Page 36 of The Women of Wild Hill

As she stomped back toward the cottage, Brigid mulled over a memory.

It was one that often slipped into her mind at quiet moments.

She would watch it on repeat as though worrying a wound.

In the memory she was fourteen, Phoebe was thirteen, and they had been arguing.

By that point, pretty much anything could have started a fight.

A sweater, a CD, the telephone, the last stick of gum.

They were always at each other’s throats.

“Sit down,” their great-aunt Ivy ordered the girls. Flora sat down when they did. No one dared disobey Aunt Ivy when she got in a mood.

“What are your greatest gifts?” Ivy demanded. “Tell me!”

Phoebe, always keen to be teacher’s pet, cleared her throat. “I can heal things with my—”

“Wrong!” Ivy didn’t even allow her to finish. She turned next to Brigid.

“I see how people—”

“Incorrect! You two have no fucking idea, do you?”

Neither girl spoke. They’d never seen her quite so angry, and Brigid couldn’t recall ever hearing Ivy use the word fuck.

“Your two greatest gifts are exactly the same. This family and each other. No other talent or skill or ability will ever be as important as those two gifts. Do you hear me?”

The answer was yes. They’d heard it before, too, and to be honest, neither girl had really taken it seriously. It sounded like the kind of sentimental bullshit a sitcom mom would say.

Their cynicism wasn’t lost on Ivy. “You don’t believe me? Of course you don’t. The irony is, you never will unless you lose each other. Take it from someone who knows.”

Then she stomped out. The lecture was over. They’d spot her later on, sunning herself on the large flat rock that rose from the water a dozen yards off the beach. She stayed out there most of the day, as though she couldn’t bear to share the same plot of land with the two of them.

“Ivy was only a little older than you when Rose died,” Flora had reminded her daughters. “She still misses her sister.”

“She wasn’t cursed with the Bride of Frankenstein here,” Phoebe muttered.

“Fuck you,” Brigid sneered. “You’re not nearly as perfect as you think, Princess Buttercup.”

“Stop!” Flora shouted. At that point, even she’d had enough.

“When are you two idiots going to realize that your gifts are meant to complement each other? If you worked together, you’d be unstoppable.

But apparently, you’re both too stubborn to see it.

You will never fulfill your promise until you stop this bullshit and learn to act as a team. ”

“I never asked for any of this,” Brigid said.

“Neither did I,” Phoebe added.

“You’re both absolutely insufferable,” Flora told them.

Thirty years later and nothing had changed.

THE COTTAGE WAS DARK WHEN Brigid made it back from the ancestors’ graves.

She had no idea how long she’d been gone.

Hours, she guessed. The Scotch bottle in her hand was far lighter than it had been.

In the kitchen, she discovered a masterpiece left behind on the stove—a sunny frittata, its crust golden brown and its surface sprinkled with the colorful confetti of a half dozen vegetables.

Only a single large slice had been cut away.

Sibyl must have eaten dinner alone and gone to sleep.

It was a sad welcome to Wild Hill. If she hadn’t been so mad, Brigid might have been ashamed of herself.

Inside, Brigid charged up the stairs and locked herself in her childhood room.

The minute she closed the door, she knew she’d made a mistake.

Brigid found herself looking at the very same dress she’d worn to watch her mother be lowered into the ground.

It lay crumpled up in the corner where she’d thrown it thirty years earlier.

Her mother’s funeral had been a dour, depressing rite attended by three men who had no business being there.

Flora deserved a wild, raucous bonfire. Instead, she got two girls dressed in hastily bought black dresses.

Brigid’s father had packed her clothes for her when she’d refused to do it herself.

The drawers of her dresser had been pulled open and emptied.

All the things he’d deemed worthless—the family photos and mementos—were right where he’d left them.

The horror of that day on Wild Hill wound around Brigid and squeezed until she could hardly fill her lungs.

Finally, she pushed up a window and climbed out onto the roof below.

She opened the Scotch and drank straight from the bottle.

The more she consumed, the less inclined she felt to stick around with a sister who hated her.

They may have argued, but over the sixteen years they’d lived together, she’d done everything she could to protect Phoebe.

She’d heard other people say they’d be willing to kill for their families.

Well, Brigid actually had. And not once—not once—had she ever regretted it.

You’d think that Phoebe would know Brigid always had her best interests at heart.

Or at the very least would give her the benefit of the doubt.

