She stood, tentatively putting weight on her ankle. It seemed fine. She faked a limp.
“Julia!” she called after her sister, her voice breaking with the effort. The night was still. Bright. Clear. In the far distance, she heard the rush of the river, so faint, like the inside of a conch shell.
Julia stopped, turned. “Leave me alone, Hannah!” she yelled back, and Hannah felt the burn of fury in her gut. That bitch.
“I’m hurt!”
She retracted the key from her pocket and pulled the blackberry vines away from the opening. Just as she’d thought: a rough wooden door, once painted but now splintered and weathered.
The key fit perfectly in the old padlock. When the door swung open, she saw nothing but concrete steps down into blackness.
“Julia!” Hannah called again, the lantern casting dark shadows into the cavern.
So strange, thought Hannah, that I’m not afraid.
Hannah descended the steps, careful with her ankle, holding on to the wall. Julia’s face appeared above her from the opening, moon bright and shining.
“Hannah, what are you doing?”
“I’m hurt. I fell.” Hannah felt the half lie in her mouth, sweet and full. Would her sister worry? She might pretend to worry.
“Hannah, please.”
Hannah, please. Oh, a refrain from her childhood. Please go away. Please leave me alone. Please be quiet. Please stop talking. Please make yourself smaller. No, smaller. There, now you are invisible.
“I got the door open,” Hannah said from the center of the room. She swung the lantern out before setting it down in the middle of the floor: shelves, flour sacks, canning jars—some filled with brown liquid, most empty. A pile of burlap in the center of the room. A few glass jugs filled with water.
“Hannah, it’s not the right time for this. Please, I have to go.” Julia’s voice was quick, panicky.
“You don’t have to go. You choose to go.”
“You don’t understand anything!” Julia screamed, her face red with rage. “I just need you to leave me alone for five minutes. You don’t! You’re always after me. Do you know there are bigger things happening than you this summer?”
“Why would I know anything? You don’t talk to me. You haven’t talked to me in months.”
Julia panted, trying to catch her breath. She descended the concrete stairs, stepping carefully into the beam from Hannah’s lantern. Finally, she said, calmer, “Hannah, listen to me. She killed Ellie. Aunt Fae killed someone. Maybe more than one. We are not safe here. We are not safe with her.”
“That’s bullshit. Aunt Fae couldn’t kill anyone!”
Did Julia’s selfishness know no bounds? She’d accuse Aunt Fae of murder?
“You take everything from me.” Hannah covered her face, willed the tears to come, but her eyes stayed dry. She felt nothing: not fear, not sadness, just a blank emptiness deep inside where feelings should have been. Like she’d been flayed open, all her insides out for the world to see, and now she had nothing left.
Hannah didn’t recognize the girl in front of her: the tangled blonde hair, the flush of her cheeks, the sour smell of her. “I can’t go back to Plymouth. Do you understand? Do you know what he does to me?” Her voice cracked, the tip of an unpleasant feeling surfacing. Despair. Hannah tamped it down, stamped it out. “Did he do it to you?”
It was a big gun, Hannah knew. Her sister wilted, her face transformed, and Hannah had her answer. Not anymore. Julia didn’t have to say it.
Julia’s old silence was Hannah’s new burden.
Fuck that.
Julia took two steps forward and folded her sister in her arms. Hannah didn’t return the embrace, just waited. Counted to five. Breathed in and out. Bubbles of anger rising up, her throat on fire with it, her skin burning where Julia touched her. Julia, who had always sworn she’d protect her.
Hannah slipped out of the hug and bounded up the concrete steps two at a time.
“Hannah!” Julia yelped.
Outside, the air felt cooler. A breeze was blowing a storm in. The air hummed with energy.
Hannah slammed the door shut.
Clicked the padlock closed. Click, click.
Julia’s footfalls hit the concrete steps on the other side. Then: thump, thump.
“What are you doing, Hannah? Let me out!”
Then, “Hannah, please.” And softer, again.
Thump, thump. The weight of her sister’s fists on the other side of the door.
Hannah on the outside. Combing the vines—just so—with her fingertips over the wood. Until the hillside looked like a hillside, nothing more or less.