you, but I knew that wasn’t possible. That wasn’t possible, right?”
Julia tilted her head, shaking it, and studied Hannah. She took a breath. “Hannah, I need you to think for a moment, okay?”
Hannah nodded. How easily she fell back into it, her sister the leader, the teacher, the mother. She the faithful student, the child.
Oh, there was so much she had to tell her. Wyatt and Huck and Aunt Fae. Aunt Fae! Oh, poor Julia. “Aunt Fae is dead, Julia. She died in a car accident—”
“Hannah, STOP.” Julia’s voice was loud and firm in the tiny room, and Hannah’s thoughts stilled. Her sister always did this, though. If Hannah got too excitable, Julia tempered it. Hannah had been too much for Julia. Too much for Trina. Too much for everyone.
“I didn’t run away. I need you to think. I need you to remember. You need to remember.” Julia’s voice edged higher. She took Hannah’s hands in her own, and now they felt cold. “Think, Hannah. I can’t make you remember. Only you can do that.”
“It was starting to rain. You packed a bag. The path was slippery. I hurt my ankle.” Hannah spoke slowly, the images coming in bursts.
“Did you really hurt your ankle?”
Yes. No. “We would be sent back to Plymouth. I just wanted to stop you from going to the police.”
“But then what?”
“I just wanted to stop you. I just wanted to stay here,” Hannah whispered.
“Then what, Hannah?” Julia pleaded with her, her face wet with tears.
Hannah shook her head, closed her eyes. Her sister’s face in her memory, white in the blue light of the moon. Fae killed Ellie. I have proof. We aren’t safe here.
You ruin everything. You ruined Wyatt. You ruined Brackenhill. We were so happy, before. I can’t go back to Plymouth.
“You ruin everything. You’re still doing it,” Hannah moaned, the dirt hard beneath her knees when she sank down, resting her forehead against her forearms. Julia held tight to Hannah’s hands, swaying slightly. “Stop. Just stop ruining everything.”
Click, click. The snap of an old lock. Not rusted.
The key in her fingertips. A fleur-de-lis.
Oh my God.
Hannah wanted to crawl inside the dirt, bury herself. Make it stop, the pain, the emptiness, the missing.
She’d been so angry. Furious. She remembered everything suddenly, like a flash. The fury, the hurt. She’d been so tired.
What had she done?
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Then
August 2, 2002
“Julia, wait!” Hannah’s voice cut across the courtyard. The moon was bright, but Hannah had grabbed one of Stuart’s battery-powered lanterns from the kitchen. Julia turned, her duffel bag slung over her shoulder, and studied her sister.
Hannah was so tired. Her body was screaming for sleep, her legs heavy and back aching. And yet her heart raced and stuttered. Couldn’t find a rhythm.
“Where are you going?” she called after her. Julia turned away then, hefted her bag higher, and took off down the path toward town, legs pumping.
Hannah raced after her.
Julia, who had everything: Wyatt. Josh Fink. Secrets. Friends. Trina. She was going to ruin everything. For what? Because she wanted to? Everything Julia did was because she wanted to. Because she didn’t care who she hurt. How could she have not seen it before? Julia didn’t love Hannah. Julia loved Julia. She didn’t care who she stepped on as long as she got what she wanted. She wanted to leave Brackenhill? She’d make sure it happened. By going to the police? About what? What lies would she make up now?
Hannah was destined to live in her big sister’s shadow, forever falling short. The uglier one. The dumber one. The one that was ignored by her mother and preyed upon by her stepfather. She couldn’t go home to Plymouth. She would not be made to leave Brackenhill again.
Julia picked up speed.
Hannah had never been to this part of the forest at night. The path to town was steep and narrow, pebbled with rocks, and Hannah’s ankle rolled, her hip hitting a painful root. She leaned forward to massage it, her fingertips finding the tender spot below the bone. Her sister’s blonde hair in the distance was growing fainter; she could barely make her out. In a few seconds she’d be gone.
Hannah looked around and saw with astonishment that she’d tumbled right outside the embankment. From the path the embankment looked nondescript, the side crawling with dead blackberry vines, spindly and broken. Hannah knew what lay underneath the vines.
A door.
Slowly, as if in a trance, she touched the fleur-de-lis key in her pocket. And then she knew. She’d