She pulls my arm down, out, then above my head before I can react. A sickening pop sounds as a hot jolt arcs through my shoulder and down my arm. Relief follows as my shoulder rests naturally again.
“Come in. Tell me everything.”
I follow her. The ghost of suffering sharpens my senses. The wind at the back of my head, the smell of fresh fish in the kitchen, the warmth of the fireplace. Chamomile slips in before the door closes and settles into a corner of the room, watchful as a cat.
“I was on the beach. I saw the boat, small like ours,” I begin. Elle hurries around the small room, clearing the clutter of the day from the counters on one end, then stuffing linens into a trunk beneath the bedon the other. “One man. I snuck into the trees for cover, but he saw me. He waved. I’m so sorry, Elle. I’ve wrecked everything.”
Elle stops her hurrying and comes back to me. She cups my face with her rough hands. “You warned me, little ghost.”
My eyes water, but Elle presses her hands against my cheeks.
“No tears.” The warmth in her voice is replaced with focus. “Tears won’t save us. You’ll hide upstairs. You won’t make a sound.”
It will be all right, Caroline,Chamomile soothes.
“He saw me,” I remind them both. “Why else would he wave? He’ll be looking for me.”
“Give me your dress,” Elle orders. Her face has turned to stone, the same look from the night we escaped. “He saw a fair-haired woman in a dress. He’ll find her.”
All of Elle’s dresses are stored away, as she doesn’t enjoy wearing them, and we don’t have time to search. The lighthouse keeper’s clothes flood on me, but I don’t need them for a ruse. Elle puts out the fire in the corner and closes the curtains.
“He might not be coming to the lighthouse,” Elle mutters. “Maybe firewood, or fishing.”
Come, Caroline.Chamomile is halfway up the stairs to the storage room.He’s close.
“Be careful,” I tell Elle, hugging her close. Her form softens at my embrace. “Oh, your hair. We need to undo it, like mine.”
With clumsy, hurried fingers, I unbraid her tresses. She stands, awkward and tense, my white cotton dress and waves of blond hair spread around her like in a mourning portrait.
“Be silent, my love,” she says as I scamper up to the storage room. “One man won’t destroy us.”
3Elle
To Lie
I sit beside the doused fireplace ashes, Liney’s frightened face lingering in my mind. She’s cowering above among jellies and cured meats while I sit in her dress to play pretend. I tuck the fillet knife carefully into the fold of my armchair. There’s a charge in the air—my nerves or the storm?
This quiet island has tricked me out of my necessary fear. I’ve failed her. Did this interloper spot me on my last supply run? Followed me, unseen, to where I hid the boat? What are his connections? I’ll cancel the next trip if we survive this. We’ll last on fish and preserves through the winter. Liney will miss her comforts, but this is a small sacrifice.
“He may be a friend of mine,” the lighthouse keeper says, peering out the kitchen window. I hadn’t noticed he’d returned.
“All the more reason to gut him,” I mutter.
“Are you satisfied with staying?” he asks. His tone carries so much condescension and disgust that I can’t tell if it’s a genuine question.“I don’t know why I thought you might do the brave thing and leave. You’re a mouse trapped in a corner.”
“A mouse that killed you,” I remind him.
“What a triumph to kill an unarmed man turned around and making you tea,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re a coward, girl. Don’t forget.”
He’s got no idea. If it were as simple as the ghost believes, I’d move on to another city. We’d go to Boston or book a crossing to England. The Forsyth tragedy may not have made the papers in London. We were a new-world family with no connections to the English gentry.
Mr. Pratterman makes any dream of leaving impossible. The landlord of the lighthouse and wielder of the power stored below. I can’t leave while I’m still indebted. The lighthouse keeper knows bits and pieces but not the full picture of my bargain. Would he dare to speak to me if he did?
The ghost has never found a pamphlet on his father’s desk, out in plain sight as though meant for anyone to sneak in and see. An advertisement for the Mount Hope Asylum for the Insane, a new facility across the harbor. On the front, in a script I recognized, were the wordsCharles—A suggestion should you have trouble. Yours, TS
This was the moment, hands shaking, that I lost all faith in my parents. They were in Thomas’s pocket, while I’d become a problem to be dealt with.
I’d heard of a girl who went to Mount Hope. She was a few years older than I, from a less fortunate family. She’d complained of headaches and intense nightmares. The details were kept to whispers after she stopped showing up to events. She’d refused to be shipped out west to be wed in a homesteading program and attempted to escape at the last moment from the train station. Her parents had found a physician willing to diagnose her with temporary insanity. Sent for enough time in overcrowded, unclean, brutal conditions to soften her fortitude. Shenever returned, either rotting in Mount Hope or sent off in another train car. Or worse.
