MADELYN FOURNIER DOESN’T answer the door at first. But I look up into the camera above me, my feet planted. “We need to talk about Grace and Delphine,” I say.
The silence lingers long enough that I doubt for a moment that Madelyn even knows I’m there. But at last the speaker in the doorbell turns on. “Come inside,” Madelyn says, and the lock pad gives a blat. I didn’t know she could access it remotely, but I’m not surprised. The tiny FellTech logo stamped on the metal is a clear reminder of how closely everything here is monitored and connected.
The routine of changing is second nature. My own clothes are gone, of course—delivered to Westmore as promised. It’s back to the school sweats. As it was the first day I met her, Madelyn’s door is left open a crack so that she won’t have to get up to answer. She sits on the couch, her long legs crossed and her gaze on some distant point to the side.
“Eden. Come in,” she says unnecessarily as I enter. She wears a sleeveless red silk blouse and black trousers, diamond earrings, eyeliner applied with engineered precision; I’m frizzy-haired and clad in maroon, but I straighten my spine and refuse to be intimidated. I take the seat across from her. “What do you know, Eden?” she says at once.
“I came here to ask you that,” I say.
She waves a hand. “I think we’re past the point where it’s useful to hide anything from you. I’m just trying to save time by not telling you what you already know.”
“I know about the Drowning Girl. I know that she comes here,” I say.
Madelyn flicks her thumbnail with her middle finger, making a distracting clicking noise that makes my skin crawl. “Yes. She does. She started coming for Delphine as soon as we brought her back to campus. Any rainy night.”
“The water hurts her because of the Narrow,” I say.
She dips her chin in confirmation. “The school is on a well-water system. The groundwater is contaminated with the water from the Narrow. And the rain—I don’t know if it’s because some of it comes from the Narrow or if it’s because it was raining the night that poor girl died, or something else entirely.”
“It was never about distilled water at all, then,” I say.
“Anything from off campus is fine,” Madelyn confirms. “And it seemed to be enough. I really thought we’d done enough to protect her, but then Aubrey . . .” She presses her fingertips to her lips, looking away. I lean forward.
“Aubrey started to see her.”
“I never would have knowingly put Aubrey in danger,” Madelyn says. “It’s not as if she confided in me that she was seeing a ghost. I had to piece it together later. I wouldn’t have let her stay if I knew.”
“But you let me move right in.”
Madelyn rakes a hand through the air, frustrated. “Aubrey was fine for years. I had no idea it would escalate so quickly with you. As soon as I realized what was happening, I was going to go to Oster and tell him it wasn’t working out. I would pay your tuition, and you would be safe somewhere else. But he’d already made the arrangements.”
“Do you know who she is? The Drowning Girl?” I ask.
“I believe her name is Maeve Fairchild,” Madelyn says. She speaks readily, and her tone is one of relief to finally be able to tell someone.
“Does Oster know?” I ask.
“I don’t know how much Geoffrey has worked out,” Madelyn says. “Or how much he believes. He’s certainly happy enough to take my money, and he wouldn’t want anything about Aubrey’s accident to tarnish the reputation of the school, so he’s smoothed things over. But I think he feels more comfortable existing in a state of deniability.”
“So he can pretend there’s nothing supernatural happening while keeping his biggest donor happy,” I note.
“There are perks to wealth,” she acknowledges.
“Madelyn,” I say. My mouth is dry, my pulse racing. “What exactly is wrong with Del?” I already know. Or at least I think I do. But I need her to say it.
“Delphine told you the story of what happened to her twin,” Madelyn says. She wets her lips. “Delphine never had a twin. But Grace Carpenter did.”
The missing pieces fall into place, confirming what I had already guessed. The reason that Maeve is so inevitably drawn to Abigail House—to Del. She’s looking for Grace. She isn’t only chasing the past when she returns again and again to that house. Grace has been there all along.
“She’s not Delphine, is she? She’s Grace,” I say, barely above a whisper. Somehow, she’s Grace.
The girl I got to know.
The girl I fell for.
The girl I kissed.
I want to scream, or run, or weep. Instead I force myself to sit still and pretend that everything I understand about the world isn’t coming apart at the seams.
