The brush stops, midway through my hair.
“I didn’t seeyou.” Her words are measured, precise. “Which we will talk about later, Caroline.”
Another distraction, using my whole given name. But my shame didn’t survive the drowning. I imagine it sinking. An offering to roil in the waves in my stead.
“Answer me.” My throat protests against speaking louder.
She brushes again, rougher. “I saw the kitchen. I was a little preoccupied, searching for where you’d gone.”
“Nothing out of order?” I venture.Let me in, Elle,I want to scream at her.No tricks.
She tugs at my hair so hard that my head bobs back with it.
“Ow! Careful!”
Elle takes back her hand and sets the brush on the bedside table. I picture her fingers shaking. With anger? Fear?
“My knife was on the floor,” she says, quiet as a confession. “Why was my knife out?”
That’s all I get? I want to shake her. But if the fight was in my head, then that makes sense. All Elle would’ve found was what I touched. I don’t know how to answer. Tears well in my eyes.
“I’m so scared,” I whisper. How many more girls will my mind invent? “What are we doing here? What will become of us?”
This is what Elle is equipped for. She shushes me, comforts me, climbs into bed, and holds me. The picture of a perfect sister when I give her the right conditions.
I drift into sleep in her arms. Chamomile doesn’t appear. Neither does Bridget—that was the name! Is she a new incarnation of my imaginary friend? Or a real woman out on the island alone and surely scared?
I haven’t dreamed alone in months.
I float in swirling, quiet nothing. It’s my first moment of peace sinceI saw Mr. Croxton’s boat on the horizon yesterday morning. How much changes in so little time. There’s nothing in this dream but endless gray.
I wake too quickly. My sister’s arm is draped over me with a tension that betrays she’s awake too. My head is turned to the chesterfield, to its squat wooden leg closest to me. I’m at an odd angle, not natural to my usual sleeping position, looking somewhere I never have before.
Specifically, to the trapdoor the chesterfield stands on.
15Elle
To Worry
While Liney sleeps, twitching beside me, I plot the murder of Bridget Coleman.
I should conserve my strength. The sun rises above the lighthouse’s spire, marking my twenty-fourth hour awake. I’ll be useless to us if I’m falling over with exhaustion.
But what if she comes back? Murders us while we sleep? A bitter irony.
I’ve only murdered one person up close. He was easy. No one tells you that. Not that any of my tutors or priests were well versed in death, but it always struck me as a difficult act.
It’s not.
The motions of his knife against his throat were laborious, but I’d assumed it’d be more complex. There should’ve been a moment of decision between maiming and ending a life. But once the blade is in action, you simply keep going. You stop seeing the squirming person within your grasp. You start planning where to put their body so your sisterdoesn’t see. You consider how you’ll change their home into yours. Then they’re dead. You’re a murderer. And you move on to the next task.
My plan for Bridget is simple. Knife, throat, end. It doesn’t matter where, only soon. In a sample of one lighthouse keeper, this plan worked flawlessly.
Anyone who’s come into our lives so serendipitously now must be a plot by Mr. Pratterman. Every time my eyelids droop, I’m assaulted with visions of blood seeping down from the rafters, Liney’s head rolling back in the arms of a sea demon, and my black knife dripping on the floor.
Liney left the lighthouse last night. She displaced my knife before she left, may have used it. Douglas delayed me, knowing Liney had left. What did she see? Mr. Pratterman is capable of trickery and magic. He’s remained closer to this place than I thought. The taste of him lingers on my tongue long after it should’ve dissipated.
I toss my head back against my pillow. I’ve drifted from fact into speculation.
