her.

Lifting his legs up off her bed to pull her jewelry pouch out, Maddie noticed something drop to the floor. She bent down onto the floor, something that would have prompted a lewd comment from Luke had he not been otherwise engaged, and poked her head under the bed.

An onyx rune stone—one that came from Cordelia and Rebecca’s old store—had tumbled onto the hardwood floor. Maddie grabbed hold of it and turned it to look at the symbol etched onto the other side, but both sides were blank. She hadn’t come across one of these stones since she first got to school. Maybe it was some kind of sign that going back to Hawthorne was a bad idea.

That’s the understatement of the century
, Maddie thought wryly.

Closing her eyes, Maddie went through the runic alphabet in her mind. Cordelia and Rebecca could recite the stones and their meanings effortlessly, but Maddie never was able to keep them all straight. Maddie always had to fall back on a little book of rune stone meanings that she came across in a secondhand bookshop.

Tess had once told Maddie that all the women in their family possessed a gift. It was a sort of knowing, a special extrasensory perception. Before that night on Misery Island, Maddie had just started to become more in tune with her abilities, but ever since she left Hawthorne behind, the door to those abilities had slammed shut.