MORNING COMES, AND Veronica holds me to my promise to go to the hospital. She gets keys to the Land Rover from Remi and drives me herself, uncharacteristically silent. Her jaw is set, her eyes fixed on the road ahead.
The pain is not as bad as the guilt. She knows now that I’ve been lying to her. Keeping secrets. Maybe once, telling the truth would have been better than keeping up the lie, but after this long, confession isn’t a balm anymore but a blade driven straight to the heart.
“I wish you’d told me,” she says when we’re halfway there.
“I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you? I would have helped you,” Veronica says.
“You would have wanted me to turn him in,” I say.
“Of course I would have,” Veronica snaps. “This guy attacked you. He broke your fucking arm. He gave you a fucking concussion. He should be in fucking jail.”
Guilt curdles in my gut. The longer I don’t correct them, the more it becomes a lie. “It’s not about him. Luke—”
“What does it have to do with Luke? He hurt you too?” Veronica demands.
“No,” I say quickly, looking anywhere but at her, and this time it is a lie. “But he’s on parole, and Dylan wasn’t supposed to be there. He could go to prison.”
“Parole for what?” Veronica asks.
I don’t answer. Other people don’t see Luke as a person. They can’t put the bad things he’s done in the context of the good. Maybe it still works out to him being rotten. But it’s different from only defining him by his worst deeds. I don’t mind if people hate him. I do, too. I also know he brought me soup when I had the flu and let me watch cartoons on his iPad. He protected me from a bully at school in fourth grade, taught me how to tie my shoes, spent an entire Saturday morning doing a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with me. The good doesn’t outweigh the bad, but it still exists. I need people to know it still exists.
“You should have told me. I could have helped,” Veronica says.
“No, you couldn’t,” I say.
“Of course I could. My parents have all kinds of resources. They could—”
“This is why I didn’t tell you. You think you can fix everything. You think that every problem is just a matter of how much money you have to throw at it,” I say angrily.
“That’s not true,” Veronica protests. She shakes her head. “I thought you trusted me. I thought we told each other everything. When did that change?”
“It didn’t,” I say.
Veronica snorts. “You’re keeping secrets from me. That means something’s changed.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I say, and watch the moment she realizes what I mean. Nothing has changed—because I’ve been keeping secrets from her all along.
She lets out an angry hiss. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are. You’re my best friend.”
“How can you say that when apparently you’ve been keeping secrets from me the whole time? What have you been hiding? Has it been like this the whole time and you didn’t tell me?”
“Not like this. Not this bad,” I say, looking out the window. I swallow. I can’t start crying. “I wanted to be the person you thought I was. Not your sad charity case of a friend.”
She’s silent. Then, “Are you safe at home?”
“I thought I was,” I tell her. For certain definitions of the word. “This summer was different.”
Veronica clenches her teeth and doesn’t say anything more until we reach the hospital. She drops me off in front of the ER and circles around to find parking. By the time I’m through checking in and have found a place to sit, she’s back. She takes the chair beside me, staring down at her phone. I know from the soft chimes in my pocket she’s messaging the group chat, but I don’t have the energy to check what she’s saying.
“I’m just letting everyone know where we are,” she says, still not looking at me.
“How much are you going to tell them?” I ask.
“I said you must have fallen last night. You can decide how much to tell them yourself.”
“Thank you.”
She grunts and puts her phone away, then sits back in the chair with her arms crossed. It’s a slow day in the ER, but there’s a wheezing kid and a guy with chest pain, so I guess we’ll probably be here a little while.
“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly.
I look at her without comprehension.
“I’m sorry that I wasn’t a good enough friend for you to feel like you could tell me what things were like.”
“It hasn’t always been like this,” I say.
“But it’s always been bad, hasn’t it?” she asks. “I should have noticed. You were the only one who never wanted the summer to start. You were always so glad when breaks were over and you could come back. And you never invited any of us to your place.”
“I couldn’t,” I say. “Luke doesn’t like having people around he doesn’t know. It makes him worse.”
“Violent?” she asks.
“No,” I say immediately, defensively. Then my shoulders slump. “Not most of the time. He has episodes, and sometimes things get scary, but he’s never hurt anyone too badly.” Except me. Except this time.
“What about your parents? Haven’t they done anything?” Veronica asks.
“They’ve done everything. Therapy, medication, tough love, unconditional love, hypnotic regression, essential oils, you name it.”
“What about for you? What have they done to make sure you’re okay?” Veronica asks.
“Atwood,” I say simply.
Veronica lets out a huff. “So he’s a monster, and you’re the one that gets sent away.”
“He’s not a monster. And what were they supposed to do? Give up on him?” I ask.
“Yeah. Maybe they should have. Before you got your arm broken,” Veronica says fiercely.
Sometimes I think the same thing. My parents had a choice to make. They didn’t choose me. I know it wasn’t their intent. They thought this was the way to keep both their children. Instead, they lost us both.