Madelyn shakes her head. “She is Delphine. And she is Grace. Like an amalgam of the two, combined into a single personality. Both of them and neither of them. She doesn’t know,” she adds quickly. “Sometimes she thinks Grace’s memories are dreams or daydreams. Sometimes she works them into her memories, finding places where they’ll fit, and I don’t contradict her—it’s important not to contradict her, because if you do . . .”
“She remembers that she’s dead,” I say, thinking of Maeve rearing back, her wounds reopening. “That’s why the water hurts her. It hurts Grace.”
“There are things that help. Keeping her here, in this house—it seems to have been a haven for her in life. She only grew settled enough to stop having fits when we brought her here,” Madelyn says. “It’s a delicate balance. Keeping things familiar, but not enough that she truly remembers. Encouraging the parts of her that are Delphine without alienating Grace. That balance is all that is keeping her alive. I don’t always know which parts are which. I don’t think I care anymore. She’s my daughter. Every part of her.”
She wipes tears from her eyes, not looking at me, and clears her throat before continuing.
“I’ve tried to find ways to extricate Grace without harming Delphine, but there aren’t rules for this kind of thing,” Madelyn says, her helplessness making her voice raw. “All I can do is keep her safe. I thought it was working, until . . .”
“Until Maeve found her,” I say. “Why now?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Madelyn says with false humor.
“She’s almost the same age as Grace when she died,” I say. “Maybe that’s why. Until now, she’s been different enough that Maeve couldn’t find her or recognize her.”
For the first time, it hits me that this means that Grace is truly dead. There is no secret happy ending, no family and future lived in secret. She died. She drowned, just like Maeve.
“She was in the water,” I say, staring at the wall behind Madelyn.
“What’s that?”
“Grace. She was in the water,” I say, pulling the threads together. “The night before Del first got sick, I saw her down by the Narrow. I sneaked out to do the leap, and she followed me. I saw her jump. She fell in. I thought she was dead. But when I ran to get help, she was back at the dorm. She was fine. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t think anyone would believe me.”
It wasn’t just that, though. It had been the shame and the fear and the guilt. Knowing she was down there because of us. Because we went, and because I pushed her away all day, was cold to a girl desperate for a friend.
“You . . .” Madelyn’s voice chokes off into silence. Fury flashes in her eyes for a moment, and I stiffen, ready for whatever she says to me. I deserve it. But instead her shoulders sag. “That explains it, then. That must be why—how—Grace found her.”
“She saved Delphine’s life,” I say. “But for whatever reason, she didn’t leave. Maybe she couldn’t. And now Maeve is looking for her.”
“She can’t have her,” Madelyn snaps.
“You need to tell Delphine,” I say.
“It could kill her. She can’t know,” Madelyn says, gripping the arm of the couch. “You cannot tell her, Eden. She can’t think about what happened. We just need to keep her safe and keep Maeve away from her.”
“She loves her.”
“There is a fine and fragile line between love and possession. Believe me. I’ve crashed through it often enough,” Madelyn says. “She may love Grace, but I love Delphine—and she can’t have Grace without taking my daughter. So I won’t let her.”
She looks at me, aching desperation in her eyes. We’re all just drowning. Pulled by a current we can’t see and can’t escape.
And I am no exception.
I wander the campus in a haze. Delphine is Grace; Grace is Delphine. It wasn’t one girl who emerged miraculously from those waters but two, and she doesn’t know.
She can’t know.
She has to know.
I can’t keep this from her. But what if Madelyn is right and learning the truth kills her?
Maeve will never give up trying to reach Grace now that she’s found her. And I wonder about Delphine. How long can a body survive with death inside it, a soul where it doesn’t belong?
It doesn’t matter what Del should or shouldn’t know, though, if I can’t reach her. The school is watching everything we do. I’m sure Del’s messages aren’t private. But maybe that’s the solution as much as the problem. I pull out my phone.
Hope you’re doing well. Just wanted to say hey. Veronica’s talking to her friend Jane and will NOT shut up and I’m going a little crazy. Like, some of this stuff should definitely go in a private journal, not blasted full volume in a shared dorm, right?
Anyway. I miss you.
I send the messages, hoping that to anyone else they’ll read like I’m trying to make small talk to get my ex to talk to me again. And hoping Del knows the real meaning.