But nothing Brigid had ever done was enough to make Phoebe trust her.

Thirty years had passed, and the bitch couldn’t even be cordial.

Brigid wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting when she returned to Wild Hill, but the atmosphere in the cottage was suffocating, and the air on the estate felt thick with ghosts.

The ancestors were all around her, watching and judging.

Fuck you all, Brigid told them. I never signed up for this shit.

She took another swig and climbed back into her room, unzipped her suitcase, and tucked the half-empty Scotch bottle inside.

Then she closed the bag and hauled it downstairs.

She’d call a car when she got to the gate.

BACK AT THE GRAVES, PHOEBE reached into the hidden pocket inside her left boot and pulled out her emergency cannabis.

She’d toughened up over the years, but apparently, she hadn’t located and reinforced all her soft spots.

The confrontation had hit her hard enough to leave her winded.

The moment she’d seen her sister lying on their mother’s grave, she could tell Brigid was suffering.

If Phoebe had hugged her or kissed her—hell, if she’d even shaken her hand—she might have known what it would take to fix her.

Screw her, Phoebe thought as she struck her match.

Brigid had made her own bed. Phoebe had no idea why she’d been brought back to Wild Hill, but she sure as hell wasn’t there to rescue her movie mogul sister.

By the time she was starting to feel the high, she’d decided to get the fuck off the Island.

She hadn’t even brought a suitcase, since she’d had nothing to pack.

The tornado had carried everything she owned away.

All she had to do was walk back through the gate and never look back.

Phoebe stood up, brushed herself off, and set off for a long walk.

Just as she passed the mansion, the heavens opened up and a heavy rain began to fall.

She stopped outside the caretaker’s cottage but did not go inside.

Her sister was standing at the top of the porch stairs with her suitcase. She must have had the same idea.

“I didn’t see a storm on the weather report,” Phoebe noted, standing mere inches from where their great-great-grandfather had been killed by a lightning strike.

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” Brigid insisted. But she stayed right where she was.

“Sure.” Phoebe continued down the drive. A little rain wasn’t going to prevent her escape. The walk to Mattauk was just a few miles. She’d find a hotel, have her clothes laundered, and be on the first flight back to Ed in the morning.

“Maybe wait a few minutes before you leave?” Brigid shouted.

“Thanks for the advice, but I’ve got to get going,” Phoebe called back over shoulder.

Then the sky flashed white and both women were blinded.

There was a loud crack, followed by a clap of thunder, and the sisters smelled woodsmoke and heard the rustling of leaves.

A branch swiped Phoebe’s cheek as a giant sweet gum fell in front of her.

She felt the whole hill shudder when it slammed into the ground.

Brigid’s vision slowly returned, revealing a massive tree blocking the drive.

With a huff, Phoebe turned and stomped back to the cottage. If she’d wanted to escape, she could have easily done so. A fallen tree wasn’t much of an obstacle. But the message was clear: neither Brigid nor Phoebe should be leaving that night.

Someone snickered. “Looks like the Old One has spoken.”

Both sisters spun toward the doorway of the cottage, where Sibyl was now standing, dressed in a pair of Ivy’s old Brooks Brothers pajamas with one of Sadie’s silk scarves around her head. She looked very much at home as she ate strawberries straight out of a colander.

“Sibyl?” Phoebe croaked.

“Hello, Mommy Dearest,” she said. “Boy, do you have a lot of explaining to do.”

Phoebe immediately turned on her sister. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me she was here?” she demanded.

“Have you lost your damn mind?” Brigid responded. “She’s your fucking kid. Don’t act like I brought her.”

“I’m not a kid. I’m The Third,” Sibyl said, putting an abrupt end to the argument.

Phoebe pointed up at the heavens. “So does this mean you can call storms now?” she asked, though she seemed terrified of the answer.

“Nope,” her daughter said. “Still utterly talentless. Just like you always wanted me to be.”

“She has one ace up her sleeve, though,” Brigid said. “She’s got all the dirt on the Duncan family.”

“What did you tell her?” Phoebe barked.

“Will you stop?” Sibyl was fed up with the bickering. “Why the hell do you keep blaming Brigid for everything? I wasn’t even aware she existed until this afternoon. The ancestors were the ones who told me everything.”

Phoebe’s face drained of blood. “Did they tell you why our mother died?”

“Not yet,” Sibyl admitted. “Flora is going to show us. Then you and I are going to have a long chat, just the two of us.”