AS SOON AS I set foot downstairs, I know this was a mistake. Mother is withdrawn, barely noticing as Catherine flits around her, placing fresh flowers in the vases. Even Father is subdued; he hasn’t pulled out any papers to show our guests, and he sits in his chair, swirling a glass of Madeira side to side without drinking. It’s too soon for entertaining, even if it’s only Mr. Barrett and Mr. Pierce. It’s too soon to make polite conversation and sit down together and eat and laugh as if nothing has happened. Catherine’s revelation rests on my shoulders heavy and constricting as a noose. When Ada shows Mr. Barrett and Mr. Pierce in, it’s all I can do to lift my head and murmur a greeting from dry lips.
Catherine and Mr. Pierce move off immediately together to their corner in the parlor, and I watch them with a queasy stomach. For as little thought as I usually give to Mr. Pierce, I can’t help the pang of pity for him that runs through me; he has no idea the breadth and consequence of the snare Catherine is setting for him.
“Miss Montrose.”
Mr. Barrett moves out of the shadowed doorway and gives me a stiff bow of his head. “I confess I was surprised to receive an invitation so soon after...” He trails off, frowning into the corner where Catherine is speaking in soft tones to Mr. Pierce.
“Yes, well, we wanted to...thank you.” I never would have agreed to this dinner, championed Catherine’s cause, if I had known then what I know now about her condition.
The conversation is stilted, painful, both of us going through the motions of saying the right things. What happened at the pond hangs between us, heavy and unspoken just as I knew it would. I can’t look at Mr. Barrett without seeing him emerging from the water, face white and jaw set, Emeline hanging from his arms. And he must look at me and see a foolish girl, jealous and petty, someone who would entertain a suitor at her own sister’s burial.
We sit down to an informal meal of roast beef and potatoes. Catherine and Mr. Pierce are the only ones who are oblivious to the mantle of gloom that sits over the rest of us, though even Mr. Pierce has the good sense to keep his voice low, his look deferential when speaking to Mother.
Ada has barely cleared the first plates away when Mr. Pierce pushes back his chair and stands up. “I’m so sorry, but I’m afraid I have an engagement in town and must say good night.”
“Oh, that is too bad,” Mother says, but the relief in her eyes at having one fewer person to entertain is palpable.
Catherine’s face falls. She forces a bright smile, but there’s no hiding the tight lines around her mouth. “But it’s so early yet!” she protests with a nervous little laugh. “Surely you won’t leave us so soon.”
I give her a swift kick under the table. The sooner this torturous dinner ends, the better. But she only glares at me and squares her shoulders in defiance.
Mr. Pierce bows and assures her that if his engagement weren’t of the most pressing variety he would stay for hours yet, but unfortunately it is. If Catherine was hoping for a proposal tonight, then her hopes are quickly dashed.
“Mr. Barrett, you aren’t leaving us so soon too, are you?” she asks, turning her gaze sweetly on him.
He should go, leave us to our grief. But my eyes are greedy for him, my skin alive at the knowledge of him so close by. I don’t know what would be more unbearable: for him to leave, or for him to stay.
Mr. Barrett looks up, pausing his glass midair. He flickers the swiftest of glances at me before clearing his throat. “It’s growing late. I think perhaps I should accompany August.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Mr. Pierce says with an easy smile. “I’m more than capable of navigating these country roads. Stay, stay.”
Catherine nods eagerly in agreement. “At least stay for coffee,” she says with a wheedling pout.
Mr. Barrett looks uncomfortable, but to his credit his voice is gracious and genuine. “Yes, of course. Coffee would be lovely.”
Mr. Pierce takes his leave, and we move back into the parlor. No sooner does the front door click shut than Catherine has angled her chair in Mr. Barrett’s direction, leaning in low to him to offer to pour his coffee.
Mother announces that she has a headache and must retire, but that she hopes Mr. Barrett will stay and enjoy the coffee and cake that Ada has brought in. Father acts as reluctant chaperone, but within a few minutes he’s nodding over his newspaper and soon after is snoring with abandon on the settee.
Mr. Barrett sits with his back straight, coffee in hand while Catherine asks him shy questions and blushes at his answers. She knows just what will work on him as opposed to Mr. Pierce, how to use his quiet, dignified personality to her advantage. I watch with increasing agony, helpless to do anything but sit mute as a statue while Catherine charms and flirts her way into Mr. Barrett’s heart.
Picking up a book, I pretend to be absorbed in the story, though it might not even be in English for all I know. I steal glances over the top of the pages, my face burning, my mouth dry. I’m just about to tear my gaze away and force myself to read, when Mr. Barrett catches me staring at him.
Before I can drop my eyes, Catherine intercepts the look. “Lydia,” she says in a pointed tone, “weren’t you saying before dinner how tired you were?”
Her voice is sweet, but there’s a flinty determination in her eyes.
“I...” I open my mouth, ready to deny saying anything of the sort. She’s made her intentions more than clear, and do I really have the spirit to battle Catherine tonight? Can I find in myself the will to laugh and smile and bat my eyelashes alongside of her, all in the vain hope of catching Mr. Barrett’s fancy?