I rush back to Westmore. Veronica is on the couch, making out with Remi. I yelp and shield my eyes. “Sorry!”
“WHAT DID WE SAY? NO PDA IN THE COMMON AREAS,” Ruth hollers from her room.
“Sorry, Mom,” Veronica calls back.
Remi chuckles, blushing, and gives me an embarrassed wave. “Hey, Eden. Good to see you,” he says.
“You, too. Um, Veronica? I need to borrow your laptop,” I say, bouncing on the balls of my feet.
“You have your own,” Veronica says, a fine line between her brows.
“I’ll explain later, but I really need to use your AtChat account,” I say.
“Technically, that’s against school policy. It’s in the handbook,” Remi points out.
“So’s the bottle of scotch hidden behind your headboard,” Veronica shoots back. “Go ahead. Password is the same as always.”
“You need to start taking your cybersecurity more seriously,” Remi scolds her.
“Sweetheart, if you start talking to me about bits and bots and technobabble, I am never going to make out with you again,” she says with a throaty rasp to her voice, sliding into his lap once more.
I leave them to it, too anxious to be amused. I duck into Veronica’s room and log in. A minute later, I have her private journal on her AtChat account pulled up. I open a new entry and type.
I don’t know if you’re reading this, but it was the only thing I could think of. I need to see you. There are things I need to tell you.
The security system on Abigail House is FellTech. I thought you might have your mom’s log-in or be able to use Jane’s somehow and let me in.
I sit there, waiting, not sure if Del is reading or if she has a way to message me back. But then a message pops into Veronica’s inbox. It’s an admin alert—a canned response to reporting a technical issue. But when I open it, there’s a second message tucked below the first.
Mom’s going into town tomorrow around noon. I can get her phone and put in a new profile for the security system with the old code. I don’t think she’ll notice. She doesn’t really know how the app works.
I sit back, relief washing through me, and rub my hands over my face.
I need to see Del again. Not just because of what I need to tell her—after what happened with Maeve, I need Del’s touch. Her presence.
I delete the text of the private journal entry. Then I delete the admin message and log out. Hopefully, even if Oster thinks to check my profile, he won’t go snooping around Veronica’s.
Now there’s nothing to do but wait.
I have to skip class to get to Abigail House at the appointed hour. I’m finding it harder and harder to care about school. Grades and classes and college admissions seem unimportant next to Del and Grace and Maeve.
I approach the house slowly, scanning the drive for Madelyn’s car. But there’s no sign of her, and the house’s isolation works in my favor, the screen of hedges and trees hiding me from casual observation.
I try not to look up at the camera as I step onto the porch. If Madelyn is watching, I’m screwed anyway, but I still try to look like I’m supposed to be here as I put in the code.
The light flashes red. My heart drops. Did Del not put in the new code? Maybe she couldn’t get her mom’s phone.
Or maybe I put the code in wrong, I scold myself, and try again.
The light flashes green. I dart inside. One obstacle down.
Even knowing Madelyn isn’t there, I creep quietly from the foyer into the hall, like I have to sneak past her door. Del is already at the bottom of the stairs, watching me from the other side of the glass.
I cross the distance between us quickly, and she raises her hand to the glass. I rest mine on the other side, matching the spread of her fingers, and let out a laugh of agony and relief.
“Hey,” she says, her voice shaky. “I didn’t know if you were coming back.”
“Of course I came,” I say. She curls her fingers against the glass. “Can I come up?”
She nods. “I’ll wait upstairs,” she says, but she doesn’t retreat at first. Her breath fogs against the glass. For two seconds, three, we stand there, separated only by the door, before she reluctantly draws away.
I rush my way through the procedures and practically gallop up the stairs. I want to kiss Del the moment I get to the top, but she catches my hand instead and pulls me into the bedroom—and then my lips are on hers, and her back is against the door, her hands, urgent and greedy as they rove up my body, slide inside my shirt.
I break away before we can get too far and lean my forehead against hers instead. “Del,” I say. “God, Del.” Is that even the name I should be calling her?
“Shh. It’s all right,” she says, her fingertips on my jaw, her eyes searching mine.
“It isn’t,” I say. “None of it is.” I fall back away from her and sink onto the bed with a groan.