“I’m never going back there,” I say. I haven’t been able to bring myself to think it before. I don’t have to go back. I’m going to be eighteen before Christmas. They aren’t even paying my tuition anymore. They can’t make me.
“No, you aren’t. You’re coming home with me,” Veronica says. “You’re right. I can’t fix everything, but I can fix that much.” She reaches out and takes my hand, clasping it tight.
“You’re not angry with me?” I ask.
She bares her teeth in a feral smile. “Of course I’m angry with you. I’m furious. Sisters get mad at each other.”
I’m not going to cry, I remind myself.
I cling to her hand, and she doesn’t let go until they call my name.
The nurse who checks me over asks gentle questions. The doctor sends Veronica out of the room and asks blunt ones. I figure they know I’m lying when I say that I fell, that the bruise on my back and the crack to my skull are from rocks, that the handprint on my arm is a result of Veronica trying to catch me as I fell. Both of them try to convince me to make a report, to have something on file if I decide to go to the police. I tell them I don’t need to. What I mean is that it wouldn’t make a difference.
Several hours later, I’m back in the passenger seat with a diagnosis of mild concussion and a splint on my fractured arm, as well as an appointment for a follow-up. Veronica takes care of updating Zoya and Ruth, then drives us straight back to Abigail House. By the time we get through the entry procedures, Del is at the bottom of the stairs, anxious and relieved to see us.
“It’s fine. No worse than the first time around,” I tell her. “And I got this stylish new accessory.” I indicate the splint. “Now, if it’s okay with the two of you, I’d really like a nap.”
“We need to talk first,” Veronica says, standing with her arms crossed.
“No offense, but I’m deeply tired of talking,” I say. “I can’t remember the last time I had a full night’s sleep.”
“Right. Because of the ghost that’s stalking you,” Veronica says.
“Maeve,” I say. “Her name is Maeve.”
“The Drowning Girl,” Veronica says, and there’s a challenge to the words. “She almost killed you last night. We have to figure out how to stop her or destroy her or whatever.”
“She’s not evil. She doesn’t need to be destroyed,” I object. None of this is Maeve’s fault. “She doesn’t want to hurt me—or anyone. She’s trying to find Grace. If we can help her, maybe she can move on, or whatever it is souls are supposed to do.”
“Why are you so obsessed with helping this girl who was dead before you were even born?” Veronica demands.
“Because she shouldn’t have died,” I say. “Because it might help Del.”
“You can’t always take on everyone else’s problems, Eden,” Veronica says. “Look at what this is doing to you.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not if I can help her,” I insist.
Veronica gives a strange, strangled sound. “Of course it matters. You matter.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say, and my face goes hot. I can’t tell if I’m lying. All I know is that I can’t leave Maeve out there suffering like she is, not if I have any chance to save her. I couldn’t do anything this summer. Only surrender. Now I can do something, and I can’t turn away from it.
Del interrupts, her voice gentle. “How can we even help? We don’t know where Grace is. Everything you’ve tried to find out about what happened to her ends with that night. So if she isn’t with Maeve, where did she go?”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head, frustrated. Maeve’s memory and her ability to communicate are so fragmented, but I’m certain she knows more that could help us. If only she could find a way to help me. “I need to talk to Maeve again. If she can tell me what actually happened that night—”
“No,” Del says at the same time Veronica snaps, “No fucking way.”
“She’s not going to just go away,” I say. “Helping her is the only way to stop this. And it’s the right thing to do.” I look between them imploringly. They have to understand.
Del is the first to nod. “The whole world is trying to keep them apart and punish them for who they are. It tore them away from each other. And it happened to so many people so many times. We can’t fix the past, but maybe this one story can have a happy ending,” she says softly.
“They’re dead. How happy can it be?” Veronica asks, but she purses her lips, thinking. “Maybe we could find a way to talk to her without getting hurt.”
“How?” Del asks.
“We could try a séance,” she suggests. “I mean, most of what I know about this sort of thing is about, like, the metaphorical energy of the spirits as a source of strength and wisdom, not an actual manifestation of a dead girl with dead-girl powers. But we could give it a try.”
“What would we need?” I ask, my heart speeding up. It sounds too good to hope for, but I’ll try anything.
“Let me look into it,” Veronica says. “We’re probably going to have to cobble some things together and cross our fingers.”
“We’ve got to try,” I say immediately.
Veronica gives me a hard look. “First you’ve got to heal up. Because now you’ve got a doctor appointment, and if Maeve snaps your bones again, you’re going to have some awkward explanations.”
“She’s right,” Del says. “You’ve got to take care of yourself first, Eden.”
“We don’t have that kind of time.”
“We do if you’re careful. Don’t let the water in. Don’t stay out after dark. Right?” Veronica says.
“But—”
“Two weeks,” Del suggests. “Give yourself two weeks to heal and for Veronica to do the research. Maeve’s waited forty years. She can wait that long.”
I let out a sigh, surrendering. “Fine. Two weeks.”