2000
“Get up! Up!”
I am aware of the voice and of the gentle shoves to my shoulder long before I open my eyes.
I rise from a deep dark place, breaking through the surface of sleep, and the light rushes in, crashing over me as my mom pulls back the curtain. I feel sluggish, my brain is heavy, and the headache is still there, not bad but lurking, as if it will creep up on me when I least need it. I pull my legs up tight to my chest. I’m sweaty. The sheet under me is moist.
“We’re late.” She tosses a throw pillow onto the foot of the bed.
“Where are we going?” It comes out in a slur. How long has it been since I woke up on this island? More than a decade. I miss B.B. so fully and so suddenly that I gasp and pull my legs even tighter to my chest.
“Henrietta Sophia Volt. You missed most of the funeral, and you cannot miss the reading of your father’s will. Get up.”
Then I remember: Was there a body in the quarry? The lake outside waits for me, licking at the shore as if for a taste. The sweat-soaked sheets slip away, and I begin shivering.
“Do I have time for a shower?”
“You do not have time for a shower. I will go downstairs and get you some coffee, even though it’s way past the time when Ms. Innkeeper said she’d feed us.”
My mom is about to head out our bedroom door when she stops. “Are you okay?”
“Not really.”
“Sonia missed you last night. She wanted to see you.” She keeps her eyes in my direction, but I can see her looking through me. “I was worried about you.” Now her eyes are on me, fully looking me over. “You look rough.” She walks away from the door to kiss me on the forehead. “And you’ve got a little bit of a smell to you. Maybe a shower is a good idea.”
“Thanks a lot,” I say, pretending to be offended, but shaking so badly now I can hardly hide it.
She places her palm to my forehead, an absentminded but motherly gesture, and I can see she doesn’t even take the time to process what she feels before she is headed back to the door.
“Get clean. Get dressed. Whatever you have to do but do it quickly,” she says as she slides out the door. “If we left right now, we’d be five minutes late. And we’re meeting at Quarry Hollow. Location change.”
I stare at her. Quarry Hollow?
“B.B. texted you. I read it, sorry.” My mother isn’t sorry. She’s too flustered to be sorry.
“Mom, you don’t have to go.”
“Oh, I’ll go.” She plucks at her eyelashes. “Your dad promised me he’d make sure the house was left so it wasn’t your responsibility, but I’m sure there are other things to settle.”
I rise slowly from the bed, my head thick from the sleep aid I took, but the bad feeling is fading. I flex my toes, stretch my calves. I walk to the small window and look out at Lake Erie. The sun is high and bright. People walk down the street. A ferry is emptying. I smell the diner’s pancakes. The island is warm and happy this morning, and that feeling eases into me as I open the window a crack and breathe in the fresh air.
The old firepit is there in the side yard surrounded by Adirondack chairs. The gravel drive is paved now. I park on the street near the huge old tree in the front yard, where we once hung the tire swing. The tire is gone, and instead, there is a dimple in the ground, an indent like a deep hole covered with a blanket of grass.
I wait for the dread of the house to set in. I can tell it has a hold on my mother. She sits quietly, arm raised to grab the oh-shit handle in the car. Her knuckles gone white. I feel something else. Anticipation? Giddiness?
“This is it,” she whispers to me.
“It doesn’t bother me like it does you.”
“But it should.”
We sit in silence. I am holding the steering wheel, gripping it with both hands. I let go. Rest my hands palm up in my lap. There is a big blank spot in my memory from last night. I thought maybe it would become clearer as I woke up fully, like the blur of it would gain focus given a little wake-up time. It hasn’t. Not really. But I know too that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen the house. That it’s seen me.
“I was here last night,” I say, trying out the statement to see if it is fact.
“I figured as much. Did you go in?”
“No,” I say, but that answer doesn’t feel entirely honest. I don’t tell her that I did go in the quarry. I remember that wide white face, staring up at the sky. How my mouth had filled with saliva. My stomach growling.
“Mom, I’m getting out.”
“Okay.”
“You gonna be okay?”
She shakes her head no. “You know how when you go back to places where you were a little kid? How they seem super-small?”
“Sure.”
“It’s the opposite here. This house makes me feel like I’ve been swallowed up. Even from out here.”