“Yes,” I say, standing. “I am tired. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll say good night as well now.”
* * *
The heat has finally broken, but I need air, I need to clear my head of the image of Catherine’s awful secret growing beneath her gown, the image of my other sister pale and lifeless in Mr. Barrett’s arms. Instead of returning to my room, I head outside. Cursing, I trip over the rock propping open the door and stumble into the night. My clothes are too tight on my body, it’s hard to breathe. Yanking off my gloves, I leave them wrinkled in the drive as I start walking toward the road.
We’re ruined and I don’t even care. Catherine has driven the final nail into our coffin. Every time she spoke longingly of London it was because he was there. Every time poor Mother wrung her hands because a friend turned their face from us in the street it was because of her. Every time Father reproached her for how she let herself be portrayed in the papers, why, she knew all along that those columns spoke the truth. How could she do this to us? What if the baby is born damaged, proof of its unnatural beginning? How will Mother bear it?
I double back away from the road and up behind the house. The windows glow yellow and warm, and inside Mr. Barrett and Catherine are sitting tête-à-tête as Father, oblivious, snores softly in the corner. If I was heartsick at the thought of Mr. Barrett’s hands on Catherine before, I’m seething now that I know the truth behind her motives. And this is the family that I mourned? This is the family that I would have done anything to keep together?
The woods have grown thick and unfamiliar, and I stumble blindly with outstretched hands. The lace at the hem of my dress snags and unravels. I can’t believe I let Catherine primp me up. I feel dirty, and I smear off the lip paint with the back of my hand. She’s right, it was her fault. If it weren’t for her and Charles we never would have come here. But Catherine was also right about another thing: what’s done is done. And if Emeline can’t be here, then I will go to her.
The weeping willow greets me, swaying despite the lack of breeze. Come, Lydia. Come to me and spill your troubled soul. I won’t judge. When the stonemason is finished with Emeline’s gravestone it will bear a weeping willow bent over an urn, that tree sacred to Persephone, to the underworld. That tree that the Greeks believed bestows the gift of poetry and understanding, of transcendence, but only to those willing to descend into the darkness. For Emeline it’s either a beautiful tribute or a cruel irony.
I carefully take off my shoes, lining them up at the rocky edge of the water. My stockings are next. I peel them off and neatly fold them, placing them next to the shoes. Out come my earrings, off with the pearl hairpin that Catherine stuck in so deep. I shake my hair out so that it spills down my neck and back, my scalp tingling. Lighter and lighter. I can’t take my dress off myself, so I hike it up, tying the torn lace and silk in a knot at my thigh.
Everything is so clear now. My body is light, my mind free of the tangled thoughts that have plagued me for weeks. No more sick Catherine and Charles, no more Cyrus, no more Mr. Barrett, no more spirits forever lurking at the periphery, no more aching loneliness.
The water is smooth and tepid and I barely feel it swallowing first my ankles, then my calves, the back of my knees.
I want to know. I have to know. What did it feel like? What filled the last moments of my sister’s life? Was it quick and peaceful, like slipping into the embrace of a pleasant dream? Or did she panic, fighting for air as the water stole her breath away? The willow watches me, nodding. I know. Come, Lydia. Come and I will show you.
The bottom is slippery and rotten; my toes curl around the slick rocks as I move farther out into the black. Water laps at my chin. I open my mouth. Putrid, stale. Oh, Emmy. I close my eyes. Stifling silence closes in around me, the steady chorus of peepers and owls far away and muffled as I slip below the surface. The only sound is the beating of my own heart, steady and unafraid.
It’s peaceful, but in an awful, greedy sort of way. The night, the water, they want to take me. They want to swallow me up until I’m nothing more than a sigh, a forgotten secret. And I want to let them. Come, Lydia. There is nothing for you above, but down here you can have her again. You can be with your sister, forever.
Slip away. How easy it is. Why is the darkness so feared in favor of light? In the day everything is laid bare, the truth naked and ugly for what it is. But in the darkness everything is possible. It is pure, forgiving. I can forget.
Let go, Lydia.
I let my fingers float out in front of me. The water softens everything. My vision blurs, my need for air replaced with my need to be with her. I’m so close. Only a little farther, a little longer, and everything will be all right.
* * *
A jolt. Something grabbing around my arms, hard. The silence gives way to a deafening roar as the force pulls me backward, upward, water rushing around me. I was so close. Just a little farther and I could have reached out and touched her, her auburn hair swirling around her pale face like a halo.
I gasp, water and slime choking out of me as my body betrays me and fights for air. Darkness explodes with light. Arms tighten around me, lifting me despite my wet dress weighing me down.
My body is lead and my lungs ache, but I’m not ready to come back. Blind panic takes over and I thrash out. My only thought is that I must get free. I must get free and find Emeline at any cost.
“Lydia! For Christ’s sake, stop!”