She settles next to me, taking my hand. Worry creases her face. “What’s wrong? What is it you needed to tell me?” she asks.
“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I should,” I say. If I tell her, it could be deadly.
But what’s the alternative? Let her live in ignorance, unable to make her own decisions, unable to protect herself or understand what’s happening? I shudder. I can’t make that decision for her. She has the right to determine her own future.
The only thing that keeping secrets has ever brought me is pain. It’s meant I had to carve parts of myself away. Pretend to be versions of me that don’t really exist.
Del needs to be able to make that choice.
“There’s something I found out,” I say. “But, Del, your mother thinks that even knowing this stuff could trigger your condition, maybe even kill you.”
She stares at me. I can’t begin to read the storm of emotions in her eyes. Fear and confusion and curiosity and—and trust. “It’s worth the risk,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t keep living like this. The ghost at my door. I need to know what’s happening to me, or I’m going to lose it,” Del says, and offers a fragile, false smile.
It’s her choice, I remind myself. I don’t have a right to protect her from it. I take a deep breath. “I figured out what happened the night you fell in the Narrow. How you survived.”
“How?” Del asks, hunger in her voice.
“It was Grace. She saved you somehow. She helped you escape the water, but you helped her escape too.”
Del’s hand tightens over mine. She looks at me with furious intensity, not yet comprehending. “Grace was in the water.”
“She and Maeve were there together. Caught in the Narrow—together forever, right? But when you fell in and Grace saved you, she stayed with you. Maeve was left alone. That’s why she started to show up. She was looking for Grace. And Grace was with you.”
“With me,” Del repeats.
“In you,” I say, and wait, silent.
Slowly, Del looks away. She fixes her eyes on the opposite wall. “In me,” she echoes. “As in . . .”
“Her ghost—or soul, or spirit, or whatever you want to call it—it’s part of you,” I say.
“I’m possessed,” Del says flatly.
“I don’t know if that’s the right word for it,” I say with a helpless shrug. “Your mother thinks it’s more like you became the same person. You’re Del. And you’re Grace. One person, just more than that, too.”
Del’s hand slips from mine. She rises from the bed and walks slowly toward the vanity. The mirror reflects back her still, solemn face. “Sometimes I look at my reflection and I don’t recognize it,” she says. “I look at my mother and it takes me a moment to remember who she is. I knew I’d changed. I felt different. Maman said it was because I was sick. That being sick would change anyone. I was so impatient with my old friends when they tried to talk to me. They seemed like chattering little children. That’s why I liked Aubrey so much. My mother said she was an old soul. Like me.” She gives a hollow laugh. “Does that mean I’m sixty?”
“Grace died when she was sixteen. At this point, you’re—Del is older than her,” I say. I don’t know how to talk about them separately. I don’t know how much they are separate. She remembers her brother, the scent of her aunt’s dahlias, as if they are her own memories. She’s never noticed being two people, so maybe that means she isn’t. She’s one person who used to be two. “You’re still breathing. That’s good.”
“I can feel it, though,” Del says. She turns back toward me, her movements precise. “Like a trickle of water down the back of my throat. I can hear it. Like a sound that isn’t yet a sound. The water rushing in.”
Her breath comes fast with a little hitch at the end, a small wet sound at the back of her throat. I rise and cross to her, putting my hand over her sternum to feel the too-quick beating of her heart.
“You’re okay,” I tell her. “You’re safe. There’s no water here. You aren’t drowning.”
“But I did.”
“You did,” I acknowledge.
“Who am I, Eden? Delphine or Grace?” she asks.
“I don’t know. Both. Neither,” I say. “You’re Del. You’re the girl I love.” I haven’t said it before. Maybe it isn’t even true—not yet. But it will be. I know with all my soul that our love is a promised thing.
She looks at me, her lips parted. And in that moment, my heart cracks like brittle ice, and just like that, the promise tumbles into truth.
“I love you, Del,” I whisper.
“You promised never to lie to me,” she reminds me.
“I’m not lying. I love you,” I tell her. I press my lips to hers, and she lets out a soft sound of longing. “Del or Delphine or Grace, I love you,” I say, tears in my eyes.