I reach my hand out to hold hers. We sit together like this, waiting for a sign that it is time to get out of the car, but I realize that it’s up to me. And I am very, very late.
“Let’s go together,” I say, and let go of her hand.
I stand on the sidewalk to look at the house. She’s right. It’s huge—literally and figuratively. The biggest on the island. Seth made sure it was the tallest as well, its third floor topped by an attic and a turret on the backside that hangs out over the quarry.
I climb up onto the porch and rattle the front door. It’s locked. I cup my hands to the glass to peer in the window. The front room is full of familiar furniture but not people. I follow the porch to a side door, my mother now on the front steps, holding on to the white railing as tightly as she can, as if we are still on the ferry. I peer in a kitchen window, and I can see the old Formica table with its four chairs. It was too small a table for my mother’s India-import tablecloths, and the fabric would hang all the way to the floor, tangling with your feet as you tried to rise to clear your dishes. B.B. and I would hide underneath. On the top of the table are two coffee cups and a pile of papers.
I turn the doorknob and the door swings inward. Something skitters out from under the table. It’s too big and loud for an insect, but I can’t catch its shape or features. A shadow that makes scritch-scratch noises on the black-and-white tile floor, noises loud enough to make me jump back, then arms are around me, enveloping me from behind, and I scream.
“Henrie!” It’s B.B. “Where the fuck have you been?”
I lean forward against the doorframe, breathing heavily. I can’t answer right away.
“Morning, Beatrice,” my mother says, walking up to us both. She is no longer holding on to the porch railing, but her left hand is flexing and unflexing at her side.
“It’s not morning anymore.” B.B. keeps her body stiff, far from my mother. She doesn’t want a hug. Mom doesn’t try. “You were supposed to be here this morning but now it’s afternoon. What the hell happened to you?” B.B. is trying to act lighthearted, playful, but she’s mad at me. For being late. There is something else too. She’s agitated.
“Nothing happened. And what’s all over you?” I brush at the left side of B.B.’s face. “Spiderwebs? Why are your shoes all wet?”
She leans in, one side of her mouth climbing higher than the other and says, “As if you don’t know.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I ask. It’s a test of some kind. Like she is making sure I don’t know what she thinks I don’t know.
“Ahhh, nothing.” Her voice is back to its normal volume. “We’ll get into all that later.” It’s a threat but I don’t understand what kind. “You left me alone with the lawyer, you bitch!”
I tell myself that’s all she means. It’s enough, isn’t it? I fled the funeral. I missed the meeting with the attorney. It’s enough to make even the most loving sister mad.
“B.B. This is all a bit overwhelming. Give me a break.”
“Well, I managed it without a break.” B.B. snorts a little as if I’m ridiculous.
I suppose I am. “I said I’m sorry.”
“Actually, you didn’t.”
“She’s right,” my mom says. “You haven’t apologized.”
I glare at my mother. A WTF look even though I know WTF. She’s trying to get on B.B.’s good side, a useless effort.
“I had a hard time at the funeral and had to take care of myself. I’m sorry I overslept.”
“That’s a suck-ass apology,” B.B. says.
“It’s what you’re gonna get.” I shrug. “Where’s the lawyer?”
“He left, but we talked since you didn’t show up.” I try to read my sister’s expression. Her voice, deepened by cigarettes, sounds grave.
“You don’t seem happy.”
“Oh, I’m happy. Thrilled even, but happiness is hardly the point. Do you want to sit down to hear this?”
“I have no idea. Do I?”
“For years, Dad was trying to encourage the state to reclaim the island. He was working a deal to turn our land into an extension of the state park, tear down the house and repurpose the land, ever since he decided not to have more babies. Carrie, you remember?”
I look at my mother, whose face remains drained of color.
“Well, hold on to something,” B.B. says. “The state doesn’t want it. Any of it. I guess they researched the cost of turning it into a state park and rejected the proposal. Dad didn’t have time to rework it so…”
“Fuck,” my mom says. “Shit.”
“So…?” I say, unable to process what has gotten B.B. excited.
“It’s ours!”
“What’s ours?” I ask.
“All of it. The house, the quarry. Turns out we even own Fun Land. That creepy old park is ours too. We own forty-one percent of the island.”
“You and me?”
“The Volt sisters back in the black.” She is happy, yet there is a coldness to her that I don’t recognize.
