Simon shook me awake. He was wearing a blue satin robe with gold trim and pajamas that looked like he might have hit up Truman Capote’s estate sale. He sat back in relief when I opened my eyes. “I wasn’t sure if you’d hit your head.”
“I . . .” Sunlight made me crinkle up my face. My head hurt. Everything hurt. And I was covered with rust and grime, feet caked in sandy mud. Almost like I’d run to the top of a five-story building and had then been tackled to a hard surface by the nosy neighbor boy . . .
“Did someone do this to you?” Simon helped me sit up and went to the stove, rattling around pots with an unholy clatter.
“No,” I said. I covered my eyes, massaging my forehead. I’d had hangovers before, but at least I usually got to have fun first. “It was just a stupid accident,” I said. Once my head stopped throbbing and I stopped seeing halos any time I opened my eyes, I’d figure out exactly what sort of accident I’d purportedly had to explain this situation. Now I just pulled my knees to my chest and groaned.
Simon started water boiling and then took a first aid kit out of a cabinet. “Care to elaborate?”
“I . . . uh . . . tangled with an angry possum? You have those on the island, right?” I flinched. The last twelve hours were really messing with my ability to lie.
“Cute,” Simon said. He soaked a pad in antiseptic and swiped at the cuts on my hands and forehead.
“Ow!” I jerked my arm away but not fast enough. Simon frowned at the scratches, turning my arm back and forth in his thin, cold fingers. I realized there was an outline of a hand where Doyle had yanked me away from the ledge, and I shut my eyes, waiting for Simon to freak. Right on cue, he did.
“Did Doyle Ramsey do this to you?” he demanded.
I blinked. That sure was a fast jump. I guessed the animosity Doyle had for my uncle was mutual. “No, he didn’t. I would have been really hurt if he hadn’t grabbed me. He was trying to hold on to me, not harm me.”
I didn’t want to rat Doyle out for trespassing, but I figured that was better than Simon thinking he was some kind of maniac who’d attacked me.
“And just why the hell were you outside in the middle of the night?” Simon demanded.
Or maybe Doyle wasn’t the one I needed to worry about.
“I, uh . . .”
Simon held up his hand. “I wanted to give you time to settle here. Feel like you could stay in one spot for more than a few months at a time. But if it’s already happening . . .”
“What?” I shouted. My head kicked like a mule in response and I winced. “What is going on here? What is everyone afraid to say to me?”
Simon sighed and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit,” he said when I didn’t move. I hauled myself into the chair, whimpering softly as I sat and agitated a whole new group of cuts and bruises. Simon got a couple of chippy mugs and a little silver ball that he packed full of tea. “Earl Grey all right?” he asked. I shrugged.
“Doyle didn’t do anything wrong,” I said again. “I was sleepwalking. He tried to help me.”
Simon pursed his mouth up. He looked so parental, even after two days. Disapproving and about to chew my ass out. “The last thing the Ramseys want to do is help you, Ivy.” He took the tea strainer away and blew on his cup.
“I’m getting the sense that’s the last thing you want too,” I said, staring at him. “Or you’d tell me the truth right now instead of making tea.”
Simon smiled in response. The light caught his glasses and reflected two Ivys back at me. I looked like crap. I was scratched up all over my cheeks, smeared with dirt, and I had sticks in my hair.
“You’re a lot like your mother,” he said. “Resilient to the core.”
“That’s not the word I’d pick for her,” I muttered, taking a sip of tea. It was hot and bitter, but it warmed me up, so I downed it.
“Ivy, there are people and things in this world that fall outside the understanding of the average person,” Simon said. “Such as our family. That curse the locals whisper about may be a fairy tale, but there is something in our blood that leads to madness. A particular kind of madness. It comes on in late adolescence, and it . . . well.” He licked his lips. “Needless to say, I was relieved when it passed me over and devastated when it consumed my sister.”
I put my mug in the sink and ran water over my scratches, the blood dissolving and running down the drain, staining the spotless porcelain pink. “Okay,” I said, turning back to my uncle. “I get that there’s something seriously fucked-up swimming in our gene pool. If you could just fill me in using small words, that’d be awesome.”
Simon wrinkled his nose at my swearing, but he stood and faced me. “I’m afraid I don’t know a great deal more. Myra left before doctors could do much work with her, and in our parents’ day mental-health problems weren’t much talked about . . .” He trailed off and spread his hands. “All I know is it doesn’t correspond to any disorder in the DSM, it doesn’t respond to medication, and it tends to affect the women more than men. My sister—your mother—was the worst in a long while. But I never believed she’d do harm to anyone except herself, and I’m glad to see I was right.”
I wanted to tell him how wrong he was, to pick up the mug I’d just rinsed and smash it. I didn’t, though. I just stood there shaking, even though the radiator in the corner was hissing and clanging as it poured out waves of warmth.
“I wanted to ease you into this, keep an eye out for any signs before I even brought it up or scheduled any doctors’ appointments for you,” said Simon. “But Doyle Ramsey made that impossible. His whole family are animals. They loathe us, and you cannot trust them.”
“Is the loathing because of the whole penchant-for-murder thing that runs in our family?” I said. Simon grunted.
“In the 1940s, my grandfather—your great-grandfather—walked to the other side of the island. He picked up a hatchet from the Ramseys’ woodpile and he massacred everyone in the house. Everyone except Liam’s father, Colin, who was just a boy at the time. The police eventually found my grandfather dead in the ruins of the original Ramsey mansion. My mother was also just a girl, and she was never the same after what her father did. She went looking for him the morning after the murders. She saw what he’d done. She was the one to wash the blood off Colin Ramsey and the one to wait for the boat to the mainland, to fetch the police. She was all of twelve years old.”
Both of us went quiet. Only the radiator kept up its clanging, like tiny hands hammering to be let in. “My grandfather was insane, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault but his, but you coming here has stirred up a lot of issues for Liam, to say the least,” Simon murmured at last. “And now with that drunk idiot nephew of his, Neil, turning up dead . . . Stay away from the Ramseys, Ivy. I mean it. Just because we share this island doesn’t mean they won’t decide to take out on you what a Bloodgood did all those years ago.”
I stayed quiet. Doyle didn’t seem so bad—he had saved me from being a human pancake, after all—but I wasn’t about to start a fight with Simon when he was finally being open with me.
“You can ask me anything, even though I don’t know much,” Simon said, picking up his tea. “We can discuss this more later as well, but right now I need to continue my morning, and you should go shower and get ready for school.”
“Am I for sure going crazy?” I whispered. I thought again of just telling him about Neil and the bloody shirt and my inability to shake the feeling I’d done something really terrible. The bottom line was he was being honest for now, but I’d known him less than a week. I’d be an idiot to trust him with something like that when I wasn’t even sure what happened.
Simon gave a sad shrug. “I don’t know, Ivy. Your mother went through something very similar, starting around your age. All we can do is wait, watch, and hope.”
That was a bullshit answer, and we both knew it, but I decided to let it slide. I’d had enough information thrown at me for me one sucky morning. The second thing he’d said registered with me, and I cocked my head. “You seriously expect me to go to school now?”
“I seriously do,” my uncle said, picking up a newspaper from the table and tucking it under his arm. “Today and every other school day. The boat leaves in an hour.”