Mr. Barrett. My ears are clogged but his voice comes through sharp and familiar. I stop struggling, hoping that I still might be able to slip from his grasp and into the depths of the pond.
But he locks his arms tighter around my waist, pulling me back to the shore, half swimming, half trudging in the thick water. Pondweeds wind around my ankles, loath to let me go. Every step back to shore is like a broken promise to Emeline.
When we reach solid ground we collapse in a heaving tangle of limbs. As soon as I feel the damp earth beneath me, all my strength, all my fight, dissolves from my body. I’m deflated, empty. I failed in the one thing I thought I could control.
The willow holds its tongue, and the night becomes ordinary again. Mr. Barrett lets go, rolling over onto his back, his breathing heavy and ragged, a limp arm draped over my stomach. To think of all the times I imagined his closeness, his touch, and this is how it has happened. I could almost laugh. I turn my head, the dirt cool against my cheek as I struggle to bring the world back into focus. Moonlight streaks pale and fleeting through breaks in the clouds, softening the edges of Mr. Barrett’s profile in the darkness. There’s a dark stain under his nose—blood?—and his hair is matted down to his cheeks. A pang of guilt runs through me.
My throat is burning and I don’t think I’ll ever get the taste of slime out of my mouth. Rolling over, I retch. It’s not just the taste I am frantic to rid myself of, but the failure, the realization that I’m still here.
When he’s regained his breath, Mr. Barrett sits up and rakes his hair back with shaking hands. “Christ,” he says, softly. He turns to me, peering through the dark, and I’m sure the moonlight is betraying the shame written all over my face. Why did he have to come? Why do I have to suffer this embarrassment on top of everything else? It could have all been over by now. I turn my face away, wishing the pond was an ocean like the day when I screamed and screamed, that it would lap up the small bank and pull me back in its receding tide. But the placid water just shimmers, dark and still.
“You’re shaking,” he says, more to himself than me. I can’t feel anything, but there’s a warm, metallic taste in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue from chattering. His coat lays crumpled on a rock, as if thrown off in a hurry and forgotten. He slowly hefts himself up, grunting at some injury, and stumbles over to retrieve it.
He steps over my shoes and stockings, arranged so neatly, smug that they would never be worn again. Seeing them like that, empty and still needed, cracks open something deep inside of me. Despite my hoarse throat and lingering breathlessness, a broken wail cracks out of me, followed by a torrent of tears. It’s nothing like the scream the evening Emeline died; this wail is mine and mine alone. It doesn’t churn the water or send clouds scudding across the sky. It is my misery and grief distilled into a single, plaintive note.
Mr. Barrett doesn’t say anything as my sobs gradually subside into miserable hiccups, he simply sits me up and wraps the coat around my shoulders. When I’m snugged tighter than a mummy, he stays crouched beside me, cupping my face in his hands and brushing a stray tear away with his thumb.
“I know, I know. There now, you’ll be all right,” he says with unbearable tenderness. “Everything will be all right.”
How I wish I could believe him. How I wish I could lean into his warm, capable hands and let all my problems fall away from me. But he can’t know that everything will be all right, and his words promising otherwise are the kind that a parent offers to a child with a scraped knee—meant to comfort, but without any real meaning behind them. If only he hadn’t come.
Crying has left me hoarse and it’s hard to form my words, but I can’t stop myself. He leans down to hear me, so close that my lips nearly graze his ear.
“You saved the wrong sister.”
Slowly, he pulls back. His face contorts in something like pain, a spreading realization of betrayal as if he were Caesar and I Brutus. I want him to reproach me for saying such a terrible thing, or to rush to assure me otherwise even if it’s not true. Anything. But he just levels a long, unreadable look at me. When he does speak it’s softly, with words so heavy with pity and disappointment that I think I will die of shame.
“Oh, Lydia.”
He stands up, and I suppose he’s finally had enough of me. It must be time to go home. I close my eyes, curling my fingers into the loamy dirt. At home there will be questions, more hurt looks.
He doesn’t say anything else as he scoops me up, draping my arm behind his neck, his trembling hands digging into my flesh. His shirt is cold and wet, but underneath his chest is warm. I’m exhausted, my body inside out and spent, but still he clutches me as if I might try to escape back into the pond.
The breeze sighs with regret. I crane my neck back, watching as the water recedes into the night, indistinct and black. It might not have claimed my life in the end, but as I let my head fall against Mr. Barrett’s chest, his heartbeat strong and fast against my ear, I know that nothing will ever be the same again.
My eyes are heavy and tired, but just before they close, I catch a glimmer of movement. Emeline.
She stands beside the water, still as a little statue. This isn’t the mirage of a desperate mind, or imaginings, delusions, visions. She’s there, as real as anything. The whispered promises that drew me to the pond were not hollow.
I open my mouth to call out to her, to beg her to give me some sign that she sees me, but my throat is too hoarse, too dry. When Mr. Barrett feels me renewing my struggles, he tightens his grip, his fingers curling into my wet clothes. It’s no use. I’m spent of energy, and so I watch Emeline grow smaller and smaller until the night swallows her whole.