“That motherfucker,” my mom mutters from behind us.
“Hey now!” B.B. says.
“Look”—my mom locks eyes with me—“he wanted you to have a different life. He didn’t want to leave any of this to you. Let me see the will.”
“Are you accusing me of lying?” B.B. spits out. It’s so full of hate that my mother takes a step back, hits the porch railing with the backs of her thighs.
“No. I mean, I’m just saying he promised me.”
“Oh, and those are the promises we think he should have kept? The ones he made to you?”
“Stop it,” I say. “Both of you. It is what it is.”
“He also had a shit ton of money. He raised us like we were poor, but there was money all along. Of course, the deferred maintenance is astronomical.…”
“Deferred maintenance?” My brain is not moving very fast.
“The work that hasn’t been done to the house that will have to be done before you sell it.” My mom emphasizes the last two words, as if that’s enough to convince B.B. of the next best step.
“Henrie,” B.B. whispers to me. “We can live here together, like before.”
“Jesus,” my mom mutters. She lowers herself to the porch.
I’m stuck in the doorway, and the skittering inside the kitchen has started up again.
“He left you money too, Carrie,” B.B. says. “I don’t know why. Maybe because he made you live poor for so long. Or maybe so you’ll go the fuck away and leave Henrie and me alone here where we belong.”
I am about to ask more questions when the porch creaks. A tall man, the sheriff if his outfit isn’t just another Masquerade effort, is on the first porch steps and waits for me to see him before taking one step up, then the next. He’s wiry, his legs long enough to leap the whole house, so his care with each step strikes me as funny. A giggle starts in my chest, but then I realize he’s familiar.
“Wilderness?” I say.
“Of course.” He gives me a little half smile that reminds me so much of the little boy he once was that my heart aches. B.B. and I grew up with this man. This sheriff. The kid we’d make kitchen concoctions for—throwing together anything we could find, baking it, then inviting him over to eat.
“You’re still here.”
“I left briefly.”
I notice for the first time that his long brown pants are soaked to the knee. Puddles form around his large-booted feet.
“Why were you in the quarry?” I ask, turning to B.B.
“Oh shit. You don’t know? Ms. Sonia found a body. I thought I said that. Didn’t I tell you that?” She turns to my mom to ask the last question.
“A body?” I taste blood in my mouth, as if I’ve bitten my tongue.
“Just a foot actually,” Wilde offers.
“Did you call the dock?” Wilde asks, and B.B. stops her secret telling to look sheepish. Wilde gives a heavy sigh. “I need to use your phone, Beatrice.” He steps forward toward the kitchen door.
For a moment, B.B. looks wild-eyed, and I wonder if she will block him, but I watch her, and she stops herself. Takes an intentional breath and waves him in.
She keeps her eyes on me. “An actual piece of the body was left behind this time, Henrie. Sloppy, whoever or whatever it was. Not jewelry or clothes. Not a purse or a backpack. An actual body part. Gnarled and bloody, ripped from some poor girl. No pretending something bad didn’t happen there last night.”
“Jesus, B.B.”
My sister seems excited by the find. More alive because of its existence. “For a moment, I was scared it might be you.”
I feel startled by this.
“Come on. Don’t look so surprised. You disappeared yesterday and were late today. Plus, you tried to kill yourself out there when we were kids.”
“That’s not true,” I say. I know what she’s saying isn’t right. I never tried to kill myself, but there is also so much I can’t remember. “Mom, tell her she’s wrong.”
“You’re wrong.” My mom’s voice is flat, emotionless. The words are unconvincing.
“Whatever,” B.B. responds with a bright smile. “It hardly matters right now. We’re both here now, and we, you and me, can take over where Daddy left off.”
A memory surfaces. My body strong, thick with muscle, running like an animal through the quarry. So hungry, drool drips from my mouth.
“What do you say, Henrie? Let’s stay on island and live the life. I can tell you want to.”
I should say no, turn on my heels, and head to the ferry, but I don’t. I should at least tell her that she’s wrong; I don’t want to stay. I want to have never come back at all, but another part of me knows that this decision, the one to stay or go, was made a long time ago. I am my daddy’s baby girl. Some ugly, angry piece of my insides belongs here with my sister. The two of us already growing hungrier and more feral.