She’s the one who kisses me this time, not gentle but hungry, half exultant and half desperate. But just as quickly as the kiss begins, she pulls away.
“Maeve,” she says. “I left her there. In the river.”
“Do you remember?” I ask.
She puts her hands to her head. “Tiny bits and pieces. I remember her. Her hands. I remember . . .” A blush creeps up her neck. She touches one finger to her lower lip. “We were supposed to be together forever.”
There’s a lump in my throat like a stone. Even death didn’t keep them apart. Who am I in the face of that? “Do you know what happened? How Grace drowned?” I ask.
Del shakes her head. “That’s down in the dark. In the water. I can’t go there,” she says, shivering. “I don’t think I can think about Grace too much. It’s—she—” She gives a shudder, and for a moment her breathing stops. She stops. Her body goes still, then limp, and I lunge forward in time to catch her.
She sags against me but quickly gets her feet under her again, coughing and spluttering on nothing as she straightens up. Her face is pale as a sheet of paper.
“Let’s not do that again,” I say, and she nods. “So thinking about Grace and about that night is a definite no-go. But you haven’t just drowned, so I think we’re doing okay.” My voice is shaky.
“Is that supposed to be my life, then? Trying desperately not to think too hard about who I used to be?” she asks. She sounds lost. “And what about Maeve?”
“Maybe we can make her understand,” I say. I think of her pressing me down onto the bed, the snarl of anger in her voice. She died for love of Grace. Died in panic and pain. Maybe she’s too damaged by that trauma to listen. To let go.
“I loved her,” Delphine says. It’s almost a question. She looks at me as if I can answer it. “I was the one who loved her so much, we died for each other. It was me, wasn’t it?”
“It was Grace. And you are Grace. Or part of you is,” I say. I hesitate. “What about now? Do you still love her?”
“I don’t know,” she says. She shuts her eyes. “Yes,” she whispers, and I know—she is remembering. The power of that love is flooding through her.
I ease back. “I wish there was some way you could be together again,” I say. It isn’t a lie. Not really. I do wish Grace and Maeve could be happy again, reunited.
And the idea of losing Del feels like its own death.
“I don’t want to die,” Del whispers. “I don’t want to go back there, Eden. It’s all darkness and cold and you’re dying with every breath.”
“What if . . .” I trail off. It’s too crazy an idea. It probably won’t work. But she looks at me with a bright shard of hope glinting in her eye, and I say it anyway. “What if you didn’t have to go back to the river to be with Maeve? What if she could escape the same way Grace did?”
She looks at me blankly. “How?”
“Grace and Maeve’s chance at life, their chance to be in love, was stolen from them,” I say. “But we could give it back if Maeve could do the same thing. Maeve could be part of me, the way Grace is part of you. Maybe if they—if we were together, it would be enough to keep them both alive. Give them back to each other.”
And then I could have Del. It wouldn’t be the same me—but does it matter? I won’t have to give her up.
Maybe being me doesn’t matter so much if I can have that.
“Could we even survive like that? With the river trying to pull us back every moment?” Del asks.
“I don’t know. But I’m willing to try.”
Del turns away. She walks to the bedside table. On it rests the pages of Grave Belles I gave her. She’s nearly at the end of what I’ve written. Lenore’s face in stark black-and-white fills the entire page as caption boxes seem to swarm around her, each with a fragment of her panicked thoughts as she realizes that Belle has been discovered by her brother and is in mortal danger. It’s also the moment she realizes she’s in love with Belle.
“What happens to Belle and Lenore?” Del asks softly. She looks up at me through her pale lashes. “Do they survive? Do they get to be together?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Sometimes I think it has to be a tragedy. Sometimes I can’t bear any ending but one in which they’re happy and in love.
“I would really like to find out,” Del says. Her voice breaks. “Promise me you’ll finish it.”
“I promise.” And they’ll live. They’ll be happy and they’ll never die, and they’ll get a forever that can never be taken away.
“Let’s do it,” Del says. Her voice is rough but confident.
“When?” I ask, my heart hammering.
She looks to the window, out at the overcast sky. “It’s going to rain tonight,” she says.
Tonight.
Tonight I will find Maeve.
Tonight I will drown.
And then maybe, just maybe, both of us will live.