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I shake my head, unable to explain the quick, almost painful racing of my heartbeat. My body flushes with heat.
Mr. Barrett holds my gaze a little longer, as if there are two paths in front of him, and my face alone can tell him which to go down. He nods, more to himself than me, having apparently decided.
“I felt bad for how Catherine was acting. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t taken it to heart. I couldn’t find you, but when I went outside, I found these instead.” He produces my gloves from his waistcoat. They’re neatly folded and he handles them as if they were made out of spun-gold silk.
I hold out a shaking hand, jealous of the soiled and crumpled gloves. I wish he would keep them forever. As soon as he gives them back a little link that I didn’t even know existed between us will be broken.
There’s so much I want to say to him. It’s like he’s pushed a door open a crack, and now I want to throw it the rest of the way open, spilling out everything that’s inside of me.Thank you for caring enough to come looking for me. Thank you for following me and being a good, decent person. Thank you for ignoring what I thought I knew was best for me.
But I don’t. It’s the same as with Catherine; just because he wants me safe doesn’t mean that he wants anything beyond that. I carefully close the door again, tired of being the only one who seems to want so much more from the other. “Thank you,” I say, accepting the gloves.
Thunder rolls in the distance and the rain pelts into the room at a slant. My books will get wet if the windows aren’t closed. I’m about to push off the quilt and shut the window, but when I see Mr. Barrett, I freeze. He’s cradling his forehead in his hands, elbows on his knees. For a moment I think he might be crying, but his back is still. Taking a slow, ragged breath, he draws his hand down his face and sits back up. It’s a weary gesture, as if he has lost a fight and is gathering the energy to go on. When he sees me, he follows my gaze to the books, and slowly crosses the room to shut the window. The rain throws itself angrily against the glass.
Mr. Barrett stands immobile, hands jammed into his coat pockets, gaze focused on the runny landscape. His voice is hoarse and low when he speaks.
“I won’t ask you why, because I know all too well what drew you there. But I will ask, no, I willdemandthat you not do it again. I can’t...” He trails off, choking on his words. “Do not do it again.”
My own voice is small and tight. “I... I won’t,” I say, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.
He nods absently, not looking at me. The moment stretches out between us. Then he takes a deep breath that shudders through his shoulders to his chest. I’m still frozen, afraid that he has more to say, that he’s come to his senses and decided to have it out at me after all. But he only takes out his pocket watch, and says lightly, with apology, “I’m afraid I must be off.”
“Yes, of course,” I say a little too eagerly, loath to let him know how desperately I wish he could stay.
He turns to leave, then hesitates with his hand on the door frame. “By the by, I spoke to your sister on the way in.”
Good lord, Catherine is fast. “Oh?”
“She says that you haven’t left your room in three days.”
I don’t say anything.
He nods, taking my silence as affirmation, and frowning into the messy room. “Well,” he says, “I’d like to visit you again. That is, if it would be all right with you.”
Even though I’m sitting down my legs go wobbly, and I have to bite my cheek from smiling too much. “I’d like that.”
Mr. Barrett doesn’t have any such inhibitions, and his smile is slow and dazzling. “Good.” His eyes hold mine. “Good,” he says again, this time briskly, returning to his old, businesslike self. “I expect that the next time I see you it will be in the library, or the parlor, or the garden—anywhere else but your room—and that you will have a new book recommendation for me. Hopefully something with a happy ending this time.”
17
I’M DRIFTING BETWEENwakefulness and sleep, my head hopelessly full of Mr. Barrett’s smile, of the willow tree, of Catherine’s rounded stomach, when Emeline comes to me.
I sit up slowly, blinking away the haze of sleep, hardly daring to breathe.
She pads through the darkness to my bed, leaving little puddles of water in her wake. She moves with purpose, though there’s something sluggish, something halting in her gait, as if with every step she’s pulling away from some invisible force dragging at her ankles. Her face is as pale and glowing as the moon and there’s a sunken darkness around her eyes, but as sure as the wind blows, it’s my little sister.
I let out a long, shaky breath. How I have dreamed of this moment, desperately willing the universe to bend its laws and allow me to see her just one more time. I knew that my eyes had not deceived me at the pond, knew it as surely as I know the beat of my own heart.
Emeline stops when she reaches the bed. Her face is bloated, her lips blue and her lovely auburn hair is tangled with pondweeds. She doesn’t just look like she did when Mr. Barrett pulled her from the pond, but worse. As she studies me from solemn eyes so like hers in life yet so different, I shiver, trying not to inhale the wet smell of decay.
“Emeline,” I whisper through the darkness. Is she like the pale lady who will disappear as soon as she senses I’m watching her? It doesn’t matter. I am not scared of her. How could I fear my own sister?
“Hello, Lydia.” She comes right up to the edge of the bed, her intentions unmistakable.
Before I can move over to make room for her, she climbs up beside me as she has done so many times in the past when she came seeking refuge from the dark.
“Oh, Emmy,” I whisper. I’m too relieved to be frightened, too desperate for her touch to recoil. “Oh, sweetheart, what are you doing here?”
She snuggles in beside me. She’s so cold. Colder than after Mr. Barrett pulled her out of the water, colder even than the last time I touched her lying in her coffin. I put my arm around her tiny, translucent shoulders, breathlessly wondering how it is that she can really be here next to me after so many aching days and weeks of unanswered prayers. Is she just one of so many other spirits who seem to haunt Willow Hall now?