Page 51 of The Light Between Worlds

The five of us sit in the dark as the sound of planes fades away and the sirens eventually stop. But fear still eats away at my insides—fear that this is the worst thing I’ve done, bringing Ev home from the Woodlands. That I am born to trouble, sure as the sparks fly upward, and only harm when I want to help.

Swallowing back guilt, I hold my sister close.

36

AFTERNOON LIGHT STREAMS THROUGH THE WINDOWS BYthe time I make it downstairs. I may be groggy and muddleheaded, but my makeup is flawless and I haven’t left a hair out of place.

Powder and pumps. Jamie once told Evelyn that’s all I’m interested in since the Woodlands, but what he doesn’t realize is that you can wear powder like a shield, and wield the right lipstick like a sword. I may have let the Tarsin heir’s poisonous words get the better of me once, but never again. I am always on my guard now, every one of my thoughts and feelings carefully managed and accounted for, and I go nowhere unless I’m dressed for war.

Pushing open the kitchen door, I find Jamie sitting at the table, ashen-faced and nursing a cup of cold tea.

“Where are Mum and Dad?” I ask, brushing past him to freshen the kettle and set it back on the stove.

“I sent them to bed. They’ve been through more than enough this week.” Jamie’s words come out muffled and when I turn, he’s got his head in his hands. That breaks me a little—I’m used to being bludgeoned by his honor, and came in ready to have it castup to me that I left Evelyn behind.

I sit beside my brother, slide one arm through his, and rest my chin on his shoulder.

“Poor old man. Have you had a terrible time?”

He nods, but doesn’t look up. “I went to St. Agatha’s the morning after she disappeared. The school called Scotland Yard and they brought dogs out. The Yard traced her through the woods, found her sweater and shoes in a clearing, and the trail kept on after that for a bit. But it stopped at the—”

His voice cuts off and I pull away, pull into myself. I put my shoulders back, lengthen my neck, and set my mouth into an indomitable scarlet line. When I speak, I might be stating the time of day.

“It stopped at the river.”

I can see the River Went in my mind’s eye, rushing darkly along through the woods outside St. Agatha’s, then over rapids and past the sheep fields outside Hardwick. My stomach turns over, but the kettle’s on, so I suppose I’d better choke down some tea.

“They’ve been questioning everyone at St. Agatha’s, and St. Joseph’s, too. She was seeing a boy from St. Joe’s, you know.”

I glance sharply at Jamie. “Evelyn—oursisterEvelyn—was seeing someone?”

Jamie looks up for the first time, and his face is anguished. “Don’t, Philippa. Not when things are like this. I knew him and I asked him to look out for her when he could. They hit it off, and I thought—I thought it would make things better for her.”

“Apparently not.” The words rattle out before I can catch them, dry and wounding and not at all what I meant to say.

Jamie pushes his chair back and crosses the kitchen, standing in front of the sink and staring out the window that offers no view but a brick wall. “I couldn’t handle her. I don’t know how you did it all those years, but I couldn’t. I tried—God knows I tried, but I think it was something I said that—”

I hate hearing Jamie lose his words because of Evelyn. I despise having to watch his hands tremble before he balls them into fists.

“Stop that. Stop it right now. Jamie Hapwell, turn around and look at me.”

Jamie turns, reluctantly, and he slumps like he did in the Woodlands, when the weight of worlds rested heavy on our shoulders.

“I don’t know what happened,” I say. “None of us do, yet. Maybe we never will. Maybe we’re going to have to live with this hanging over us. But whatever it is, it was Evelyn’s choice, and it’s a choice she’d been making since the moment we came home.”

If only I believed my own words. As surely as I know my name, I know my sister would still be here if I hadn’t left. Yet I can’t bear the way Jamie is standing, like something’s gone wrong on the inside. He’s been the best of us for so long, the only one who managed to stay whole, and now he’s finally broken. I’d tell a thousand lies and hide a lifetime of heartbreak to take away a little of his pain.

“They said there’s compelling evidence,” Jamie tells me. “But that without a—”

“—body—”

“—she’ll have to be missing for seven years before they can declare her... well, anything other than just missing. Can we live in the in-between for seven years, Philippa?”

I get up and go to him. Ever since we were children, no onehas asked what we could live with. Not about the war that ripped Europe apart, not about the world that ripped Evelyn apart, not about this. I stand in front of Jamie and fix him with a battlefront look—the sort that won’t give an inch, and won’t allow anyone else to give, either.

“We’ve always been in the in-between, Jamie, and you and I live with whatever comes our way.” He bows his head and when he looks at me again, I give him a smile bright as steel. “I’m here now, and I’m not leaving. We’ll bear up under this together.”

Something crosses his face, and it might be an answering smile or it might be the ghost of an expression he wore in the Great Wood. “You’re a brick, Phil. I’m glad to have you back.”